Virginia Beresford Fox, granddaughter of Cranbrook founders, George and Ellen Booth, was born in 1935 in Detroit. Growing up at Cranbrook, she attended Kingswood School during the seventh through tenth grades, and graduated from Chatham Hall in Virginia. She obtained a bachelor’s degree from Wellesley College in 1956, majoring in French. She returned to Michigan to study at Wayne State University where she earned a master’s degree in French and teacher certification. She taught French at Kingswood during 1956/57. She married James Fox in 1958, at Christ Church Cranbrook and the couple had two children, Kathy and Steve. She has been an active and avid volunteer at the Cranbrook Institute of Science for many years, in addition to serving on numerous Cranbrook committees, boards and the Cranbrook House and Garden Auxiliary. In 1991 she received the President’s Award for Excellence, and in 1996 the Founder’s Medal. The materials in this collection belonged to Virginia Fox’s grandmother, Ellen Scripps Booth. There are Ellen’s (Nellie's) childhood spelling and penmanship books, and a sketchbook, showing that she shared her mother’s interest in botanical miniature painting. There are also books given to her by her father, James Edmund Scripps. The few pages of botanical notes, in Box 1, were stuck among the pages of Object Lessons in Botany.