At the outbreak of the Civil War, Richard Morris Hunt married the American shipping heiress Catharine Clinton Howland (1841-1909). They were the parents of five children and collaborators in Richard's career and Catharine's advancement of working women. Among their shared activities was the assembly of scrapbook volumes composed of thousands of clippings, organized by subject, that comprise a visual and, to an extent, textual encyclopedia of Western material and fine arts related to the design of nineteenth-century eclectic architecture and the practice of Richard Morris Hunt.