Latest Post
Reading Tea Leaves at Special Collections
Posted June 26, 2024
Written by Dan Du, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina - Charlotte (Special Collections Research Center travel grant recipient, 2023-2024)
Special Collections
Diary of an Ocean Voyage to Latin America
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Marie Seegelken and her husband Oliver embarked on a cruise from Los Angeles to Cristobal, Panama. The couple left Los Angeles on August 7, 1934 after dining the night before at the California Yacht Club. The passengers started their voyage on the SS Santa Catalina but were transferred to the SS Santa Elena for the voyage home where they arrived on September 4.
Left in the Lurch
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In 1819 Asher Marx (no relation to Groucho) wrote a letter to Moses Myers of Norfolk, Virginia complaining about his money problems, saying that his credit would have been sufficient to support his family but Wilson & Cunningham "left me in the Lurch" for $40,000. Did they really use that expression in the early 19th century? Was Asher the one who coined the phrase?
College Memorial Garden
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The centerpiece of the College's Memorial Garden is a towering bronze sculpture of a dove, created by David Turner, class of 1983. Turner's sculptures appear all over campus, including Bald Eagles in the Sadler Center and Great Blue Heron and Marsh Wren in the Crim Dell.
Centering animals in archival research
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Tracing the histories of oppressed groups is notoriously difficult as their members may have been prevented from attaining educational or material resources that would allow them to keep records of their experiences. Or their existence may have been deemed so inconsequential that they were simply excluded from or misrepresented by larger data sources like census records, upon which researchers often rely.
Asian and Asian Americans in the University Archives
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In honor of Asian-Pacific American Heritage Month, here are brief biographies of some of the earliest known Asian and Asian American students and faculty at William & Mary.
K.O.B. Ribbon Society
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This image of female students of the K.O.B. ribbon society surrounding the Botetourt Statue appeared in the 1931 Colonial Echo yearbook. Shortly after William & Mary became a co-ed in 1918, "a certain group of girls who found each other's company congenial, decided to form a ribbon society."
Beautiful Penmanship
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One of the most beautifully executed manuscript volumes in the Special Collections Research Center is a genealogy notebook compiled by Wilson Miles Cary (1838-1914). Cary, the grandnephew of Thomas Jefferson, was born in Harford County, Md. and later lived in Baltimore, Md. where he served as a court clerk and also pursued his genealogy interest.
College Camp 1775
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Col. Patrick Henry marked out an area "behind the College" for the Virginia Militia camp during the period 1775-1781. This indicates that the camp was behind (west) of the Wren Building which was always referred to as "the College" in the eighteenth century.
Recent Women's History Acquisitions in Special Collections
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In honor of Women's History Month, Swem Library Special Collections would like to highlight two of its most recent acquisitions related to women's history. The Rowena Goddard Diary is a travel diary kept by Rowena while traveling with her mother in Germany during the spring and summer of 1889.
Shirley Temple in Williamsburg
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We lost an icon with the death of Shirley Temple Black on February 10, 2014. As a child actor, she captured the hearts of millions of Americans. Later in life, she served as the U.S. Ambassador to Ghana and Czechoslovakia, and Chief of Protocol of the United States.
Newton Day Recap
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1In a follow up to last week's post about Special Collections' Principia, here are some pictures of the Newton Day tree planting ceremony and our display of rare science books in the Physics Library.
Newton's Principia
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William & Mary will soon be home of one of history's most famous trees. Well, at least a very close relative. This Saturday, February 22, William & Mary will accept the first of three apple trees grafted from a descendant of the purported apple tree that inspired Isaac Newton's theory of gravitation. The gift comes to us from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, which is connected to William & Mary is through its founder and W&M alumnus, William Barton Rogers.
19th Century Women's Diaries
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Special Collections has recently purchased sixteen women's diaries, totaling about 4,800 pages, written in Connecticut and Oregon. Most of the factual information below is taken from the dealer's description. Twelve of the diaries, dating 1886 to 1945, belonged to Rosanna M. Munger, daughter of Theodore Thornton Munger, a Congregationalist minister and an advocate of Horace Bushnell's "New Theology."
College Airport
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The College Airport was located on Airport Rd which runs perpendicular to Richmond Rd and Mooretown Rd. (click on image for larger view) At the time of construction in the early 1930s, it was suggested that the airport be named "Benjamin Ewell Field" after the former College president who owned a farm nearby. It was only used for a few years in the early 1930's to teach flying to students.
Making Sense of Chaos
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Tasked with processing the Rosina Bowers Papers series of the Hamilton Family Papers, I opened two boxes of photographs and papers as one would expect to find them in someone's home, rather than what you would expect in the stacks of an archive. I had two initial reactions to the yet unprocessed collection.
A Year In Review
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In this letter, James DeLancey, acting Governor Of New York, writes to William Kempe, the royally commissioned provincial Attorney General of New York, concerning a potential mutiny by sailors on the Hudson River in 1759 during the Seven Years War. More material related to the Seven Years War can be found in Special Collections' Armed Conflicts research guide.
Out with the old, in with the new
Posted
If you are a frequent visitor to our blog, you may notice that things look a little different around here. We have updated our look from the design we initially opened for business with in August 2009.
X Marks the Swem Spot
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This is a 1949 aerial photo of campus long before any of the "new campus" buildings. The "X" marks the spot where Swem Library would be built in 1964.
A clandestine edition of Galileo's Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, 1710
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Earlier this semester we displayed a selection of Special Collections' early modern science books for a group of students and faculty. Among the exhibited volumes was a copy of the second Italian edition of Galileo Galilei's Dialogo or Dialogue concerning the two chief world systems, Ptolemaic and Copernican, published in 1710.
Swem's Visiting Librarian takes on Chapin-Horowitz Dog Book Collection backlog
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Special Collections and Content Services is thrilled to welcome Xiaoyan Song to the library as Swem's Visiting Librarian.