Latest Post
Reeder Reel Episode 1: Sam Gruber
Posted March 21, 2025
On the inaugural episode of the Reeder Reel, Sarah and Drea speak to alumni Sam Gruber '24 about his video project supported by the Reeder Media Center.
W&M Libraries Blog
College Farm
Posted
The College Farm of William & Mary was active in the 1920s-1940s. According to a 1935 Alumni Gazette article the farm was first organized in 1923 by President J.A.C. Chandler. The 65 acre farm supplied vegetables and fruit for the college dining hall.
The "Controversy" of Being Different: LGBT Student Groups at William & Mary
Posted
One of the best sources for tracking LGBT presence at William & Mary is the archives' collection of the student yearbook, Colonial Echo, which is available online. Insider tip: the digitized versions are searchable by keyword! This is how I started my research filling in the gaps of what we know about LGBT groups at the College.
Fostering Hope and Community in an Internment Camp
Posted
On Friday, the 25th of September, 1942, Hilda Haworth, her husband Walter, and many others left the English Channel island Guernsey for Germany. The diary details life in the camp for a little over a year, and was immensely fascinating to read through.
A Treasure Trove of the Colonial, Revolutionary, and Early National Periods
Posted
Currently, the Tucker-Coleman Papers are undergoing a serious overhaul. Groups of boxes are being subdivided into intuitive series within the collection, and the finding aids for each are going digital, making the Tucker Coleman Papers more accessible to researchers than ever.
Diary of an Ocean Voyage to Latin America
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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
Posted
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.