While combing through clippings from the Middletown Press as part of a greater project of archiving their collection of photographs, negatives, and articles, I came across an article that stopped me in my tracks. Titled “Sgt. Dick Hawley Slays 44 Japs in Potato Hill Fight,” it was published in August, 1943. The article details local Staff Sergeant Richard Hawley’s experience of a skirmish in New Georgia, part of the Solomon Islands, on July 17, 1943. Battles in New Georgia were part of the Pacific campaign of World War II that took place between June 20, and August 25, 1943. According to the author, Staff Sergeant Richard Hawley was responsible for the deaths of 44 Japanese soldiers during the Battle of Potato Hill.

I have come across other articles on local men who were fighting abroad, but what is unusual about this article is its language. The author glorifies Hawley’s actions, describing Hawley as having “achieved an amazing individual record of fighting against the Japs.” The use of the word “Japs” reflects the contemporary racialization and othering of the enemy, and is disturbing to modern readers who recognize the racist connotations of the term.

The article quotes extensively from Hawley himself. He describes the battle, and how “the Japs were within 30 feet when I managed to crawl back to the gun and open fire. The next morning I found 10 within 10 feet of the parapet, all dead, and another 34 lying back a little ways. ‘Old Betsy’ sure was shooting straight that night.” The quote reveals a lot about a soldier’s mentality. Death in battle is treated casually, and a soldier can take pride in his performance, as well as in his weapon. Interestingly, the machine gun is personified, and female.

The article goes on to quote a letter to his sister, in which he requests a new hunting knife. His previous one, which he refers to as his “little baby,” “really came in handy.” Unfortunately, he lost it, “and not in a very pleasant manner.” He then closes the letter with a simple “Thanks. Love, Dick.” The contrast is truly jarring.

“Sgt. Dick Hawley Slays 44 Japs in Potato Hill Fight” is a portrait of a local boy who becomes a local hero; “Dick” stands in for all the young soldiers abroad. As a snapshot of the time, it captures the racialization and degradation of the enemy, as well as robust patriotism and pride in fighting the good fight. The triumphant tone of the article may have helped to boost morale and support for the war, because it is ultimately a story of U.S. victory.

Cataloging photographs can be frustrating. I’ve been working on the Middletown Press Project and one of my jobs is to sort the photographs that we received. Many of the photographs are impossible to date and the people and places impossible to name. The unidentifiable photographs are placed into one large box that sits on the corner of the desk. This pile of nameless people and dateless scenes makes me incredibly uncomfortable. Perhaps I am a little bit obsessive, but I dislike not being able to learn more about each photograph. Of course, I generally have no choice but to ignore this anxiety because there are too many photographs and too little time.

Once, however, I got lucky, and I was able to fulfill my obsessive compulsions. When I came across the above photograph, there was no information about it, but the prominently pictured newspaper convinced me that I could save this photograph from the “Unidentified” box. Two or three Google searches later, I found a French website that sold old copies of newspapers and had pictures and descriptions of each edition. I was able to find the same edition of the newspaper featured in this photograph for sale on this website and can now relatively safely guess that the photograph was taken in Paris, June 1968. What had been a photograph of four people looking at a newspaper became a photograph of the reactions to and aftermath of the student riots of May 1968.

My experience of this photograph helps to counterbalance my other frustrations, although such an experience is rare. It may have been a better use of my time to organize the labeled photographs, but I can’t help but to enjoy a discovery, even one as small as this.

The following post was written by Doreen Mangels, a graduate student in the Simmons Graduate School of Library and Information Science. This semester Doreen was an intern in Special Collections & Archives. We are grateful for her excellent work!

I recently finished processing two series in the Music Department Records collection.  The first series includes proposals, correspondence, and other print materials relating to the creation of Wesleyan’s doctoral program in ethnomusicology.  These records date back to the 1960s.  Wesleyan was a real pioneer in the world music field.

The second series contains about 400 photographs—mostly in black and white—of music performances at the university.  In some of the shots, the performers are posed for the photographer—stiff, formal, with smiles firmly in place; in others, they’re captured in the middle of a concert or recital, and we can see on their faces intense concentration and, at times, the exhilaration of performing.

In addition to photos of faculty, many student groups are pictured:  the Wesleyan Glee Club, the Jibers, the Cardinals, instrumental ensembles, the Wesleyan Band on the field.  These date from the 1940s to the 1980s and give a real sense of the music tradition at the university.

The collection also contains images of world music performers who visited Wesleyan.  These photos are fascinating.  We see artists who specialized in African, Indian, Indonesian, Korean, and Native American music, the instruments they played, and the traditional dress they wore while performing.  I was particularly intrigued by the photos of Indonesian performers.  There are shots of dancers wearing elaborate armbands, headdresses, and masks, some with long, protruding fangs.  There are also pictures of Wesleyan’s own Javanese gamelan orchestra.

My favorites were photos of a performance of Javanese wayang kulit–a shadow play with flat leather puppets—given at Wesleyan in 1970.  A program in the collection explains that this was the first all-night performance of its kind in the United States.  The accompanying explanatory notes describe the significance of the imagery and chants and how the dalang—the puppeteer—manipulates the puppets, delivers the dialog in many voices, describes the scenes, and comments on the meaning of the play.  In the photos, we see the behind-the-screen action of dalang Oemartopo as well as the magical images the audience saw.

I recently have been going through press clippings from the Middletown Press. The press clippings are just one part of a larger collection of photographs, negatives, and articles from the Middletown Press that myself and two others are going through and filing. Today, I couldn’t help but stop when I came across an envelope marked J.C. Penney. It could be that holiday commercials have already gotten to me, but more likely, I paused because this envelope was thicker than others. Inside, there was a pamphlet of a speech Penney gave called “A Brief Outline of My Early History.”

The pamphlet was published by the First Baptist Church in Monroe, Louisiana, and a photograph of Penney, with his hair sleeked to the side and his bow tie carefully arranged, takes up the center part the cover. Within the pamphlet, Penney describes his life, from growing up in a poor family in Mississippi to running a large, nationwide department store from its headquarters in New York. Throughout his speech, Penney emphasizes the importance of Christianity and a strong work ethic.

After reading the speech, I couln’t help but wonder how the pamphlet came to the Middletown Press. There isn’t a date of publication on the pamphlet, and the envelope did not contain an accompanying article from the Middletown Press. On the back cover of the pamphlet, however, I found a few notes that were difficult to read. But from what I could make out, it seems that J.C. Penney might have come to Middletown’s YMCA, and that the pamphlet was a bit of preliminary reading for the Press’s reporter.

If this were the case, I wonder what influence Wesleyan as a Methodist institution had on bringing Penney to Middletown. Special Collections and Archives has many documents about the University’s Methodist origins and student activities related to the religion. Many of these primary sources deal with missionary work that dispersed Wesleyan alumni across the globe. If this pamphlet did have something to do with Wesleyan’s role as a focal point for religion, it is just another example of how Wesleyan students and alumni were part of a larger network.

We continue to go through the photographs, negatives, and press clippings, and there will be a finding aid soon. Can’t wait to see what other things we’ll come across to share!

We have been adding student theses to WesScholar, our online repository of Wesleyan scholarship. We have most of the 2009 and 2008 theses, a smaller number of 2007 theses, and we’re adding earlier theses as time allows. We just added one of our all time most popular theses, The “Quails”: the History of Wesleyan University’s First Period of Coeducation, 1872-1912.

Written in 1972, Louise “Lucy” Wilby Knight sent surveys to those female and male students who had been present for Wesleyan’s coeducation “experiment” (1872-1912). Elderly at the time, these alumni and alumna remembered their experiences at Wesleyan and provided an invaluable record of that first period of coeducation. Special Collections & Archives also has Knight’s original research notes and completed surveys.

Now that The Quails is available online, more readers will be able to learn about Wesleyan’s history–and see the incredible work completed by Wesleyan students!

Special Collections & Archives will be open today, Friday, May 8 from 2pm to 5pm, and tomorrow, Saturday, May 9, from 1pm to 4pm. The extra Saturday hours are intended to help students complete their research in our department.

We send our condolences to the family and friends of Johanna Justin-Jinich. Our campus mourns together.

I recently came across an interesting collection of the Great Hollow Wilderness School, a Wesleyan run summer wilderness program for disadvantaged youth.  In the late 1960s, a 1,440 acre wildlife preserve on New Fairfield  (almost on the New York-Connecticut border) was will to Wesleyan and in 1969, the Great Hollow Wilderness School was created.  The program was created as a sort of combination of  Upward Bound and Outward Bound.  Wesleyan was invested in the project in many ways, including staffing the program with students and even creating a graduate level class in outdoor education leadership.

In 1985, Wesleyan decided to use the land for something other than the Great Hollow Wilderness School, and began the WOW program, the Wesleyan Orientation in the Wilderness.  Wesleyan hosted a few-night camping trip for incoming freshman.  The majority of the collection, besides some files with program information, is made up of the paraphernalia from both the Great Hollow Wilderness School and WOW, including the very 1980s t-shirts from the summer program, some goofy hats, and the WOW water bottles given to the participants of the program.

Now knowing about the Great Hollow land, I am curious as to what has happened to it.  Does Wesleyan still own it?  There is very little written information in this collection and I would like to find out more.  How long did the WOW program last?  I can’t find much about it after the mid-1990s, but is seemed to be a success.  Do we use the land for anything, even perhaps for field work during the year?  What has happened to the Wilderness School?  I should only hope that the school is using such a great piece of land appropriately and I would encourage the reinstatement of a program like WOW.

Tags: Summer program, Wesleyan-owned land

Celebrate EARTH DAY with SC&A

Wednesday April 22, 2009 3:00-5:00pm

Don’t miss the opportunity to come to Olin Library and step into Special Collections & Archives between 3:00-5:00pm on Wednesday April 22 to see some of our materials selected specifically for our Earth Day exhibit. Our newly acquired atlas “EARTH” will be on display. Sure, we’ve all seen an atlas before but Wesleyan University owns the mother of all atlases in “EARTH,” which takes cartography and publishing to a new stratosphere. More than 100 international cartographers, oceanographers, and geographers have produced an astounding 355 maps covering 194 countries. Adding to this cartographic feat, the massive 580 pages contain extensive country text, covering all the nations of the world. EARTH also presents four stunning gatefolds measuring 1.8 meters across, including one titled “Earth from the Sky at Night”, a stunning image taken by NASA. More than 800 exquisite images were sourced from prestigious picture libraries, including a large number of images taken by National Geographic photographers. Only 3,000 copies of this highly prized volume have been printed. Highly detailed maps, produced by a team of international cartographers, are the foundation of this book. Each of the countries of the world is also described and illustrated in detail, with focus on the geography, history, culture, and unique features. I guarantee seeing this atlas will be worth your walk over or we will give you a free pencil. Just the fact that you read this much of this blog post means we will give you a free pencil. All you have to do is ask when you get here.

Are you wondering what ever happened to those old cards people use to have to look through one-by-one to find a book location? Since we no longer use a physical card catalog we will have on display a few ways the staff has found to repurpose, recycle, and reuse them as part of our Earth Day exhibit.

In 1939, the Wesleyan Alumni Council started collecting alumni memories, which included those of Wesleyan professors, pranks, the burning of North College in 1906, and the arrival of women in 1872. This collection, the Alumni Council Collection of Recollections, has been a pleasure to read. Because of the nature of these anecdotes, in this post I’m going to do a round of “WesBusters” (like the TV show MythBusters) and see how much of it I can validate as fact or myth.

STORY 1

There are exciting stories about competitions between the Freshmen and Sophomore class on Washington’s birthday to be the first to fire a cannon.  In one instance in 1892, the competition went terribly wrong when a bomb (meant to be a decoy of the cannon fire) exploded in a Freshmen’s hands and blew up parts of North College.

CONFIRMED: several newspaper clippings confirm this event really occurred.

STORY 2

In the 1880s, the faithful Methodist Wesleyan men would set fire to a “scandalous” billboard owned by the Colgrove Opera House (which housed burlesque shows). The billboard was located on the corner of High and College Streets and faced the dormitory, which was then North College. It featured “drapeless contours” of feminine forms which were often offensive to prim Wesleyanites of that period.  However, every time the students burnt down the billboard, Colgrove would replace it.

PLAUSIBLE: One other source also mentions these events.

STORY 3

Then there’s the story of the campus mummy. During the 1880s Professor Van Benschoten went on sabbatical in Athens. While he was away he purchased a mummy from an institution that was in need of cash. However, after the mummy was shipped to the port in Athens, the dock official mentioned that Van Benny was missing a permit (or a bribe). Van Benny went to the British Consulate (since there was no American consulate at the port) and asked for help. Upon hearing his story they suggested that he wait a couple days and something might happen to relieve the situation. He waited and on the morning of the third day, a British warship had arrived in the night to end any shenanigans over the shipment of the mummy.

The mummy used to be on display in the Wesleyan Museum, which was in Judd Hall. Later the mummy was stored in the attic of Olin Library, unsecured. In 1990, a student discovered the mummy and hid it in his unsuspecting friend’s bed. The mummy lost a finger during this adventure and now is under lock and key.

FACT: There are many articles in Special Collections & Archives that identify Van Benschoten as the original purchaser of the mummy and a couple of Argus articles about the mummy in the bed.

STORY 4

And finally a piece of economic landscaping advice from the 1870s written by A. Sear Pruden (class of 1914). “I cannot vouch for the authenticity of this story but as Joseph Jefferson once said when questioned as to the actual historical background of his anecdotes, ‘One might say the story is good enough to be true.’”

“It seems in the good old days that the Board of Trustees of the University was dominated by a few economical and hard-fisted Connecticut and New England Yankees. The quite sizable area of campus in front of College Row boasted a crop of grass that might have done credit to the pampas. There was a considerable debate at the Board of Trustees meeting as to how the grass could be kept from entirely overrunning the college grounds. Instead of employing manual grass cutters, it was decided to buy a flock of sheep and pasture them on the front lawn where they would, by grazing, keep the grass down to a respectable height. The flock of sheep duly arrived and were pastured on the campus. Shortly after, the college body was very much astounded, going to the Chapel one morning, to be greeted by scores and scores of pitiful bleatings which apparently were projected out of the ground. On close inspection it was found that some mischievous people had buried each one of these sheep up to the neck in the ground, allowing only their heads to protrude from the ground. The chapel and college exercises were suspended for the day to enable the entire college body to join in the excavating and exhuming of the sheep.” Or so the story goes!

BUSTED: There is no way students could have dug several scores of holes in one night and captured all the sheep without being noticed.  It is plausible that the university did purchase sheep to take care of the landscaping, however.

If you like the stories here, check out the Alumni Council Collection of Recollections. A newly available finding aid can be found on the SC&A website.

My latest processing project is that of the Middletown Manuscript collection dating from 1668 to 1937.  The collection is made up of a variety of documents from the Middletown area with no real common theme except for the location.  The collection is not very big, but it is filled with some interesting documents, not only for their content, but also for their design.  There are bills and tickets and deeds and money and many of them are quite beautiful, even if not entirely legible.  One of the largest sections of the collection is the folder containing about fifteen different deeds.  These, being legal documents, are not the best looking but are interesting printed forms with blanks to fill in the appropriate information: name and location of the person selling the land, name and location of the person buying the land, amount of land, cost of the land, etc.

Some of my other favorite information from this collection are the shipping folders, one from the 18th century and one from the 19th century.  They contain information about the cost of a trip on a ship, lists of items bought, lists of the ship’s crew, as well as some great looking tickets for trips on the ships.

These are two tickets form the 18th century folder, from 1829 and 1831, both on steamboats in Connecticut.

The 19th century tickets, while there are only a couple, are reflective of the change in technology.  The most interestingly designed ticket is for the New Haven, New York & Hartford railroad from 1891.  Railroads became an important part of Middletown beginning in the mid-19th century when the big railroad companies began to develop lines through Middletown.  There are a few letters from the big companies to the people of Middletown and surrounding towns telling them whose land they would be building through and a date to meet with a representative to object to the proposed plans, but I highly doubt the rail companies really took any complaints into consideration.

Train ticket from 1891 still intact!

Along with all these legal documents are some from the bank, specifically some paper money, and even some bank IOUs.  They are really quite beautiful and like most printed official documents of the time, they have blank spots for the pertinent information to be filled in, such as the date and the name of the person to whom the bank owes money.

A $10 IOU from the MIddletown bank in May of 1918.

The last two folder of the collection contain information about the Addises, a prominent Middletown family.  The entire first section is a collection of bills and checks to and from Ms. Daisy Addis, apparently quite the shopper.  From all the different bills Ms. Addis seems to have accumulated, it is really amazing to see how many shops there were along Main Street in Middletown in at the end of the 19th and the beginning of the 20th century!

A receipt from J. H. Bunce, Dry Goods, Carpets, and Furniture for the purchase a chair, $1.75, in 1898.

The rest of the Addis collection is mostly made up of deeds and legal documents, mostly revolving around the Doane family, who seemed to have quite a lot of land in the Middletown area.  Overall, the fact that this collection contians various documents makes it all the more interesting, as we get a little bit of Middletown history from a lot of different sectors: legal, commercial, nautical, etc.  If you have any interest in the history of Middletown, I recommend checking this collectiuon out as you may get a new look on some aspects of daily life from the 17th, 18th and 19th centuries!

Tags: 17th century, 18th century, 19th century, legal documents