» Kate Levy

Great Hollow Wilderness School: Wes in the Woods

Kate Levy — Thu, 30 Apr 2009 18:17:50 +0000

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.

Middletown Manuscripts: A history through bills, deeds, and tickets

Kate Levy — Thu, 26 Mar 2009 19:34:19 +0000

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!

Have our exams gotten easier?

Kate Levy — Mon, 14 Jul 2008 20:31:37 +0000

In the archives, there is a fascinating collection of examinations from 1868 to 1970. While going through this collection, I had to do some research on the curriculum during that time to see how these exams fit into the history of the development of academics at Wesleyan. In the mid- to late- 19^th century, the curriculum was very different from what we know it as today. The curriculum we know today wasn’t set until after World War II with few changes since then, with the exception of the addition of a few departments. The curriculum at the beginning of the collection, however, was made up of only two options: the general course of study and the scientific course of study. There were four required entrance exams for Wesleyan: Latin, Greek, English, and Mathematics, although if you were planning on pursuing the science, you were not required to take the Latin and Greek entrance exams. However, Greek and Roman history were still part of your required classes, as well as other languages. The exams, especially the language exams (Latin, Greek, and German particularly) had pretty demanding expectations, even of the entrance exams. There was often a long paragraph that just said “translate,” and this was just to be allowed to continue studying that language! Every student had their schedule planned out for them all four years based on what they were studying and what year they were, with, initially, no choice in electives. It wasn’t until the beginning of the 20^th century that departments were established and students were allowed to choose among them and various classes within them. Since then, the exams don’t look too different than what most are today. The exams in the collection from post-World War II are mostly mid-term and final exams and therefore comprehensive exams for courses. It is interesting to see what department’s material has changed over the years and which have not changed at all.

(This is an image of the course schedule by class year from the 1890-1891 course catalogue. Click image to enlarge.)

The course catalogues themselves are pretty interesting as well, although they are not part of the examinations collection. They were pretty elaborate when the student body was much smaller, with a list of every student by class, where they were from, and where they lived on campus, and a list of all the professors and their addresses too. There was also a list of the graduates of the spring before and the degrees they had earned. There were campus maps, some years more detailed than others. Like the current course catalogues, there was a brief history of Wesleyan, a short explanation of all the academic prizes, a list of the members of the board of trustees, a list of building on campus and their purpose, available scholarships, and rules and regulations.

If you want to see specific exams to see if what your’re learning has changed at all over the past 150 years, come check out the Examinations Collection, made up of over 800 exams!