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.

Statistical Account of the County of Middlesex, in Connecticut, by David Dudley Field (originally published in 1819) includes all manner of intriguing information about events major and mundane, from murders to mining to the mysterious Moodus noises.

The 1884 History of Middlesex County with Biographical Sketches of its Prominent Men, (published in 1884) includes detailed histories of each of the 16 towns in the county, highlighting religious, military, and industrial heritage along with interesting tidbits about fixtures of local life such as taverns, newspapers, and schools. It includes biographies of more than 150 notable individuals, and portraits of more than 50 of them.

The 1903 Commemorative Biographical Record of Middlesex County (published in 1903) features biographies of more than a thousand men – and a few women – that were prominent at the turn of the twentieth century, along with their family lineages, and hundreds of portraits. The majority of the biographies are of individuals with roots that extended back to the colonial era, some of whose names are still part of the landscape today, such as Russell, Wilcox, Pelton, Lyman, and Gildersleeve. However, among them are included biographies of a number of recently arrived immigrants from Ireland, Scotland, and Germany, with names like Dunn and Inglis and Kretzmer, who had prospered in their adopted homeland.

These resources are invaluable for historians and genealogical researchers, and we are delighted that the Godfrey Library and Middlesex County Community Foundation teamed up to make these scarce materials widely available.

As one of the earliest “town and gown” organizations at Wesleyan, the Middletown Scientific Association explored popular scientific topics from 1871 to 1968. Its membership was comprised of Wesleyan University faculty members as well as residents from Middletown and surrounding areas. At their frequent meetings, most often held in science lecture halls at Wesleyan, members presented papers on their own scientific interests or heard lectures from visiting scientists and educators. Occasional field meetings found members exploring hands-on scientific inquiry in the fields of botany, biology, astronomy and geology. As early as 1880, women were admitted into the association’s membership.

One notable visiting lecturer was Nobel Prize-winning physicist Enrico Fermi in 1940.

Even though membership swelled to over 300 members, attendance at meetings began to dwindle. In 1968, the association’s leaders polled the membership about meeting attendance and a consensus replied that while their interest remained high, they were just “too busy” to attend. The association directly disbanded.

The records of the Middletown Scientific Association, recently processed by Special Collections and Archives, contain the organization’s administrative records. Included are several books of minutes, printed meeting announcements, treasurers’ and presidents’ reports, clippings, correspondence, and other historical materials which document the organization’s operations.

(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!

After a month of deciphering handwriting from the 1800s, I’ve finally produced two finding aids for the diaries of Lorenzo Whiting Blood and Harriet Stewart Judd. Surprisingly both of these two figures had very complex lives, much different from what the current Wesleyan student goes through.

The first diary was from Lorenzo Whiting Blood who regales the reader with his adventures as a Wesleyan University student during the 1830s and some details on his later life. The diary begins when Blood is a freshman at Wesleyan who is struggling to become a Methodist minister. However, after completing a year at Wesleyan, Blood attempts to open his own school in Cheshire, which after a few months is forced to close. He then comes back to Wesleyan where he has to take twice the course load to catch up to his class. Somehow he is able to accomplish this, but then again Blood decides to leave Wesleyan, this time to teach at Amenia Seminary. Unfortunately while he is teaching there, he is diagnosed with the measles which leaves him on the verge of death for two months. Miraculously he recovers and returns once again to Wesleyan where, somehow, he goes on to graduate near the top of his class. The journal then describes the troubles Blood faces trying to find a job, marrying his hometown love, and ends with him becoming deacon of Mystic.

The second diary is from the wife of Orange Judd, a former Wesleyan student, by the name of Harriet Stewart Judd. This diary is from 1872-1873 and chronicles three trips taken by the Judd family across the Eastern coast of the United States and throughout Europe. Judd visits many tourist points of interest including Shakespeare’s grave and the Leaning Tower of Pisa, while giving great details on the architectural and historical background. Judd also writes about her traveling family’s dynamic, along with Orange Judd’s continual sicknesses.

If these sound interesting, come check them out at Special Collections & Archives or check my finding aids: you won’t be disappointed!

This image of the class of 1886 is only one image of thousands in our over 150 album collection. Recently, a person cleaning out a relative’s home found a beautiful album from 1882, with winter scenes of Middletown and photographs from the inside of the original library (now the Patricelli ‘92 Theatre). The generous donation of this class album to Wesleyan gives us a glimpse back in time to a campus at once familiar and foreign.