Special Collections & Archives at Wesleyan University
A place for news and information about rare books, manuscripts and university archives.
One hundred and fifty years ago, William North Rice, class of 1865, wrote the above in his diary on the day that President Abraham Lincoln died. Rice would devote his life in service to Wesleyan, becoming the university’s first professor of geology and serving three times as acting president. Below is the diary opened … Read more
Just because it’s in a history book doesn’t mean it’s correct. In this detailed study of the Battle of Waterloo from 1815 (where Wellington soundly defeated Napoleon), someone has written tons of annotations (comments in the margins), correcting the author. Given what he’s written, it sounds like the person writing the comments was right … Read more
We’re not exactly sure what’s going on here–a concert? a play? spirit photography?–but these members of the class of 1872 look like they’re having some fun. They’re standing in front of the old gymnasium, which once stood on a site on present-day Andrus field behind the Chapel. Left to right, Silas William Kent, Samuel Greenleaf … Read more
Is Russell House haunted? Video producer Ben Travers investigated, aided in part with resources from Special Collections & Archives. Happy Halloween! https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dsGCAPgCcBo
The following was written by archives intern Owen Thompson: As part of my ongoing internship in SC&A, I recently digitized and made available in WesScholar an unusual book for Wesleyan’s Adopt a Book program. The volume, Pictures of Middletown and Wesleyan, was adopted by library staff and friends in honor of former Assistant University Archivist … Read more
Who knew that you could find actual plant specimens in Special Collections & Archives? It’s true, we own several books of pressed plants, including this book of pressed sea vegetation from Bermuda. Bermuda 1890 was handmade out of blue-green paper, with hand-painted oceanfront scenes on the front and back covers. Inside, 45 different specimens of … Read more
Woodrow Wilson, president of the United States from 1913 to 1921, taught history and political economy at Wesleyan from 1888 to 1890. This photograph shows the 1889-1890 Wesleyan faculty. Prof. Wilson is sitting in the front row, third from left, holding a top hat. Before Wesleyan, he taught at Bryn Mawr, where he felt “overworked, … Read more
Here’s a newly-cataloged book in our collection: Account of a voyage to the western coast of Africa, performed by His Majesty’s sloop Favourite, in the 1805, being a journal of the events which happened to that vessel… By F. B. Spilsbury (London: R. Phillips, 1807). Several of the engravings in the book show that the … Read more
I made a presentation to the summer Wesleyan Mellon Mays Fellows of a selection of resources related to their research interests. One item I showed was the book, Biographical Sketches and Interesting Anecdotes of Persons of Color. To Which is Added, a Selection of Pieces in Poetry. According to The Annual Report of the … Read more
This week, I showed Sarah Croucher’s summer Field Methods in Archaeology (ARCP 373) class a selection of resources that help researchers discover who previously lived in various Middletown buildings and what the residents’ occupations were. One indispensable source is city directories, and SC&A has them for Middletown for the years 1868 through 1927. Here’s one … Read more
