Special Collections & Archives at Wesleyan University

In the “Chemistry Dept. 1832-1968″ vertical file, you’ll find this document. The caption reads: The chemistry lecture room in old Judd Hall. Prof. M.L. “Mose” Crosley was lecturing on the last day of classes prior to the final exam. The device at the right moved a huge roll of wrapping paper by means of the [...]

Long-time members of the Wesleyan community will remember Willie Kerr. He joined the university in 1959 as an assistant professor in the History Department and later served as assistant provost, provost, and secretary of the university. He retired in 1993 and died in 1999. At Professor Kerr’s February 26, 1999, memorial service, former President Colin [...]

Vice President Richard M. Nixon, accompanied by his wife Patricia Nixon, is shown here visiting campus on Oct. 18, 1956, during a reelection campaign swing through Connecticut on behalf of President Dwight D. Eisenhower and himself. The Argus reported that Nixon spoke to about 400 students who crowded around him on High St. Suzy Taraba [...]

I was conducting research in women’s athletics and encountered this photograph of the field hockey team taken in 1971.

Here’s a teaser about my next “Historical Row” column in Wesleyan, the alumni magazine: it’s about the night in 1906 that North College went up in flames. You’ll have to read the article after it’s been published to find out more…

A reader asked to see 1650-1900. Mattabeseck. Middletown. A description of the exercises connected with the two hundred and fiftieth anniversary, October 10 and 11, 1900. This booklet has a tremendous amount of detail about the celebration, including a full description of what we’re told was one of the longest parades yet assembled. The page [...]

If you follow our picks of the week, you may remember a very similar image to the one above from a pick made last September. At the time, I didn’t know if or how the photograph was used, but as you can see, a slightly different shot was featured on the cover of the February [...]

A researcher was interested in photographs of The Highwaymen, a group of Wesleyan undergraduates who hit the top of the pop charts with their single, “Michael (Row the Boat Ashore)” in 1961. (You can read more about them here, here, and here. ) We have a number of good shots, including a series of contact [...]

In the course of pulling sample materials for a presentation to Prof. Ron Schatz’s Exploring Middletown’s History (HIST171) class, I came across this aerial view of downtown Middletown found in the SC&A “Middletown, Photographs, Main St.” vertical file. Main Street runs diagonally from top left to bottom right, and Court and College Streets are running [...]

Love those silly internet cat sites?  Adorable kitties getting into trouble have been around forever.  Here’s one of many too-cute-to-be-true images from Oliver Herford’s Rubáiyát of a Persian Kitten (New York: Scribner’s, 1922, c1904).  This sweet little stray wandered off the library’s weeding list into a safe, new home in Special Collections & Archives, already [...]