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.

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.

In 1982 Wesleyan students protested the administrations elimination to their aid-blind financial aid policy. The students held a 150-hour protest on the second floor of North College (as shown in this picture), one hour for each year the university existed. The university responded to their protest by denying the students potty privileges and locking the bathroom facilities in North College. If the students wanted to pee they would have to leave the building and get locked out. In response the students used a bag in the corner one of the administrators’ office (where they were sleeping) and periodically lowered the bag of refuse out the window. Public Safety caught the students in the act and the administration reported them to Student Judicial Board (SJB) and tried to shut the sit-in down. The SJB decided that the bathrooms should be unlocked, the students should be allowed support runners, and the students should move to more public office.

Earlier in the spring 1982 semester, over 600 Wesleyan students attended a rally in Washington D.C. to protest President Reagan’s higher education cuts. It was well publicized that Wesleyan students were the largest single group in attendance. Later 1,284 students signed a petition for the university to bring back the aid-blind admissions policy. When that didn’t work they resorted to the 150-hour sit-in which was during reading week and spring fling. Many of the students inside North College had plenty of time to study for their final exams! They commented that spring fling made more noise and disturbances than they were during their entire sit-in.

More information about this protest can be found in the April 29th Coalition Records.

Once the US entered the First World War, the university became a military hub for training soldiers. Some of the skills that students worked on were combat firing, map-drawing, first aid/sanitation, trench construction (such as in this photo), and military history.

One of the questions that I encountered while processing the history of this collection, World War I Service Records, was what the difference was between a Reserve Officers Training Corps (R.O.T.C.) and a Student Army Training Corp (S.A.T.C.)? It turns out that the university originally had the R.O.T.C. program as well as a Certificate of military training. However once the drafting age dropped from 21 to 18 they established the new S.A.T.C. program to allow students to continue with their education and still be prepared to go off to war. However neither of these programs lasted more than a semester. Once the armistice with Germany was signed the university went back to being a civilian institute.

The World War I Service Records are comprised of a form sent to Wesleyan Men involved in the War. On the back of the form was a questionnaire that asked the men to describe their experience with the war, how well Wesleyan prepared them, and their views on universal military training. Interestingly enough many of the men never fought abroad and spent the majority of their time on an Army base or a fort. The most honest response was by George Raymond Larkin, class of 1918, who wrote ” The army made me lazy physically, mentally and spiritually. Encouraged careless ethical living. Developed chronic restlessness.” Joseph Francis, class of 1914, says of his experience while on the front that “the ability to sympathise with the man in the ranks [is] learned perhaps from playing a losing football game.” My favorite story that I came across was transcribed by the widow of Joseph Hubbard Hefflon, class of 1894. She sent in a journal about her husband’s experience in the YMCA of immediately being torpedoed once shipped out, the way he served as a father figure and the respect that he developed with the other men, and then finally of his dying of pneumonia.

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!

Benjamin Arthur Caleb Papers, 1851-1861
Laban Clark Papers, 1794-1935
Deutsche Verein Records, 1909-1960
Monday Club Records, 1892-1995
Dana Plante (Class of 1959) Collection, 1954-1960
Phyllis Rose Collection, 1977-1984
Beatrice Witkin Papers, 1949-1988

With the help of our great student employees, we’ll be putting more finding aids online throughout the school year.

The Nineteenth Century Administrative Records includes the original charter of Wesleyan University, financial information about tuition and donors, student records (including who received demerits!) and even fun stuff like lists of “materials” and “apparatus” belonging to the Wesleyan University Laboratory. It’s fascinating to find out what Wesleyan was like over a hundred years ago by using archival collections like this one.