New finding aids completed in SC&A

As part of my internship at SC&A I created finding aids for three collections. The most notable among these is the finding aid for a collection that I processed during my internship dealing with Wesleyan President James L. McConaughy, his wife Elizabeth, and son James Jr. The collection entitled, McConaughy Family Papers, details important aspects … Read more

Pick of the week, May 15: A Spatial History of Wesleyan University

A Spatial History of Wesleyan University combines geographical and quantitative analysis with archival and oral history research to interpret the past in place. It is the product of the Spring 2015 course in Digital History at Wesleyan taught by Visiting Assistant Professor of History Amrys O. Williams, part of the university’s Digital and Computational Knowledge … Read more

Pick of the week, June 21: How to find out who lived in this old Middletown house

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

Nineteenth Century Photos

SC&A likes to give you a heads up when there’s a collection that’s ready for use. We have a good one for you—a collection of 19th century photographs. The Joseph W. Reed and George Creeger Collection of Human Likenesses, 1840-1900, is just about ready for you to use. English Department faculty members Joe Reed and … Read more

“First experiment in coeducation”

With continuing interest in the “first experiment in coeducation” at Wesleyan, it seems timely to point out some of the resources available.  Wait, didn’t you know Wesleyan was coed for forty years between 1872 and 1912? You may want to look into this yourself. Special Collections & Archives, and Olin Library at large, have some … Read more

A mystery solved

The other day, I discovered a mystery in Special Collections: an extremely skimpy catalog record for a book in our collection.  All it said about this book was: Bible.  N.T. [for New Testament].  French [Nouveau testament] [S.l. : S.n., not after 1762.] 665 p. ; 19 cm. Title page missing. What does all that mean? … Read more

What Gives You Pause? Privacy, Sensitivity and Family Papers.

Archivists review the historic materials to put them into a level of order and to describe the content so others may use them.  Occasionally, we’ll see something that gives one pause. I have been working on family papers that include nineteenth and twentieth century correspondence. Various family members made contributions to their fields such as … Read more

Arthur T. Vanderbilt Papers

As part of Andrea Benefiel’s work on the Collection on Legal Change (CLC) earlier this year, she created an online finding aid for the Arthur T. Vanderbilt Political, Profession, and Judicial Papers. The papers document the illustrious career of Vanderbilt, a Wesleyan alumnus from the class of 1910. Vanderbilt had a long career in private … Read more

New online sources for Middletown and Middlesex history

The Godfrey Library in Middletown, CT, a rich center for genealogical history, recently announced that it has made three major resources on Middletown and Middlesex County history available digitally from its website. The three volumes’ titles and descriptions, from the Godfrey’s website: Statistical Account of the County of Middlesex, in Connecticut, by David Dudley Field … Read more

School days

We started a new school year this week. The weather has been hot but the leaves are starting to turn, which always reminds me of research! Fall is the time when our senior thesis writers conduct most of their archival research, and we always have a number of other students who research Wesleyan and local … Read more