Special Collections & Archives at Wesleyan University
A place for news and information about rare books, manuscripts and university archives.
A patron called and described a photograph that she had in her possession and wondered if it had something to do with Wesleyan. I asked her to email a digital copy, and I found the identical image in the 1914 Olla Podrida. Turns out what she owned was a photograph of the 1913 Wesleyan University … Read more
Wondering what to do before you graduate? Here’s what one student did, back in 1929… Paul S. McElroy graduated from Wesleyan in 1930, but the year before that, he spent time in Egypt, teaching English at the American University at Cairo. While there, he and some of the faculty members of the American University took … Read more
During Reunion/Commencement Weekend, my colleague, Music Librarian and World Music Archives Director Alec McLane, and I co-presented a WESeminar on events surrounding the last few days in April and the first few days in May 1970 at Wesleyan, which included rallies in support of the Black Panthers in New Haven, calls for a strike to … Read more
As I was refiling some photographs, I came across this stereograph taken of Memorial Chapel in 1893. I’m afraid I don’t know what the event is. These cards are also called a steropticans, stereograms, or stereo views. When you look at them through a stereograph viewer (shown below), the two images merge into one 3-D … Read more
A reader was interested in class albums, including this one that belonged to Charles Washburn Church, Class of 1864. In the 19th century, before there were college yearbooks, Wesleyan students assembled albums and selected the photographs they wished to include. At first, the albums consisted of portraits, but in the 1870s and 1880s, photographs of … Read more
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 … Read more
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 … Read more
Here is the photograph of the John Wesley Club in the 1965 Olla Prodrida. Look familiar? Leonardo da Vinci’s The Last Supper: (Image source: http://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Giampietrino-Last-Supper-ca-1520.jpg)
I needed to examine images of the 1993 commencement ceremonies in response to a reference request and I encountered this shot. I like the colors and the mortarboards against the sky, and it reminded me that for this year’s seniors, there’s just one semester to go.
An inquirer emailed this week looking for information about her great grand-uncle, Ralph Lockwood Crandell ’12. We discovered he was quite active in campus clubs and groups, including the Corpse and Coffin Society. Our pick of the week is the photograph above, which appeared in the 1912 Olla Podrida.
