Special Collections & Archives at Wesleyan University
A place for news and information about rare books, manuscripts and university archives.
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 one of our newly-cataloged artists’ books: Everyone Sang, by Siegfried Sassoon, with woodcuts by Terry Schupbach-Gordon (Tobaccoville, N.C.: Catbird Press, 2009). Siegfried Sasson is best known as a poet of World War I, along with Robert Graves and Wilfred Owens. He wrote this short poem called “Everyone Sings” in celebration of the end of … 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
We’re not exactly sure what’s going on in this unidentified photo from about the mid-1970s. We think it possibly could be a riff on a Last Supper motif, which wouldn’t be the only time Wesleyan students have done this. I’m a bit concerned about the gentleman with the bat. Maybe it relates to this painting, … Read more
Here’s a nice shot of an unidentified DJ in the studios of radio station WESU in the fall of 1969. At that time, the station was located on the lower level of Clark Hall. Check out those 45s!
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
Over the decades, hundreds of distinguished guest lecturers and visitors have shared their wisdom with Wesleyan. One of them was civil rights leader and U.S. Congressman John Lewis, who came to campus in April 1998. Rep. Lewis began his career at the height of the civil rights movement in 1963, and among his numerous activities, … Read more
A colleague provided this link to a post found on the Ask the Past: Advice from Old Books blog: Statute Forbidding Any One to Annoy or Unduly Injure the Freshmen. Each and every one attached to this university is forbidden to offend with insult, torment, harass, drench with water or urine, throw on or defile with … 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
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
