Special Collections & Archives at Wesleyan University
A place for news and information about rare books, manuscripts and university archives.
By Maggie M. Long The Coen brothers pay homage to old Westerns in their most recent film “The Ballad of Buster Scruggs”, an anthology of six short stories of the Old West, with the first featured story about an affable singing cowboy so familiar in many Westerns of years ago. We too have in Special … Read more
Nancy Ottmann Albert’s evocative photographs of vanishing New England structures and landscapes will be featured in “Documents in Black and White,” a new exhibition opening in Olin Library on Oct. 5, 2016. The show is being presented in conjunction with the formal announcement of Ms. Albert’s gift of her papers to the library’s Special Collections … Read more
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
Pictured above is the earliest known photograph of the Wesleyan campus, a view of South College taken in 1865. In front is what is believed to be part of the graduation ceremonies held 150 years ago for the Class of 1865. Our best wishes to the Class of 2015!
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
The Great Blizzard of 1888 is legendary throughout New England, and it remains the benchmark by which all subsequent storms have been measured, including the one that will probably be known as the Blizzard of 2013. Paralyzing the East Coast from the Canadian Maritime Provinces to the Chesapeake Bay from March 11 to 14, the … Read more
Recently, I have been sorting through a collection of socialist pamphlets and texts donated by the family of Harry Wellington Laidler, class of 1907. The collection is mostly made up of League for Industrial Democracy (LID) pamphlets printed during the first half of the twentieth century and an assortment of texts on socialism abroad … Read more
