Welcome class of 2016, and all others who may stumble upon this post! My name is Karl Moll, and I am a rising Junior who works as the Archivist’s Assistant in the Haverford College Quaker and Special Collections in the Library, which houses the College Archives (and a great place to look for a job once you get to campus!). I thought it might be interesting to take a look at what incoming freshman at Haverford were experiencing 100 years ago when they came to campus. Now, the ‘Ford has undergone a lot of changes in the last century: for starters, we are no longer an all-male school, the class size was about 1/10th the size it is now (167 students at the school, 48 of them freshman), the Morris Infirmary was still under construction, and the college was officially Quaker.

When freshmen entered the college, they were given a handbook:

This book was designed to introduce the new students to the customs of the college, and was funded by the Y.M.C.A. (which was still very much the Young Men’s Christian Association). The main goal in publishing the guide was to “call…attention to an organized effort for the development of Christian character amongst us”. Though, since this is Haverford, the organization “lays no emphasis on creeds or dogmas, and in no way tries to exert sectarian influence”. To me this sounds reminiscent of the second part of the oft-quoted segment of the 1888 Commencement Speech by President Isaac Sharpless:

Every time I read this, I get chills

It seems to fit into the tradition of being one’s own person.

One of the more interesting sections of any of the class handbooks from years past are the Rules for Freshman. Unfortunately, 1912-1913 seems to have been a reasonable year, and there are only “Points for Freshman”. Most of these are still pretty sound advice, though many are outdated:

Some useful information for incoming freshman, plus advice

In other years, there are rules banning freshmen wearing mustaches and carrying canes. Freshmen were also required to move out of paths to make way for upperclassmen, and not lighting an upperclassmen’s cigarette could lead to a fine. Maybe this year the Officer of Hazing (yes, that was an actual title) decided to take it easy. The sophomores were traditionally in charge of Hazing (or teaching the school’s customs). To see some funny rules from earlier years check here or here (feel free to browse around the site that the link brings you to, these are the digitized images from Haverford Special Collections and the Archives of the College!).

One of my favorite parts of historical Haverfordiana are the songs that freshman were expected to learn and sing at sporting events (failure to learn the songs resulted in punishments which ranged from midnight head shavings to monetary fines to being thrown in the duckpond). The major sporting events on campus were soccer and football (“Undefeated Since 1972″), but many of the songs could be sung during alumni events, or seniors could just make the underclassmen sing in the dining hall if they felt like it:

Various publications on campus and College Songs

I wish we still had songs like these...

More Songs!

The rest of the handbook provided the new student with reference material to all the resources on campus. These range from train schedules, telephone and telegraph services, the various clubs on campus, student publications, secret societies, and more…

Customs and the “Honor System”:

College Customs and the Honor System

The Honor Code of today seems very similar to the Honor System of old, but at the same time very different. And while we still have a “Customs” period for Freshman like in the post above, it is far removed from what these old newspapers show us:

So a lot has changed over the years, but there is still that Haverfordian feel through it all

If you have any questions about this, or other aspects of Haverford History, feel free to shoot me an email at kmoll@haverford.edu, or email Haverford Special Collections (hc-special@haverford.edu) where you can get some more expert advice. If I were writing “Points for Freshman” for the incoming class of 2016, one that I would stress would be to stop in and visit Special Collections in the back of the Library. The collection is really one of the gems of the college. You can find the historical materials for the club you get involved in, genealogical records of famous Quakers, old sports photos, anti-slavery materials, maps,  yearbooks from years past, rare books (Copernicus, Darwin, Shakespeare… no big deal), records for the Philadelphia Yearly Meeting, and much more.

As part of a series of posts by our student employees, Karl Moll ’14 talks about what he’s been working on in Special Collections this summer:

One of the bigger projects that I’ve been working on this summer has been to create a template which allows users to input archival information from a finding aid into Excel and then it converts it into a valid EAD program so that it can be uploaded into Archivists’ Toolkit.

If you don’t understand what the above section means, that’s all right. It took me a little bit to get it all, and I’m going to walk you through it now.

EAD is subset of XML which is a programming language which is pretty similar to HTML, without most of the style commands. XML is really useful in creating hierarchies of information, which is why EAD (Encoded Archival Description) is based on this format. EAD is a standard used by many archives and special collections across the country to make finding materials easier across collections. For more on the history of EAD, look here. For more on standards in general, I may write another blog post about the development of ANSI standards. But more on that later.

For this project, I’m working on a brilliant template by Matt Herbison which properly formats the information that is inputted into a spreadsheet into a valid EAD program so that it can be uploaded into Archivist’s Toolkit. It is a really wonderful template that makes converting a finding aid into AT so much easier than writing the code by hand, or even entering it directly into AT. However, to be super useful to us here, I’ve been trying to make some modifications to it.

The first thing I did was get rid of a lot of the fields that we wouldn’t be using for our finding aids. After a lot of consultation with John and Diana, we determined that all we really needed were Level, Title, and the newly added Call Number or Shelf Location. More on the Call Number in a bit. The template went from looking like this:

To this:

This new version is a lot more streamlined for what we need it to do, since that’s all the information that we are really interested in anyways. Since there wasn’t already a field for Call Number, I had to create one. This part of the project ended up taking some time getting familiar with XML and EAD.

I really wanted there to be a way to put the call number with each individual item in the Finding Aid. The way I first tried was just to concatenate the Title cell in Excel with a Call Number cell, so that it would look like “Karl’s Papers, 2010-2012. Call Number: R1 SA B3″ but this lacked a symmetry when it actually created the finding aid, since not all the titles are the same length. I was looking through the AT window…

…when I noticed that there was this field:

Now, a Component Unique Identifier sounds a lot like a Call Number to me, so I then began an Internet quest to learn more about XML and EAD to see what tags corresponded to this entry field (I knew that there HAD to be something, since AT fields correspond to the EAD standard). After a couple of days of teaching myself about XML, I realized that the tag <unitid> </unitid> would be my best bet.

Now, the template works by concatenating cells in the spreadsheet so that the code is automatically produced. In the back-end of the program, it looks like this:

Notice that some of the columns have fixed values such as “<c0″ and “><did><unittitle>”. These are here to create certain constants for a valid program, and it ends up producing code like this:

I changed some of the fixed cells so that they would populate the Component Unique Identifier field in Archivists Toolkit using the <unitid> tag so that it produced code like this (the differences are pretty subtle):

So after I made those changes, Archivists Toolkit was able to accept it as a valid program to be uploaded, with a call number for every field and then produce a Finding Aid like this:

The Call Number is on the left side preceding the Title. I’ve been working on various ways of making the Call Number more readable, but haven’t uploaded it to AT yet.

My next blog post on the templates will be on my ongoing struggles to deal with nesting issues to provide the user with one extra level of hierarchy!!! Stay tuned!

–Karl Moll ’14

A tribute to Librarian, Esther Ralph (1918-2011), by Margaret Schaus, Lead Research and Instruction Librarian at Haverford College:

Esther Ralph, long-time librarian at Haverford College, passed away October 21. Esther worked at Magill Library from 1941 through 1984. She began as an assistant cataloger while still enrolled in Drexel University’s Library School. She later worked in the Bindery, managed circulation, became head of cataloging, and Associate Librarian. She oversaw the building and the collection move during the massive addition made in 1964-1967 and introduced computerized cataloging to the library. Her notes in books bear witness to her care and appreciation of research materials both for scholarship and for the college’s history.

In her 40-year career at Haverford, Esther witnessed many changes to the Library’s building, collections, and services. When she arrived, she and other staff returned books to the stacks using a dumb waiter operated by rope and pulley. She saw U. S. Army units exercise on the College fields during World War II; she heard Eleanor Roosevelt speak to students and faculty in the College chapel. In 1941 the Library held around 150, 000 volumes. When Esther retired the Library had doubled its floor space and tripled its collection size.

In 2008 in honor of her service, her family dedicated a bench and garden area on the north side of Magill Library outside Special Collections. It is a fitting memorial near the library, offering students a place to read or talk between classes.

Learn more about Esther’s career and experiences at Haverford from her oral interview: hdl.handle.net/10066/1636

–Margaret Schaus

During Customs Week in the fall of 2009, I remember being bombarded with all sorts of information intended to guide  me as I embarked on my 4-year journey. I promptly forgot the bits of advice that I considered pointless (who cares about having a balanced class schedule or knowing all the important academic deadlines of the semester?) and focused on counsel that struck me as the most instructive, e.g. the low down on the locations and nuances of all the vending machines on-campus, the inside scoop on the best place to buy socks in Suburban Square and the list of unofficial graduation requirements (any Quakers in need of a black eye, or info about the Friendly Association Papers, should contact me at akhan@haverford.edu).

A few days ago, I was musing on how the list needs to be updated with new requirements.  That same day, while idly browsing the records of the class of 1915 in the History of Haverford College section on triptych, I came across an article that provided me with the idea for one such requirement (did Special Collections read my mind? Far-fetched, but possible) :

The article reports the suspension of six Haverford seniors after they were caught serenading beneath the windows of a Bryn Mawr dorm at midnight. I was more than a little amused when the article noted that “there was an intimation that the singing was off-key” and the suspension infringed on “the unalienable right of college men to sing college songs on their way home from class gatherings”.

The thought that the article was a hoax never crossed my mind until I read the alleged telegram exchange between the presidents of the two colleges presented as exhibits. It seems scarcely believable that president of Bryn Mawr would send her telegrams from “the beanery” and would sign off as Emma Scarey. It seemed even less likely that M. Carey Thomas, a prominent suffragist from the early 20th century, would complain to President Sharpless that her “poor dear lambs were disturbed….much to the detriment of their needed beauty sleep”. There are numerous other gems embedded in the article that indicate this article is a century-old precursor to the Bi-Co (on A Budget) website.

There’s also a possibility that the article itself is chronicling an event that really happened but the telegrams are fabricated to poke fun at the administration in a more subtle way than this comic that follows the article:

In any case, I’m inspired by the antics- real or imagined- of the class of 1915 and I will endeavor to copy them towards the end of my senior year in order to be considered truly worthy of graduating from this great institution.

Triptych contains a wealth of such material and I urge readers to go on a treasure hunt and find similar gems from the college archives. It’s a much better procrastination tool than facebook, which is evil incarnate anyway.

Today marks my completion of going through half of all the links in the finding aid for Special Collections. This means that I have read the descriptions of, and checked the links for, HALF of all the collections in Special Collections. That is a lot of collections. And I have to say, there is some really interesting material in here. For instance, in the ” Baltimore Monthly Meeting Homewood records,” there are signed letters by Abraham Lincoln! Then, there are pictures of William Lloyd Garrison, noted abolitionist and newspaper editor, in the “Friends Historical Association” collection. Add to that documents from 1 A.D. (“Dean Putnam Lockwood”), correspondence with John Updike (“John R. Hawkins”), letters from Alexander Graham Bell (“Edward Drinker Cope”), documents from William Penn (“William Penn papers”), hundreds of recordings of concerts by Haverford students, faculty and others (“John Davison papers”), and a sampling of letters by U.S. Presidents (“William Pyle Phillips collection”)! And those are just the things that immediately jumped out at me! There are definitely some major gems for the curious explorer to find here. If one is interested in people standing up for there beliefs, there are multiple mentions of a Thomas Story (1670?-1742) who was a former fencer and musician turned Quaker, a friend of William Penn, discussed Quakerism with Tsar Peter the Great,and was arrested for preaching Quaker faith in Kilkenny (the warrant for his arrest is in the “British Friends’ letters”). For those interested in the history of the library, there are the “James Phineas Magill papers” (after whom our library is named) and the “Michael S. Freeman papers” (who was a major proponent of Tri-Co library cooperation). If your fancy is more American history, I would direct you to the “John Ewer letters” which are from one merchant to another regarding the early signs of the American Revolution.

If you aren’t necessarily interested in the above topics, but you are colored intrigued, you can always check out the Finding Aid (which I would generally recommend!). I’ve been working here for a semester, and I didn’t have any idea that this was all here. This leads me to believe that most of the college doesn’t even know what awesome resources are back here. So come check it out!

If you have any questions, you could email me at kmoll@haverford.edu, or, if you want the good help, email Haverford College Special Collections at hc-special@haverford.edu.

What about parody?  Check out this new-ish online student publication, The Bi-Co (On A Budget), which includes a clever send-up of the Descartes letter discovery from 2010.  Professors, administrators, and school traditions are lampooned on the pages of this Tumblr microblogging site.  Even the Cricket Library isn’t spared!

One hundred and fifty years ago today, President-elect Abraham Lincoln passed through Haverford, PA, on his journey by train to the presidential inauguration in the capital city of Washington, DC. His trip began on February 11, 1861 as he and his wife boarded a train at the Great Western Railroad depot in Springfield, IL. That day, he gave brief remarks along the way in Springfield, Tolono, and Danville, IL, at the Indiana State Line, and in Lafayette, Thorntown, and Indianapolis, IN.

The inaugural route from Illinois to Washington, DC, is now famous for its avoidance of what has become known as the “Baltimore Plot.”  As the first president to be elected from the Republican Party and with Southern states threatening to secede over the issue of slavery, there was considerable tension over a possible plot to assassinate the President-elect on his journey to the capitol. The Pinkerton National Detective Agency was hired to provide security on the journey and a route that took the President-elect through Baltimore at night (and in disguise) was secretly planned to secure his the safety.

The inaugural route wound its way through seventy towns and cities, from Illinois through Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania and on to New York State. Arriving in the City of Brotherly Love from New Jersey, the President-elect gave several speeches including those to the Mayor and the citizens of Philadelphia and to a delegation from Wilmington, DE. He gave two rousing speeches at Independence Hall on February 22 before continuing his journey to Harrisburg and on to Washington, DC.

We know from A History of Haverford College For the First Sixty Years of Its Existence (1892) that Lincoln “appeared on the rear platform of the train and bowed to the students assembled at the station” and student Thomas Battey, class of 1863, later remarked in a letter that “As the train passed by the successive groups that had gathered along the bank sloping down to the road bed, the tall form of ‘Old Abe’ appeared on the rear platform, hat in hand, and bowed graciously to each group” (Providence, 5 mo. 4, 1927).  At the time, Haverford Station on the Pennsylvania Railroad was located at the edge of campus on what today we call Railroad Avenue. While there is no evidence that his train stopped or that he gave a speech, his brief appearance must have made a deep impression upon the 65 male students enrolled in the College. For a time there was a historical marker on this spot.

Another  who saw the President-elect was Charles Roberts, class of 1864. Soon to become an avid collector of autograph letters, the young Roberts had received Lincoln’s signature from November 17, 1860, just 11 days after he won the presidential election. This letter would become the nucleus of an extensive collection of autograph letters collected by Roberts over the course of his life.  In 1903, his collection of over 12,000 items was donated to the College by his widow, Lucy Branson Roberts.

The brief passage through Haverford would not be the only time that the students would get to see Lincoln. Sadly, on April 22, 1865 the assassinated President’s body would again pass through Haverford Station, this time retracing the inaugural route in reverse. Haverford Professor (later President) Thomas Chase spoke at Collection on the day of his assassination and his wife, Alice, remembered receiving the news:

Was it not a terrible blow on Seventh day. A student, Allan Thomas, came before we had left our room in the morning. Thomas [Chase] went down to see him and soon returned so overcome with grief that I knew something unexpected and dreadful had happened, but could not prepare myself for anything so horrible as the truth, and when he told me I was almost as much overwhelmed as himself (Lawnside [Haverford], April 19, 1865).

Special thanks to Diana Franzusoff Peterson, Manuscripts Librarian and College Archivist, and Anne Upton, Quaker Bibliographer and Special Collections Librarian, for providing assistance researching this event.

There were 25 graduating members of the class of 1889, and through a gift of Betsy Rawle Slattery in November, we received carte-de-visite photographs of 21 of them. The magnificent Biographical Catalog of the Matriculates of Haverford College published in 1922, provides sketches of the lives of these Haverfordians. Among them were physicians (T.F. Branson, W.R. Dunton, W.C. Goodwin), lawyers (Charles Burr, S.P. Ravenel), professors (W. Fite),  and businessmen (A.N. Leeds, D.C. Lewis, L.J. Morris, J.S. Stokes) and others.

Franklin Butler Kirkbride was one of them. While a student, he was class historian and made Phi Beta Kappa. A businessman, he was affiliated with a large number of companies, often as president or director, including President of the Empire Cream Separator Co., 1912-20. He was decorated by the King of Sweden as Commander of the Order of Vasa in 1921.

During their time at Haverford, the class of 1889 was witness to many events.  To name just one per year while they were students: 1885: the Haverford College Grammar School opened; 1886: the first college tennis tournament was held at Merion Cricket Club; 1887: Isaac Sharpless became president; 1888: Haverford beat Swarthmore in football; 1889: the Gustav Baur collection of books was received by the library, the largest book donation to that point.

If you would like to see images of other members of the class of 1889, please visit: tinyurl.com/4w8aalb

While preparing for a presentation about the return of the Descartes letter, I came upon this speech from Secretary of the Board of Managers, Howard Comfort, dedicating Roberts Hall in 1903, which together with the Charles Roberts Autograph Letters Collection, had been donated to the College by Roberts’ widow, Lucy Branson Roberts. The speech is included in its entirety, having been transcribed by our student assistant, Kyle McCloskey ’11.

Remarks at the opening of Roberts Hall, Haverford College – Fourth Month 30th 1903

By Howard Comfort

It seems fitting, at the first formal gathering in this new building, that a few words should be said regarding its creation and purpose.

In 1860, Charles Roberts, descended from Welsh  ancestors, entered Haverford.

In the chapter he wrote for the Haverford History, he calls his College days, “the Civil War Period” – the weary days of the great struggle between the north and the South, when thousands of troops rolled by on the railroad which then bounded the college grounds. On one occasion Lincoln bowed to the students from the rear platform of a passing train, while on his way to take up his duties as the newly elected President. Charles Roberts tells us it was the day of small things in college and without.  The conditions were however favorable to the development of mental training, in the quiet student of simple tasks, who loved reading and study. In the family life that then prevailed, students were drawn more closely together than now, so friendships were formed and interests aroused, that lasted through life.

Charles Roberts

In 1864, Charles Roberts was one of the first class that rec’d their diplomas from the platform of the then new Alumni Hall. During a successful business career of nearly thirty years, he took an active part in many societies and organizations, founded to promote historical, artistic, scientific, benevolent, antiquarian and educational purposes.

It was as a member of the City Councils of Philadelphia, that he was best known to the general public. He served in the Councilmanic Chamber continuously for 18 years, up to the time of his death. In this service he faithfully, ably and honestly performed his trust, setting an excellent example of strict integrity and fidelity to public duty.

Secure in the confidence of his constituents, he retained the personal esteem and friendship of his opponents by never impugning their motives, thus confining his criticism to objectionable measures.

This evening, Charles Roberts’ connection with this college is of especial interest. He was a member of the Board of Managers for thirty years. During part of this time he was President of the Alumni Association and Secretary of the Corporation. He was, perhaps the most regular attender of Board and Committee meetings, where his ripe judgment and Knowledge of College affairs will he greatly missed. A liberal contributor to every good cause, he was ever ready to answer the not infrequent calls of his Alma Mater. Therefore when his premature death occurred fifteen months ago, his colleagues had no expectations from the estate of one [who] had already done so much for the College.

In March of last year, Mrs Roberts informed the Board, that she wished to present to the College an Assembly Hall, in memory of her husband. The only condition attached, was that the new Hall should contain fire-proof rooms for the reception of the Autograph Collections, to be given the College, and to be Known as the Charles Roberts Autograph Collection and kept intact by the College.

Group in front of Roberts Hall, 1940s

The Managers gratefully accepted this generous offer, with a keen sense of its fitness as a memorial of one whose interest in our Institution had been so constant & fruitful.

Mrs Roberts has co-operated with the Building Committee in the selection of a site, and has given valuable help in the consideration and revision of plans, prepared by Cope and Stewardson, architects.

Owing to difficulties which attend many building operations of recent times, completion has been delayed, but we are glad to welcome you this evening to this room, which, even in its present conditions, promises to be a most convenient assembly room for our larger academic gatherings.

When all is finished, we expect to have administrative offices at the right of the front entrance, for the dispensation of such laws and orders as are incident to the Presidential office.

From Charles Roberts' student autograph book

On the left are two fire-proof rooms for the final home of the collection of rare manuscripts gathered by our late friend. As an undergraduate, he had the usual youthful desire to collect, and early began to accumulate papers and autographs to be pasted in an old fashioned scrap-book.

Through many years, before so many collections were in the field, Charles Roberts was a judicious and constant buyer of rare books, portraits, prints, autographs and manuscripts of a literary and historical character.

The autograph collection alone has been conservatively estimated as worth $85,000. It includes the letters of many literary men of this country and Europe, and of nearly all the statesmen and public characters of the United States.

Mrs Roberts has been giving much attention to the best way to care for this collection, so as to combine safety with a proper degree of accessibility, one of the most difficult problems for curators to solve. It is her desire, as we knew it would have been that of her husband, to allow as much opportunity for examination and study as is proper, — and if any mistake is made it will be on the side of liberality.

Some in this audience can recall, as I do, their pleasure in opportunities to examine some of these manuscripts, under the guidance of their late owner.

With the suppressed enthusiasm of the antiquarian, he would draw treasure after treasure from well-ordered receptacles, and point out the distinctive features of each. I remember his showing some letters of Shelly and Burns, to illustrate their care in the details of paper, penmanship, the framing of paragraphs, and accurate use of language.

A study of this collection will go far to confirm the impressions that the art of letter writing as practiced one hundred years (and less) ago, has been lost in the rushing activity of this generation.

The cost of this Hall, when completed, will be about $53,000, which, — added to the market value of the autographs, makes this memorial worth nearly $140,000, expressed in the measure of material things. Measured by the standard of academic sentiment, who will attempt to fix its value through the coming years?

For the love and interest which prompted this magnificent gift, I esteem it a duty and a privilege, to thank Lucy Branson Roberts in the name of the Corporation and of all students past and present, and still more on behalf of the wider constituency we call friends of the College — and of the innumerable company of future generations of students, who will seek the truth beneath these shades, long after all present have passed away.

Those who notice initials after a person’s name will be impressed by ones following Theodore William Richards,  class of 1885.  After he received his B.S. from Haverford, he received a B.A. from Harvard in 1886; an M.A. and Ph.D. from Harvard in 1888; an Sc.D. from Yale in 1905; a Chem.D. from Clark in 1909; a Ph.D. from Prague in 1909; an Sc.D. from Harvard in 1910; an M.D. from Berlin in 1910; a D.Sc. from Cambridge in 1911; a D.Sc. from Oxford in 1911; a D.Sc. from Manchester in 1911; a Ph.D. from Christiania in 1911; an LL.D. from Pittsburgh in 1915; an LL.D. from Pennsylvania in 1920; and, oh yes, an LL.D. from Haverford in 1908.

Since his accomplishments are even longer than his string of degrees, suffice it to say that he was a chemist who received a Nobel Prize for Chemistry in 1914, becoming the first American to receive that honor.  His research uncovered the atomic weights of twenty-five important elements.

Richards was extremely methodical as a scientist and extremely successful as a teacher, though his student, J. Robert Oppenheimer did not find his teaching methods brilliant and deemed him “afraid of even rudimentary mathematics.”

Richards’ father, William Trost Richards was a well-regarded artist and his mother, Anna Matlack, a Quaker. Richards himself was interested sports, music, literature, and art.  So, now we get to the illustration here depicted.

Barclay Hall on Haverford’s campus was built at the end of the 1870s, and Richards, no doubt, was living in no. 7 in January 1885, though there is no documentation in the college archives to prove this, nor to indicate who was his roommate. What we see in the accompanying watercolor drawing by Richards is a simple desk with books, a tennis racquet and art on the walls, possibly an oriental rug on the floor, no light of any kind. Richards clearly was also a talented artist.