Recently asked to be a “guest blogger” on the PACSCL/CLIR Hidden Collections Blog, I thought it would be worth repeating my post here, encouraging our Haverford readers to follow the PACSCL/CLIR Blog, too.

Haverford College Quaker & Special Collections was one of the first institutions to be treated to the excellent work of Holly, Courtney and the fabulous student processors (hi, Forrest and Leslie!) hired for the Hidden Collections project. As a semi-official Guinea Pig, we really benefited from the extra time and attention given us by the PACSCL processing team. All involved did first-rate work and brought some much needed order to 10 of the high-research-value collections in our backlog. Participating in the project also jumpstarted our adoption of Archivists Toolkit to process new collections, has inspired us to find additional ways to open our holdings to researchers, and has provided our staff with ample opportunities to debate the pros and cons of minimal processing!

Today, we now record all accessions and process all new collections in Archivists Toolkit. For accessions we record all gifts no matter the format (manuscripts, archives, books, photography and fine art) and any purchases that are not reflected in the acquisitions module of our ILS (such as manuscripts and photography). Eventually we hope to include retrospective accessions in AT too. In addition to the original 10 finding aids produced by PACSCL, we have completed 19 more in AT, all of which now reside on the PACSCL EAD Repository hosted at Penn, in addition to our local web server.

Our instance of Archivists Toolkit is installed on a Tri-College server located at Bryn Mawr College and serves the needs of four individual repositories across the consortia: Bryn Mawr Special Collections, Haverford Quaker & Special Collections, Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, and the Peace Collection at Swarthmore College. Accessions and Resource (or collection) records for our four repositories are partitioned within AT. However, we do share the tables for Subjects and People, which is very useful when the topics of our collections overlap, which they frequently do.

In addition to moving ahead on creating new finding aids in AT, we have spent the past year making our legacy finding aids more accessible. Previous efforts at moving our finding aids into the 20th century had produced only a handful of fully searchable guides online and a mish-mash of Word files, PDFs, XML files, Excel files, ASCII text files, and Filemaker Pro databases living on a single staff computer, inaccessible to our researchers without the direct intervention of staff. A decision to “not let the perfect be the enemy of the good” finally freed us from our paralysis and has produced extraordinary results.

When the PACSCL crew left us in 2009 we had—in addition to their 10 finding aids created in AT—approximately 45 other finding aids online. By agreeing that it was better to supply our researchers with something “quick and dirty” than nothing at all and through the dedication of our students and staff, we turned all of the other finding aid formats into PDFs and mounted them on our web server. These are listed on two web pages in both Collection Name and Collection Number order and the complete lot of nearly 250 finding aids is searchable using a Google Custom Search. The results lists are not always pretty and neither are some of the finding aids, but for the first time the majority of our materials are discoverable online and our researchers seem pleased with the access.

As the work of the PACSCL team has discerned over the course of the grant, there are those collections which work well with minimal processing and there are those that do not. Historically, we have never given the same level of attention to each of our collections. Personal and family papers have often received more detailed processing than business papers and archival records. While we have not adopted an MPLP approach at Haverford, we are interested in discerning ways of saving time and money while still providing rich access to our researchers and offering fulfilling and educational opportunities to our student employees and interns. In the coming months we hope to try our hand at an “iterative” approach at enhancing collections by revisiting selected series within some of the collections processed to a minimal level under the PACSCL project. And we aim to improve the remainder of our online finding aids bit by bit.

As one of the first institutions to dive into the PACSCL Hidden Collections project, we are pleased to see it wrapping up and hope that the other institutions who have participated have been as pleased and inspired as we have.

So I have been working on cataloging the books in the Rufus Jones Study in the Philips Wing,  and I have been discovering some really interesting material. And I’m not just talking about the wide variety of fascinating books in there, but all the things I’ve been finding INSIDE the books!!!!

(I thought this was really cool!)

One of the first items I found was bookmark from circa 1915, which is promoting an insurance policy that covers injuries to one’s servants, along with damages caused by civil insurrection, subterranean fires, and riots and strikes.

(Ain’t that the darndest thing?)

Another item I found should be of great interest to those who have recently completed applying to colleges: it is an old letter of recommendation/transcript from the Principal of the Friends School to “The President of Yale” (clearly this was a lot more informal process back in the day!):

(“This is to certify that Frank P. Pickley[?], has graduated at this school in the present class. That he is in our judgement reasonably well prepared on the following studies for your Freshman Class at Yale College….[list of classes taken]“.)

(“…He has completed these reasonably well. His moral character is very good. He has been with us several years, Augustine Jones, Principal of Friends School, June 28, 1888″)

So there you have it. A letter of recommendation from 1888, and a currently politically incorrect insurance policy. I’ve really enjoyed going through this library and finding these gems. It makes me feel like a treasure hunter, but the value is that it is so interesting!

In the coming weeks, I will post some more of my discoveries! In the meantime, my email is kmoll@haverford.edu.

In this long overdue blog entry, I’ll recount the work I’ve been doing and the experiences I’ve had as a student assistant at Special Collections over the past month. I’ve been assigned with the conservation and digitization of the Friendly Association Papers, a collection of documents from the mid-eighteenth century that chronicle the efforts of a bunch of Philadelphia Quakers as they sought to arrest the escalating violence between Native Americans and settlers in Pennsylvania . The Papers contain a fascinating mix of journals, letters, minutes of conferences, receipts of trade between merchants and Native Americans, land deeds etc. The details of this effort to resolve conflict by  fiercely  advocating pacifism are worthy of several separate blog posts. For now, I’ll focus on my role in preserving this collection for posterity.

Within a few days of starting my job, I was left wondering about the extent to which the alkalinity of a solution of ammonium hydroxide decreases after a container of it is left open overnight. Let me backtrack and elaborate on my duties to shed some light on how I managed to land myself in such a quandary. I alternate between working in the main Special Collections section located towards the back of Magill and the bindery on the library’s 1st tier.

In Special Collections, I operate the camera-stand shown on the left to photograph the documents after they’ve been treated in the bindery and catalog the images before they are uploaded online to Triptych, the tri-college digital library. All of the above tasks take place under the watchful eyes of Anne Moore, the Digital Collections Librarian, and Bruce Bumbarger, the Library Conservator responsible for the bindery. The bindery is a pretty neat place, containing books and manuscripts in varying stages of disrepair as well as housing the hardware and chemicals needed to treat these books and bring them back into a satisfactory condition. The ammonium hydroxide I previously mentioned is one such chemical used in the conservation of the Papers to insure the documents are thoroughly de-acidified before they are re-housed. Besides being treated with ammonium hydroxide, the documents are also put through a series of baths (pictured above) to make them less brittle and remove the iron in the ink responsible for the corrosion endangering the documents. Recently, Magill hired two summer interns (one of whom is the possessor of the appendage in the right picture)  specializing in library conservation to speed along the process of conserving the Papers. Hopefully, you’ll be hearing from them soon.

In my time at Haverford, I’ve developed the lucky habit of meeting interesting people in the most random of places. My streak continued when I ran into David Cook, MD, class of ’64 in the bindery where he occasionally volunteers. I remember a conversation with David in which I was really struck by the numerous changes Haverford has undergone since he was a student here. Apart from the obvious dearth of XX chromosomes, there were many open areas of land that are now carrying the weight of buildings which we take for granted, including Gummere. After being forced to live there in the 1st week of summer, I have to say that sounds like a reasonably fair trade-off, even though I’m sure most of my peers would beg to differ. Anyway, I’m veering off-track now. It just seems really cool that an alumnus  has continued to maintain such a close association with the college after the elapse of such a long time. I can only wish that I have the same relationship with Haverford long after I graduate.

I’ve recently been introduced to one of the more exciting sides of working in the archives–hunting for buried treasure much more literally than is usual in the archives.
While going through the papers of Julia Cope Collins, a member of an important Quaker family and wife of a Haverford professor, I found a small envelope, labeled ‘Bryn Mawr Trust Company’. Below this was scrawled ‘Safe Deposit Box Keys.’ Indeed, there were three keys on a small keyring in the envelope, one with a number on the base.
For obvious reasons, this discovery excited me. The Bryn Mawr Trust Company is very close to Haverford’s campus–it was certainly possible, I thought, that the bank had kept a record of the items in the safe, or at even that the safe had been forgotten by the family and that the contents were still there.
A little quick googling provided a name of someone who might, it seemed, have some information about the fate of the box. I sent her an email, asking whether the safe might still be in use, or whether they might be able to give me any information as to what might have been in the safe.
While we were waiting for a response, everyone at Special Collections did some thinking and discussing of what might be in the safe, and what we could do with it. The consensus was that while we had a clear right to whatever was in the safe, sending the valuables to her heirs was the right thing to do. We would, however, probably keep the papers from the safe. We are, after all, a library.
A few days ago I got a call. Their Safe Deposit Box specialist told me that (shockingly) they don’t keep unpaid safe deposit boxes for fifty years, nor do they keep records for that long. The knowledge of what was in that safe deposit box has been lost to history.
Even after that disappointment, it’s certainly been an adventure. I’ve learned that even seemingly serious, grown-up people will get excited when they find an old safe deposit box key. And I’ve learned that most real places, unlike libraries, don’t keep records from fifty years ago.

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.

More than 40 years before women achieved the vote in the U.S. in 1920, Emily Howland (1827-1929), a Quaker reformer, educator and philanthropist was petitioning the New York legislature to act equitably. In an 1876 letter just added to our collections,
Howland reminds the Honorable A.S. Russell that under the Constitution as written, the legislature has the power to give women of New York the right to vote. To encourage him, she suggests that grateful women would vote for those who empower them, and, conversely, refers to the historical outcome of “taxation without representation”: peril to a government that disallows the vote to women. By the time this letter was written in 1876, Howland had already accomplished a great deal — as a teacher in a school for African American girls, as an organizer of the Freedom Village for refugee slaves during the Civil War, as an advocate for women’s rights alongside Susan B. Anthony; she would later also become a champion of world peace.
The letter takes its place alongside Haverford’s other Howland materials, including the Emily Howland Papers, which illustrate her interest in African American education.

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.

From 1519 until 1836, parts of Texas were under Spanish, French and Mexican rule.  Mexico itself was under Spanish rule until 1821, but after independence, it governed Mexican Texas until 1836, when the Texas Rebellion separated it from Mexico. In 1830, Mexico had ordered all slaves to be freed, but many Texas colonists ran around this law by making their slaves indentured servants for life. By the time it became a Republic in 1836, there were 5,000 slaves in Texas.

The annexation of Texas into the U.S. was thus controversial for those who did not want to bring a slave state into the union (it became a state in 1848).

A new document has just been acquired by Special Collections.  It is a “memorial” (petition) to the Senate by the Pennsylvania Society for Promoting the Abolition of Slavery protesting the annexation of Texas into the Union and setting forth its reasons, including the creation of a new market for slaves and promoting the trafficking of slaves. This they surmised from similar circumstances in Louisiana and Florida. The document is an unsigned draft, though on the verso is the signature of Edith Stackhouse. Among the society’s members were several Quakers and, as the writer notes, such lights as Benjamin Franklin and Benjamin Rush. It is inferred that the writer is Stackhouse’s husband, Powell Stackhouse (1785-1863). They were both received into Philadelphia Monthly Meeting in 1843, and he served as an overseer of this Quaker meeting, though he did not appear on lists of members of any committees, including those relating to African Americans.

In 1842, James Buchanan (1791-1868), 15th president of the United States, was serving as a Democratic senator from Pennsylvania and he presented this petition.  At the conclusion of his presentation, the document was ordered to be printed (see: The Weekly Herald, April 9, 1842).  One would expect that the petitioners would have presented their senator with a finished copy to read, rather than a draft, and that the document had been printed as ordered, but an exhaustive search through such resources as the U.S. Congressional Serial Set and the Making of America website provided no such evidence.

With this knowledge in hand, this seemingly rare document was acquired for our Quaker Collection.

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.