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.

Photo of Haviland Meeting House from "The American Friend" (First Month, 1897; p.79).

For the past few weeks, I have been scanning and cataloging pictures of meeting houses from all over the United States. Photographs, newspaper clippings, and post cards document the many variations of these buildings. Although they share the same function, meeting houses varied in their locations, materials, and styles.

The meeting houses that I have found were spread all over the country from Philadelphia to Seattle. Their locations in time varied too. The earliest I worked on was the High Street or Great Meeting House in Philadelphia from the 1690s!

Trying to find the histories for the meeting houses can be a daunting task, but it is very interesting to learn about how they evolved over time. Many meeting houses started out as log structures. As time passed, more permanent stone or brick structures replaced these earlier buildings.

A unique example of a more ephemeral meeting house is one in Kansas. Dating to 1885, the Haviland Friends Church started out as a building constructed of sod!

Buildings featured many different styles. Most of them were simple one or two-story buildings; however, there were some exceptions to the rule. There were several large Greek Revival buildings and a few that had Gothic details.

Working with these images has been really interesting so far. The most challenging ones are the unknown meeting houses, but it is fun to be a detective!

For more information and images of meeting houses, see Triptych.

As I mentioned in a previous post, a few weekends ago was alumni weekend. On that Friday, an alumnus came in and asked to see an item that caused most work in the library to stop. All of the student interns came to see the book the alumnus requested, namely a copy of Shakespeare’s first folio.

Oooh. Ahhh. I was really surprised that we had something as rare and precious as a first edition Shakespeare work. There are 228 still in existence of the approximately 1,000 originally printed. A copy stolen from Durham University was valued at 15 million pounds or approximately 25 million U.S. dollars. I was astounded that I could read through this book just for fun.

Then John Anderies, the Head of Special Collections, told me that this was only one of a few astounding works that we had in special collections. Apparently we also have a 1472 Foligno edition of Dante’s Divine Comedy. This astounding book is even rarer than Shakespeare’s first folio; there are only 14 copies of the Foligno edition in the world, and it is the first printed edition of the book. It is so old that the book still has illuminations, ornate pictures or letters done in gold leaf and painted.

I and a few other students came to the archives the next day to study the Foligno copy.

I was thrilled and astounded to be able to handle amazing manuscripts like the Foligno Dante and Shakespeare’s first folio. These pieces are part of the William Pyle Philips collection. Philips was the class of 1902, and donated a number of priceless artifacts to the library including a first edition of Paradise Lost, the famed Descartes letter, and a copy of Copernicus’ De Revolutionibus Orbium Caelestium. Seeing and leafing through these pieces reminded me of the amazing hidden resources that our library holds, and wish that more students availed themselves of the absolutely unique opportunities that Special Collections provides.

Yesterday, I came across a box of Anna Morris Shinn Maier’s personal books. They are mostly diaries from her adult life, but included in the box were a guest book, and autograph book, and two sketchbooks, as well as an assortment of “Cookery Cards.” While the sketchbooks are largely blank, they are interesting because the pages Anna did fill hold careful sketches that are simple yet charming. 
Most of the drawings are pen and ink images of scenery; mountains,  trees, and lakes. I was curious about the forest-like setting  of the sketches, which were initialed “A.M.S.,” (Anna before she married Paul D.I. Maier), and dated. I spent a little time investigating the diaries in the box, found the year, 1896, and read several of the August entries. There, Anna wrote about a trip that she took with a number of family members and friends. Thanks to Anna’s detailed diary accounts,  I now know that their weather was nice and clear, even “splendid” on the third day. For five days, the party spent their time together or in groups, walking the mountains and boating. Anna recorded that she enjoyed spending a lot of time with “Nancy,” and when the others went fishing, she preferred to sit on the shore and read or draw.
Reading these accounts of what sounds like a delightful trip makes me simultaneously remember summer trips I’ve been on in the past, and muse about the possibility of someone else skimming one of my journals in the future, looking for clues to what my life is like now.

For more information on this (or other) collections, please feel free to come in to Special Collections, or email hc-special@haverford.edu.

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.

I was pleased to receive in the mail recently a copy of Pierpaolo Polzonetti’s Italian Opera in the Age of the American Revolution, published in 2011 by Cambridge University Press.  The cover of this excellent book displays a copy of our striking oil painting of The Quaker meeting: woman preaching from a tub by Egbert van Heemskerck.

Given the delicate and sometimes strained relationship that Quakers have had with music—especially in the religious movement’s earliest years—few would suspect that the cover of a book about Italian opera would be graced with an image of a Quaker meeting.  Yet 18th- and 19th-century Europeans were fascinated by Pennsylvanian Quakers.  Voltaire is noted for extolling their virtues in a series of letters.  And when Benjamin Franklin went to Paris he was mistaken for being a Quaker and did little to correct the misunderstanding.  Polzonetti’s book explores issues of American identity, including the depiction of Quakers, through the receptive lens of Italian opera.

Our painting by van Heemskerck is one of several from the late 17th century by the Dutch artist living in England.  These were copied frequently, especially as engravings.  It seems depictions of Quakers were popular no matter the medium, and in this case, at least, the treatment is dramatic, even worthy of opera.

Mary Esther Williams Dasenbrock spent her early years in Michigan and graduated from Vassar College in 1943. While a student there, she happened to hear a speech by Haverford professor Douglas Steere, who was also to head up the Relief and Reconstruction (R&R) program at Haverford College. Later, the chaplain at Vassar recommended she join R&R and that’s how she ended up in the R&R masters’ degree program at Haverford in the fall of 1943. There were 22 members in that first group of R&R students, all but one of whom were women. Only two of them were birthright Quakers, but by 1990, almost all of them were Quakers, which Dasenbrock felt demonstrated the impact of the program. The group was unified by age and socio-economic background and they were well-received by Haverford students. They lived in Language House (2 College Lane) and Professor Manuel Asensio and Elisa Asensio were their house parents.

The R&R curriculum included language (she took Polish & advanced German) and area studies, international relief administration, social case work, bookkeeping and an “applied work” program, as well as philosophy taught by Douglas Steere. Dasenbrock thought Haverford was lenient with them. She wrote her thesis on “Camps for Migrant Laborers…” in 1945, which is now in the college archives. The following summer she spent in a Federal migrant labor camp in Texas, both screening people for communicable diseases and running a day care – even though she never liked children – where everyone spoke Spanish and she didn’t.

Directly after, she was sent to Puerto Rico for 11 months to work in a Quaker Civilian Public Service health clinic. She averred “I never have felt that I was capable for what I was supposed to do….” Upon returning home in 1946, she began work with the American Friends Service Committee (AFSC) and was sent to Poland working on clothing and food distribution. After the relief effort was disbanded, she helped establish a work camp in Poland that succeeded in building a school.

Mary Esther Williams married Henry Dasenbrock in Poland in 1947. Shortly thereafter, they returned to the U.S. and spent a year as directors of a work camp in Mexico. After their children were born, they lived in Ohio and she was asked by the superintendent of schools to help found a college, now a branch of Wright State University. She was on the Board of that college and thought that one of the most worthwhile activities she had ever undertaken. When Henry got a job with AFSC as a fundraiser, they moved to Baltimore, and Dasenbrock volunteered in the local AFSC office. Under the auspices of the AFSC, she was able to go to Poland again in 1958 to lead an international work camp, again building a school. She was the executive of the World Federalist office in Baltimore, then worked with UNICEF. Finally, the family came to live in Haverford and she became a member of Haverford Monthly Meeting. She served on the board of Haverford College from 1979-1990 and worked to raise an R&R Scholarship for the college, all the while keeping the R&R group together through a newsletter that she wrote continuously from the early 1950s. Toward the end of the 90s, she and Henry moved to Quadrangle, a Haverford retirement community. She was awarded a Doctor of Humane Letters from Haverford in 2004. Mary Esther Williams Dasenbrock died in March 2011.

This information primarily comes from an oral history interview recorded in 1990. What this summary cannot convey is Dasenbrock’s lively intelligence, self-effacing character and personality so full of a zest for life, but which the interview so amply affords. The interview can be heard at: thesis.haverford.edu/dspace/handle/10066/1644 Unfortunately, the very beginning of the interview conducted by Carolyn Tolles is not on the recording but it is set down here:

Q. I understand, Mary Esther, that you were brought up in Grosse Point, Michigan and graduated from Vassar in 1943. What did you major in?
A. I majored in euthenics and nobody ever knows what that is. It’s from the Greek “well-being.” It was a catch all. I didn’t know what …

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.