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 Most of these are still pretty sound advice, though many are outdated: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.

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.

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

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.

In the fall of 2008, during the first semester of my freshman year here at Haverford,  I started working in Special Collections with Digital Collections Librarian David Conners to finish the Cope Evans project.  Started in 2002, the project was to digitize the Cope Evans Family Papers collection in order to make each item available on the web.  This involved reading, scanning, and transcribing almost 3,000 items dating from the 18th to the 20th century.  I had very little knowledge of the Society of Friends before coming to Haverford, and working with this collection of papers was a great way for me to really understand the essence of Quakerism.

At the culmination of the project in the spring of 2009, an event was organized to unveil the work that all of the students, interns, fellows, and librarians had been doing for the project.  Members of the Cope and Evans families were invited, as well as other members of the community, and anyone who had worked on the project in the past.  I spoke on the student panel at the event, and wrote a couple of pieces about some themes that arose from the letters, which were the compiled into a booklet about the collection.

Currently, I am working with Manuscripts Librarian and College Archivist Diana Franzusoff Peterson as the student archivist. I plan to major in Anthropology with a minor in Spanish. I also study Arabic, and plan to spend my junior year abroad in Egypt.

Charlotte Brooks, Marlis Gildemeister, Laurence Wylie, and an unidentified woman learn auto mechanics as part of the Relief and Reconstruction master’s degree program during World War II.

The College Archives maintains a collection of historic photos organized by subject for patrons to view. This photo and many others are available online through Triptych, the Tri-College Digital Library.

Special Collections puts many of its digitized objects into Triptych: the tri-college digital library.  Materials documenting the history of the College can now be found in one collection, "The History of Haverford College."  The collection combines over 500 historic photographs, documents from the College Archives, and published histories of the College.