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Archives and Special Collections Blog
Elizabeth Rourke, Editor-in-Chief, 1939 Nutmeg
The Nutmeg Yearbook was first published in 1915, and its first woman editor-in-chief was Elizabeth Rourke, a member of the Class of 1939. Hers was the last graduating class of Connecticut Agricultural College. A month after her June graduation, her alma mater became the University of Connecticut.
-Mark J. Roy, University Communications (retired)
Student government began at Storrs Agricultural College in the 1890s, but it wasn’t until 1918 when a woman would serve as its leader. Gladys Dagget, who also made a first for women as business manager of the student newspaper in 1918, was president of the Students Organization that same year. When men returned from World War I, they resumed control of the student government. A separate Women’s Student Government Association was established in 1918, coordinating activities and campus life for women until 1971. After a change in the constitution of the male-run student government, Henrietta Spring, a member of the Class of 1945, was elected as its first woman president in 1944.
Women's Student Council, 1920-1921 Nutmeg
-Mark J. Roy, University Communications (retired)
The family of the late Coleen Salley have donated James Marshall’s book dummy for his “The Cut-ups cut loose” to the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection. The charming, 32-page dummy is accompanied by a letter from Mr. Marshall to Ms. Salley with a note about “our little book.” The dummy is black and white with some color on the title page. The book was published in 1987 by Viking Kestrel and is dedicated to Ms. Salley. This piece is the only item in the Marshall Papers for this title. Thank you, Salley Family, for this important addition to the NCLC.
–Terri J. Goldich, Curator
It was in the fall of 1893, just months after Storrs Agricultural School became Storrs Agricultural College and began officially admitting women, that the first student organization for women was established. Women had been taking classes unofficially since the fall of 1890, and then a legislative act in 1893 made their enrollment official.
The first student organization at the school was a literary society launched in 1888 when it was still an all-male institution. That group disbanded after its founder left the school. Two literary societies took its place in 1893, the Eclectic Society for men and the Ionian Society for women. They merged into one group and took the Eclectic Society name in 1894. Then a new, separate literary society for women formed in 1899 as the Alethia Society.
Editors of The Lookout (student newspaper), 1906-1907
A student newspaper, the monthly “Lookout”, was established in 1896, but it wasn’t until 1906 that the all-male staff was joined by a woman. Lena Hurlburt, a member of the Class of 1907, was the Class Notes Editor, in addition to being co-captain of the women’s basketball team.
The Class Notes position would be the only position for women on the newspaper staff until 1917. After the United States joined the fighting in Europe during the First World War, women took over many of the previously male-dominated campus organizations. Helen Clark was the first woman to be editor-in-chief of what was now the Connecticut Campus, with Gladys Dagget as the first woman to serve as the newspaper’s business manager. Both Clark and Dagget were members of the Class of 1919. But once the war was over and the men returned to campus, women would not again hold those top positions on the newspaper for decades.
Helen Clark, 1918
Gladys Daggett, 1918
-Mark J. Roy, University Communications (retired)
Student body, Storrs Agricultural College, Fall 1894
With the arrival of Susan Herbst as the University of Connecticut’s president, it’s time to take note of some other firsts for women in the history of the University.
The first woman on staff was Mrs. R.H. Coit who served as matron from 1882 to 1883 at the Storrs Agricultural School. Although records do not indicate exactly what a matron’s role entailed, it’s possible she did cooking and cleaning in the single-building school/dormitory that was home to the first dozen students of the then boys-only school.
The first woman on faculty at the agricultural school was Josephine Nettleton, who first taught algebra when she joined the teaching staff in 1888. Later she was a instructor in mathematics and physical geography.
It was in the fall of 1890 that a girl joined the boys in classes. Nellie Wilson had asked Benjamin Koons, principal of the school, if she might be admitted. Koons, reasoning that the state law establishing the school for boys did not expressly forbid the enrollment of girls, answered in the affirmative.
Wilson was joined by Louisa Rosebrooks and Anna Snow in the spring of 1891, and two years later, the legislature formalized their enrollment when it changed the name of the school to the Storrs Agricultural College.
The following year, 1894, Wilson, Rosebrooks, and Snow, whose names are memorialized on residence halls in South Campus, became the first women to graduate from the college. And they did it all as the first commuting students. The first dormitory for women, Grove Cottage, would not be built until 1896.
-Mark J. Roy, University Communications (retired)
Memorial Day was first enacted to honor soldiers following the American Civil War and after World War I it was expanded to honor Americans who have died in all wars. UConn established its own permanent memorial in November 2009 with a monument erected west of the flagpoles, between Beach Hall and the CLAS Building.
Veteran's Memorial at the University of Connecticut
In addtion to the physical memorial, the Alumni Association mantains the Roll of Honor at the Alumni Center
Roll of Honor, Alumni Center, University of Connecticut
and online at http://www.uconnalumni.com/roll-of-honor/the-roll.html. If you have the opportunity, I would encourage all who are on campus over the Memorial Day weekend to include a visit to these memorials to honor the UConn alums who have made the ultimate sacrifice.
–Betsy Pittman, University Archivist
The countdown is on for the CT Book Festival this weekend! The weather will be great, there are lots of wonderful authors and panels to hear, there will be tons of books for sale and all sorts of stuff for kids to do, too. See you at Book Fest!
Ozoplaning with the Wizard of Oz (Chicago: Reilly & Lee, 1939). By Ruth Plumly Thompson, illustrated by John R. Neill.
Neill wrote three Oz books after Thompson resigned from writing the series in 1939. This story contains the original characters, Dorothy Gale, the Tin Woodman, the Scarecrow, and the Cowardly Lion and of course the Wizard of Oz. Jellia Jam (“Jamb” in the original Baum) is the Wizard’s “pretty little serving maid” who does not appear in the movie version. The Soldier with Green Whiskers and Nick Chopper join everyone for a dinner party at the Wizard’s home so the Wizard can show off his new inventions, two Ozoplanes named Ozpril and Oztober. The Soldier, Tin Woodman, and Jellia board the Oztober and through the Soldier’s bad luck, take off through the roof on a long adventure.
–Terri J. Goldich, Curator, Northeast Children’s Literature Collection
Old Saybrook, Connecticut, switch tower, on the New Haven Railroad. Photograph taken by James S. Klar, 1975.
James S. Klar spent his working life as a city planner, but his first love was photography. After he retired he indulged in his passion full-time, and received training in photography techniques. In 1975 he received a grant from the Connecticut Commission on the Arts to photograph 75 railroad stations in southern New England for an exhibition. This photograph of the Old Saybrook Interlocking, or switch, tower, was taken on June 10, 1975, for the exhibition.
James Klar died in 1985 and in 1990 his wife Marjorie donated the photographs from the exhibition to the Railroad History Archives. The photographs show exquisite details of old railroad stations and structures, many of them dilapidated.
The interlocking tower in Old Saybrook was built in 1912, for the New York, New Haven & Hartford Railroad. An interlocking, or switch, tower was an important feature for railroad safety. It allowed the tower operator to communicate with railroad personnel about train movements, and to control junction switches and signals with a bank of levers on the second floor. In the 1920s the mechanical interlocking was replaced by banks of electrical relays, which were replaced by pneumatic assists. By the 1970s changes in dispatching technology rendered the tower obsolete and it was closed. The tower was razed in June 1998.
This photograph of the switching levers on the second floor of the tower was taken in 1997 by Robert Brewster when it was recorded for a Historic American Buildings Survey, which you can find in the Connecticut Historic Preservation Collection.
Please join us for the 2011 Raymond and Beverly Sackler Distinguished Lecture in Human Rights.
“International Justice, Transitional Justice: What Have We Learned about What ‘Works’?”
Diane Orentlicher
Deputy, Office of War Crimes Issues, U.S. Department of State
Thursday, April 21 4:00 PM
Konover Auditorium, Dodd Research Center
Diane F. Orentlicher is serving as Deputy, Office of War Crimes Issues, in the Department of State while on leave from American University’s Washington College of Law, where she is a Professor of International Law. She has served in her current position, on appointment by Secretary of State Hillary R. Clinton, since October, 2009. The Office of War Crimes Issues advises the Secretary of State and formulates U.S. policy responses to atrocities committed in areas of conflict and elsewhere throughout the world.
Described by the Washington Diplomat as “one of the world’s leading authorities on human rights law and war crimes tribunals,” Professor Orentlicher has previously served in various public positions, including Special Advisor to the High Commissioner on National Minorities of the Organization for Security and Co-operation in Europe.
Professor Orentlicher is also co-director (on leave) of the Center for Human Rights and Humanitarian Law of American University. From 1995 to 2004, she served as founding director of the law school’s War Crimes Research Office, which provides legal assistance to international criminal tribunals and courts established jointly by the United Nations and national governments. Professor Orentlicher has presented congressional testimony on a range of issues of international criminal law, including U.S. legislation on genocide.
Jean Nelson, Public Outreach Coordinator
We have posted frequently about the collections, events and activities surrounding Archives & Special Collections in this blog. Today I’d like to do something a little different and share an example of the research being conducted in the reading room this spring. Olivier Burtin, a graduate student from France and Strochlitz Travel Grant awardee, made a second trip to Storrs in March to continue his research in the Vivien Kellems papers.
Olivier Burtin, a Strochlitz Travel grant awardee, conducting research in the reading room.
A comment about his research from Olivier:
The research I am conducting on Vivien Kellems is the product of my broader interest in U.S modern history, and more specifically in the history of U.S conservatism. I started to delve into the subject early in 2010 for my Master’s Degree thesis at Sciences Po in Paris. Since then, I have made two trips to the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center at the University of Connecticut, Storrs, where Kellems’ personal papers are located. There are a number of reasons why I decided to study this topic.
A successful Connecticut businesswoman, Kellems (1896-1975) founded and operated her own cable grips company for more than thirty years, at a time when managerial positions were overwhelmingly male-dominated. She was also a highly controversial public figure known primarily for her unorthodox opposition to income taxation, beginning in World War II. Her political involvement combined staunch anti-tax resistance (leading to several suits against the federal state), fierce conservative criticism of government and unwavering advocacy of women’s rights, all put forward by unique oratorical and public relations skills that made her famous nationwide. She acted as a prominent maverick in Connecticut politics, running several times for Congress from 1942 to 1962. Although she remains a lingering presence today in the memory of many conservatives and residents of this state, her personal papers – donated to the University by her nephew in 1992 – have yet to be thoroughly investigated by historians.
Kellems’ life is not only fascinating in itself, it is also a valuable addition to the growing literature on U.S conservatism and it helps us understand its historical development. Her career spanned a critical time in America when liberalism was flourishing; hence it offers an insight into the relatively under-documented origins of the conservative renewal in the 1940s and 1950s. Although she ultimately failed to create a perennial political movement around her, she gathered more than 10,000 sympathizers in the early 1950s with her national women’s organization, the Liberty Belles. Years later, she played a central role as a standard bearer of tax resistance in the late 1960s and early 1970s, with her struggle against unfair income taxation for singles. Her papers contain a wide variety of sources – political fan letters, membership lists, newspapers clippings, etc. – that allow me to document not only her career but also the growth of a political movement.
She passed away in 1975 as active as ever: she had just resumed her PhD a few years earlier at the University of Edinburgh and was about to submit her doctoral dissertation…on taxation, of course!
Mr. Burtin is one of several travel grant awardees who have come to Storrs this year to conduct research in the collections. Over time, I hope to share more of their interests and stories with you.
Betsy Pittman, University Archivist
TV interviews by Billie Levy featuring authors, illustrators, editors, collectors and curators in the field of children’s literature are now available via the Libraries’ video streaming service. The interviews are from the “Children’s Books: Their Creators and Collectors” series filmed at WHC-TV. Go to http://www.lib.uconn.edu/services/video/streams.php and scroll down, or go directly to the web page at http://www.lib.uconn.edu/services/video/levy.php. New interviews will be added as they are completed at the television station. Miss Billie, as she is known here in the Dodd Center, is one of the founders of the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection and has donated thousands of books, posters, greeting cards, and ephemera over the years the NCLC has enjoyed her support.
This project was made possible by the generosity of Susan Aller of West Hartford in honor of Miss Billie, with support from West Hartford Community Television. Ms. Aller is the author of more than a dozen biographies for young people, including the stories of J. M. Barrie, Florence Nightingale, George Eastman, Louisa May Alcott, and Mary Jemison. She has worked as a magazine editor in New York City, and her essays on a variety of topics have appeared in The New York Times, Christian Science Monitor, and other publications. Ms. Aller is a graduate of the University of Nebraska at Omaha, and lived for extended periods in Spain and France, before coming to Connecticut in 1979. As a collector of antique children’s books, she has been an active supporter of the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection and the Billie M. Levy Travel and Research Grants endowment fund. Ms. Aller participates weekly in a long-standing writers’ group and is a member of the Saturday Morning Club of Hartford, a women’s writing group founded in 1876. The NCLC is grateful for the support from Ms. Aller and West Hartford Community Television. Thanks go especially to Nicholas Eshelman for all the tech work that made this project possible, and also to Miss Billie for her help in tracking down some of the interviews for digitization and for supplying recent interviews for inclusion in the project.
Terri J. Goldich, Curator