by Clements Library | Oct 5, 2015 | Manuscripts
We recently received a Twitter query related to the strangest items in archival collections. Meg Hixon, who did extraordinary work at the Clements Library as a Project Archivist, recalled that we have a dried strawberry in our James Caswell Knox Papers. This...
by Clements Library | Sep 28, 2015 | Acquisitions, Books, Graphics, Manuscripts, Maps
Post by Brian L. Dunnigan, Associate Director and Curator of MapsThe Clements Library is known to historians and scholars of other disciplines as a primary source repository of “Americana” dating between 1492 and 1900. For all too many members of the history and the...
by Clements Library | Sep 25, 2015 | Manuscripts
Post by Cheney Schopieray, Curator of ManuscriptsGraduate students are a vital part of the William L. Clements Library. As work-study employees, interns, grant-funded workers, and volunteers, graduate students help the Library with many different sorts of jobs and...
by Clements Library | Jun 21, 2015 | Graphics, Holidays, Manuscripts, Today in history
Post by Jayne Ptolemy, Manuscripts Curatorial AssistantIn 1880 William Brunton, a Unitarian minister from Boston, began composing a special diary that recorded the everyday activities of his young son, Herbert, whom he affectionately called Bertie. “It is a work...
by Clements Library | May 10, 2015 | Books, Holidays, Manuscripts, Today in history
Post by Jayne Ptolemy, Manuscripts Curatorial AssistantOn May 24, 1873, Kate Edgerly finally found the time to return her sister’s letter. “You want to know how I get along with four children,” she wrote, with more than a little exasperation,...
by Clements Library | Mar 26, 2015 | Graphics, Manuscripts
Post by Jayne Ptolemy, Manuscripts Curatorial AssistantIn mid-July 1860, travelling salesman George P. Slade wrote a letter to a female correspondent about his experiences plying his trade in the Midwest. In his attempts to sell fruit trees, he covered a great deal of...
by Clements Library | Feb 14, 2015 | Holidays, Manuscripts, Today in history
According to Ruth Webb Lee’s A History of Valentines (1952), the creation and distribution of valentines in America began sometime in the mid-18th century. Prior to the advent of mass-produced, printed notes and cards around 100 years later, women and men made...
by Clements Library | Dec 24, 2014 | Graphics, Holidays, Manuscripts, Maps
Archives specialize in documenting change over time, but the holdings at the William L. Clements Library also reveal how some things remain stable through the years, including the excitement surrounding Christmas morning. On December 20th, 1840, Edward H....
by Clements Library | Nov 27, 2014 | Holidays, Manuscripts, Today in history
Post by Jayne Ptolemy, Manuscripts Curatorial AssistantThe William L. Clements Library sends warm Thanksgiving greetings and offers a glimpse at holidays past via our Manuscripts Division. In November 1857, William H. Ireland, Jr., sent an illustrated, lyrical letter...
