The Letters, Documents, and Other Manuscripts of the Duane Norman Diedrich Collection is a selection of individual items compiled by manuscript collector Duane Norman Diedrich (1935-2018) and the William L. Clements Library. The content of these materials reflect the life and interests of D. N. Diedrich, most prominently subjects pertinent to intellectual, artistic, and social history, education, speech and elocution, the securing of speakers for events, advice from elders to younger persons, and many others.

One of the most prominent early American schoolbooks. The Clements collection includes a sampling of more than twenty different editions from 1786 to the end of the nineteenth century.

The Rewards of Merit collection consists of approximately 815 hand-illustrated and printed rewards of merit originating in the United States during the 19th and early 20th centuries. The practice of giving rewards of merit to school children and other young folk first began in the United States during the early 1600s. Handed out by instructors, these tokens encouraged school attendance, good behavior, and excellence in one’s studies. Rewards of merit at this time were largely handwritten and illustrated.

The Calhoun Colored School photograph collection consists of 3 large format card-mounted photographs as well as a photo album containing approximately 202 photographs documenting people and activities at the Calhoun Colored School, a private primary and secondary school in Calhoun, Alabama, founded with support from Booker T. Washington.

The Chilocco Indian School collection consists of 1 piece of realia, 1 school yearbook, 1 pamphlet, 1 manuscript, 1 graduation certificate, and 107 photographic images in various formats related to the Chilocco Indian School in northern Oklahoma.

This photograph album contains 57 photographs of the Jinan Station of the American Presbyterian Shantung Mission from ca. 1923 to 1928. Many of the images show the Murray High School for Girls and its students. Young girls are shown in the school yard being led through routines and stretches, in class portraits, on a riverboat, and likely participating in May Day celebrations dancing around a maypole.

This collection contains 7 school notebooks used by members of the Gilbert and Rupley families of Mercersburg, Pennsylvania, to practice penmanship and mathematics. Other items include poetry, a cover sheet, and loose pages from an account book.

The Brayton W. Smith diary includes daily entries detailing Smith’s experiences as a student at Beloit Academy in Beloit, Wisconsin, and at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan, during 1867. His entries describe curricula, student life, studying habits, boarding houses, family matters, and his interest in baseball.

This collection is made up of two slim, pre-printed “Common School Course” penmanship copybooks filled in by Mary Crawford in 1898. The volumes include printed pages of practice sheets and endpapers with printed charts of letter formations, summaries of content, principles, illustrations showing body and hand positioning, and example movement-drill exercises.

• Louise Gilman Papers, 1866-1869
• Elizabeth Camp Journals, 1819-1825
• Old Westtown : a collection / edited by Frances C. Tatum
• Mary S. Peake, the colored teacher at Fortress Monroe. / By Rev. Lewis C. Lockwood, first missionary to the freedmen at Fortress Monroe, 1862. ; With an appendix.
• The Boston school compendium of natural and experimental philosophy, : embracing the elementary principles of mechanics, pneumatics, hydraulics, hydrostatics, acoustics, pyronomics, optics, astronomy, electricity, galvanism, magnetism, and electro-magnetism; with a description of the steam and locomotive engines. / By Richard Green Parker, A.M.

• Online Exhibit: For All Ages
• Online Exhibit: “Honest Independence”: The Life of Norton Strange Townshend
• Online Exhibit: Views of Assimilation: Photography in Indian Boarding Schools
• Online Exhibit: American Encounters: Native American History at the Clements Library, Case 15: Boarding Schools
• Article in Quarto #13: Velvet Ribbons and Oyster Pie (p. 4-5)
• Article in Quarto #14: Designing Women (p. 11-12)
• Article in Quarto #32: “Expressions of Assimilation?” (p.8-9)
• Quarto #37: [Education] Reading, Writing, and ‘Rithmetic
• Article in Quarto #46: “Col[or]ed Men Are Not Admitted Here” (p. 6-10)
• Article in Quarto #54: Picture Day
• Article in Quarto #58: Too Cool for School
• Bookworm #37: Native American Boarding Schools as a Tool of US Empire.
• Bookworm #44: Teaching Black History with Dr. Richard Bell and Latoya M. Teague
• Bookworm #65: The Full Person: Celebrating Emily Howland and Women’s History Month w/ Jayne Ptolemy
• Bookworm #69: “Giving It All Away: The Story of William W. Cook and His Michigan Law Quadrangle.”
• Blog post: Forging Forward: Sources on Post-Civil War Black Education
• Blog post: From the Stacks: Back to School
• Blog post: Recent Acquisition: 19th Century Children’s School Books
• Blog post: From the Stacks: Student Maps
• Blog post: Learning Through Maps
• Blog post: An Accidental Trailblazer: the Marion E. Grusky Rucker Collection