FROM 1769 TO 1944
College Archives Preserve Fascinating Dartmouthiana
IN a well-locked section of Baker Library, an integral part of the College is keeping steady and uninterrupted pace with itself—perhaps one of the great advantages of an institution over an individual. The changes that come with the turbulent but pride-bringing events of war, the records of faculty and graduate achievements in peace, and the ever-human deeds of undergraduates, are held and reflected in the fascinating security of the College Archives.
Professor Sanborn, a forthright teacher and one-time librarian of Dartmouth, wrote in 1870, "It is high time something should be done to rescue the history of the college from oblivion the materials of our college history are fast perishing. Of the early professors almost no memorial is left but their epitaphs and even their tombstones are crumbling to decay." Since that time, thanks to the efforts of those whose task it has been, the work of "rescuing the college" has been accomplished.
A great part of this labor has been done by Miss Mildred Saunders who came to the new Baker Library from Simmons College in 1928. Under her supervision over half of the Archives' 20,000 manuscripts have been indexed. A recent project, employing students, has been the indexing of The Dartmouth from its first issue in 1839 —a work of tremendous scope and detail. Since the college has no museum, many famous relics have their place in the Archives. To anyone visiting the records, however, this brings a homey touch that adds a great deal of interest. To see Daniel Webster's famous tall and wide beaver hat as well as his legal writings and voluminous correspondence brings an impression of familiarity and vividness that could not be achieved otherwise. When Dean Emeritus Roscoe Pound of the Harvard Law School came to Dartmouth to speak this winter in the Guernsey Center Moore Foundation lecture series, one of the things he asked to do, in a sort of meeting of legal minds, was to try on Webster's hat. Dean Pound, as have all others before him who have tried it, found the hat too large.
In fact, one of the greatest attractions of the Archives Room is its sense that the past has its own place in the present, and that things are in progress and happening. Miss Saunders, working closely with the College's great men, has come to know their lives and characters well. As she speaks of them, they all seem to be alive. "Someone writes," she says, "that Daniel Webster was just like everyone else only on a much greater scale, while Rufus Choate was like nobody but himself. I think that is true. Choate had a charm of personality that shows in the smallest record that comes down about him. His face was so expressive and animated that all the pictures we have of him are as he was at that moment. I think he was a literary man in an age when that wasn't a profession." .... "George Ticknor must have written for posterity even when he was an undergraduate but then, you know, George Ticknor always had plenty of assurance."
Because of the great interest in Dartmouth as a colonial college, and the completeness of its records, historians and educators from all over the country have done research and writing in the Archives Room. Speakers have come to study the speeches of Choate and Webster, two great figures in the age of rhetoric. Hovey and other Dartmouth graduates have drawn their share of students and writers. Dartmouth undergraduates have written their honors papers on material found only in the Archives and a number of faculty publications are based on these records.
At present one of the fast-growing and most important possessions is the correspondence of Dartmouth men now in the Service. Already of vital interest, these letters from all over the world, contributed by relatives, classmates and faculty, will become irreplaceable documents of the College.
The dignified historic and the strictly human go along side by side. To anyone surveying the Archives Room there is the reflection that the vitality of the Dartmouth spirit owes much to the fact that its parent was a lusty one. Survival in early Hanover was not to be taken for granted, by person, animal, or object. Undoubtedly the most precious and interesting treasure of the College is the handsome book presented by Sir John Wentworth, Colonial Governor of New Hampshire, to Eleazar Wheelock in May 1773. In it are the Charter and first records of the College. During the hectic days when the war of Dartmouth College vs. Dartmouth University was raging, and records instead of controversialists were liable to be taken prisoner, this book was hidden in a bin of wheat, by Mrs. Woodward, whose husband was a grandson of Eleazar Wheelock. In the barn attached to the house now occupied by John Pearson '11 it was as safe as it is now in the vault.
It is in the Archives Room that the "town and gown" controversy—the question of every college town—is settled. So closely are the town and College histories interwoven that they are one. The history of the Campus which was, to the townspeople, a Common and there for the convenience of their cows, would not be complete without the diaries and letters of students who, not so particular about many other things, locked the cows in the basement of old Dartmouth Hall and threw rocks at the owners who came to fetch them. The ire of old Jedediah Baldwin, notorious for "not being able to get along with the students," will go down to posterity, as he would wish it, along with the silver emblems and keys he made in his shop for Phi Beta Kappa and the early Dartmouth societies. Some of these keys are the only existing records of certain societies. In the past and present, the records of the town of Hanover and of Dartmouth are inseparable. The recent destruction of the Nugget by fire will be documented along with other fires which have affected the life of the College.
One of the most unusual candidates for a future museum is the Orerry, a smallscale planetarium, secured in England by Eleazar Wheelock's son John. A forerunner of the College's observatory, it was given to the Archives by the late Prof. John Poor. The moon still sticks, as does the only joke of old Professor Adams, who taught natural philosophy and had the custom of telling his class that "the moon is acting lunatic."
A large collection of early engravings and daguerreotypes bring back the early scenes and people of Dartmouth. The earliest engraving is the Dunham engraving which appeared in February 1791 in the Massachusetts Magazine, showing the first buildings. One of the most interesting is one done by Christian Meadows, a forger with a law-abiding name, who was put in jail in Vermont. Some Dartmouth students got permission to hire him, and while he was serving his sentence he made the engraving of the Common which the students sold. Their profit, if any, is unrecorded.
From 1778 until 1881, when Hanover was named Dresden and was located in Vermont, Alden Spooner, the Vermont state printer, published the Dresden Mercury and Universal Intelligencer. A copy of this belongs to Dartmouth, as does the first printed copy of the College Charter. There are faculty records back to 1815, student grades to 1832, library records back to its first circulation book in 1774. The records of Dartmouth University, all printed publications of the College—the Dartmouth and Aegis, as well as others not so long-lived; examination papers and schedules, accounts of societies and fraternities; the first seal of the College; early dance programs, and student entertainments which are the source of many of the early student customs—all these now invaluable materials are safe and accessible in the Archives.
For charm and interest, as well as in- formation, the diaries of John Willard, a tutor at Dartmouth in 1822, and William How, a student in 1851, could not be re- placed. As Miss Saunders says, William How "was not the grind type." It would be hard to find a more haunting example of student reverie than his entry for June 24, 1851: "How the stormy weather holds onl It is not exactly stormy but then it is cloudy, and the wind sticks to the N.E., so that there is no telling when it will clear off. Whether it is owing, as some say, to the earth passing through that portion of the atmosphere which is filled with the car- casses of defunct comets or not, I have not taken the trouble to investigate."
EXPERT IN DARTMOUTH LORE, Miss Mildred Saunders, head of the College Archives, shows two Navy V-12 students one of the huge wooden spoons which used to be awarded to the junior chosen as the biggest eater in the class. Looking at this spoon, awarded to Randolph McNutt '71, for whom McNutt Hall is named, are A/S Bryan Battey '46, USNR (left), of Washington, D. C, and A/S Buell Kingsley '45, USNR, of Port Washington, N. Y.
