Governor Raymond Baldwin signs bill creating the University of Connecticut, May 26, 1939

Marking the fifth and final name change of the small school in the eastern hills of Connecticut, Governor Baldwin formally signs the bill creating the University of Connecticut with state and school officials looking on.  Previous names reflected the changing nature of the institution as it evolved to meet the needs of the citizens of Connecticut: 

• Storrs Agricultural School                   1881-1893
• Storrs Agricultural College                  1893-1899
• Connecticut Agricultural College         1899-1933
• Connecticut State College                  1933-1939

President Charles L. Beach, right, and student Paul Manwaring, stand under the north arch of Hawley Armory at the dedication of Gardner Dow Field on Alumni Day, May 22, 1920. After the north and south arches were taken down sometime around 1950, the Dow plaque was moved the to west side of the Armory building.

In May of 1920, the campus community, at what was then Connecticut Agricultural College, gathered near the north end of Hawley Armory for a solemn occasion.

Eight months earlier, on September 27, 1919, Gardner Dow, a member of the CAC football team, died from injuries he sustained when he collided with an opponent from the University of New Hampshire. The tragedy occurred during CAC’s season opening game at UNH in Durham, New Hampshire. 

On October 6, the CAC Athletic Association, which had oversight of all campus athletic activities and facilities, approved a measure naming the college’s athletic field the Gardner Dow Field.

Students, faculty, alumni, and others gathered on May 22, Alumni Day in 1920, to dedicate Gardner Dow Field, which at  one time stretched from Hawley Armory east to Memorial Stadium, with football and baseball fields, tennis courts, a track, and other athletic facilities. As the University grew, those facilities were moved to separate locations throughout the campus.

On that day in May 90 years ago, a plaque was unveiled in memory of Dow, and placed on an arch at the north end of the armory.  The plaque was moved to the east wall of the armory in the 1950s, and it is still there today, in 2010, facing what remains of Gardner Dow Field.

Homer D. Babbidge and students in front of the Student Union, 1967

Homer Daniels Babbidge, Jr. was born today in 1925, in West Newton, MA.  Educated at Yale University, Dr. Babbidge became the eighth President of the University of Connecticut on October 20, 1962 at the age of 37.  A charismatic, respected and much beloved member of the University community, Babbidge resigned from the University in the summer of 1972 after ten years of service.  Several years after Dr. Babbidge left the University the new library, which replaced the Wilbur Cross Library in 1978, was named after him.  Today, Homer Babbidge would have been 85 years old.  Unfortunately, he died on March 24, 1984, but his legacy and name live on at the University.

The first University Scholars, recognized in 1952, with President Albert Jorgensen and Provost Albert Waugh.

The University of Connecticut began honoring its highest achieving students with the University Scholars program in 1951, and six years later, it started a tradition of recognizing all academic achievements.

The first Scholars Day was held May 11, 1957 as part of the University’s 75^th anniversary year celebrations. Nearly 600 students with high scholastic standing were honored in the afternoon program at the University Auditorium (it would be a few more years before it would become known as Jorgensen Auditorium).

The honorees included ten University Scholars and 579 students who had received general University honors, were members of honors societies, or who had distinguished themselves in a special field of study.  The guest speaker that day was Edward D. Eddy, Jr., provost and vice president of the University of New Hampshire, who later was president of the University of Rhode Island. His topic: “On Being Gloriously Content.” He concluded that college students were not challenged enough, and that they should seize opportunities for learning outside of the classroom to complete their education.

Today marks the 40th anniversary of the massacre at Kent State University, where Ohio National Guardsmen sprayed tear gas and then opened fire on students protesting the escalation of the Vietnam war into Cambodia.  Four students were killed, and eleven others wounded.    John Filo, a Kent photojournalism student, took an iconic photograph of a 14-year-old runaway, Mary Ann Vecchio, kneeling beside the body of 20 year old Jeffrey Miller.  The photo appeared in the New York Times, as well as various other media outlets, and earned a Pulitzer Prize for Filo in 1971. 

Georgia Straight, an anti-establishment alternative newspaper from Vancouver, Canada, published a front page story on the Kent State Massacre. Newspaper from the Alternative Press Collection, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

Following the massacre at Kent State, the faculty wrote a resolution condemning the use of violence on their campus.  Kent State University closed for the remainder of the semester.

Resolution passed by faculty at Kent State University, May 5, 1970. From the Alternative Press Collection, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

Hundreds of thousands of university students across the country protested the use of violence by the National Guard, as well as the escalating violence in Vietnam.  A  campus wide strike was held at the University of Connecticut on May 7, 1970.

Flyer for the University of Connecticut Student Strike, May 7, 1970. From the Alternative Press Collection, Thomas J. Dodd Research Center.

Louise Gaffney Flannigan, born in 1867 and died in 1949, lived her whole life in New Haven, Connecticut.  As the sister and wife of men who worked for the New Haven Railroad, she wrote flowery poems as odes to the courage and fortitude of railroad trainmen, and for good reason.  Working for the railroad in the late 1800s was dangerous — this mode of transportation was still very new and laws regulating the railroads to ensure the safety of the workers were few.  Many of the poems Louise wrote were memorials to the men who died on the job.  Sadly, even her husband, Frank Flannigan, died in 1915 when he was hit by a train.

The Louise Gaffney Flannigan Papers, part of the Railroad History Archive here at the Dodd Research Center, is a very unique collection, quite unlike the typical railroad collection of timetables, track maps and photographs of locomotives and stations.  Louise’s papers consist of her poems and writings, almost all about her admiration of her beloved trainmen and her despair when one falls while on duty.  The poems tell us a lot about Louise herself, about her resilience and her humor.  Despite her constant fear that another man will die while working for the railroad, she had a real respect for the trains, their power and their beauty. 

Shown here is the first stanza of “A Brakeman’s Death,” undated but it must have been written before 1889.  Louise  writes “Whenever I pass near the railroad track, and see the trains pass by so fast, I love to wave to the jolly brakeman, seated on the cartops, as one by one they pass, Their eyes are ever on the alert, To see each bridge and dodge down low, They run quickly also to their brakes, Over cars covered with ice and snow.”

Hard work, indeed.

For more information about the Louise Gaffney Flannigan Papers, see the finding at http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/findaids/flannigan/MSS20070066.html

An Act establishing Storrs Agricultural School, 1881

Following the offer of land and funds from the Storrs brothers, the General Assembly officially established the state agricultural school in Storrs, Connecticut on April 6, 1881.  The following fall, the buildings were prepared and 12 boys enrolled for classes.  The inaugural class included: Frederick B. Brown (Gilead), Frank D. Case (Barkhamste), Charles H. Elkins (Brooklyn, NY), Charles S. Foster (Bristol), John M. Gelston (East Haddam), Samuel B. Harvey (Mansfield), Henry R. Hoisington (Coventry), Burke Hough (Weatogue), Arthur S. Hubbard (Glastonbury), Andrew K. Thompson (West Cornwall) and F. M. Winton (Bristol).  The formal public opening of the school was October 7, 1881. 

An Act Establishing Storrs Agricultural School (p.2), 1881

In 1999, Curator Terri Goldich joined Mrs. Billie M. Levy’s program “Children’s Books: Their Creators and Collectors”.  The show, which began in 1993 on West Hartford Community Television, hosted hundreds of well know authors, illustrators and collectors over the years.  Billie Levy, a retired librarian, children’s book collector and host of the popular show, is well-known to the Dodd Research Center.  Her donation of over 10,000 children’s books is the backbone of the Northeast Children’s Literature Collection (NCLC).  And on a personal note, her southern hospitality brightens up any room she joins. 

In this video from the archives, courtesy of the University Libraries’ new video streaming service, you can hear from our own NCLC Curator, Terri Goldich, just shortly after the new facilities of the Dodd Research Center were dedicated in a plea to authors and illustrators to “Save That Draft”.   mms://video.lib.uconn.edu/Levy49

Two men from UConn’s early history share March 2 as their birthday.  So we offer up best wishes to the memory of Theodore Sedgwick Gold, an unsung founder of the Storrs Agricultural School, and George W. Flint, second president of the school when it became Connecticut Agricultural College.

Theodore S. Gold

Gold, one of the first trustees of the school when it was established in 1881, was born on March 2, 1818 in Cornwall, Connecticut.  In 1845, he joined his father, Dr. Samuel Gold, in founding an agricultural school for boys, the Cream Hill School, in West Cornwall. Even before the school closed in 1869, Theodore was a champion for establishing a state agricultural school for boys, and, in his 50^th anniversary history of Connecticut Agricultural College in 1931, Walter Stemmons wrote that “Gold was in a position, at least after 1866, to impress his educational ideas upon the Storrs brothers. The striking similarity in form and substance between the Cream Hill School and the Storrs Agricultural School is evidence which cannot be ignored.” As a member of the state school’s initial Board of Trustees, Gold headed a subcommittee charged with the new school’s organization. For many years he was secretary of the board, and in 1900, he wrote the first history of the college. A copy of that history is part of the Gold family papers in the University’s archives.

George W. Flint

George Flint’s tenure with the college was much briefer than Gold’s, and a good deal more controversial. During his first year as president, Flint saw what had been Storrs Agricultural College since 1893, become Connecticut Agricultural College in 1899. But by then, he was at the center of a dispute that became known as the “War of the Rebellion.” Flint’s interest in classical education over agricultural, and his efforts to incorporate them into the curriculum of CAC brought him into direct conflict with members of the faculty. 

 The “war” was played out, in part, through letters-to-the-editor columns of newspapers in Connecticut New York, and Boston. Long-time faculty resigned, and, at the request of trustees, Flint resigned in 1901.

Rufus Whitaker Stimson, hired in 1897 as professor of English and Literature, was appointed acting president of Connecticut Agricultural College on 5 October 1901.  Stimson, a graduate of Harvard University and the Yale Divinity School, was appointed president just over a year later.  Stimson utilized his noted eloquence to publicize the activities and programs of the young agricultural school as well as advocating an expansion of the courses offered and increasing enrollment.  Details of the accomplishments of Stimson’s tenure are available in Walter Stemmons’ Connecticut Agricultural College–A History, available in the University Archives.  “On February 20, 1908, Rufus Whitaker Stimson presented to the Board of Trustees his resignation as president, the resignation to take effect at the close of the college year.  President Stimson had been connected with the college for eleven years, four as professor and seven as acting president and president.” (Stemmons, p. 130-131)

Flyer from Gay Pride Week, San Francisco, California, 1975

The Foster Gunnison Jr. Papers at the Thomas J. Dodd Research Center is one of the most significant collections of homophile and early gay liberation materials in the United States.  From 1963 to 1975, Foster Gunnison Jr. collected the records of the Eastern Conference of Homophile Organizations (ECHO), an early coalition of organizations seeking the creation of a national homophile organization. Gunnison also collected the records of gay and lesbian organizations throughout the United States. He founded his own organization, the Institute for Social Ethics (ISE), “a libertarian-oriented research facility and think tank for controversial social issues,” in the early 1960s.  In 1967 Gunnison authored the pamphlet, An Introduction to the Homophile Movement, which outlined the history, aims and objectives of the movement and profiles of organizations active in the movement.

The collection contains correspondence, fliers, and information from many of the most important gay and lesbian organizations of the time, including the Christopher Street Liberation Day Committee, the Gay Activists Alliance, the Kalos Society, the Mattachine Society, ONE, and the Student Homophile League. 

The finding aid for the collection is available at: http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/findaids/gunnison/MSS19960009.html

The Cheney Brothers Silk Manufacturing Company Records is not a new collection — we’ve had it in the archive since 1984 — but it is a solid collection of extraordinary historical materials that draws a steady line of researchers from genealogists and textile historians to UConn’s undergraduate and graduate students and secondary school students.  The collections provides strong materials documenting this Manchester, Connecticut, company’s rise, in 1838 as the Mount Nebo Silk Company founded by six Cheney brothers, to its status as a leading producer of silk in the 1880s, to its peak in the 1920s when it produced silk for fashionable French garments, and then follows its decline after World War II (when it produced parachute material for the war effort) to its sale in the 1950s to J.P. Stevens & Company.  The Cheney family was renowned for their paternalistic attitude to their workers and for providing housing, schools, and recreation facilities for its workers.  An extraordinary component in the collection is a large set of employee cards from 1900 to 1940 where details of each worker — his or her country of origin, languages spoken and read, levels of education — are available, making that an amazing resource for ethnic history research.

This image from a 1929 brochure shows how the company marketed its fashionable fabrics.  Tres chic!