Sometime in December 1971, Homer Babbidge, President of the University of Connecticut, spoke to the Monday Evening Club on the subject of stone walls, Robert Frost and the meaning of “Good fences make good neighbors.”  One of the more charismatic individuals associated with the University, Dr. Babbidge used the imagery of practical New England tidiness and poetry to illuminate broad interpretations of international borders, hint at the intellectual foundations  of education and extoll the virtues of physical labor–in nine and a half short pages!

This talk, and many other speeches, presentations, reports and studies, is available in the Babbidge papers in the University Archives housed in the Dodd Research Center.

"How to build a stone wall," Homer D. Babbidge, Jr., December 1971

 A PDF version of the complete talk is available here and a partial description of the materials to be found in the Babbidge papers can be accessed via the finding aid for the collection (http://doddcenter.uconn.edu/findaids/President/MSS19690004.html). 

A more recent, artistic interpretation of the classic New England stone wall can be found in professor Olu Oguibe’s recent installation at Real Art Ways in Hartford (scheduled through March 2011).

Connections between past and present are frequently discovered in the archives.  Please consider this an open invitation to come in and find out more about the history of UConn in the University Archives in the New Year!

     Betsy Pittman, University Archivist

Tuesday, November 11, 1941.  Armistice Day.  I met my classes as usual.  At 8 o’clock I met my elementary economics classes, discussing economic problems of natural resources.  At 9 o’clock I met the consumption class giving back their recent hour examinations, and finishing the work on housing. I also made a bare start on a discussion of savings.

 Bill Mattson reached Willimantic at 11.11 by train from  Boston, and Edith met him there.  Ernest Russell drove down from Hadley and arrived at my office just before noon, as I got back from my 11 o’clock class.  We drove home, and met Mattson.  The two men stayed for dinner, supper, and over night.  As usual, Edith put on a wonderful display of culinary art and of old-fashioned hospitality.

 Thus begins the journal entry for this day in 1941 by UConn faculty member and later Provost, Albert Waugh.  A tireless and meticulous diarist, Waugh recorded his daily activities both mundane and extraordinary throughout his life, allowing researchers to see first hand what was happening in Storrs, Connecticut, from the time of his hire in 1941 through his retirement in 1973.  

The Waugh daily journals have been available for research as part of the Waugh papers since their donation in 1985.  An invaluable resource for several University histories, the journals were originally considered for digitization in the late 1990s when the University Libraries received its first IMLS grant for what is now known as Connecticut History Online (http://www.cthistoryonline.org/cdm-cho/index.html).  The sheer volume of the journals made this impossible and the CHO project went on to digitize predominantly images (approximately 14,000 at last count) over the course of the next several years.  Technological advances in more recent years, however, has made the option of electronic access to the materials viable.  In the last year, Archives & Special Collections, with the permission of the Waugh family, has digitized the entire 30 plus span of journals.  In the next several months, researchers will be able to access PDF (portable document format) copies of the journal entries directly from the finding aid, completing one of A&SC’s largest digitization efforts.   

There was also a happy side effect to this lengthy project, in addition to meeting the Waugh family and hearing their stories first hand.  Collaboration with the Waugh family on this project resulted in the discovery of additional journals!  Subsequent donation of these new discoveries has expanded the dates of Waugh journals from 1941-1973 to cover the period from the 1920s through the early 1980s. 

As soon as we go live, it will be announced here so stay tuned!

     Betsy Pittman, University Archivist

It’s the top of the eighth inning. The Yankees lead the Giants 3-0 in the second game of the 1922 World Series, and students at Connecticut Agricultural College listen to the game on radio on the lawn in front of the Mechanic Arts Building.

It was the first time that the entire World Series was on radio, and this second game would end in a 3-3 tie after a controversial call “on account of darkness” in the tenth inning.

Radio was relatively new for the campus – WABL, the first student radio station at CAC, began broadcasting that fall from studios in the Mechanic Arts Building. The station’s equipment was probably the source of the hook up to a speaker that was placed outside the front door of the building.

Students kept track of the game with a box score on a blackboard placed in front of the building

The winner of the “subway” series was the Yankees. They beat the Giants in five games.

Students of Connecticut Agricultural College listen to Game 2 of the 1922 World Series on October 5, 1922. Freshmen can be identified by their beanies, and just to the left of the photo center is a lone co-ed joining the boys for the afternoon of baseball. The Mechanic Arts Building on North Eagleville Road is now the Islamic Center on the main campus in Storrs.

Alfred Gulley, seen in a photo from the 1917-1918 Nutmeg Yearbook, was a professor of horticulture at Connecticut Agricultural College for 23 years.

Just one month after turning 69, Alfred G. Gulley died on August 16, 1917.  He had been a professor of horticulture at Connecticut Agricultural College for 23 years.

Born July 15, 1848 in Dearborn, Michigan, by the time of his passing Gulley was in charge of the campus grounds, including supervisions of ornamental plantings and devising the layout of walkways and roads throughout the campus

Writing of Gulley in his annual report to the State Legislature, CAC President Charles L. Beach said he “was loved and respected by the faculty and students alike and … his life and character were an inspiration and example to the students with whom he came in contact and his judgment and council had much influence in shaping the development of the institution during its formative period.”

Soon after Gulley’s death, the Horticultural Building in which he taught was named in his honor.

The 1917-1918 Nutmeg Yearbook is dedication to Gulley:

  “As a token of our regard for him as a friend and in testimony of our admiration for him as a man and a scientist, this volume is respectfully dedicated by The Editors.”

Horticulture Hall and the ornamental gardens near it are seen in a photograph from 1917, the year Alfred Gulley died. The building was named for Gulley after his death.

Charles C. McCracken, president of Connecticut Agricultural College when it became Connecticut State College, was instrumental in launching the career of operatic soprano Ruby Elzy in the 1920s.

Charles C. McCracken, president of the University from 1930 to 1935, was born on June 27, 1882. In what during his tenure that the-then Connecticut Agricultural College became Connecticut State College; the Husky became the college mascot; and college received its first national accreditation. After years of disputes with trustees and faculty over his management of the college, McCracken resigned in 1935 after the Trustees had enacted what became known as “The Gag Rule”,  the aim of which was to stop campus discussion of whether military training should be mandatory for college men.

A little known episode in McCracken’s life is that he “discovered” Ruby Elzy, an African American college student who became a nationally known operatic soprano and who created the role of “Serena” in George Gershwin’s folk opera Porgy and Bess.

On a fact-finding trip with a committee studying Negro schools and colleges in the South, Charles McCracken, of The Ohio State University, visited Rust College in Mississippi. As the committee met, Elzy was rehearsing for a concert nearby, and her voice carried into the windows of the meeting room. Committee members left the room to hear her sing and McCracken was so taken by her talent that he decided to bring Elzy to Ohio State. She graduated from OSU in 1930, the year McCracken left to become president of CAC.

Connecticut Agricultural College's Class of 1907 was the first graduating class to wear caps and gowns. The graduates, standing on the steps to Grove Cottage, the women's dormitory from 1896 to 1919, include Lena Hurlburt, fifth from right. Hurlburt was captain of the women's basketball team and first woman on the staff of The Lookout, the student newspaper.

As candidates for graduation came forward to receive their diplomas on June 14, 1907, they looked different from their predecessors at Connecticut Agricultural College.

They were wearing caps and gowns.

The Class of 1907 was the first class to wear academic gowns and mortar board caps to their commencement exercises at CAC. Previously the graduates had worn either suits and ties or hand-sewn dresses.  In the more traditional academic garb, the graduates in 1907 listened as Rev. Rockwell Harmon Potter, pastor of Center Church in Hartford and later dean of the Hartford Seminary, deliver an address on “The School of Life”.

Also on June 14 in UConn history:

1895 – Andrew L. Hyde elected as first alumni trustee;

1899 – Storrs Agricultural College became Connecticut Agricultural College;

1914 – Gold Hall, first residence hall for men, burned down. It had been built in 1890;

1963 – The Mace, symbol of University authority, was first used at Commencement.

UConn's first president, Benjamin F. Koons, was a veteran of the Civil War, and had strong opinions on how Memorial Day was to be observed.

Memorial Day was first observed in 1866 in Waterloo, New York to honor the memory of Union soldiers killed during the Civil War (1861-1865). It was then known as “Decoration Day”, as the graves of the fallen were decorated in remembrance, and it consolidated what had been locally observed remembrances in many locations.

Over the years, the day has come to be a time to remember all who have fallen in service to the nation. In addition to visits to cemeteries and grave sites, it alos has become a day of picnics, parades, and events like the Indianapolis 500.

For some in the 19^th century, including Benjamin Franklin Koons, first president of UConn when it was the Storrs Agricultural College, the thought of spending the day grilling hamburgers and hot dogs would have been distressing.

Koons was a veteran of the Civil War, and was a member of the Francis S. Long Post No. 30 of the Grand Army of the Republic in Willimantic, Connecticut. He had enlisted as a private in his native Ohio in 1862, and survived 17 engagements, at was at Appomattox when the war ended.

The Hartford Courant noted in Koon’s obituary in December 1903 that “it has been his custom of late years to deplore the perverted use of Memorial Day, believing that May 30 was consecrated to the defenders of the Union and not athletic carnivals.”

In sweltering heat, the Class of 1963 received their degrees from the University of Connecticut in an outdoor ceremony held in Memorial Stadium.

The commencement speaker was Raymond Baldwin, who, 24 years earlier, while serving as Governor of Connecticut, signed the legislative act turned Connecticut State College into the University of Connecticut.

Before starting his address, Baldwin joked about the event that occurred on May 26, 1939. He recalled that he signed the bill with a quill pen, and told the commencement audience that he believed it was probably the last document in Connecticut that was signed with a quill pen.

“I’m not sure but I think the School [sic] of Agriculture produced that pen from some goose. Anyway, it worked pretty well. Actually, there is an aftermath to that. Today the question came up as to who had the pen, and President Babbidge and the Provost of the college looked at me with some suspicion and I want to assure you that I didn’t keep the pen. I gave it to Al Jorgensen and you’ll have to look him up for that.”

“Al Jorgensen”, of course, was former UConn President Albert N. Jorgensen. And there was no need to check with him.

The quill pen was, and is, part of the University Archives collection.

Quill pen used by Gov. Raymond Baldwin in 1939 to sign legislation that changed Connecticut State College into the University of Connecticut.