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!