Latest Post
Reading Tea Leaves at Special Collections
Posted June 26, 2024
Written by Dan Du, PhD, Assistant Professor, University of North Carolina - Charlotte (Special Collections Research Center travel grant recipient, 2023-2024)
Special Collections
Medicine and Slavery at William & Mary
Posted
The records of the Office of the Bursar contain an array of financial information dating back to the 18th century. One of the more interesting aspects of these records that has recently come to light pertains to William & Mary's involvement in the slave trade. Many of the documents contain references to enslaved people who were held by the university as well as payments to slaveholders for the hire of their slaves.
Virginia Gazette, 1893-1921
Posted
Williamsburg, Virginia's current local newspaper, The Virginia Gazette has had various owners and publishers since its initial issue in 1736, plus there were many years when it was not published at all. The longest publication gap was between 1780 and 1893.
Newly Digitized Material: The St. George Tucker Almanacs
Posted
Just as Great Britain is on the eve of having its first woman prime minister to serve since Margaret, Lady Thatcher stepped down in 1990, Swem Library's Special Collections received a few letters written by Nancy, Lady Astor, along with a printed image that she captioned.
A Recent Discovery: Eliza Abrams's Music
Posted
Sometimes researchers discover wonderful new things about treasures in our collections. On a recent visit to William & Mary, Dr. Candace Bailey from North Carolina Central University spent time researching in the extensive collection of bound music volumes in Swem's Special Collections.
The Library of St. George Tucker
Posted
Swem Library's Special Collections holds the library of St. George Tucker. The library has been described by Jill M. Coghlan ("The Library of St. George Tucker" (M. A. Thesis William & Mary. Department of History. 1973.) In her work, she revealed that the library holds a bit more than one-half of the books listed in Tucker's estate.
Bursar's Records: Skins and Furs
Posted
The Bursar's Records contain accounting and financial information for William & Mary dating back to the mid 1700s. Unfortunately, some of these records have been lost due to fires and other events. However, the surviving records contain a wide variety of information that illuminate different aspects of life in early Virginia.
Enslaved People as Collateral
Posted
The records of the Office of the Bursar contain a wide array of financial information dating back to the 18th century. Recently, these records have provided additional information about William & Mary's involvement in slavery and the slave trade. Many of the documents contain references to enslaved people who were held by the College, as well as payments to slaveholders for hiring enslaved people.
Recollections of Two Beloved Wives
Posted
Bishop William Meade graduated at the top of his class at Princeton. He studied for the Episcopal ministry at a time when the fortunes of the Church in Virginia were at a nadir after the disestablishment caused by the Revolutionary War. He was ordained by Bishop James Madison who was also serving as President of William & Mary. Along with Bishop Richard Channing Moore, he led a revival of the Church along evangelical lines.
Dirty Jobs: Processing
Posted
Processing a collection can be a straightforward task: papers (or a collection) arrive here at the SCRC and we can easily discern the logic behind original the order of the collection. If no order is present, then we devise one as we process the collection. But sometimes you receive a collection like this…
Accounting for Enslaved People
Posted
The records of the Office of the Bursar are some of the earliest and most comprehensive records of William & Mary, some from the 18th century survive to the present day! The accounts document the financial interactions of William & Mary and its personnel in the 18th-19th centuries.
All Wrapped Up: The Montebourg Manuscript
Posted
When a 1633 French legal document was donated to Special Collections, a creased, torn, dirty piece of paper was wrapped around it. This wrapper may seem like something that should be thrown away, but it has its own stories to tell.
"Exceptional in Any Age": The Library of Lady Jean Skipwith
Posted
The Library of Congress's reconstruction of Thomas Jefferson's library now receives many visitors who wander through the remarkable library of a remarkable man, institutionalized at the very heart of the US government. The importance and preservation of the libraries of "great men" has been a part of our history for a long time; and most national, university, college, and other institutional libraries are based around those of white men.
A Rebel's Book of Napoleon
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The origins of Napoleon and His Times were a mystery when it arrived in Special Collections in October, 2015. Clues on the front free end paper and title page helped to unravel the mystery, though, and revealed the serendipity of this book finding its way back to the Historic Triangle.
Doing Archaeology in the Archive
Posted
For the past several weeks, Prof. Michelle Lelievre's Anthropology 201 class—Lost Worlds and Archaeology—has been visiting the Special Collections Research Center to learn about the kind of work anthropologists and archaeologists do when not in the field. Students in this course have been using maps, blueprints, photographs, letters, documents, and old issues of the Flat Hat newspaper to uncover information on a little-known structure on campus—an old amphitheater located near the present-day Matoaka Amphitheater.
From the Cradle of Printing into the Classroom
Posted
One of the titles we will be showing in two upcoming instruction sessions this week, the 1483 Leaves from the Ninth German Bible (Biblia Nona Germanica), is the only one of our nine titles printed before 1500 that is in a language other than Latin.
Chinese New Year
Posted
On the first day of the Chinese New Year, these pages from a book purchased for Swem Library with support from the Vinyard Endowment Fund serve as an excellent reminder of the connection between printing and calligraphy. The character visible behind the printed page was actually brushed in by hand, so the book in question is unique despite being part of a print run. Just as in the early days of European printing, when books were finished by hand with colorful initials and flourishes, so this book reminds us that even in our modern world, the production of printed books is not totally divorced from the handmade or the individual.
The Royal Charter on Display
Posted
The Royal Charter will be on display in the Special Collections Research Center on the first floor of the Earl Gregg Swem Library on both Charter Day (10-6pm) and Saturday, Feb. 6th (10-2pm).
Children's Letters
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Parents keep their children's letters and drawings, now often putting them on the refrigerator. Unless the children were sent away for education, in the eighteenth and nineteenth-century, most stayed close to home and probably only wrote if a parent were away. There are some letters in our collection written by older students away at boarding school or college, but letters by very young children are few.
Nineteenth-century Valentines
Posted
Before superhero and princess Valentine's Day cards, we had Lord Byron.