Cypher

The College of William and Mary has used a cypher mark of an intertwined W and M since its earliest days. The earliest placement on an object is on the William & Mary's boundary stones. In 1714, the College ordered two dozen "leather buckets with the Colledge Cypher thereon."

Material in the Special Collections Research Center

• Selected images of items available from the Special Collections Research Center's Flickr page, including one of the boundary stones.

References

• Some Notes on the Four Forms of the Oldest Building of William and Mary College, Earl Gregg Swem, William and Mary Quaterly, Second Series, Vol. 8, No. 4 (Oct., 1928), pp. 217-307

Need help?

To search for further material, visit the Special Collections Research Center's Search Tool List for an overview of the Special Collections Database, W&M Digital Archive, Flat Hat-William & Mary News-Alumni Gazette index, card catalogs, and other tools available to help you find material of interest in William & Mary Libraries Special Collections Research Center.

Questions? Contact the Special Collections Research Center at spcoll@wm.edu or 757-221-3090, or visit the Special Collections Research Center in the Earl Gregg Swem Library at William & Mary.

A Note About The Contents Of This Wiki

The information available in this wiki is the best available from known documents and sources at the time it was written. Unfortunately, many of the early original records of William & Mary were destroyed by fires, military occupation, and the normal effects of time. Information in this wiki is not complete as new information continues to be uncovered in Swem Library's Special Collections Research Center and elsewhere. Researchers are strongly encouraged to use the Special Collections search tools for their research as the information contained in this wiki is by no means comprehensive.