Tag Archives: primary sources

Research files: From GAW to Tommy

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Any time a student or any member of the community attends an IWU sporting event a constant image and cheerful presence is the IWU mascot of Tommy Titan. Tommy Titan is undoubtedly one of the important symbols of Illinois Wesleyan University, but when did Tommy become the official IWU mascot?

The IWU Titan name was first mentioned in October 27,1927 issue of the Argus. The IWU football team previously had no specific name and they were the first to acquire the nickname Titans. Soon all IWU sports teams chose to use the name of the Titans, but the first name of Tommy did not appear until much later and we can thank a man named Lee Short!

Tommy being pulled onto the field in a chariot.

Click on the image to go to the Argus issue containing Tommy’s debut!

Class of 1944 alumnus Lee Short earned the credit of creating the gladiator-like image of our beloved mascot and giving him the first name of Tommy in 1951.

Throughout the 1960s and 1970s, Tommy’s appearance evolved even more, but you can read the story about Tommy’s origins in the November 2, 2007 Argus. The first image we have of Tommy is at this football game against ISU on September 25, 1965. The student portraying him is Steve Reeser, Class of 1969.

Long before Tommy Titan, the IWU colors of green and white were documented as our school colors in an 1898 report by the Daily Pantagraph. It is interesting to think that before adopting the name of the Titans the sports teams of the past (pre-1927) simply referred to themselves as the GAW (for Green and White) and continued to do so for some time until the Titan name decidedly became the commonplace term.

Be sure to look at the Argus issues linked in this post and all the other resources for IWU history! And check out our campus traditions page for pep songs and more. Lee Short has a long and interesting association with IWU, and he contributed an oral history recording in 2010 that is also available online.

Departmental History: Political Science

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The short answer is during the 1950-1951 school year and Assistant Professor Robert O. Gibbon.
The question is  “When did the department begin and who was the first chair?”

This blog will be used to record our research on departmental histories as they are received. A backlog currently exists in this type of research and I will catch it up in a post as soon as possible. For now, here are some added details in the development of PoliSci at IWU:
The 1921 school year shows the earliest mention of a political science branch within a division of the Department of Economics and Sociology. It was headed by Professor Carl W. Strow.

The 1922-23 school year lists political science as part of the Department of History and Political Science, marking the first time it was in the title of a department. This department was headed by Professor William Wallis and this structure/alignment and chair remained the same until 1950. At that point Wallis remained History’s Chair and Gibbon (who had been on the faculty in the combined department since 1947) became chair of the new, separate department.

Other chairs:
1955-1958 Robert O. Byrd
1958-1963 A. Glenn Mower, Jr.
1963-1967 Bunyan H. Andrew (dept shows combined with History again during this time)
1967-1972 Donald P. Brown (who had been teaching in Hist/PoliSci during the recombined period)
1972 John Wenum begins

New collection of old letters

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Bird Correspondence CollectionDuring the summer of 2013 an Archives Student Assistant processed a donation of letters. Over 900 handwritten letters between IWU alumna Florence Ralph (’30) and Marion T. Bird are contained in this collection. The letters cover a wide range of topics from faith to politics, school activities, local events, family and more — all the details young people might share during a long courtship in a tumultuous time in American history.

The donation of the handwritten documents came from the descendents of Florence and Marion and also included scanned pdfs of all the letters that family member P. L. Embley created. Researchers are welcome to use the letters in the archives or in the online collection we created with the scanned images. Mrs. Embley also selected and scanned photographs from the family albums held by the children and grandchildren of Florence and Marion Bird.

We appreciate the efforts the family has gone through to make these documents available to researchers everywhere. The letters in this collection have not been transcribed at this time. Readers are welcome to contribute transcriptions they create or additional subject headings they identify to archives@iwu.edu.

New Access to Old Sources

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IWU history texts are now available in the Internet Archive! Through our membership in the Consortium of Academic and Research Libraries in Illinois (CARLI) we were able to digitize the seven published histories on Illinois Wesleyan this semester. CARLI funded the scanning and they are now available online through an agreement with The Internet Archive, a non-profit that was founded to build an Internet library.

internetarchiveThe Internet Archive hosts this and any other content we choose to add in the future with a customized homepage available at http://archive.org/details/illinoiswesleyanuniversity, but of course all of the texts are fully searchable and discoverable through any search engine.

Tips and links for researching these and other historical IWU sources are available at http://libguides.iwu.edu/IWUHistory.

New acquisitions in the sciences

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A “herbarium,” a plant specimen book, was recently discovered in a lab in CNS. This book has significance for IWU’s history: it was compiled by Alfred O. Coffin, the second African-American to graduate from IWU. Coffin received an M.A. in 1888 and a PhD. in 1889 from IWU’s non-resident degree program. He was first African-American in the U.S. to earn a Ph.D in Biology.

Alfred O. Coffin, Ph.D., 1889

Alfred O. Coffin, Ph.D., 1889

A. O. Coffin signature

 

 

Plant speciman page

 

 

 

 

 

 

A text that belonged to former Biology faculty member (1958-1978) William M. Darlington was also donated this winter. It bears an inscription dated 1898 and contains notations on plant varieties.

These two volumes and other material related to the sciences are now on display in The Ames Library. The exhibits, titled “The Sciences in Special Collections” will remain in two exhibit cases on the entry level until the end of January. After that, as is the case with all archives and special collections holdings, they will be available for use in Tate Archives & Special Collections on the library’s 4th floor.

 

New research source available online

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The Bulletin of Illinois Wesleyan University was published to convey news and images of the campus to alumni, faculty, staff, students and prospective students. We’ve recently concluded a preservation and access project on all available issues. The paper in many of the early issues was brittle and crumbling, so we had them professionally digitized to make them searchable online; preservation microfilm copies were also made.

This collection spans the years 1902-1986 and represents the entire holdings of the University Archives. If you have issues not shown in the collection, please contact us at archives@iwu.edu to discuss a loan or donation so we may secure copies for our historical record.

 

Theatre and film history collection

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A recent donation to IWU’s Special Collections from Emeritus Theatre Professor Jared Brown contains primary sources, including recordings and transcripts of over 150 interviews, he used in the publication of four books:
The Fabulous Lunts: A Biography of Alfred Lunt and Lynn Fontanne (1986),
Zero Mostel: A Biography (1989),
Alan J. Pakula: His Films and His Life (2005), and
Moss Hart: A Prince of the Theatre (2006).
A complete collection description is available in the finding aid for the Jared Brown Collection of Biographical Sources.

Photographic material acquired

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Summer 2011 brought our biggest accession of the year and fulfills a need that was identified before my arrival on campus. Nearly all photographic negatives, contact sheets and slides dating from the 1960s to 1990s that were formerly stored in the basement of Holmes Hall have been transferred for processing to the archives. Once processing is complete, we estimate the collection will occupy 130 linear feet.

This collection was inadequately protected both because of the physical environment of the basement and at the item level: negatives were in legal-sized envelopes and contact sheets were in shoe boxes. We are spreading the costs over a couple of budget cycles but our goal is to re-house the entire collection and make the index publicly available.

Also included in this photo transfer were some of the newer slides stored within the campus photographer’s office in good-quality sleeves, so material from the mid-1990s only needed a stable physical space.

It should be noted that other photographic material remains in various places in Holmes Hall, but this large transfer is a great start to ensuring that the collection is protected for the future. Additionally, research requests can be handled by archives staff, instead of taking up our photographer’s already well-used time!

Oral histories

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Transcripts, recordings and photographs of oral history participants are now publicly available. All interviews from 2009-present were recorded digitally. Earlier recordings were digitized from other media types held in the University’s Archives and contain both interviews and recorded events that provide insights into IWU’s life and culture.

The project goals are below. Alumni past their 50th anniversary and faculty, staff and administrators with more than 30 years of service at IWU have priority for participation. We need interviewers to make this project sustainable! If you are interested in conducting interviews, contact archives@iwu.edu.

The purpose of this oral history project is to record memories of people’s experiences at IWU. In addition to basic biographical information interviewers will be prepared to ask questions based on the subjects’ affiliation (alumni, staff, faculty, administrator) with the University. Subjects should feel free to share reflections on any part of their IWU experiences that they would like.

Personal anecdotes of administrators, staff and faculty are welcome in addition to comments directly related to their role on campus and their opinion about the changes that took place during their tenure.

All interview subjects will be asked to sign an interview agreement form permitting the University to use all or part of their recordings and/or transcriptions for exhibitions online or in physical formats. After the transcription is complete, the subject may review and correct it as needed. Permission for us to use this interview may be revoked until this final review time.

The archives will gladly accept historical photographs of the interviewees or of the campus from the time they were involved with it. We will make scans and return originals only on request. Permission to exhibit loaned material digitally over the Web or printed and displayed in-house must be given at the time of the loan. Outright donations are quite welcome and will be accepted after the standard archives’ donor agreement is signed.

Contact archives@iwu.edu to schedule an interview or for details on donations.

Source for IWU Historical research

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As part of a presentation titled “Gems from IWU History” given during the 2010 Homecoming Back to College program last Friday, a research guide devoted to sources people could consult on their own from off campus was created. Links for descriptions we’ve prepared on IWU’s physical collections are also provided. At the bottom right of the guide is a copy of the powerpoint and notes for the presentation; links into our digital collections are in both of these documents and were used to illustrate collection content as well as the many ways archives staff search for answers when working on research questions.

If you have a question about IWU history, explore the research guide but feel free to contact the University Archivist, too! (309-556-1538 and archives{@}iwu.edu)