An Exhumation

Frederick Ransom was a member of the Class of 1820, though he did not reach graduation. We don't know much about him. He came from a local family in South Woodstock, Vermont, and died of tuberculosis in 1817, at the age of nineteen. The only reason we ran into his name is because of the steps his father took to prevent the disease from spreading to others in his family. 

Tuberculosis has a long history alongside humanity, and it remains the leading cause of death by infectious disease worldwide today. At the time that Frederick was sick, there was no effective treatment and the first successful immunization was still about a century away. It was a disease that destroyed whole families and communities, which may explain the drastic measures that were taken by Frederick's father after the young man succumbed to the disease. According to Frederick's younger brother Daniel:

"It was said that if the heart of one of the family who died of consumption was taken out and burned, others would be free from it. And Father, having some faith in the remedy, had the heart of Frederick taken out after he had been buried, and it was burned in Captain Pearson's blacksmith forge."

Frederick Ransom's story is considered part of a larger pattern now referred to as the New England Vampire Panic. In the 18th and 19th centuries, widespread outbreaks of tuberculosis in New England led to multiple instances of exhumation, burning, and sometimes even the consumption of ashes, all as folk medicine remedies for the disease. In some cases, there was an explicit fear that the dead were somehow feeding on the living, which was spreading the disease within families. We don't have enough details in Frederick's case to know if burning was prescribed as a preventative with or without the the undead concern. In any case, despite the precaution, Frederick's death was followed by the deaths of his mother, sister, and two brothers, also to tuberculosis.

We have Ransom's alumni file, but all it contains is a letter sent to the College in the 1930s with an excerpt from Daniel's unpublished diary which is quoted above. We don't know anything about him as a person or a student, and without his connection to this specific piece of folkloric history, we might not have anything but a name in our alumni catalog.

To see the little bit that we do have, ask for the alumni file for Frederick Ransom, Dartmouth Class of 1820. A copy of Daniel Ransom's unpublished diary is held by the Woodstock History Center. 

“Brave, Unselfish, Venerable Man”: The Private Champions of Nathan Lord’s Defense of Slavery

On July 24, 1863, Rev. Nathan Lord resigned the presidency of Dartmouth College, an office he had held for thirty-five years. He gave it up rather than retract his defense of slavery: a defense he had grounded in Scripture rather than morality, and one that had made him a liability to the College in the eyes of the Dartmouth Board of Trustees and a favorite target of the abolitionist press. In the Northern public, Lord had become a pariah for his regular defences of slavery throughout the 1850s and an outright villain by the middle of the Civil War through his belief that Northern abolitionists had caused the conflict with their heresy and hypocrisy. However, in the period after his resignation, Lord was commended by some privately as a martyr. Over the following months, letters and money arrived from friends, former Dartmouth colleagues, and admirers who saw his resignation as a display of noble principle.

Lord had not always been slavery’s champion; in an 1839 letter he called it a “moral and political evil” and stated that it was the “obligation of all men to attempt the immediate and entire removal of it.”¹ By the 1850s, though, he had become perhaps the most prominent clerical apologist for slavery in New England. The trustee Amos Tuck, a Dartmouth graduate and a founder of the Republican Party in New Hampshire, brought before the Board’s 1863 annual meeting the resolutions of the Merrimack County Conference of Churches, which regretted the “popular prejudice” that Lord’s views had drawn and urged the trustees to consider a change in the presidency; Tuck then chaired the committee whose report reaffirmed the college’s loyalty to the Union. When the Board adopted it, Lord produced a resignation he had drafted a week earlier, read it to the members, and walked out.

Lord had, in a sense, seen this outcome in advance. Four years earlier, in a letter on John Brown’s raid at Harper’s Ferry that was printed in the Richmond Whig, Lord had written that the Northern men who reasoned about slavery’s divine right as he did were “frequently maligned” and so “retire, for the most part, to their secret places, and wait to be justified.”² This characterization would later be reaffirmed as prophecy through his own experience with the Board and Northern press, but also by the quiet support which he received after his resignation.

The first to write was Joel Parker, the Harvard law professor and former New Hampshire Chief Justice, who had himself recently left the Dartmouth board. Days after the resignation, Parker congratulated Lord on being “well out of the concern” of an institution he expected only to “grow worse and worse.” The trustees, he wrote, were “a miserable board” now handed to “radical politicians, and radical ministers,” and Tuck in particular was “an ambitious party politician” and “a very coarse man besides.”

Two days later, writing from Hamilton, Canada West, an admirer by the name of Benjamin Douglass expressed “profound indignation” at the action that had forced the resignation and wrote to “honor your determination to stand fast by God’s truth.” Noting that friends in New Hampshire were already arranging “to free you from pecuniary cares,” Douglass offered more than sympathy: “I beg you would do me the honor to accept the small amount enclosed as a slight token of my esteem and affection.”

That support soon became organized, and it drew in the most eminent of Lord’s defenders. In November 1863, former U.S. president Franklin Pierce wrote to Samuel Morse, the inventor of Morse code, asking him to contribute to a life annuity fund for Lord and his wife. Lord’s situation, Pierce urged, “constitute[d] the strongest possible appeal”: here was “the only eminent and aged clergyman” who had “firmly withstood the onslaught of that fanaticism which had brought ruin upon our country,” a man who had staked his office and livelihood “for the maintenance of truth and the Constitution.” That stand had made him “a shining mark for abolition insolence and detraction” and, to Pierce, a “Brave, unselfish, venerable Man.” The following January, a Boston committee presented Lord and his wife with an annuity of twelve hundred dollars, raised, its organizers wrote, “with remarkable cheerfulness and hearty good will.”

These letters complicate the tidy story of the college’s removal of a pro-slavery president. Lord’s arguments were indefensible, and the trustees who eased him out stood on the right side of the war. But the correspondence shows that Lord did not experience his resignation as a reckoning. Supported by men who called his stubbornness courage and his defeat a sacrifice, Lord was proud to resign his office rather than his beliefs, writing to his nephew that he was “as free and happy as a bird, except for regret at seeing Dartmouth prostituted to a vile idolatry.” While the public record remembers a president forced out for defending slavery, the private record preserves the network of respectable men who made certain he paid as little as possible for it, and who were sure that history would prove him right.

You can view the letters from Parker (Mss 863454), Douglass (DP-6, Box 6625), Pierce (Mss 863456.1), Lord (Mss 863429), and the Boston committee (MS-510, Box 1, Folder 43); the 1863 Board of Trustees' meeting minutes (DA-1, Box 2117); Amos Tuck's report (Mss 863940); and Nathan Lord's pro-slavery manifesto, A True Picture of Abolition (MS-510, Box 1, Folder 27), by requesting them online and then visiting Rauner Library.

Posted for Bradley Edington '27, recipient of a Historical Accountability Student Research Fellowship for the 2026 winter term. The Historical Accountability Student Research Program provides funding for Dartmouth students to conduct research with primary sources on a topic related to issues of inclusivity and diversity in Dartmouth's past. For more information, visit the program's website.

¹ Nathan Lord, letter to the editor, Vermont Chronicle (Bellows Falls, VT), July 10, 1839, https://www.newspapers.com/image/489365266/.

² Nathan Lord to J. M. Conrad, December 1, 1859, printed in Richmond Whig (Richmond, VA), December 16, 1859, https://www.virginiachronicle.com/?a=d&d=RWH18591216.1.1

Enquiries as to Strange Ships

When traveling somewhere you do not speak the local language, what are the phrases you would prioritize learning? You can find countless phrasebooks today that aim not to teach you another language, but to get through a trip with a handful of essentials -- where's the restroom, how much does this cost, is this vegetarian, et cetera. Apparently, this is not a remotely new phenomenon. 

Today we're looking at Eskimaux and English Vocabulary for the Use of the Arctic Expeditions, published in 1850 under orders from the British Admiralty. The preface specifies that the book is intended to aid efforts to relieve the Franklin Expedition, which had departed five years before. After a discussion of the "Eskimaux" language, we move into a description of its grammar and then an extensive (but pocket-sized) vocabulary. The real treat is the selection of useful phrases, divided into categories like "Enquiries as to Strange Ships," "Notice of Reward for News of Missing Ships," and "Dialogue with a Sick Man." Here are a few of our favorite phrases:

• Have you seen any large ships lately?
• Have you seen any white men on this coast?
• We are in search of two English ships Which have been five years in the ice.
• The Queen of England will give a large reward To any of the Innuít who will bring news of them. 

Of course, there's something very immediate about the words deemed necessary for talking to a sick man, such as "Do not be afraid" and "I must bleed you." It's a fascinating peek into what British explorers expected to need as they traveled into the Arctic, as well as their attitudes to the people there. There's even a discussion in the preface of the term used for the Inuit over their own autonym. To read it, ask for Stefansson PM63 .W33. 

"But he is now free"

We just had one of those "discovery" moments. We put that in quotes because the only reason we could make the discovery was because an archivist long ago did a great job of cataloging a letter. She or he probably "discovered" it, we used their work to rediscover it. Anyway, none of us knew about it. It's quite a story. In the Fall of 1839, a person fleeing bondage from a plantation in Alabama found his way to Hanover on the way to Canada. He caused a sensation on campus, and the local abolitionist group persuaded him to come to the chapel to talk about his experiences.

Luckily for us, Lemuel Chandler Spofford, Class of 1839, wrote about it in a letter to his brother from October 10th, 1839. His sympathies are clearly with the abolitionist movement, and the rhetoric he uses to describe the runaway slave is indicative of the Northern sensibility--filled with pity for the enslaved person and an abhorrence to the cruelties of the institution of slavery. He writes:

There was a pitiful object passed through this place a fortnightly since. A poor runaway Slave who had thrown off his shackels of Slavery and was makeing his way through a land of freedom to a land of freedom. At the request of the good Abolitionists he went into the Chapel and told his pitiful tale in the presence of 400 or abouts that. He carried the marks of Slavery which were arguments that could not be decried one was a very crooked leg which had been broken by his mistress while she was in a rage at him. His master he said was good he never whipped but once he said with 110 lashes because he forgot to tie the horses. "A good Master" I should think. He was carried from here to Canada by the friends of the poor Slave but come near being taken he went into a tavern where he saw two men whom he saw in Alabama but he is now free.

He has no name in this letter. His identity is that of a runaway slave.

To see the letter, ask for MS 839568.

The Other Declaration of Independence

In 1876, Americans celebrated the centennial of the Declaration of Independence in grand fashion. For six months, millions of visitors flocked to Philadelphia to visit the Centennial Exhibition, a showcase for the nation’s growing industrial strength. And on July 4, thousands gathered in front of Philadelphia’s Independence Hall, where the Declaration had been signed, to hear the document read aloud by U.S. Senator Richard Henry Lee, and to listen to orations by various dignitaries commemorating the momentous event.

Suffrage leaders, understanding the symbolism of the occasion and the mass media attention it would bring, had prepared for this moment. Together, Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, and Matilda Joslyn Gage of the National Woman Suffrage Association had drafted a Declaration of the Rights of the Women of the United States. “The history of our country the past hundred years has been a series of assumptions and usurpations of power over woman, in direct opposition to the principles of just government,” the Declaration declared. The document went on to “arraign our rulers,” listing the rights denied women as “articles of impeachment” against them.

Perhaps not surprisingly, when the suffragists asked to read their Declaration at the Independence Hall ceremonies that July 4, they were denied permission. Undeterred, they read it anyway and passed out copies to the crowd. While their staged defiance did not garner as much media coverage as the event itself (many reports failed to mention it), several newspapers did cover it. After the event, Anthony made sure that the Declaration circulated far and wide (see Mss 876419 Susan B. Anthony letter, at Rauner).

The Declaration is a reminder that it was both radical ideas and radical actions that defined the suffrage movement.

To view Rauner’s copy of the Declaration of Rights of the Women of the United States, ask for Rare Book HQ1236 .D44 1876.

Snow Job

When Dr. John Snow had the handles to London's Soho Broad Street public water pump removed in 1854 in an attempt to curb a cholera outbreak, he was exceeding his authority, but he was thoroughly convinced that the contaminated well was the cause. He had charted the cases on a local map and made the connection. The General Board of Health in London was not convinced. In their Report of 1854, they dismiss Snow and his theories. Commenting on the outbreak in Soho, they said:

In explanation of the remarkable intensity of this outbreak with very definite limits, it has been suggested by Dr. Snow, that the real cause of whatever was peculiar in the case lay in the general use of one particular well, situated at Broad Street in the middle of the district, and having (it was imagined) its waters contaminated with the rice-water evacuations of cholera patients. After careful inquiry, we see no reason to adopt this belief.

It took a while for a medical community, firmly wed to the miasma theory of contagion, to catch up with Snow. We have an extensive report from 1874 detailing the water supply of Great Britain. It includes a map of Soho displaying Snow's plotting of cases as well as a detailed diagram of the sewers near the Broad Street pump. I guess they eventually decided there was some merit to his ideas and perhaps the outbreak was not caused by a disturbance in the grounds of the "Plague Pit" that released a miasma across the city.

The Board of Health report is in the LCSF at RC133 .G6 A34, and the 1874 report with the maps is here in Special Collections at Rare TD257 .G73 1874.

Harsh Climates, Political and Otherwise

1816 was a weird year for Dartmouth. The state of New Hampshire took over the school, transforming it into a public university and making changes to the leadership and how it was run. Naturally, a lot of people within the College objected to this, resulting in the famous Dartmouth College Case. A few years later the case would be decided in favor of the College assuring its independence.

The takeover wasn't the only thing going on in 1816, however. The world was in the middle of its "Year Without Summer," a period of climate chaos caused by the eruption of a volcano in the Dutch East Indies the year before. The ash and gas released into the air was so extensive that it blocked light, causing global temperatures to drop and crops to fail. New England was not spared and the agricultural consequences around here were significant.

David Woodburn Dickey, Class of 1818, wrote a letter home on June 20th, 1816. He starts with a point of disappointed optimism -- "I was in hopes that by this time I should be able to inform you respecting the termination of the College difficulties but large bodies move slow" -- before going on to share his thoughts on both the situation at Dartmouth and the weird weather. David thinks that it's a good idea for the legislature to appoint Trustees to the board, one of the changes recently made by the state. He also spends time describing the great interest students are taking in the current situation. The news about the weather drives home that this isn't a typical June: "Within three weeks past there has been some remarkable cold weather, there was no snowfall here of consequence, but in Vermont and in this state further to the North there was considerable, Here was considerable ... frost for two or three nights, which did some injury though not so much as might be expected." 

The combination of internal political turmoil and external climate upheaval at Dartmouth must have made for a really strange student experience. David's letter seems to take things more or less in stride, but the circumstances appear extraordinary from here. To see the letter yourself, ask for Mss 816370. 

 

The Brothers Brock

Edmund and Mary Ann Brock had seven children, all born between 1868 and 1879. Each of their four sons and at least one of their daughters were artistically inclined and came up during the Golden Age of Illustration, an era well-represented in our illustrated collections.

Charles Edmund, the eldest, was a prolific illustrator of magazines, literature, and the like. One estimate has him providing illustrations for about 270 books during his career. The next oldest, Richard Henry, also worked in magazine illustration but seems to have spent his career focusing on painting landscapes. Thomas Alfred, the third son, is less well-known than his brothers and his work had a more scientific bent, appearing in textbooks and journals of geology, paleontology, and so on. And Henry Matthew, the youngest son, was closer to Charles in focus and output, working in both books and magazines, with illustrations for over 500 books to his name by the time he died in 1960.

The Brocks had three daughters and significantly less is known about them. That said, Katharine Alison attended the same Cambridge School of Art as her brothers and — like her brothers — won some prizes for her work there. She did not have a career in art as they did; instead, she took care of her parents' household, was involved in local fundraising and church events, published some poetry, and eventually married and started her own family. We can’t say if she had any interest in becoming an artist professionally — there were a few successful female illustrators working at the time, but she did not join their number. 

We bring the prolific Brocks up because of those illustrated collections mentioned previously. Charles and Henry are both well-represented in our printed works, but we also have a rather exciting collection of original art by various artists including Charles, Henry, and Richard. It's satisfying to go through the work of these brothers, noticing the similarities and differences in their styles, and enjoying a window into illustration as a trade and a family business. 

To see the originals, request boxes from MS-1447.  

Surveying the Field

In 1871, Thayer School of Engineering at Dartmouth officially opened for business. The fledgling school boasted just three students and one professor but also a proud lineage and a bright future. General Sylvanus Thayer, a member of Dartmouth's class of 1807 and the fifth superintendent of the United States Military Academy at West Point, had turned his sights back to Hanover in 1867 at the ripe old age of eighty-one. He had accrued by then a stunning list of life accomplishments, including the establishment of the country's first school of civil engineering during his time at West Point.

Thayer intended for his alma mater to establish a similar program: he donated a total of $70,000 to the college as well as an impressive library of books and manuscripts related to engineering, many of which we still have to this day. He also recommended a West Point graduate, Joseph Fletcher, to be the first (and only) faculty member and dean of the new professional school. His mission accomplished, Thayer passed away in 1872 but he is still remembered to this day in certain circles as "The Father of the Military Academy" and one of the earliest proponents of engineering education in America.

Perhaps Thayer's influence is what made Dartmouth faculty insist that all undergraduates take a surveying course, even before the School of Engineering was formally established. We have several of the student field notebooks from those classes, and it's obvious from looking through them that at least a few of the undergraduates struggled to appreciate the science of engineering. Robert Bolenius, a member of the class of 1870, certainly seemed more interested in creating whimsical doodles in his assignment book than demonstrating his surveying prowess. His drawings, whether of a naked man fighting with a dog over a pair of pants next to a data table or an abstract geometrical shape converted into a Civil War tent, make us hope that Robert went on to discover a profession less rigid in its approach to seeing the world than engineering.

To look through the surveying notebooks of Robert Bolenius and other undergraduate surveying students, come to Rauner and ask for DA-31, Box 2912.

Exhibit: "Reading Sentences: Prison Libraries and Literature"

Beyond punishment for social wrongs, imprisonment has long functioned to silence or remove voices from the public forum. As we have seen with figures from Cervantes to Martin Luther King Jr., however, prison can also give inmates copious time to articulate their thoughts and the fame or notoriety necessary to draw attention to them.

This exhibit examines both the literature consumed and produced by prisoners as well as the evolving depiction of the prison in popular culture. Its scope spans hundreds of years and thousands of miles, from the chivalric romances dreamed up by imprisoned knights (and aspiring knights) of the medieval and Renaissance eras to the cheap, sensational prison dramas peddled to the working classes and the reformist prison library catalogs whose titles sought to educate and equip inmates with secular knowledge and employable trade skills in late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century New England. It highlights the electrifying prison manifestos of several prominent civil rights leaders and concludes with contemporary artist and children’s books which grapple with the psychosocial impact of incarceration.

The exhibit was curated by Sophie Chadha, Edward Connery Lathem '51 Special Collections Fellow at Rauner Special Collections Library. The poster was designed by Chadha and Max Seidman, Exhibits and Graphic Arts Designer for Dartmouth Libraries. It will be on display in Rauner Special Collections Library's Class of 1965 Galleries from April 6 through June 19, 2026.

The Road to Redemption

On a Tuesday in May of 1831, President Nathan Lord of Dartmouth sat down at his writing desk to pen an awkward letter to Reverend Jacob Cummings, a member of Dartmouth's class of 1819 who was a friend of Lord's and the minister of a small congregation in Stratham, New Hampshire. Cummings had written to Lord to inquire about a recent incident involving Daniel Clark, a member of the class of 1834 and a Stratham boy. Lord began by telling Cummings that although he was "unwilling to give pain", he felt "obliged to correct [Cummings'] impressions" about the story that Clark had told him.

The facts of the case, as per a faculty investigation, were as follows: that several nights earlier, a sizable group of pious and concerned young students had gathered at 1am before the front door of local resident Mr. Holton, whose home was known to be a den of ill repute; that they had peaceably gained access with the intention of relocating the ladies of the night from the establishment; that Mr. Holton had drawn a knife and threatened them when they tried to enter a back room; and that when they had finally been able to enter said room, they had discovered Mr. Clark hiding within. The investigation resulted in Clark's suspension from the college for a year.

Apparently, soon after being dismissed from the college and returning home, Clark had entreated Cummings to intercede with Lord on his behalf; the young man claimed that he was merely out for an evening walk to get some exercise and stopped for a rest at Holton's without realizing the nature of the dwelling. Lord's incredulity is palpable as his letter lays out Clark's story in detail: a casual stroll down the darkest road in Hanover at one in the morning followed by a random visit to an unknown residence? Nearly two hundred years later, one can almost feel the force from Lord's eyes rolling. The president ends the letter by openly acknowledging Clark's intellectual gifts and his potential, expressing his hope that Clark will repent of his sins, and praying that the young man will return to Dartmouth to finish his studies after a year's suspension so that he may "yet become a blessing".

Lord's prayers were ultimately answered, though perhaps not quite in the way that he would have hoped. Clark did repent and return to Dartmouth to finish his studies. Several decades later, he was elected to represent New Hampshire in the United States Senate where he served from 1857 until 1866. In contrast to Lord, who was well-known for his support of slavery, Clark was a staunch abolitionist who gave eloquent speeches denouncing slavery as well as supporting suffrage for all men regardless of race. His colleagues in the Senate held him in such high regard that they elected him president pro tempore for the Thirty-Eighth Congress (1865-1866).

To read Nathan Lord's frank assessment of a youthful Daniel Clark's indiscretions, request MSS 831317.1 online and then come to Rauner.

A Most Weird Look

A couple of years ago, we were lucky enough to be near the path of totality for a total solar eclipse. Upper Valley residents may have dealt with traffic and crowds, but a jaunt north of about 56 miles would get you in range of something quite spectacular. Today we're looking at a pair of artifacts from someone who traveled much, much further to see the same kind of event. In August of 1896, a total solar eclipse took place that was visible from parts of Russia, Japan, and northern Scandinavia. A group of British astronomy enthusiasts identified that last location as their best bet and made plans to head for Vadsø, Norway, near the northernmost point of that country where it converges with Sweden and Finland. Vadsø was about 1,600 miles away as the crow flies. 

This excursion included one Lawrence Neville Holden, a lifelong amateur scientist and fellow of the Royal Astronomical Society. We have his diary and photo album from the trip, so we have record of his great disappointment when the weather that day was overcast:

"As it was obviously no good trying to use telescopes everyone stood up & looked round. The scene was most curious. It was light enough to read print & the time on my watch & the lamps which we had lighted to record observations by were certainly no required. No stars could be seen even with our field glasses which we used, in the few clear patches of sky. We could see right across the fjord & the hills there had a blue black light over them, further away we saw hill tops lit up with a bright light & there were probably outside the line of totality. The temperature fell about 3°. The color of the sea did not change but at one place just beyond Vadso pier we saw a great glittering caused it was said by fish jumping out of the water. Round about us nothing appeared out of the ordinary but the whole landscape had a most weird look, & it was quite a different darkness to night. Then like a flash almost light came back & the long looked forward to Eclipse was over & the result of all our preparations was 'absolute failure' in every way."

The photo album is a bit less dour, filled with pictures of party members, the landscape, the locals, and the group's scientific instruments. There are two photos taken during the eclipse itself and while they aren't particularly compelling to look at, the  film's exposure is undeniably different than that of the other daytime shots. This was probably cold comfort to Holden, who said that afterwards "everyone had a long face & the disappointment was very keenly felt."

The next total solar eclipse will be this August, almost exactly 130 years after Holden's disappointing excursion. Totality will miss the United States entirely, but will reach parts of Greenland, Iceland, Spain and Portugal. The next one to reach Vermont and New Hampshire won't be until 2079.

To see Holden's diary and album, ask for Stef Mss-296, Box 1, or check out the scans attached to the finding aid. 

 

 

 

 

 

Ticknor's View of Dartmouth

We have been posting to this blog regularly for nearly 17 years. For a long time it was twice a week, but then we switched to once a week. So, we have made a lot of posts. That's why we couldn't believe it when we realized we had never posted about this amazing image in our collection. It was purportedly drawn by a young George Ticknor when he was eleven years old and a student at Dartmouth (yes, really--he graduated in 1807 at age 16). His father was an early graduate of Dartmouth and a major donor, and his grandfather lived nearby in Lebanon, New Hampshire.

The caption says:

This view of the principal buildings of Dartmouth University is humbly inscribed
to the Honorable John Wheelock, Esquire, L.L.D. President by
George Ticknor, Delineator
and Member of the Sophomore Class, aged eleven years.

It all seems kind of incredible that a thing like this would exist, but it all checks out. We know Ticknor was a child prodigy and that when his father sent him to Dartmouth to study he specifically asked John Wheelock to look after him since he was still so young. It is dated July 1803. Ticknor was born in August 1791, so the age is correct, and when we checked the "Catalogue of Officers and Students at Dartmouth University" from October of 1803, George is listed as a member of the Sophomore Class. We don't see any reason to doubt it. We particularly love the detail in the bottom right corner of what we guess is John Wheelock with a dog while someone nearby swings what may be a cricket bat.

To see Ticknor's drawing, request Iconography 001317 online through the catalog and then visit our reading room.

Sammelband Sociology

In our opinion, sammelbands are one of the most curious books to be found in Special Collections libraries the world over. Derived from the German word "Sammelbänd" meaning "collected group", these texts can be comprised of any number of smaller discrete publications that have been bound together to form a single volume. What makes these books intriguing is that the selection and organization of the individual publications within the sammelband has almost always been done by a private individual and not, for instance, by a publishing house seeking to divest itself of lingering back stock by putting an unpopular text together with a more saleable one (something referred to as a "bound-with" in the book world). Unlike "bound-withs", each sammelband is a unique object whose unifying concept was born out of the mind of its creator and whose purpose and value is therefore intextricably bound up with the values and interests of that person.

Recently, while conducting research for a religion class on the Essene community, we came across a sammelband consisting of the rules and regulations of no less than twenty-eight different civic-minded fraternal organizations in Dover, New Hampshire. These publications span the years from 1838 to 1887 and provide a fascinating window into the life of town-dwellers in 19th-century New England. Dover during this period grew from a town of around 6,000 people into a city that was a leading national textile producer and had doubled in population by the end of the 1800s.

The small society pamphlets in the sammelband reflect the needs and concerns of the growing city. The bylaws of seven private firefighting companies are included, along with two documents that standardize the protocol for medical treatment and regulate the fees associated with different medical services by physicians in the area. The book includes the bylaws of organizations established to better the lives of mill laborers, such as the Sovereigns of Industry (1874) and the Knights of Labor (1887). There are rules for the Sons of Temperance (1863), St. Thomas Episcopal Church's parish (1877), and the Dover Public Library (1885). And there are booklets related to a wide variety of fraternal organizations both well-known and somewhat obscure, including the Masons and the Knights of Pythias, among others.

The booklets by themselves are valuable ephemera, shedding light on communal self-governance during the rise of mill towns and city-based industrialism in 19th-century New England. Bound together, as a sammelband, they also provide a clue into the interests and mindset of someone living in Dover at the time.

To explore the twenty-eight books in one, request NH Dover 1838b via the online catalog and then come to Rauner.

A Small University

When Daniel Webster 1801 said that Dartmouth was a "small college," he wasn't kidding. These words, uttered during Webster's successful defense of the college during Trustees of Dartmouth College vs. Woodward in 1819, have become an important part of the school's identity over the last two centuries and more. This week, while looking through our broadside collections in preparation for a history class on the Revolutionary War, we found evidence of just how small Dartmouth was at the time.

In January of 1800, or perhaps 1799, a small broadside was published that listed the names of the members of Dartmouth's class of 1801, including Daniel Webster and his high school and college roommate James Bingham. A total of thirty-four names are listed in both print and manuscript; some names are crossed out, indicating their departure from the school, while a few late arrivals have been inked in by an unknown hand. This little document is fascinating to us because it underscores how tight-knit and intimate each Dartmouth class must have been at the time (no bigger than a large seminar class nowadays, perhaps). We're also intrigued by the various additions and deletions from the sheet, especially the removal of a mysterious John Russell, for whom we can find no other archival records as of yet. Of most interest to us, however, is that the document states that it is a catalogue of the members of the sophomore class of "Dartmouth University". We dug a little deeper and found a similar catalogue of the class of 1788 that also identified the school as a university, less than two decades after the founding of the school and sixteen years before the controversy that sparked the Supreme Court showdown.

This little detail has left us with many questions, some that can be answered and others that will never be: At what point had the College begun to call itself a University long before the schism of 1804 that caused the creation of two rival institutions, Dartmouth College and Dartmouth University? Did Webster and his classmates also call it that when they were students, and if so did it seem odd to him to call Dartmouth a "small college" in 1819? Regardless, the school had clearly left a deep impression on him and his small cohort of classmates during their time in the wilderness.

To see the list of members of the class of 1801, come to Rauner and ask for Broadside 799101.

Spring Colors

This time of year, we're getting pretty wistful for spring. As such, we've been looking at books on flowers and we have a lovely one to share today. Margaret Roscoe's 1829 Floral Illustrations of the Seasons is just what it sounds like: a series of botanical illustrations, each accompanied by a brief description of its classification, cultivation, and history. Prior to this work, Roscoe (née Lace) illustrated another botanical text written by her father-in-law, William Roscoe. Floral Illustrations is dedicated to William, who she describes as a generous patron of the science.  

In the process of making this book, Margaret Roscoe's original illustrations needed to be reproduced in print. To accomplish this, a professional engraver named Robert Havell made aquatint plates imitating her work as closely as possible. Those plates would print black-and-white images, which were then colored by hand. The finished prints could then be bound into each copy of the book, creating a run of more or less identical works. 

The color is the real reason we're mentioning this process now. There's inherent distance between whatever those original illustrations looked like and the published prints, but they were both physical mediums. But there's a new, significant layer of separation in showcasing this book now: the limitations of digital color. You can see the photos included in this post through something called the RGB color model. It's how phones and computers represent all colors, based on various combinations of red, green, and blue light. It's an impressive technology with a very nuanced output, but what it shows you is not how color works on the page. 

When you look at a book (and most other things) in real life, the color tends to be subtractive: white light passes through an object and the nature of the object allows differing wavelengths to be absorbed or reflected. Those wavelengths are then translated by your eye, resulting in your own color perception. This is fundamentally how the pigment on a colored illustration works. In these photos, RGB is doing its best to represent the yellow of the crocus and the blue of the spring gentian, but it is doing so by emitting light, when the illustrations are producing that color by selectively absorbing it. As such, it doesn't actually look the same.

The colors in Floral Illustrations have remained remarkably vivid, despite being almost 200 years old. This foray into optics is all to say that if you want a reminder that spring is coming, we have you covered. We just really recommend that you come see it in person. 

To see this particular piece of loveliness, come to Rauner and request Rare Book SB407 .R79 1829.

Exhibit: "Making the Case for Suffrage"

From the vantage point of 2026, women’s right to vote can seem like a foregone conclusion. Yet it took women almost 150 years from the founding of the United States, and over 70 years from the first women’s rights convention, for women to achieve suffrage on a national level. And even then, it was a partial victory: the Nineteenth Amendment, ratified in 1920, did not protect the rights of minoritized women, many of whom remained prohibited in practice from exercising the franchise.

This exhibit examines some of the strategies women employed to argue for their right to suffrage. It looks at how suffragists relied on mass media and popular culture to create what they referred to as “propaganda” for their cause. It highlights how they utilized American symbols, how they deployed their organizational networks in campaigns of persuasion, and how they eventually turned to more public and direct forms of action to convince American men to grant them the vote.

This exhibit is not a comprehensive overview of the suffrage movement. Limited by the material in Rauner’s collections, it largely focuses on white women suffragists and on the final two decades of the suffrage campaign.

The exhibit was curated by Sarah Bowman, Processing Specialist at Rauner Special Collections Library. The poster was designed by Max Seidman, Exhibits and Graphic Arts Designer for Dartmouth Libraries. It will be on display in Rauner Special Collections Library's Class of 1965 Galleries from January 7th through March 13th, 2026. For more information, visit the exhibit website.

New Additions to our Collections!

In addition to our current collections of phenomenal books and manuscripts, we are always collecting new amazing items that we know will be used eagerly by students in our classrooms. The breadth and depth of our teaching across the curriculum is represented in the following list of recent acquisitions, all of which were added to our shelves over the last three or four months. If you'd like to visit us to see any of them in person, place a request via the linked catalog record and then come to Rauner!

Codex 003545: A 17th-century manuscript scroll containing the Lotus Sutra, one of the most important texts of the Mahayana branch of Buddhism.

Incunabula 171: A single sheet from a 1483-84 almanac printed by Johannes Angelus, a prominent physician/astrologer/astronomer who practiced his trade in Vienna in the late 15th and early 16th centuries. This particular page provides advice on how to pair medical treatment with beneficial astrological signs  for the coming year.

Presses L876lokn: Book artist Angela Lorenz created this volume, titled Known no-bodies, in 2025. The work displays seven original watercolor paintings of "portrait-like figures, each with aspects of a face and a body with various fanciful modifications".

Rare CT3202 .B4 1804: Matilda Bethany's Biographical Dictionary of the celebrated women of every age and country was printed in 1804 and contains short biographies of famous women from antiquity to the present day, organized alphabetically.

Rare RM184.5 .K45 1753: A book printed in 1753 and written in Chinese with Japanese reading marks that explains the locations and relations of fourteen meridians and acupuncture points using woodcut illustrations.

Rare PA6801 .A2 1502: The 1502 Strasbourg printing of the works of Virgil, sometimes known as the "Grüninger Virgil" after the name of its printer. The work contains 137 original full-block woodcuts that were influential for artists and printers across Germany, Italy, and France for several centuries.

Rare G2355 .N577 1666b: Japan's first atlas published in Kanbun 6 (1666), consisting of 1 preface and 16 provincial maps. The accompanying text describes routes on the maps and includes such information as statistics for rice production and distances between various points by land and sea.

A Ghost Story for Christmas

When A Christmas Carol was published in 1843, it came with the subtitle "Being a ghost story of Christmas." Ghosts might not be the first thing we think of at Christmas-time, but in the U.K. there is a well-established storytelling tradition on just that subject. It's difficult to say if Dickens is completely to blame for this, or if he merely provided the literary text that brought an existing folk practice into a more traceable medium. Oral tradition, after all, is tricky to pin down.

Regardless, the Victorians took this idea and ran with it, and the English-language ghost story had a heyday running from the mid-19th century well into the first half of the 20th. Christmas drifts in and out of the picture -- there are many chilling tales taking place during the holiday, but it was just as frequently used as a framing device for something unrelated. The Turn of the Screw, for instance, begins with a group telling ghost stories at a Christmas Eve party, leading one guest to dig up a manuscript he possesses entailing a "real" encounter, and thus bringing us to the actual plot.

The medievalist (and rare book man!) M.R. James deserves special mention here, having published collection after collection of chilling tales throughout the first thirty years of the 20th century. Many of these began as entertainment devised specifically to read aloud to his students and colleagues during the holiday season. The same stories served as ready inspiration in the 1970s, when the BBC began an annual television program fittingly called "A Ghost Story for Christmas." From 1971 to 1978, a short ghostly film, most often adapted from James, would be aired on or just before Christmas. The series was revived in 2005 and has continued on and off since then.

We've just installed a new single-case exhibit showing off an array of spooky tales, some taking place at Christmas and some just referencing the storytelling tradition itself. Dickens is there, as is The Turn of the Screw, as are M.R. James's published thoughts on what a ghost story requires in order to succeed. We suggest dropping by to see it sometime, especially if you need a change of pace from what can feel like mandatory holiday cheer.

Body-Snatching and Bad Luck

In the winter of 1810, Doctor Nathan Smith wrote from Hanover to a fellow physician in Philadelphia. Smith apologized for not writing sooner to his friend and colleague, blaming the delay on a "little bad luck" back in December that had given him "great inquietude." As the founder of Dartmouth's medical school in 1797 and its only professor of medicine at the time, Smith was also the instructor of anatomy. The bad luck, it turned out, was that Smith had contracted with an untrustworthy individual to procure a fresh cadaver for the school's anatomy lectures. Instead of going to Boston and purchasing a body there as instructed, the independent contractor instead snatched a newly deceased corpse from the Enfield graveyard only a few miles to the east of campus. It wasn't long before a local officer of the peace appeared in the middle of an anatomy lab dissection and reclaimed the cadaver. At the time of the letter, Smith expressed confidence that "we shall survive the accident without material injury either personal or to the Institution."

President John Wheelock was less optimistic a few months earlier when writing to Benjamin J. Gilbert, a local lawyer and influential member of the community. In his letter to Gilbert, dated December 18th, 1809, Wheelock suggests that it was Dartmouth medical students who had stolen the body. Speaking for the College administration, he affirmed that "We cannot express the detestation and abhorence [sic] which we feel on account of this inhuman & barbarous act, nor our ardent desire that the perpetrator or perpetrators may be found and brought to justice, as an example to deter others from the perpetration of such an infamous crime." As evidence of the college's commitment to re-establishing the "public confidence" in Dartmouth, he included with his letter a resolution that granted Gilbert and other prominent leaders of the Upper Valley community permission to inspect the rooms of the students whenever they wished. In the resolution, Wheelock acknowledges that the reputation of the medical school is inextricably linked to that of the college, and that "recent events" have damaged the entire institution's reputation among the community.

Despite the earnest and swift response by Wheelock, body-snatching continued to be a problem for at least the next century, not just at Dartmouth but nationwide. To read Nathan Smith's letter, request MSS 810163 online. To read Wheelock's letter to Gilbert and the entirety of the resolution, request MSS 809668 and MSS 809668.1.