George Watson Cole (1850-1939), the first librarian of the Huntington Library, was a pioneer of modern bibliography who set a standard few have matched with the catalogs of the collections of Americana and English Literature assembled by E. Dwight Church.

Cole was awarded an honorary Doctor of Humane Letters from Trinity in 1920 “in recognition of his work in the field of Bibliography.”  It is likely this honor which led him to give his collection of some 10,000 postcards and miscellaneous ephemera related to Europe, most of which dates prior to 1915.  His Americana postcards (some 25,000) and his papers are at the American Antiquarian Society.

Volunteer Lisa Lew is creating an inventory of these postcards, which show the churches, monuments, city views, art galleries, market squares, harbors, theaters, cemeteries, municipal buildings and neighborhoods of Europe as they were before the ravages of both World Wars.  There are also postcards of soldiers, portraits of ruling families, flags, coats-of-arms, coins, ships, bridges, beaches, vehicles (carriages, automobiles, planes, trains, fire engines, etc.), farms, parks, sports events, gardens, fountains, and costumes.  It is an amazing collection, and we hope to have the inventory online soon, and at some point, we may digitize it all.

Lisa’s job has been made much easier because Cole was a librarian, and ordered the collection upon strict and detailed guidelines.  Indeed, he wrote a pamphlet on the subject in 1935, entitled Postcards: The World in Miniature.  A Plan for their Systematic Arrangement.

Dated September 1892, this stunning little piece of Trinity history was in a recent auction of sports memorabilia in Chicago.  Lee Smith (Trinity MA ’72, Economics), brought to our attention and helped us acquire this “carte-de-visite”–surely one of the earliest “football cards” produced.  According to the auction description, “One of the top teams of the day was Trinity College, they played such teams as Harvard, Yale and even crushed Columbia 54-0. The uniformed players are identified as George Hartley and Richard Henry Macauley with a great inscription on the verso: ‘Presented to Miss Edith Ward by her latest conquest. The Freshman Richard Henry Macauley.'”

According to his student file in the Trinity Archives, while Richard Henry Macauley ’95 may have been Miss Edith Ward’s “latest conquest,” he married a Miss Sarah Tainter Bulkeley–the youngest daughter of Lt. Governor William H. Bulkeley (CT)–the year he graduated.  He was from Detroit, and worked in his father’s wholesale millinery company for 5 years after graduation, and then four years on his own; his company went bankrupt, after which he entered the insurance business and eventually became manager of the Eastern Michigan branch of Aetna Life Insurance.  He died on September 13, 1928 at age 55.  In the 1906 College Bulletin he is listed as a graduate member of the “Medusa Society” and an honorary member of “The Royal Egyptian String Octette.”

We have less information so far on the senior, George Derwent Hartley ’93, a native New Yorker and son of an Episcopal clergyman.  He was captain of both the football and baseball teams at Trinity during his senior year, was a banker & broker in New York by 1917, and apparently died in San Francisco in 1931, at the age of 62.  Hartley was also a donor to the library, giving us an impressive rarity, which is described at great length in the College Bulletin of 1904 (pp. 7-12)–an English translation of John Calvin’s Institutio Christianae Religionis (The Institution of Christian Religion), published in London in 1587.

Our April/May exhibition will focus on the life and career of Trinity alumnus Hyam Plutzik ’32, who studied under Trinity professor Odell Shepard (1884-1967).  During his student years, Plutzik served as an editor on the Tripod, and helped revive the student yearbook, the Trinity Tablet, which had been dormant for many years.  Several years after graduation, he returned to Connecticut to spend a “Thoreauvian” year in the countryside, undoubtedly inspired by Professor Shepard’s interest in the nineteenth-century Transcendentalists.  In 1941, on the eve of America’s entry into World War II, Plutzik wrote a detailed account of his life since graduation in a remarkable 72-page letter to Odell Shepard, the original of which is in the Watkinson, and will be on display. It was Odell Shepard who wrote Plutzik’s recommendation letter to Yale University, where he pursued graduate work on scholarship from Trinity College

Most of the materials on display are on loan from the University of Rochester, which hosts the Plutzik Reading Series, one of the longest-running reading series in the country.

The opening of the exhibition (which is being installed as I write) will be on April 9, from 1:30 – 3:30pm, and will feature readings of Plutzik’s work by our own award-winning poet Ciaran Berry, Artist-in-Residence Clare Rossini, and Dick Allen, the Poet Laureate of Connecticut.  Trinity students will also read selections of their own poetry.

Despite the snow this evening, we had a gratifying turnout for the opening of our two graduate student exhibitions: the first on Trinity and Bates College ca. 1890-1930, and the second on Christmas traditions represented in the Watkinson. This exhibition (and the two printed catalogs which accompany it) were part of the requirements which the students fulfilled in American Studies 835: Museum & Library Exhibitions.

Brent Bette, a history teacher at Simsbury High School who is currently completing an M.A. in American Studies at Trinity, discussed his exhibition comparing Trinity and Bates Colleges.  Bette is a graduate of Bates, and has been collecting ephemera relating to his alma mater since graduation.  His items are placed along side those he selected for comparison from the Trinity College Archives.

Jenn Brasfield, also in the American Studies M.A. program, was inspired to put up a Christmas-themed exhibition when she discovered that the Watkinson held an array of British and American Christmas cards dating back to the mid-19th century.

The catalogs (covers below) were written by the students, designed by Michael Russem of Kat Ran Press (Cambridge, MA), and printed at Trinity College.

[Posted by Peter J. Knapp, College Archivist]

The Archives has recently received a gift of books, research papers, published poems and literary correspondence from Dr. Arnold L. Lieber, Trinity College Class of 1959, a distinguished psychiatrist and clinician.  Dr. Lieber retired in 2005 after a career of over 30 years as a psychiatrist in Miami and Miami Beach. He served several years as medical director of the Clinical Neuroscience Center, St. Francis Hospital and Miami Heart Institute, Miami Beach, and was also on the consulting staff of the Mt. Sinai Medical Center, Miami Beach, until his retirement.  During his career Dr. Lieber published many clinical research reports and papers, including studies on biological rhythms.   Included are copies of his books, The Lunar Effect (1978) with 10 foreign editions, and How the Moon Affects You (1996) with three foreign editions.  In addition there are copies of Dr. Lieber’s  poems that have appeared in journals as well as an inscribed copy of his just-published collection of poems entitled Chasing the Muse. The gift also includes a small collection of correspondence with various literary figures such as Allen Ginsburg and Samuel French Morse, formerly a Trinity faculty member, as well as with members of the London school of poets he came to know during a brief sojourn in England during the 1960s.

Dr. Lieber’s interest in biological rhythms complements the pre-1950 research work of Trinity biology professors Thomas H. Bissonnette and J. Wendell Burger already contained in the Archives.  The Lieber gift also contributes to the wide range of archival material documenting the careers of Trinity alumni in various fields.