Education Department anniversary

Was contacted by a prof there before, but what with one thing and another they couldn't find time, but now they want to look into this. I will meet with them, replied as follows:


 Education will be an interesting one, in a real sense the whole school was an education department for decades, as a Normal school and then Teachers college, and then in '66-67 you see the school become a comprehensive liberal arts school, all the various departments. Then of course you have the 100+ year long story of the old campus school, which ran from the 1860s (or earlier,) up thru the late 1970s.

Biography information for Advancement and Scholarships

Part of an ongoing project to flesh out the donor biographies for the named scholarships, and for some other projects as well... Shared link to Bud Meade Updates, and mentioned that I would love to have the old alumni newsletters, the Brockport Statements and so on digitized commercially, I just doubt I will ever have time to do it myself. There is a wealth of information in them on all sorts of college people, but with no indexing it is a very time consuming treasure hunt to find anything, if you even do.

Florence Brown '55

I was asked about this grad awhile back, she was an African American educator of prominence in the Rochester city schools, pre-K education. Advancement is seeking to recognize her further and asked about any possible surviving relatives etc. Shared some names from her obit, a relatives I found, suggested checking with the church named in the obit in her home town, New Rochelle, where she spent her summers off etc.

Yearbooks

Someone from Advancement, asking if I had extra copies of the '69 yearbook. I answered as follows:


...the yearbooks story is as follows: they are all online, at the link below, and for print copies I have all the ones that were in Alumni House, plus some I had. Having said that, the print is hit and miss. Like 1970, I have 10 or so, but for '69 I just have 4 copies. I could give one away to them though if you want it. Let me know, I can send it in the campus mail or bring it over.

Brockport Cemetery photo

Was asked about whether I had an early photo of this cemetery, the one on High Street. I do, it is one of the George Guelf glass plate negatives that were digitized. The photo is c1910. I shared it with the person, they want to use it in the Brockport Community Museum site, and someone from the Landmark Society wanted a look at it too.


Update: One part of the query above was about a receiving vault that had been there in the cemetery, an unusual Egyptian revival style stone building. I posted about this vault in the "Remembering Brockport" group in Facebook, and got a very helpful response from someone who shared the following link. Apparently the vault was demolished in the 1990s due to "severe deterioration."


https://www.nps.gov/nr/feature/places/pdfs/16000061.pdf?fbclid=IwAR26H930hWDb1L3c8OlB0IZXg6wdBgnt15PnkBQEBWwQBXPERk6JF2nkgt8

Grateful Dead

Someone working on an encyclopedic treatment of the Grateful Dead, all their concerts etc., contacted me about their appearance here in 1981. The archives doesn't have many of the things he was looking for, the contracts, film, audio etc. I did recommend using NYS Historic Newspapers for Stylus articles on the concert, how to use the database etc.

Gifford Morgan

Have been working via email a bit with the historian at the Morgan Manning House re Gifford Morgan. She is working on building up their biographical files on him, and I shared some of what I have. He had significant connections to the college, being on the board of the Normal in the '30s, and he worked closely with Hartwell to stave off the threat of closure of the school. I also had scans of several scrapbooks lent me by a Morgan family member which I emailed to her.

"Greater Rochester Climatic Data Archives"

A query about this collection, and an individual whose records are part of it, came to me. The collection apparently included 19th century weather records from Rochester, and mention an E.W. McGann, according to a 1987 D&C article the questioner had read, and shared with me. He was particularly interested in McGann.


I never heard of this collection before, it isn't something that is, or ever was, in the college archives. I'm checking with Earth Science to see if they know of it, or have it. I let the questioner know that, and also shared the link to NYS Historic Newspapers, where I did find some mentions of a "Sgt" or "Chief" McGann of the weather service in the years 1880-1890. Will be interested to hear if this collection is still here, and will update this post when I find out.

Who has Jim Dusen's photographs? (and photographs in general?)

Had a call about this, and the answer is that the bulk of what exists is in the archives, other than the most recent years. Approximately 2013 to date is all digital, stored in a site the campus photographers office has access to. For earlier years, I have all of Jim's photos, the CDs, then all the negative notebooks etc. dating c1977-2012. Prior to those, there are some photos, but also large gaps, c1964-1977. There is an extensive collection of photo negatives covering c1950-1962. Prior to that, the photos are very limited, there was no campus photographer, and often one has to search yearbooks for images. It's a complicated set of materials to describe, but that is the gist of it.


As a note, the archives does not for the most part have originals, either negatives or prints, of photos taken for the Stylus or the Saga. Generally the Stylus photographers kept their photos themselves, and the Saga were generally shot by local commercial photographers no longer in existence.

e. e. cummings painting

Advancement contact, there's some sort of book being done about the e. e. cummings paintings we have, and they were looking for a photo of the one painting. Unfortunately I don't see it. In going through Jim Dusens photo CDs this past fall with my student we did discover several CDs of shots of the cummings paintings, but this particular shot isn't in there. It's online, in Digital Commons, but those are low res images. I presume that Jim took all those, I did find some photo CDs with high resolution images of the paintings seen on the Digital Commons, but what I have doesn't have all of them...

Not a 50th, but a 70th!

The current president of the English Club contacted me, he realized that it was the 70th anniversary of the club and wants to celebrate it. Great idea, I was glad to have Sharon Carpenter's fine study of the club history and detailed list of the various publications to send him. Have offered to host him and the club here, will be following up...

Dorm photo dating

Someone needed dating and location for an old photo of girls in a dorm for The Port. It was one of my photos, the old 4x5s, not dated, looked like c1956, and while not sure of exact "hall," it was definitely one of the halls along Kenyon, Morgan, Bramley etc. Those were all girls dorms then.

REOC (Rochester Educational Opportunity Center)

Had a call from them re their archival collections, how to maintain, what to keep etc. Shared some thoughts over the phone, will follow up with email and possibly a visit there.

Another 50th celebration - Dance Department

Was just contacted by the department as they begin to prep to celebrate their 50th. I shared the link to the dance archives online that were done a few years ago, and will look for more here...

Dei Anang

A prof contacted me asking about Michael Dei Anang and possible connections with Sankofa. I shared some basic bio information on this interesting man, that he was here 1971-78, when he died, was chair of AAS part of that time, and he definitely had literary and poetical ambitions, but I had to say I didn't know of any musical interests or connections with Sankofa.

Wrestling rosters - again

Someone from athletics looking for wrestling team rosters, same years as advancement was looking for a couple months ago. I sent them what I sent advancement, I just didn't have the one year. Like a lot of archival things I just have what I have, and there often are gaps.

Book scanner working again!!!

Hah, good news, book scanner is finally working again, after almost 2 months down. Long story, IT wanted to update PCs in archives from Win 7 to Win 10, caused many problems, especially with book scanner, for which we could not find drivers to run it in Win 10, Konica just does not support it properly. So now it's a stand alone, non-networked PC, on Win 7, so I have to move files onto flash drives to bring to other PCs to back up to the cloud, share with others...


But, it is working, and this afternoon began scanning a fascinating local history document, a paper a student named Allport wrote here in 1962 about the history of schools and education in Niagara County. I will be placing it on the Digital Commons when ready.

Ellsworth

A staff person needed some images and info on our mascot Ellsworth for some social media posting. Supplied several images and a doc on the history of Ellsworth.

Coach Panaggio

He was a prominent basketball coach here for many years starting in '68. He has since passed away, and his son is interested in researching his father, and his own time here. Have thus far shared links to the yearbooks online, nyshistoricnewspapers, made some other suggestions, and asked some questions to find out better what he is looking for.

Gamma Sigma 150th

Interesting, an ILL request came in over the holiday break for the history of the Gamma Sigma fraternity. The fraternity was started here by Charles McLean with a group of students in the early Normal era, and then spread to many other Normal schools and also high schools. It ended here when Hartwell closed out all the local fraternities and sororities c1939, but continued elsewhere into the 1970s, when I think it faded away; the requestor was a '71 member. He wants to organize a 150th anniversary, so have given one copy of the book to send him, and also emailed him myself to share the link to Dedman's book etc.