Middlebury Magazine

  • Recent Stories
  • Menu
    • Features
    • Pursuits
    • Q&A
    • Editor’s Note
    • Old Chapel
    • Road Taken
    • Review
    • What We’re Talking About
    • Videos
    • How Did You Get Here Series
    • About
    • Advertising
    • Contact
    • Support
    • Writers’ Guidelines
  • Search

Summer 2017 Features

A History of Middlebury in 46 Objects

Can one capture 217 years of institutional history in fewer than 50 objects? We gave it a shot.

By Matt Jennings
Photographs by Todd Balfour
July 26, 2017
  • Facebook icon
  • Twitter icon
  • Email icon
#1, 2, 3, 4

1. Letter FROM RHODA WHITE (1909)

In the spring of 1909, Rhoda Mabel White, a doctoral fellow in sociology at the University of Wisconsin, wrote to President John Thomas, inquiring about a new position at Middlebury: Dean for the Women’s College. In her correspondence, White presented her qualifications and stated she would want to serve as a “builder of women . . . [not as] a ‘house mother’ or ‘social advisor.’” She was hired that summer.

2, 3. PINS OF GIANTS (2015)

Fifty years separate Martin Freeman, (Class of 1849) and Mary Annette Anderson (Class of 1899) but they will be forever linked. Anderson, her class’s valedictorian, was the first woman of color to graduate from Middlebury; Freeman was the first African American president of a U.S. college. These pins—created as part of Special Collections’ “Faces of Middlebury” series—helped commemorate the opening of the intercultural Anderson Freeman Resource Center in 2015.

4. COLLEGE CHARTER (1800)

This piece of parchment—23 x 28 inches—was drafted and signed a few hours after the Vermont legislature voted to approve the creation of a college in the frontier town of Middlebury.

 

#5

5. King Pin (1888)

It was late one night in 1888 when the Class of 1890 used the cover of darkness to tear down and burn a white picket fence—“a monstrosity,” one wrote of the structure—that bounded part of the campus. All that remained were the iron pins that served as hinges. The class considered the act of “beautification” its “greatest achievement.”

#6

6. CAMPUS PLAN (1909) 

The first campus plan of the 20th century was an elaborate—and unrealized—Beaux Arts design with grand gardens and separate gymnasiums and libraries for men and women.

 

#7

7. GAMALIEL PAINTER’S CANE (1819)

Middlebury’s founder bequeathed his walking stick—four feet long, made of oak with an ivory handle and brass tip—to the College, along with $13,000. The money saved Middlebury from financial ruin, and the cane became an enduring symbol of the institution.

Since the early 20th century, the president has carried the walking stick at official College events; replicas have been presented to graduates since 1995.

Clockwise from left: #8, 9, 10, 11

8. WINTER CARNIVAL (1947)

The oldest collegiate winter carnival in the United States, Middlebury’s annual event has featured a wealth of colorful posters, each with its own distinctive style of the day and age.

9. FOOTBALL (1923)

It has been reported that 25,000 fans watched in shock as Middlebury tied “mighty Harvard,” 6-6, in Cambridge. Harvard was a national power, and the “upset” made the front page of the New York Times sports section.

10. ROTC PIN (1952)

ROTC was compulsory at Middlebury from 1952 to 1966; from that point it was voluntary until the campus program was phased out in 1976. Since then, several dozen undergraduates have pursued ROTC classes and training at the University of Vermont.

11. SUNDERLAND LETTER (1835)

During his first semester at Middlebury, a young man named Byron Sunderland wrote an earnest letter to a friend, in which he described in great detail his daily schedule and his surroundings. Accompanying the prose was a hand-drawn map of the town and campus, complete with a key notating churches and bridges and dormitories.

 

#12

12. ASHTRAY (1960)

Honestly, there’s nothing all that special about this ashtray—other than its kitschiness and its ability to speak for an era when a lot of people smoked—and believed it appropriate to flick ashes onto a portrait of one of the College’s iconic buildings.

#13

13. PARKER MERRILL PROGRAMME (1888)

The Parker Merrill Speaking Competition has enjoyed a rebirth, returning to campus after a 50-year hiatus. One of Middlebury’s oldest traditions (it dates to 1807), the event was once so integral to student life, it was part of each year’s Commencement.

 

#14

14. WRMC VINYL (1960)

WRMC first went on the air in 1949; the Boss’s Nebraska was pressed in ’82. And by the looks of it, the record has received quite a bit of airplay since then.

#15

15. KALEIDOSCOPE (1874)

What did a student’s daily academic schedule look like in 1874? We have this spread from the Kaleidoscope to tell us. A senior could expect to study politics, economics, English, intellectual philosophy, geology, moral science, law, and history of civilization.

#16, 17

16. CARD CATALOG (1960)

Once a ubiquitous presence in our libraries, the card catalog has now gone the way of the rotary telephone and the typewriter. This particular catalog served as a register for the books in the Starr Library’s Abernethy Collection.

 

17. REGALIA (1895)

This academic robe and hood once belonged to Ernest Calvin Bryant, Class of 1891. Bryant taught physics at Middlebury from 1895 to 1937; upon his retirement, he gifted his regalia to colleague Ben Wissler. When Wissler died in 1983 his widow Prindle passed it along to Frank Winkler. This spring, Winkler presented the robe and hood to the department’s newest tenured member: Anne Goodsell. She becomes the first woman faculty member to wear the Bryant attire, and only the fourth wearer in its 122-year history.

#18

18.GRAVITY BEADS (1807)

Middlebury’s first professor was a scientist named Frederick Hall, appointed in 1806 as a professor of natural philosophy. Immediately following his hiring, he was dispatched to Europe, where he began procuring scientific apparatus for the College. One of his finds was this set of handblown glass “gravity beads.” Painstakingly crafted in Scotland, this set is quite rare; there are only four or five known to exist today.

 

#19

19. GREEN CHICKEN (1978)

Each fall, while the Middlebury and Williams football squads compete on the gridiron, students from the respective schools square off to tackle a two-hour set of math problems. To the winning side goes the Green Chicken, an avocado colored casserole dish, once a wedding gift to a Middlebury math professor. Alas, Williams—winner of the 39th annual contest in 2016—is currently housing the bird.

 

#20, 21

20. EZRA BRAINERD’S VIOLETS (1898)

Though Middlebury’s eighth president, Ezra Brainerd, originally focused his academic pursuits on rhetoric, he became a distinguished scholar in the natural sciences and was considered an expert on violets in North America. These specimens were collected in Addison County while Brainerd was a faculty member in the years before he assumed the presidency.

21. WHIRLING TABLE (1880s)

It is believed that this apparatus was acquired by Ezra Brainerd in the early 1880s, shortly after he began teaching physics at Middlebury. With its mahogany base, iron driving pulley, and steel spindle supported in a brass frame, the whirling table was used to determine centrifugal force.

 

#22

22. ATHLETIC SWEATER (1932)

Blue knit sweaters with a large white “M” passed for athletic swag in the 1930s. This particular item was worn by Charles Thrasher ’32, captain of the football team.

Clockwise from left: #23, 24, 25, 26

23. HORN (1890)

In the 19th century, horns were as prevalent on campus as cell phones are today. This particular horn has the surnames of all 23 members of the Class of 1890 etched into its side. There are also notations for special “hornings”: September 1889 “for the amusement of the freshmen”; October 1887 “for the amusement of the citizens of Cornwall”; and November 1888 at a parade honoring U.S. President Benjamin Harrison.

24.PHILOMATHESIAN SOCIETY MINUTES (1845)

Ralph Waldo Emerson delivered the Commencement address in 1845 upon invitation from the College’s literary and debating society. Subsequently, the group wrote to Emerson requesting permission to publish his talk, a request that the transcendentalist declined. News of the rejection is recorded in the society’s minutes of their October meeting.

25. DANCE CARD (1933)

Woe to the first-year who didn’t bring their dance card to a frosh frolic.

26. GRADUATION PIPE (1920s)

From the 1920s until the mid-1940s, graduates would celebrate Commencement by donning caps and gowns—and lighting one of these

 

#27

27. PAINTER’S LEDGER (1810)

When the College broke ground on what would become its first permanent structure—Painter Hall, then known as the “Stone College”—the man overseeing the construction kept track of every expenditure in exhaustive detail. Gamaliel Painter’s ledger was thought to be lost to history—until facilities staff discovered it during renovations of the Service Building in 2013.

 

#28

28. LS PIN (1915)

Nearly a century after the opening of the Language Schools, its students began sporting pins signifying their language of study—a handy way for passersby

 

#29

29. “BLUEPRINT” (1915)

A handful of cyanotype prints serve as documentation of the ceremonial groundbreaking for Mead Chapel.

 

#30

30. EMBOSSING PRESS (1910s)

President John Thomas kept an embossing press like this one—if not, in fact, this very one—on his desk, which he would use to imprint the College seal on official correspondence. The loose die that accompanies the press in this photograph predates the trustee’s 1933 decision to add the date “1800” along the bottom of the outside ring of the seal.

#31, 32, 33, 34

31. FIESTAWARE (1990s–2000s); 32.THANKSGIVING FEAST; 33. DOLCI; 34. BAKERS’ RECIPES

A culinary tour through time: from the colorful Proctor bowls and plates (just as often seen outside the dining hall as in!) to an early 20th-century Thanksgiving (roast venison!) to a Momofukuinspired Dolci (agedashi tofu!) to bakers’ recipes from the sixties (those elves!).

 

#35

35. COMMENCEMENT PROGRAM (1802)

Middlebury’s first Commencement exercise was an all-day affair, featuring music, Greek and Latin oration, speeches, prayer, and debate. That August day, one student “was admitted to the degree of bachelor of arts.”

Clockwise from left: #36, 37, 38

36. MONOGRAMMED PILLOWCASE (1932); 37. PIN COLLECTION; 38. THE FRATERNITY FILES (1977–1990)

For more than a century, Greek life played a central role in the social life of the College. One’s letters could be found on pillowcases; pins were collected among generations of family members; and, in the end, manila folders overflowed with memoranda documenting the demise of a once-proud tradition.

 

#39

39. ROBERT FROST’S WRITING CHAIR (1939)

During the first half of the 20th century, Robert Frost was a fixture at Bread Loaf. He began teaching at the School of English in 1921, was instrumental in the formation of the Writers’ Conference a few years later, and would return each summer until his death in 1963. He wrote many of his poems while sitting in this very chair in his Ripton cottage.

 

#40

40. ATWATER’S CUFFLINKS (1800)

Jeremiah Atwater was Middlebury’s first president, serving from 1800-1809. Educated at Yale, Atwater ably presided over a cash-strapped college, building a library and hiring the school’s first professor (see p. 39). However, when that professor received a raise that increased his salary to twice that of the president, Atwater quit in a snit. He also had nice cufflinks.

 

#41

41. FRISBEE DOG (1989)

Patrick Villiers Farrow’s bronze sculpture stands guard outside Munroe Hall. It’s rumored that five Middlebury students inadvertently invented the Frisbee in 1939 when they began to toss around a discarded pie tin from the Frisbie Pie Company while changing a flat tire. As for the sculpture, it’s probably as well known for being anatomically correct as it is for its depiction of athletic pursuits.

#42, 43, 44

42. STUDENT CATALOG (1822-1823)

His is the last name listed on this page of seniors in the 1822-1823 student catalog: Alexander Twilight; Corinth, Vermont; Room 37 w.c. In the spring, he would become the first African American to earn a degree from an American college; whether people knew that at the time is up for debate. It’s believed that the light-skinned Twilight was assumed to be white while a young man, and it wasn’t until later in his life that he was identified as being African American..

43. BATTELL’S OPUS (1915)

Joseph Battell’s Ellen or Whisperings of an Old Pine—in which a pine tree engages in Socratic dialogue with a woman named Ellen—is so strange and so bad that it has factored into an enduring tradition at the Writers’ Conference. For years, director Michael Collier has opened the conference by reading passages from the book. “It sets the literary bar so low that it puts everyone at ease.”

44. SUNDAY NIGHT GROUP (2006)

The precursor to the global environmental organization 350.org, Middlebury’s Sunday Night Group galvanized the campus during this century’s first decade—without them, there probably wouldn’t be a biomass plant and the College wouldn’t be carbon neutral.

#45, 46

45, 46. SIGNS OF PROTEST (1970, 2017)

At times in Middlebury’s history, students have found cause to stand in opposition—to events occurring around the country and the world or on our own campus. In the spring of 1970, a student proposal to suspend “normal activities” at the College in protest of the expansion of the Vietnam War and loss of life at Kent State was approved by the College Council; it was the prelude to a weeklong strike on campus. And this spring saw students and faculty wearing blue armbands inked with the letters RJ (for restorative justice) in protest of the College’s disciplinary process following the Charles Murray incident.

Leave a Reply Cancel reply

You must be logged in to post a comment.

Recent Stories

Features

“What Did I Just See?”

A schoolhouse fire in Cleveland shocked the nation in 1908 and then was largely forgotten—until now. A cohort of Middlebury scholars and students shines a new light on an American tragedy.

By Matt Jennings
Illustrations by Middlebury Animation Studio
January 31, 2018

Regarding Cloe

Her job at TED is to help people spread great ideas so that we all can understand the world a little bit better. But to really get to know Cloe Shasha ’11, we turned to her best friend.

By Bianca Giaever ’12.5
Photography by Jon Roemer
January 31, 2018

Tales of Two Cities

A pair of writers are your guides to two European metropolises as you’ve never seen them before.

By J. M. Tyree ’95 and Joseph Pearson ’97
Illustrations by Mark Hoffmann
January 30, 2018

Envisioning Middlebury

How would you describe Middlebury on its best day? And what does that best day look like tomorrow? And the day after? These are the questions a community and institution wrestled with for the better part of 18 months. We now have a framework to help answer those questions.

By Matt Jennings
January 30, 2018

Pursuits

Maker of Magic

Kpoene’ Kofi-Nicklin ’02 is the owner and creative genius behind a custom bridal boutique that is commanding the attention of the booming wedding industry.

By Lena Singer
Photography by Alyssa Schukar
January 29, 2018

Q&A

Being Victor

Discussing what it means to be a person of color in America today.

By Matt Jennings
Photograph by Paul Dahm
January 26, 2018

Editor’s Note

Radio, Radio

The evolution of a college radio station

By Matt Jennings
Illustration by Tracy Walker
January 26, 2018

Old Chapel

Our Future, Envisioned

With the adoption of a new strategic framework, Middlebury plans for the future

By Laurie L. Patton
Illustration by Montse Bernal
January 26, 2018

Road Taken

Somehow

A writer finds herself in South Sudan when war breaks out.

By Courtney Mather ’92
Illustration by Julia Breckenreid
January 26, 2018

Quotation

I have no stories of fancy places, no idea that’s going to cure anything, no history of hard times that is going to make anybody cry. What I do have is myself, and that is enough.”

—Nia Robinson ’19, delivering the talk “We Are Not As Lost As We Think We Are” at TEDxMiddlebury 2017. (She was wrong. There were tears.)

How Did You Get Here?

Meredith Robertson

By Will DiGravio
July 31, 2017

Nia Robinson

By Tabitha Mueller
July 31, 2017

Tim Hansen

By Izzy Fleming
July 31, 2017

What We’re Talking About

Katz Translates Dostoevsky, Simmons Rocks TED Radio Hour, and More

Recapping the news, notes, stories, and interesting tidbits that have grabbed our attention this week.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
Illustration by Loris Lora
March 21, 2018

Fall Splendor on Campus, Strategic Plan Ratified, and More

Recapping the news, notes, stories, and interesting tidbits that have grabbed our attention this week.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
November 2, 2017

New Students Arrive, President Patton on DACA, and More

Recapping the news, notes, stories, and interesting tidbits that have grabbed our attention this week.

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
September 7, 2017

Review

Editors’ Picks for January and February

By Middlebury Magazine Staff
February 25, 2018

Alone at the Rio Grande

In Lauren Markham’s gripping account, young brothers brave the migrant trail from El Salvador to the U.S.

By Susan H. Greenberg
Illustration by Anna Godeassi
January 29, 2018

Life After Loss

A heart-warming coming-of-age novel illustrates how a young girl helps a family emerge from the shadows of grief.

By Sara Thurber Marshall
January 29, 2018

Videos

When in the Baltics

Students in the Middlebury College choir are traveling to Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania in the spring of 2018 to perform songs native to the three countries along with music from North American composers.

By Chris Spencer and Stephen Diehl
April 6, 2018

Poetry in Motion

How Cameron McKinney ’14 found his unique voice in modern dance.

By Chris Spencer and Demetrius Borge ’16
February 22, 2018

Dance Hall Days

Our J-Term Scenes film crew pays a visit to a dance workshop.

By Demetrius Borge ’16
January 18, 2018
Middlebury College
  • Alumni
  • Newsroom
  • Contact Us
  • icon-instagram

The views presented are not necessarily those of the editors or the official policies of the College.

© 2018 Middlebury College Publications.