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The musical scores (and recordings of performances) were composed for a variety of institutions and occasions.  A number of vocal and instrumental pieces were composed for St. Paul’s Episcopal Church (Grinnell, Iowa) and St. John’s Catholic Church (Indianapolis, Indiana).

The composition of the opera Eric Hermannson’s Soul (begun in 1986-87 and completed in 1993) was supported with fellowships from Grinnell College and the Associated Colleges of the Midwest.  The opera was first performed in Grinnell on September 11, 1993 and in Iowa City on September 24, 1993.

Oh Millersville, based on the poetry of Grinnell College alumnus James Norman Hall, was first performed on February 29, 1992 in Herrick Chapel with Amy Johnson, soprano, and Richard Gordon, piano.  The 1991 orchestral version was commissioned by the Dubuque Symphony Orchestra and was performed on February 22 & 23, 1992 with Kristie Tigges, soprano.

Out of the land premiered at the inauguration of Pamela A. Ferguson as the 11th President of Grinnell College, October 12, 1991.  Text was by Associate Professor Paula V. Smith and by Grinnell President George F. Magoun.  The Grinnell Singers performed the piece, conducted by John Stuhr-Rommereim.

Broken Ground was commissioned by the Des Moines Symphony Orchestra, the Iowa Sesquicentennial Commission, and Grinnell College to honor the 150th anniversaries of the state of Iowa and of Grinnell College in 1996.  The texts were composed by Iowa poets Michael Carey, Edward Hirsch, Dan Hunter, Paula V. Smith, Mary Swander, and Ray Young Bear.  The world premier was in May 1996, performed by the Des Moines Symphony and The Grinnell Singers.

Consists of notebooks containing records of the books Ryan read. His daughter, Jean, noted: “It shows his thoroughness, organization, and wide range of interest.” Only a few Lesson Plans are included in Ryan’s papers, including some for Fundamentals of Speech, Parliamentary Law, and one of his adult education classes in Des Moines. Correspondence includes two letters from Ryan to his daughter and son-in-law. The letter dated October 22, 1947 was “Ryan’s last letter written from Grinnell after retirement, and just before leaving to live on the West Coast.” [Jean Squires’ note] The typed letter was received after Ryan’s death by his wife from a Des Moines businessman who was a former member of Ryan’s classes there.

John Dashiell Stoops was a professor of Philosophy at Iowa/Grinnell College from 1904 to 1943 and Professor Emeritus from 1943 until his death in 1973.  This collection of his papers, donated by Rose Stoops, is dated from 1904 to 1950s and includes manuscripts, notes, and correspondence.

The collection consists of personal and professional correspondence primarily covering 1962 through 1970.  The bulk of the materials are concerned with conditions at Parsons College, beginning with the summer of 1962 and carrying through to its closing in 1973.  Newspaper clippings document final years of parsons College.  Three boxes contain official material published by Parsons, minutes from various organizations on campus, and student records. One box contains the reports on parsons from various agencies.  A small amount of material is related to Dr. Crossett’s tenure on the faculty at Grinnell College

The collection consists primarily of letters written to John Nollen from members of his family 1906-32.  Correspondents include his parents, his wife, Louise, brother Henry, and his sisters Hanna and Sara.  The two sisters taught 1929-33 at Anatolia College, Salonika, Greece.  The collection includes their letters to John as well as typed copies of their letters to other members of the family and contain descriptions of their travels during those years.

The collection contains correspondence between Macy and several people from the 1870s to 1919, including a letter from Woodrow Wilson thanking Macy for a gift and for his congratulations on the 1910 New Jersey gubernatorial election. There are a number of miscellaneous family documents, Macy’s diary from 1864-65 in Savannah, Georgia, and sixty letters of tribute at the time of Macy’s death.

The James Norman Hall papers at Grinnell College span the years 1906-54.  About half the collection is correspondence, clippings, photographs, and notebooks, the other half is manuscripts of his writings, including his autobiography, novels, short stories, essays, and poems, published and unpublished.  The 665 letters and post cards are arranged chronologically.  A small portion are from Hall's four years in Boston before World War I, nearly half are from World War I and post war years, and the rest from the last 25 years of his life.  Much of the correspondence is with his family and two Boston friends, George Courtright Greener (1911-53), Director of the North Bennet Street Industrial School, and Roy Cushman (1914-50), Probation Officer in Juvenile Court.  Other correspondence includes letters and cards from Hall to his former Grinnell professors, Charles Payne (1916-44) and George L. Pierce (1911-50), from his college roommate, Chester C. Davis (1910-19), newspaperman, head of the Agricultural Adjustment Administration in the 1930's and president of the Federal Reserve Bank in St. Louis, and a few letters from Ellery Sedgwick, editor of Atlantic Monthly.  The Atlantic Monthly-Hall-Nordhoff correspondence is on 14 rolls of microfilm, and the Sedgwick-Hall correspondence is on one roll in the Archives.  A few letters are exchanges between friends with comments about Hall.  Some letters are typed, some are carbons, most are handwritten.  A typed version of selected war letters is included.  The Archives does not have Robert Dean Frisbie's letters on which Hall's story "Frisbie of Danger Island" is based, nor correspondence with Nordhoff.

Most of the newspaper clippings are reports of Hall's war experiences and reviews of his books, a few are about Hall, Tahiti, and the South Seas.  Most photographs are from World War I and his Iceland trip, a few are of his family in Tahiti.

Twenty-eight small handwritten notebooks, some of which record Hall's travels and outlines of stories and poems, a diary of the 1909 Grinnell College Glee Club tour to the west coast, and Hall's Grandfather Young's small Civil War diary (1864) are also in the collection.  Two rolls of microfilm in the Archives contain war letters, pages of notebooks and other items selected from the Grinnell collection by Paul Briand Jr., who wrote a biography of Hall.

Over half of the collection consists of typescripts, some with revisions or several versions of sections, of nine of the twelve books Nordhoff and Hall co-authored (manuscripts of the first three, published before 1930, are not in the collection), of parts or all of seven of the seventeen books Hall published alone, of scripts of two of Hall's plays, of typescripts or holograph versions of 19 of the more than 80 published magazine pieces, and of about sixty unpublished poems, stories, and essays, most undated.  The Archives owns 28 books Hall wrote by himself or coauthored with Nordhoff, including foreign language editions of some titles.

The Hall papers at Grinnell College are a valuable resource for anyone studying his career as a writer, his travels, experiences, ideas, and the sources of some of his stories.  Hall's war correspondence is particularly enlightening for the World War I scholar interested in the human aspect of the war.

Photographs taken by Grinnell College employee Jack Robertson during the 1986 school year. The majority of the photographs are of teaching faculty members, but many photos are also of students.

One letter from H.W. Parker, chair of the natural history department of Iowa College, to Mr. Aldrich regarding the release of Parker's newest book, The Spirit of Beauty.

This collection is composed of correspondence, materials from organizations and conferences, academic writings and notes, recommendations, photographs, greeting cards, gradebooks, address books, degrees, and awards.

These papers are notes, reminiscences, and correspondence of Norris regarding science clubs, science teachers, and presidents of Grinnell College.

In this file dated 1917-1931 are newspaper clippings and photographs in a scrapbook about President Main, a short biography of Harriet Hamlin, and the bulk of the collection consists of personal letters between Hamlin and Main.

The collection consists of genealogical charts 1480 0 1919.  Correspondence ca. 1898-1908, 32 portraits, some unidentified, copies of cemetery inscriptions, Family Association publications for the Chapin (4 books, 1862, 1908, 1908, 1927) and Alden (1 book, 1916) families, sixty Chapin family deeds and documents from Massachusetts 1674-1851, and a 114-page handwritten notebook by E. F. G. of Stockbridge, 1848, family history of Chapin ancestors Dudley, Woodbridge, Jones, and Eliot.

The papers have detailed information about a few branches of the family, little or no information on other branches.  The researcher might consult U.S. Library of Congress, Genealogies in the Library of Congress to identify more complete sources.

Genealogical charts in this collection trace part of the Grinnell family from Pierre Grenelle, born about 1480 in France. A descendant, Matthew, born 1602, became a Protestant and moved to Newport, R.I., in 1630, beginning the American line of the family. Matthew’s son married a granddaughter of John and Priscilla Alden. Other charts trace various branches of the Chapin family from about 1576 to Mary Grinnell’s birth about 1857.

The personal correspondence, notes and photographs of former Grinnell professor of physics Grant O. Gale. Gale was educated at the University of Wisconsin at Madison and got his masters in physics at the University of Michigan in 1933. He taught at Grinnell from 1929 to 1972. The college's observatory is named for Gale, and he was active in several Grinnell community organizations before his passing in 1998.
Gale is remembered for his dedication to his students and to his role as a mentor on the Grinnell campus.