Forum Society Records 1906-1919
- US US-IaGG MS/MS 01.148
- Collection
1 bound volume of secretary's records detailing the society's proceedings
Forum Society Records 1906-1919
1 bound volume of secretary's records detailing the society's proceedings
Philadelphica Society Records 1919-1924
2 hand-written volumes of secretary's minutes.
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
Crossett, John M.
The Harold L. Clapp papers consist of talks; unpublished articles, stories, books, verse, and translations; newspaper clippings about Clapp; and correspondence. One published book is reproduced here; other published works are listed in Appendix A. The papers span the years 1929-61, with the bulk of the material between 1947 and 1961. Mr. Clapp was very concerned about American public primary and secondary education and in teacher training, favoring greater emphasis on basic elementary subjects. Much of the collections records his active work in this area, speaking and writing and working for the Council for Basic Education in Washington, D.C. This interest began with his observations of his sons’ education in Swiss public schools during the family’s year in Geneva, 1947-48. The year is described in detail in letters written by HLC and Laura Clapp and in Laura Clapp’s introductory pages to the letters. All of these are in “Letters from Switzerland,” the first series in the Clapp papers. The Swiss letters also describe living and travel conditions and problems of American students in post-war Europe. Mr. Clapp’s ideas on education are most fully documented I the series Council for Basic Education, Talks, and Published and Unpublished Writings. French Play School shows the practical application of his ideas. His fiction (three books) was satire on American education. Other than the Manual for French A2 the papers contain very little directly relating to Mr. Clapp’s teaching of French at Grinnell College. Laura Clapp transcribed by hand or had typed some of the papers because the originals were difficult to read. She collected and in part arranged the material and appended explanatory notes where she felt they would help a reader better understand her husband’s writings. Excerpts from her letters to her mother (series 10) describe some campus events of the 1940s and ‘50s.
Clapp, Harold L.
Lenabel Courtney Oral Interview
Lenabel Body Courtney was interviewed by her grandson, J. Courtney Wilson, in January, February, August and December 1977. The collection consists of 15 cassette tapes and transcripts of approximately 230 typed pages, the transcript for each tape having an index of topics discussed.
Wilson, J. Courtney
RG-T: Treasurer's Office Records
Items in the Treasurer's Office record group span the years 1847-1980. Records from the 19th Century (Series 1 and 4) consist chiefly of ledgers, journals, and donor lists.
Prior to 1887 the college had no office force, and a Trustee served as Treasurer (without salary). Several local bankers serves as treasurers and auditors during the Gates' administration, The first salaried Treasurer was H. H. Robbins.
H. H. Robbins, 1869, was Secretary and Treasurer of Iowa College 1887-1906, and was a Trustee 1890-1906. Prior to 1887 he was a Congregational minister and a railroad engineer. He was the son of Iowa Band Member A. B. Robbins, who was the first president of the Board.
H. W. Somers, 1882, became Business Manager and Secretary in 1907. His duties were to direct the financial and accounting system of the college and to direct fund raising. In 1916 his title changed to Secretary and Treasurer, and Louis Pyelps became Business Manager. Somers served until 1919.
Louis Phelps came as Business Manager in 1916, was college Treasurer 1919-1949. He was Secretary of the Grinnell College Foundation 1917-ca. 1954. Prior to coming to Grinnell he was a construction engineer, and was involved in construction of the women’s quadrangle 1914-1916.
Rupert Hawk, Treasurer, 1949-1956
Charles Kaufman served as Accountant 1942-1956 and as Treasurer 1956-1966
Donald Lambie, Treasurer, 1966-1972
Robert Anderson, Treasurer, 1972-1988
Waldo Walker, Treasurer, 1988-1990
David Clay, Treasurer, 1990-
From about 1913 to 1940 the college expanded its facilities dramatically. Louis Phelps, College Treasurer 1919-1949, and Grinnell College Foundation Secretary 1917-ca.1954, preserved most of the papers which expedited the financing and construction of the dormitories and a few other buildings during this period. Series 3-5 are from his files.
Providing on-campus dormitores for students was a new phenomenon in the early part of the twentieth century, and financing their construction called for considerable ingenuity. Grinnell was a pioneer in this, and other colleges and universities studied the example. One officer of the General Education Board, a Rockefeller philanthropy which contributed significantly to the College, praised President Main for pioneering in the social and educational experiment; another officer feared that war or pestilence might create serious problems in dormitories (RG-T, Ser. 3.4, folder 2, Phelps to Arnett, 6/22/30),. The College Trustees created Grinnell College Foundation to raise the funds. Details of their activities are in Series 6 and Series 3.4 of this record group. Dormitory construction records are in Series 4.
Part of the financing involved owning, managing, and selling farms and other real estate. Correspondence between Mr. Phelps and the farmers and farm managers (in series 5) records on a day-to-day basis the myriad problems farmers faced during the 1920s and 30s in the midwest. Text books describe the agricultural situation, but this correspondence brings home what it was like to live and cope with falling market prices, crop diseases, pernicious weather patterns, and personal tragedies. The correspondence includes such details as building and equipment repairs; livestock sales; plant and animal diseases; when to castrate the pigs; planting windbreaks; inability to get crops to market because of muddy roads; government farm assistance programs; trial planiting of the new hybrid corn seed. Phelps was involved in all of these details.
RG-O: College Organizations 1958-
Keith Olson Negatives and Prints
Consists of three boxes of negatives, several candid pictures of college, and an aerial shot of North Campus.
Olson, Keith
William Grenzebach '67 Grinnell College Correspondence
Correspondence from William Grenzebach's time at Grinnell. May be read ONLY with permission from William Grenzebach. Researcher must contact him and explain purpose for examining the correspondence. Duration of restriction: Grenzebach's lifetime.
Personal papers and materials of Shaffer Eugene Thompson '58, including schoolwork from high school, Grinnell College, and graduate school. Files from his time serving as dean of students at Grinnell College, files from his work at Whitman College, Reed College, and personal correspondence, photos, and files.
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.
Hall, James Norman
Leonard F. Parker. Notes for his book, History of Poweshiek County
The collection contains “historical manuscripts, notes and correspondence of Professor L.F. Parker in regard to material for his History of Poweshiek County. Most materials are handwritten, although a few of Parker’s manuscripts are typed.
Parker, Leonard F.
RG-Reg: Office of the Registrar 1869-1988
Consists of transcripts and biographical material for Grinnell students. All information is considered confidential under provisions of 20 U.S.C Section 1232(g) (1982), the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) of 1974, as amended.
Grinnell – Chapin Genealogical Material
The collection consists of genealogical charts 1480 - 1919. Correspondence circa. 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.
Grinnell, Josiah Bushnell