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Keen New Addition: Photo Album Purchase Contains Rare Images of Woodrow Wilson


by Dan Linke

img_016With more than 600 books on Woodrow Wilson, including Scott Berg’s recent autobiography, is there anything new about Woodrow Wilson? With the acquisition of the photo album of Paul Edward Keen *15, the answer is yes.

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His photo album contains a dozen images of Wilson’s 1913 inauguration and his 1915 return to campus to vote, as well as many more campus and local scenes that he took while studying at the Princeton Theological Seminary (1912-16) and Princeton University (MA1915).

About half the album contains photographs that Keen took elsewhere such as Philadelphia and Antietam, but the latter half is filled with images of the town of Princeton and the campuses of the University and Seminary.  In one 1915 photograph Wilson’s black mourning armband is visible on his upper left arm; Edith, his wife of 29 years, died in August 1914.

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Born in Yorkana, Pennsylvania in 1888, after graduation from the Seminary, Keen was ordained in the United Evangelical Church and led the congregation in Wrightsville, PA, before becoming a Bible professor at Allbright College (his undergraduate alma mater) in 1924.  Starting in 1928, he taught at the Evangelical Theological Seminary in Napersville, Illinois, until his death in 1958.

Here are just 14 images found within the album:

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The album was purchased, in part, with funds provided by the Goreff/Neuwirth Charitable Trust in honor of Danielle van Jaarsveld, Class of 1995.

 

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