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Author: Helene van Rossum

  • Protecting country and Indians: The records of Junius Wilson MacMurray (1843-1898)

    How likely is it to find Civil War letters and diaries among the papers of politicians, journalists, and diplomats that are kept at Mudd Library? Or Colum­bia Plateau Indian pictographs? Meet Junius Wilson MacMurray, whose records are kept among the papers of his son John Van Antwerp MacMurray, a diplomat most of our blog readers…

  • “She Flourishes:” Chapters in the History of Princeton Women.

    Mudd Manuscript Library’s new exhibition features women at Princeton, from the days of Evelyn College (1887-1897), mainly attended by daughters of Princeton University and Princeton Theological Seminary professors, to the appointment of Shirley Tilghman as the first woman president of Princeton University in 2001. For the first time our exhibit is accompanied by historical film…

  • Johnny Sylvester ’37 and Babe Ruth

    Baseball in October is often marked by premier teams, clutch plays, and memorable moments. One such moment came during Game Four of the 1926 World Series. In that game on Wednesday, October 6th, the St. Louis Cardinals hosted the New York Yankees and their great player Babe Ruth. Ruth would shine for the Yankees, hitting…

  • Meet Mudd’s Brandon Joseph

    Name: Brandon Joseph ‘12 Major: History, with Certificates in African American Studies and American Studies Title/Duties: Project Archivist Assistant. It is my responsibility to help the archivists at Mudd arrange and process collections. My duties include collecting details related to the contents of collections, rehousing and arranging collections, and creating folder lists for finding aids…

  • Meet Mudd’s Q Miceli

    Name: Q Miceli ’12 Major: Religion, with certificates in Creative Writing (Poetry) and Judaic Studies Title/Duties: Technical Services Student Worker. My duties include sorting current University-generated publications as they arrive at Mudd in a process called “accessioning;” entering doctoral dissertations into a database (I used to pack dissertations on CDs to ship to ProQuest, before…

  • “Princeton: A Search for Answers,” 1973

    During a morning session of the President’s Conference in the early 1970s, a member of the student panel told the assembled alumni that she had come to Princeton “not to find a way of making a living, but instead to find a way of making a life.” Filmmakers Julian Krainin and DeWitt Sage used this…

  • Being Jewish at Princeton: from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s days to the Center of Jewish Life

    “The Princeton of today is not the Princeton of Scott Fitzgerald. And by that I mean you can feel comfortable being Jewish, you can feel comfortable being Asian, you can feel comfortable being African American. And while this might not always have been true (…) it is definitely true today.” The speaker is Erik Ruben…

  • A lesson for fundraisers: the solicitation process for “A Campaign for Princeton,” 1982

    In a previous blog we discussed the three-year $53 Million Campaign, launched at the beginning of Robert’s Goheen’s presidency in 1959. On an even larger scale was the five-year fundraising campaign that was launched on February 19, 1982 during the presidency of Goheen’s successor William G. Bowen. The goal for “A Campaign for Princeton” was…

  • Post-War Princeton: The building of Firestone Library, the Dillon Gym, and Bicentennial celebrations, 1945-1949

    From the start of the Depression until the end of World War II, construction activity at Princeton, like at other universities, was at a near standstill. The first buildings to be erected here as part of the post-war building boom on American campuses were the Dillon Gym and the Harvey S. Firestone Memorial Library. The…

  • Princeton’s Bicentennial: Charter Day, October 19, 1946

    In the 1946-1947 academic year, Princeton celebrated its 200th anniversary with a series of convocations and events, ending with a concluding ceremony, captured in a newsreel, which included a convocation address by US President Harry Truman. Today’s blog features another newsreel about the University’s bicentennial year that focuses on “Charter Day,” October 19, 1946. In…