This week’s progress report for the UMW group can be found here! I just have a few comments of my own to add.
As Jack mentions in the progress report, we went back to the CRHC this week to make digitization requests. The woman who normally scans was not in that day, but the next day she scanned and emailed me all of the items that I requested. I also received scans from UMW Special Collections (only a few because luckily the main sources from Special Collections are already digitized and online), so everything for my portion of the UMW site has been digitized! I don’t know if we will include every single digitized image on the history pages, so hopefully we can put additional images into the image galleries that Jack is creating.
Our next milestone is March 20, by which date we have agreed that we will all have the text for the website complete. I have started writing the “Student Life” page for the Fredericksburg State Normal School portion of the website, and after completing that I will write the “Academics” page. Both of these pages are really fun to research, and it is fascinating to see the sort of changes that the Great War wrought upon course offerings at the school (some of which you can read about in this blog post). In going back through some of my sources and doing additional readings, I found some really cool bits of information! The coolest find for me was that several professors and student clubs adopted French and Belgian war orphans! It seems that the professors or student groups only cared for each orphan for a year, so the “adoption” was not permanent–nevertheless, I think it is still amazing that the teachers and students were so involved in caring for victims of the war. In all, the Fredericksburg State Normal School adopted 5 war orphans during the war years!
I also found some excellent quotes while I was reading through yearbooks and academic catalogues and bulletins. I will include them below.
“The world has moved, and to those who stay at home is given an opportunity, too often neglected by parents and ignored in homes, to awaken through the heroes and heroines of a locality the spirit of American democracy.”
–Fredericksburg SNS Bulletin, October 1917, page 4
“The interests of these valiant and sacrificial nations must be our interests and their needs ours, for they are fighting our battles.”
–Fredericksburg SNS Bulletin, October 1917, page 11
“It was a beautiful spirit of co-operation between school and community.”
–Fredericksburg SNS Bulletin, January 1919, page 4
“Teachers, the war is over. . . . From the school-houses of our Commonwealth, the children are calling as never before for your patriotic service.”
–Fredericksburg SNS Bulletin, January 1919, page 14
Note: The featured image for this post is from the 1918 Fredericksburg State Normal School viewbook.
I love the quotes that you have found in the SNS Bulletins. It is always interesting to read the types of language that people employed during the war years.
I’m having a similar situation with my scanned documents and images rights now. I think I may end up using a gallery or archive option to showcase some of the items I’ve found. I’m just trying to find the balance between what would be useful and what would be cumbersome on my Century America website. I may end up changing my WordPress theme, so that my website can integrate visuals more attractively.
Thank you! I was really excited when I kept finding great quotes, so I hope we can incorporate most of them into the site. I think it’s really interesting because we do see that “mobilization of emotion” that Kennedy talks about.
A gallery is a great idea! Let us know if you find any good themes or plugins for creating image galleries, because we’d love to try them out too.
Great progress Leah! It’s really interesting that “orphans” were adopted in a similar way people today “adopt” the impoverished children on television. Cool stuff.