COVID-19 is not the first pandemic that Bryn Mawr College community members have experienced. As World War I was coming to an end, the world found itself facing a similar crisis with the outbreak of the Influenza Pandemic of 1918, sometimes referred to as the Spanish Flu. The College Archives holds records from both students and the college administration from 1918 which capture both the administrative decisions made during the pandemic and the effects of those decisions on some members of the Bryn Mawr community. This is a curated collection of digitized material from the College Archives; not all material related to the 1918 pandemic at Bryn Mawr is available online.
This collection is comprised of the single volume manuscript which describes Jackson’s interviews with Quaker enslavers in Maryland. The volume is organized by the names of individuals that Jackson interviewed, their reasons for enslaving people, and whether they could be persuaded to emancipate them.
Abigail Hopper Gibbons (1801-1893) was an important figure in many of the reform movements in the middle and late nineteenth century. Like her father, Isaac T. Hopper (1771-1852), "Abby" Gibbons was an ardent abolitionist and dedicated to prison reform. Of particular note is the correspondence sent and received by Abby Hopper Gibbons, including family letters and and related to her work to assist Union Soldiers during the Civil War. Also includes letters from Union soldiers, prominent Americans such as Theodore Roosevelt, Joseph Choate, and Lydia Maria Child, and correspondence reflecting Quaker family life and concerns.
The Aimwell School was founded in 1796 by Anne Parrish (1760-1800) and was run originally out of Parrish's own home on North 2nd Street in Philadelphia as an educational opportunity for poor girls. The school's mission was to provide a "proper" education to young girls while charging no more than a small regular fee for the usage of books. No tuition was charged and the school ran entirely on donations. Parrish and her coworkers worked towards the same mission, forming together as the Society for the Free Instruction of Female Children, under the management of the Society of Friends. In 1859, the Society for the Free Instruction of Female Children was incorporated and the name was then changed to the Aimwell School Association. The school was open until 1923; the corporation dissolved in 1935. The funds were transferred to a Friends fiduciary group.
The Aimwell School Records (1796-1935) consist primarily of minute book records and various documents related to the operation and administration of the Aimwell School.
Alice Whittier Jones (1873-1960) was a Quaker educator who spent much of her adult life in Israel and Palestine. She taught at the Girls' School at the Friends Ramallah Mission from 1906 to 1907, before becoming principal in 1907. Jones returned to the United States in 1914, and remained there through 1918, during which time the Ramallah School was closed because of World War I. In 1918, Jones volunteered with the Red Cross to go to Palestine and was put in charge of a large orphanage in Jerusalem. Jones, along with her friend Katie Gabriel, returned to Palestine in 1919, restored the badly damaged school, and resumed her position as principal of the school.
This collection spans more than two centuries and includes most notably members of the Allinson and Taylor families. There are also letters from Joseph Bonaparte, Sarah Moore Grimke, Julia Ward Howe and George Washington. Prominent material types include correspondence, diaries, financial, legal and property papers, maps, photographs and poetry. The richest subject veins are anti-slavery, including the Free Produce Association of Friends, the yellow fever epidemic in Philadelphia and settlement of land in New York.
Alma A. Clarke (1890- ) was an American volunteer in France during World War I. Clarke helped French orphans through the Committee France-America for the Protection of the Children of the Frontier and served as a Red Cross Auxiliary Nurse in the American Red Cross Military Hospital No. 1 in Neuilly-sur-Seine. This collection includes two scrapbooks, 1917-1919, compiled by Clarke. One scrapbook focuses on her work with orphaned children in France, and the other relates to her work as an auxiliary nurse with the American Red Cross Military Hospital.
The collection is composed chiefly of letters of members of the Society of Friends in the United States from the 17th to the 20th centuries; there are also documents, clippings, published articles, and miscellaneous manuscripts.
Ampersand published literary and artistic submissions including fiction, poetry, drawings, and photography. Contributors included students, faculty, staff, and alumni. It was published twice each year by students at Bryn Mawr College and Haverford College.
Anne Dunkin Greene Bates (1885–1939) attended Bryn Mawr College from 1901 to 1903, before transferring to Barnard College. This collection primarily contains letters from Bates to her parents during her freshman and sophomore years at Bryn Mawr. Her letters describe College plays, sports, faculty, courses, and social activities.