Chambersburg, Pennsylvania: 1927-1931.
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Hardcover. Two albums. Oblong quarto photo album, measuring 11" x 7", and quarto scrapbook, measuring 8½" x 12½". Blue cloth over stiff paper boards; tooled leatherette album. Together containing 127 sepia-toned or black and white gelatin silver photographs measuring between 1" x 1" and 3" x 5", with captions. Photo album is near fine with fine photographs; the scrapbook is very good with detached but present pages and bowing with very good or better contents.
A photo album and a scrapbook kept by a young woman, Phyllis Light, while attending Wilson Women’s College in the late 1920s. The photo album begins in 1927 and shows Light and her friends enjoying various activities including swimming, camping, and picnicking during the summers of 1927, 1928, and 1929 before she started college later that year. After a break in the album, she begins the college section of her photos with images of the buildings of Wilson College including the main building, Fletcher Hall, and the John Stewart Library. Following this are images of Light and her classmates during a Thanksgiving field hockey game, celebrating May Day, and posed around their dormitories. Her vacation time was spent at Eagles Mere, Pennsylvania where she spent summers boating and camping with friends. One photo from this time shows three African-American men posed for a photo, one wearing a lettermen sweater with a "D" on it.
Light also kept a scrapbook from her time at Wilson with clippings, pamphlets, and other ephemera from her school days. These include dance cards from neighboring colleges such as Penn State, Gettysburg, and Carlisle Academy. A copy of the Wilson Gossip newsletter, numerous programs, and Light’s academic papers are mounted throughout. Wilson College was founded by two Presbyterian ministers in 1869 as a women’s liberal arts college on a 300-acre campus. The school was one of the first to accept only women and was named for a donor, Sarah Wilson.
An extensive collection of photography and ephemera following a young woman’s time in college in the early 1930s.
Item #438174
