Hooray Archives

This week, Carol Ketcham, the school archivist, dropped by with some goodies for the project.  She gave me copies of Theodate Pope Riddle and the Founding of Avon Old Farms by Brooks Emeny, Recollections of Avon Old Farms School 1935-1941, by Clarence Derrick, and Kegley Notes, which is a series of Avonian articles written by Seth Mendell '52 to record the recollections of Bill Kegley.  (Bill Kegley was employed by Avon Old Farms from the summer of 1924 until well into the 70's; he was on site for the construction of the buildings and worked with Mrs. Riddle and every head of school through George Trautman.)  I had been looking for the Brooks Emeny piece, but I had no idea the others existed, and, since they represent eyewitness accounts of the Founder's Era, I cannot wait to have at them.  Emeny's book has the Deed of Trust among its appendices; in leafing through, I have noted with interest that the Aide to the Provost [1st called Master of Detail, this is the position whose mere existence caused so much discord between TPR and the Founder's Era Provosts (and caused some candidates for Provost to think twice)] had to be a graduate of a service academy and a former officer of the army or navy of this or any other English-speaking country and could not be dismissed by the Provost.  On a separate note, the name of the student newspaper, the Avon Record, is also set forth in the Deed of Trust.  Of course, the Deed is not entirely sacrosanct; the section entitled "Sports" specifically excludes extra-mural or interscholastic competition in anything other than riding, and through the years we have dropped the positions of Chief Engineer, Farm Manager, Forester, Steward, and, of course, Aide to the Provost.
Carol also told me that she has in the archives bound copies of all of Pete Seeger's '36 underground school newspapers.  Pete was an aspiring journalist when he was here, and he wrote and published his own school paper.  He once told me that TPR renewed his scholarship every year primarily because his newspaper was how she found out about what was going on at school! 
Thus, it seems there will be ample written sources for the chapter on the Founder's Era.  Of course, I hope to glean a great deal of information from interviews, but it is nice to know there is a wealth of information - most of it primary sources - available.
(By the way, you might well ask why none of the pieces mentioned in this post appear on the still anemic list of sources below.  The answer is that, for no reason of consequence, I have decided to add sources to that list only when I have actually consulted them in what I think is a fruitful way.  Hence, the list will hold at one source until at least mid December, after which time Gordon Clark Ramsey's book and the sources listed here will begin to appear.)