Preserving and recording our history is an essential element in building the future of Antioch College. Antiochiana began as a collection of historical artifacts gathered by College librarian Bessie Totten, Class of 1900, who served the College for 41 years. Among its impressive collection, Antiochiana includes the papers of Horace Mann and Arthur Morgan, used for academic research by scholars from around the world.
After more than a century, Antioch College remains committed to careful stewardship of this critical College resource. If you have questions regarding the archive or wish to support its preservation with the pledge of a capital or planned gift, please contact us at 937-286-5534.
Songs from the Stacks News from Scott Sanders, Archivist
01.31.2013 February marks the 60th anniversary of the most serious disaster, at least of a physical nature, in the history of Antioch College: the North Hall Fire. The blaze began on Sunday afternoon, Feb 22nd, 1953, during the winter term with a full house of nearly 100 students living there. Miraculously, no one was injured or worse, a testament to the existence, not to mention the expertise, of the College’s student-operated fire department known as “Maples.” In... › MORE
12.27.2012 What follows appeared in the very first issue of earliest Antioch College publication in the archives, and the earliest known account of a holiday break in our holdings. Though unattributed, the article has the literary stamp of a member of the class of 1870, Ellen A. Cox. “Nellie” as she was known, was an exceptional student, a leading figure in the women’s Crescent Literary Society, and served on the editorial staff in The Antiochian’s first year of... › MORE
11.29.2012 Inspiration for this installment comes from the second Tuesday in November: Election Day. While the nation voted for President of the United States and Ohio decided on State Issues 1 and 2, Antioch College held its first elections in years to regenerate Community Government. The College held this election in the East Gym, which holds the very coolest thing Antioch College owns: the Gilbert Wilson Mural. A long article in the May 1937 issue of Scribner’s... › MORE
10.25.2012 Feeling in an electoral mood, “Stacks” ventures into politics this month, though true to form into the politics of 1848. That year, the first in American history to have a single Election Day, saw an electorate certainly as polarized as the one heading into the Election of 2012, and perhaps even more so, due to a single monumental issue, namely the extension of slavery into territory acquired in the Mexican War, known euphemistically as “the sectional... › MORE
09.27.2012 Among the many founders of Antioch College, none had more far reaching impact on its subsequent history than the Reverend Eli Fay (1822–1899). Fay came from Cazenovia, New York, near Syracuse, appears to have been largely self-educated, and joined the Christian denomination in the 1840s. A leading delegate to the Marion Convention of 1850 where the idea of Antioch College was formally put to paper, Fay advanced the twin founding principles of... › MORE
08.31.2012 Among the momentous events of 1914, which include the outbreak of the First World War, the establishment of Mother’s Day as an official holiday in the United States, and the film debut of Charlie Chaplin, was the most remarkable season in the history of Antioch College football. As incongruous as the terms “Antioch College” and “football” may sound, the College known for not playing sports maintained intercollegiate athletics for more than 50 years.... › MORE
07.26.2012 Eero Saarinen, Birch Hall, and the Master Plan Eero Saarinen (1910–1961) was not yet the celebrated, controversial architect he would become when Antioch College engaged his firm to put together its first campus master plan in 1944. That year a fledgling Campus Planning Committee had concluded that the College required the services of an experienced reputable architect to help merge the many physical needs of a campus barely changed since its... › MORE
06.28.2012 The centerpiece of just about every Antioch College Reunion has been an evening meal usually accompanied by a speech. When Algo Henderson delivered the following address at the 1935 Alumni Dinner, he was concluding his second year as interim president—filling in for Arthur Morgan, who was away building dams for the Tennessee Valley Authority. Here one of the more articulate commentators ever on Antioch College addresses, among other subjects, the College... › MORE
05.31.2012 Credited directly to Danish pastor and philosopher Nikolaj Frederik Severin Grundtvig (1783–1872), the folk school model of adult education grew out of the French Revolution. Grundtvig was inspired by a report on public education written by the Marquis de Condorcet in 1792 that first advanced the concept of popular education, a movement that was part political and part pedagogical. The idea was to give the peasantry and other people from the lower... › MORE
04.27.2012 Aaron Burt Champion and the Cincinnati Red Stockings Ohio’s own Aaron Burt Champion (1842–1895) entered the Preparatory Department of Antioch College in 1856 when Horace Mann was still its president. He left school in 1860 without a degree, though that did not prevent him from becoming a successful Cincinnati attorney in just a few short years. Champion’s meteoric rise in the legal world led to a life in baseball, by that time fast developing into... › MORE
03.29.2012 Senator Arthur Brown, Class of 1862 Arthur Brown was born in Schoolcraft in Kalamazoo County, Michigan in 1843. He moved to Yellow Springs with his family when he was 13 years old so that his sisters—Marcia, Oella, and Olympia, could attend Antioch College—then one of the few schools open to both men and women. Arthur also attended Antioch, graduating in 1862. He earned a master’s degree at University of Michigan in 1864 and was admitted to... › MORE
02.23.2012 Written nearly three months after H.L. Mencken penned a screed to him about Antioch College, Professor of History Hendrik Van Loon’s letter to his famously acerbic friend may not be in direct response, but it is the closest thing to it in the Antioch College Archives. From its disarming style, clearly Van Loon could be a lot of fun to be around, though he reveals a certain arrogance about him as well, perhaps one of the things that had infuriated his... › MORE
01.26.2012 HW Van Loon of the college faculty in the 1920s Among the first hires in the Arthur Morgan era, Professor Hendrik Willem Van Loon came to Antioch College to teach history in 1921. Born in the Netherlands in 1882, Van Loon came to the United States at 20 to enter Cornell University, ultimately earning a doctorate from the University of Munich in 1911. Despite his academic credentials, Van Loon's career in higher education would prove all too brief.... › MORE
11.18.2011 Helen French Greene (1868-1952), who wrote the following for the Smith Alumnae Quarterly in 1928, was raised in Lowell, Massachusetts, where her father was minister of the Eliot Union Church. In 1870, the Rev. John Morton Greene influenced a wealthy widow, Sophia Smith, to endow a women’s college to be named in her honor. After graduating from Smith College in 1891 and earning a master’s degree there in 1901, she ran a settlement house in... › MORE
11.04.2011 Thomas and Mary Gove Nichols had managed to defeat Horace Mann at his own game—the war of words—and by early 1857 he represented a distinct minority opinion on the subject of whether they should be permitted to remain in Yellow Springs or not. Despite their victory, however, before the season was out they would suspend operation of the Memnonia Institute, renounce their long held belief in free love, leave town and, ultimately, the... › MORE
10.23.2011 Following the withdrawal of William Hambleton from Antioch College in March 1856 over his association with Thomas and Mary Gove Nichols, reformer proprietors of the Memnonia Institute, and the subsequent dismissal of his classmate Jared Gage a few weeks later, Horace Mann's war with the Nichols' entered a new stage. Gage had taken up the mantle of bookseller vacated by Hambleton's departure, and had vouched for Dr. Nichols to the College... › MORE
10.07.2011 William Neal Hambleton of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania, was already 32 years old when he entered the Antioch Preparatory Department in 1855. Prior to entering school, he'd been a farmer, cabinetmaker, and teacher. He was already a physician, a graduate of the American Hydropathic Institute that Thomas and Mary Gove Nichols had operated in Cincinnati previous to the establishment of the Memnonia Institute of Yellow Springs. As an adherent to the... › MORE
09.25.2011 Thomas and Mary Gove Nichols were already notorious for their reform activities when they issued the following prospectus in 1856 announcing their proprietorship of the Yellow Springs Water Cure. Water cure, also known as hydropathy, was a popular form of alternative medicine that employed techniques known today as homeopathic and followed regimens modern observers would recognize as wellness. Established in the South Glen near Yellow Springs in the... › MORE
09.08.2011 Horace Mann’s adherence to and understanding of phrenology begins and ends with Britain’s greatest phrenologist, George Combe (1788-1858). Originally a lawyer by training, Combe had wide ranging interests typical of the virtuoso intellectualism of his day. Though not initially impressed by the tenets of phrenology, in 1816 he observed a dissection of the human brain by noted phrenologist Dr. Johann Spurzheim, and became a convert soon after... › MORE
08.25.2011 In his report on the first ever meeting of the Faculty of Antioch College, held in his parlor at West Newton, MA in November 1852, Horace Mann described the assembled as having “a most remarkable coincidence of opinion and sentiment among the persons present, not only as to theory, but in practical matters…we were all teetotalers; all anti-tobacco men; all anti-slavery men; a majority of us believers in phrenology…” Though long... › MORE
08.11.2011 Paid government witness Harvey Matusow had yet to admit his perjuries when a subcommittee of three from the the US House of Representatives Committee on Un-American Activities conducted hearings in downtown Dayton in September 1954. Within a year his revelations would become public, which probably should have ended HUAC's interest in Antioch College right then and there. Due to a variety of other voices calling for its investigation such as The... › MORE
07.28.2011 From the Department of Fame Is Fleeting, for about three years in the early 1950s, the name ‘Harvey Matusow’ was of the household variety. Beginning in the late 1940s, Harvey went from Army veteran to Communist party member to FBI informant to special investigator on youth communism for Senator Joseph McCarthy. In that capacity he managed to ruin around 200 lives by lying under oath about peoples’ ties to the Communist Party of the USA... › MORE
07.22.2011 There are critical moments in history where, if events went just a little bit differently then, the situation would be dramatically different now. There are several such instances in the history of Antioch College. Perhaps the most interesting one (with perhaps the greatest possibility for a dramatically different outcome) is how the college dispensed with the Florida lands it received from the estate of Hugh Taylor Birch, class of 1869. The story is... › MORE
07.14.2011 Douglas McGregor of Detroit, Michigan, became the 13th president of Antioch College in 1948. One of the first ever industrial psychologists and a theorist of business management, he applied his training in psychology toward creating the most collaborative workplace possible. He inherited a college under fire from forces of anticommunism at a time when they were perhaps at their most powerful. By the early 1950s, investigation of so called Un-American... › MORE
06.30.2011 Once again “Songs” features the dulcet tones of Algo Henderson, 12th president of Antioch College. Here he defends the College against accusations that it promotes Communism. By 1946, when this statement was made in a joint session of the College Board of Trustees and the policy making body of its faculty called Administrative Council, he had become well practiced at it. Henderson first had to publicly refute these criticisms in 1940 when a... › MORE
06.16.2011 Meet Ralph Shupe, for most of his career a West Virginia radio newscaster, but for a brief time in 1954 the editor of a local weekly called The Yellow Springs American. The American was a reaction to liberalism in general and Antioch College in particular that began in 1953 under the auspices of a civic improvement organization to counter the progressive reputation of the Antioch College community. For most of its brief existence it reported the facts... › MORE
06.02.2011 Lucy Salisbury came to Antioch College as a new student the year that it opened for classes in 1853, but her education experienced such frequent interruption, probably due to financial reasons, that by 1860 she was still in the College’s preparatory program. There she met Myrick Hascall Doolittle, class of 1862, and the two married upon his graduation. Myrick would soon take a job with the United States Naval Observatory in Washington DC, then the... › MORE
05.23.2011 On Commencement Day in 1885, Antioch College dedicated a marble tablet to memorialize its students who had died in the American Civil War. The Hon. J. Warren Keifer, then just months removed from a four term hitch in the US Congress (one as Speaker of the House), gave the following dedicatory address. Keifer came from nearby Springfield, had briefly been a student in the 1850s, and was himself a veteran of the Union Army. He enlisted in April 1861 at... › MORE
05.06.2011 Lewis Montgomery Hosea was born in Montgomery, Alabama in 1842. He was raised in Cincinnati, Ohio where his father had established a successful grocery business, entering Antioch College in 1858. He was still a student in the Spring of 1861 when the American Civil War began. He left school to enlist as did so many Antiochians, joining the 6th Ohio Volunteer Regiment known as the “Guthrie Grays.” Hosea saw action in some of the most famous... › MORE
04.21.2011 The Rev. John Burns Weston spent much of his adult life at Antioch College. Admitted to its first college class in October of 1853, he was a member of its first graduating class in 1857 and joined its faculty soon after as principal of the Preparatory Dept. and professor of rhetoric, logic, and Greek. He served three interim presidencies over the course of his career, earning the nickname “Old Interregnum.” In 1881 he accepted an appointment... › MORE
04.07.2011 The March 14, 2011 issue of The New Yorker featured a long article by Harvard University history professor Jill Lepore on the pioneering American psychologist G. Stanley Hall and his studies on aging. Hall in recent years has become something of a whipping post in his field, and virtually all of his theories have been thoroughly discredited. Yet he remains a foundational figure in psychology. He was also once a member of the Antioch College faculty. In... › MORE
03.24.2011 Jane Cape of Dodgeville, WI was one the few genuine experts in the country in the field of Home Economics at the time of her appointment to the Antioch College faculty in 1926. As Chair of the dept., she guided one of the more rigorous Home Economics programs among small colleges, emphasizing chemistry, nutrition, and child development. She also established one of the first nursery schools in the state of Ohio in a long gone architectural gem called Day... › MORE
03.10.2011 Bessie Ladley Totten, class of 1900, spent a lifetime at Antioch College, and many more by extension. Her family, the Carrs and Ladleys of Yellow Springs and the Tottens of nearby Springfield, collectively sent more students to the College than perhaps any other. Born in 1876, her direct association with Antioch College began when she entered its Preparatory Academy in 1892. After completing her studies a forty year career as a librarian at the College... › MORE
02.25.2011 The November 1946 meeting of the Antioch College Board of Trustees was in many ways a typical one. As usual, finances (and lack thereof) dominated the conversation. But when Algo Henderson was president, to make sure that the proceedings would not be limited to discussions of dollars, he would schedule for the Trustees “programs which give glimpses of particular elements of the Antioch plan of education.” The topic, so the minutes say, was... › MORE
02.10.2011 Born in 1847, Cornelia “Nellie” Van Mater moved to Yellow Springs when her father, a successful merchant and Christian Church deacon of Greeneville, Ohio, was made a trustee of Antioch College (1861). John Van Mater’s time with the College was a difficult one. Brought in as treasurer to care for its ever-precarious finances, he had the misfortune of joining the Board of Trustees just as a smoldering sectarian conflict for control of... › MORE
01.27.2011 Though obscure during his lifetime, inventor, philosopher, and avant-garde composer Harry Partch (1901-1974) is now widely recognized as a significant (if eccentric) force in 20th century American music. According to biographer Bob Gilmore, Harry Partch discovered Antioch College and Yellow Springs, Ohio not long after his influential book Genesis of Music, released in 1949, received a favorable review from a memorable Antioch College faculty member,... › MORE
12.16.2010 One of Reverend Thomas Hill’s biographers said of him that “he was admired by scientists for his theology and by theologians for his science.” An outstanding undergraduate student at Harvard and a member of the class of 1843, Hill resisted both his mathematics professor’s wish that he pursue a career in mathematics, and his biology professor’s hope that he become a botanist. Instead, he followed his lifelong dream to be a minister, entered Harvard Divinity... › MORE
12.03.2010 One of the most interesting figures ever to serve on the Antioch College Board of Trustees, Charles F. Kettering knew a thing or two about research. He held over 140 patents, most of them while head of research for the General Motors Corporation. In the Fall of 1943, with nearly all the world engulfed in savage war, he spoke of research at a modest but propitious event that took place at Antioch College: a ceremony to formally retire a very important... › MORE
11.15.2010 Edwin R. Roberts came to Antioch College from Loveland, Ohio, at the southern terminus of the bike path that runs through Yellow Springs. He entered in 1909, graduated in 1913 and became an insurance agent in Indianapolis. What follows is his account of the College during the presidency of Daniel Albright Long, incidentally the longest tenure of any president in Antioch College history. Roberts could not have witnessed most of the events that he describes... › MORE
10.28.2010 This installment of “Stacks” might be subtitled: Ode to a Forgotten Financial Hero. Born near Boston in 1813, Artemas Carter joined the Board of Trustees of Antioch College in 1859. He was a prominent merchant and a leading member of the American Unitarian Association. His older brother, James Gordon Carter, had been an important education reformer in Massachusetts, served in state legislature with Horace Mann, and helped established the first ever... › MORE
10.14.2010 Once again “Stacks” sings a song of the Antioch College library, featuring vocals by Patricia Aldred, class of 1952. Her brief history of the early College library originally ran in the November 1952 Antioch Alumni Bulletin when Horace Mann Library (The Music Department to some and Weston Hall to other vintages of Antiochians) had exceeded its capacity and was about to be replaced with Olive Kettering Library. Pat married George Mrazek and together they... › MORE
09.30.2010 It is a matter of tribal knowledge that Hugh Taylor Birch gave Glen Helen to Antioch College in 1929, and that then College President Arthur E. Morgan is the one who made it happen, attracting Mr. Birch back to his alma mater with the great energy and innovation that was the character of his presidency. The unsung hero in the tale of Glen Helen, however, was Lucy Griscom Morgan. The College’s first lady was a botanist and nutritionist and one of the first... › MORE
09.16.2010 Even before there was a building to house the Antioch College Library, there was an Antioch College Library. As early 1851 requests for funds to the College Library appeared in publication. A year later, a library committee of 20 was appointed, composed largely of Christian ministers. What follows is their first florid communication to the readers of the Christian Church journal, The Christian Palladium. Photo caption: Old Library -- until the fall of... › MORE
09.07.2010 On October 5, 1854, exactly one year after the first opening of Antioch College, Horace Mann gave one of the more far-reaching addresses of his career to the General Convention of the Christian Church. In “Demands of the Age on Colleges,” Mann places Antioch College squarely at the forefront of an ever-changing and (particularly at that time) rapidly expanding American civilization, and challenges its founders to ensure that Antioch College... › MORE
08.19.2010 Manifestations of Antioch Colleges past are usually recognizable to Antiochians, but not always. Olive Trader ‘13 married Carl Nybladh in 1918. She was a high school teacher in nearby Xenia; each year a deserving graduate of Xenia High School receives a scholarship that bears her name. The following is her account of an experience from her senior year that would not have happened to any Antiochian alive today. Recollection of Olive Trader... › MORE
08.04.2010 Last month Antiochiana received a donation of Antioch School materials from Ruth Hameyer King ‘55, whose husband, Louis King ‘49, was director of the Antioch School and a longtime member of the Antioch College faculty. The Kings had a long association with the College going back to 1860, when Louis’ great grandfather, James Elbridge Greer, enrolled in the Preparatory Program. Included in Ruth’s gift was a carte de visite, or... › MORE
06.24.2010 Antiochians are justifiably proud of the College’s standing among other institutions when it comes to producing graduates that go on to earn doctorates in their profession. This installment of “Songs” attempts to arm the reader with the required information so that facts will be straight when friends are impressed. In 1984, College of Wooster Psychology Professor Alfred Hall published a study in Change magazine called “... › MORE
06.07.2010 The Athanaeum Society, 1887. Standing second from the left is Alfred Hampton, class of 1888 and the first African-American graduate of Antioch College. This is the only known photograph of him as a student. Hampton became a Baptist minister, returning to Yellow Springs briefly in 1900-01 as minister of the First Baptist Church. In 1938, while visiting his nephew Joe Curl, he was interviewed in The Antiochian. When asked what he thought of the Antiochians... › MORE
03.04.2010 As part of the College’s centennial celebration of 1953-54, Alumni Office director Helen Tordt (class of 1933) collected the memories of Antiochians from vintages various and sundry. Many of those recollections made it into the files of Antiochiana under the curious heading: “Alumni Recollections.” Each and every one is a great read in some way or other, but none have the character and style of “Thirty Years Later” by Paul... › MORE
02.04.2010 It's great to be back in Antiochiana as your College Archivist. Now that Antioch College is back, donations have begun to flow into the archives once again now that independence has been achieved. Starting with the Alumni Reunion in October, several interesting gifts have been given to Antiochiana, including: A felt Antioch banner with gold lettering on a dark blue field, circa 1930, was the gift of Matthew Derr, class of 1989. The large block type... › MORE