Meeting Minutes

The collection includes bills, receipts, letters, and account books of Josiah Albertson's lime and lumber business in Plymouth, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania, which he later held in partnership with his brothers, Jacob and Benjamin. Also included are papers relating to the Plymouth Railroad Company (1831-1844), the Gwynyd Friends Meeting, and family correspondence.

The papers of the Board of Trustees of Dickinson College, 1833-1879, include correspondence, reports, financial statements, printed materials, and legal documents, and have been arranged into thirteen series.

Series 1 – Membership contains correspondence regarding membership on the Board of Trustees, lists of members, and attendance records.
Series 2 – Reports to the Board of Trustees consists of reports by the college president on the overall status of the college as well as reports from the heads of the college departments.
Series 3 – General Business includes bound and loose copies of minutes of the trustees’ meetings, resolutions passed by the various trustee committees, and correspondence in which general business is conducted.
Series 4 – College Personnel includes materials dealing with the college presidents.
Series 5 – Physical Plant consists of deeds, mortgages, certificates, bills, and correspondence dealing with the construction of the campus buildings.
Series 6 – Financial Affairs contains reports of the treasurer, ledger books, student accounts, and other financial materials.
Series 7 – Scholarships contains hundreds of scholarship certificates as well as correspondence and reports related to the sale of scholarships to raise funds for the college.
Series 8 – Conferences consists of materials which pertain to the control of the college by the Baltimore and Philadelphia Conferences of the Methodist Church.
Series 9 – Honorary Degrees contains correspondence relating to the granting of honorary degrees to prominent individuals.
Series 10 – Publications contains printed materials produced for use by the general community such as lists of college rules and regulations.
Series 11 – Dickinson Preparatory School contains reports of the principal to the Board as well as such financial materials as the treasurer’s list of students.
Series 12 – Dickinson Commercial College includes ledger books used in conducting the business of the commercial department of the college.
Series 13 – Executive Committee contains two bound volumes of the minutes of the Executive Committee of the Board of Trustees.

A fuller description of each series is given before each series inventory.

The papers of the Board of Trustees of Dickinson College, 1783-1833, include correspondence, reports, financial statements, printed materials, and legal documents, and have been arranged into seven series.

Series 1 – Membership contains correspondence regarding membership on the Board of Trustees, as well as a membership list, c1826.
Series 2 – Reports of the President consists of reports made to the Board by Presidents Nisbet, Davidson, and How.
Series 3 – General Business contains materials such as correspondence between trustees, mandamus to the faculty, and committee reports.
Series 4 – College Personnel includes correspondence to and from faculty members, including presidents.
Series 5 – Physical Plant contains land deeds and construction and service bills for the campus buildings.
Series 6 – Financial Affairs contains reports of the treasurer, subscription lists, and other financial materials.
Series 7– Publications contains printed materials such as college catalogues.

A fuller description of each series is given before each series inventory.

The Edwin K. Charles collection consists of the various papers, government documents, newsletters, transcripts, and publications collected by Charles in the years following the accident at Three Mile Island. Edwin K. Charles, a resident of Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania, became heavily involved with the public-awareness group, Three Mile Island Alert, directly following the accident at Three Mile Island in 1979. Over the years, he collected various materials concerning the legal struggles between the NRC, GPU, and Three Mile Island Alert.

The Bevery Hess collection consists of the various papers, newspaper clippings, books, audiotapes and photographs collected by Hess during her most active period of involvement with local anti-nuclear groups. Bevery Hess was a resident of Lancaster County, Pennsylvania prior to the accident at Three Mile Island, Unit 2. After the accident, Beverly Hess became heavily involved in the local anti-nuclear movement. She was a founding member of the Susquehanna Valley Alliance and the Public Interest Resource Center (PIRC). An appendix is included, which lists the books belonging to the Beverly Hess collection.

This collection primarily provides evidence of the personal and professional life of Charles Francis Himes, student, photographer, scientist, teacher, administrator, amateur historian and father. Also found in this collection is evidence of the lives of family members including, most notably, C. F. Himes' wife Mary and her father Joseph A. Murray. Information on Dickinson College is featured prominently throughout this collection through the close association of C. F. Himes with the institution during most of his life. Beyond family and institutional history, this collection offers information on a number of social, political, economic, and historic topics. Some of these broader topics include post-secondary education in the latter half of the nineteenth century, south central Pennsylvania society, the history of photography, and nineteenth century travel.

This international society was founded in Europe in 1961 and a North American chapter followed ten years later. Dedicated to the study of civilizations, the ISCSC holds annual meetings, usually in an American university setting, in which papers are read, books are discussed, and theories are shared by the members. The society newsletter and its Comparative Civilizations Bulletin/Review are extensions of these meetings. The collection has been on deposit since 1987. The collection consists of society business, personal and societal correspondence, publications, and manuscripts.

Steven G. Leventhal graduated from Dickinson College in 1984. This collection documents his efforts to gain an honorary degree from Dickinson for Soviet refusenik Dr. Yuri Medvedkov, an effort in which he was not successful. It also contains information regarding Leventhal’s role in establishing the Dickinson Senior Class Award, which was granted to Medvedkov in 1984.

George Armstrong Lyon was a Carlisle lawyer, bank president, Presbyterian elder, and a trustee of Dickinson College. Church affairs are the central concern of these papers, which include accounts of Lyon's hostile view of the Rev. George Duffield's theology and of Lyon's part in the founding of the Second Presbyterian Church in Carlisle in 1832. The collection consists primarily of correspondence, notes, and other documents pertaining to the governmental and financial affairs of Carlisle's First and Second Presbyterian Churches. The collection also contains some items related to Lyon's position as a Dickinson College trustee, specifically in regard to his role in a conflict between College President Samuel Blanchard How, Rev. George Duffield, and Professor Alexander McFarlane.

Record group 5/2 consists of both materials dating from 1962-1989 while the Office of the Chaplain existed under the leadership of a full-time chaplain, as well as materials regarding campus religious affairs functions prior to the establishment of the chaplaincy, as early as 1924. The bulk of the material, however, dates from the appointment of Paul Kaylor in 1967 to the resignation of Mary Anne Morefield in 1989. The record group is organized in eleven series:

Series 01 General Administrative Materials

Series 02 Finances

Series 03 General Correspondence

Series 04 Chapel Programming for Weekday Services and Special Events (before fall 1965)

Series 05 College Church Programming for Sunday, Holiday, and Other Special Services

Series 06 Events

Series 07 Social Action

Series 08 Other Religious Traditions/Organizations

Series 09 Other Campus Organizations

Series 10 Other Chaplain’s Activities

Series 11 Chaplains’ Personal Papers

A fuller description of each series is given before each series inventory.

The Public Interest Resource Center (PIRC) collection consists of the various papers, newsletters, court dockets, and publications which were housed by PIRC in an effort to organize all efforts against the restart of Three Mile Island, following the near-meltdown on March 28, 1979. The PIRC was established as a liaison group between the major anti-nuclear groups formed in Central Pennsylvania, and their goal was to coordinate all efforts against TMI: legal actions, protests, and financial actions.

In the nineteenth century, the activities pertaining to admissions and student affairs were performed by the President of the College, with some assistance from the other faculty members. Inquiries concerning admissions were generally made directly to the President of the College. Members of the faculty (including the President) supervised students both inside and outside the classroom. Besides taking attendance, delivering lectures, and grading students, faculty members also monitored students’ behavior and managed the financial accounts of underage students. Communications with parents and other day to day affairs were handled directly by faculty members. This state of affairs lasted until the early twentieth century, when the College began establishing separate offices to handle the necessary paperwork for running an institution of higher learning with an ever increasing enrollment. For ease of access, the following Student Affairs/Registrar papers, representing the period prior to the modern college office system, have been assembled into one record group.

The Student Affairs/Registrar 1783-1914 Record Group is organized into seven series:

Series 1 - General Student Affairs
Series 2 - Matriculation/Registrar
Series 3 - Attendance and Deportment
Series 4 - Grades
Series 5 - Student-Patron Accounts
Series 6 - Individual Students
Series 7 - Admissions

These records document the activity and structure of Dickinson's student government.

Three Mile Island Alert (TMIA) collection consists of the various papers, government documents, legal documents, transcripts, and publications collected and maintained by Three Mile Island Alert, a not-for-profit citizens' organization dedicated to promotion of safe-energy alternatives to nuclear power. The bulk of this collection consists of reports and legal papers pertaining to the accident at Three Mile Island Unit-2, its cleanup, and the restart of TMI Unit-1. Due to the size of the collection, an outline of the collection has been provided to serve as a guide to the full register. The processing of this collection was funded, in part, by the Pennsylvania Historical and Museum Commission.

These records document the activity and organization of the Zatae Longsdorff's Women's Center, a feminist organization at Dickinson that included student and faculty members.