Season 2 Episode 4
Ben Binversie:
00:03
If you've been to Grinnell, you know how windy it can be, but even the most piercing winter winds pale in comparison to the force of the cyclone that ripped through town in 1882 leaving a trail of destruction in its path.
Ben Binversie:
00:31
This is All Things Grinnell. I'm your host Ben Binversie. On today's show we're going to talk with Allison Haack from Special Collections and Archives about the impact of the 1882 cyclone that tore through town killing 39 people including two college students and destroying dozens of homes and the entire college. But the town and college, led by JB Grinnell recovered quickly, receiving donations from all over the country to support the rebuilding process, and they came back stronger than before.
Ben Binversie:
01:00
The buildings that rose up in the immediate aftermath of the cyclone are now gone, but the legacy of this important turning point in the college's history remains. We'll also talk with Chris Jones, the college archivist, about working with the minutia of college history and his understanding of the college from the vantage point of the archives.
Ben Binversie:
01:19
That's coming up next after I remind you that the information and opinions expressed in this podcast are solely those of the individuals involved and do not represent the views of Grinnell College.
Ben Binversie:
01:33
Grinnell, the town and the college, looked a little different in 1882. 354 students, 17 faculty, and only two buildings, West College and Central College made up what was then Iowa College. The date is June 17th, 1882. Students are finishing up exams and getting ready for commencement.
Allison Haack:
01:54
And the weather is kind of weird this day, but nobody really takes note of it. There's no Doppler radar to say, "Hey some weird things are happening out in western Iowa.
Ben Binversie:
02:04
The weatherman didn't hop on the radio?
Allison Haack:
02:05
Nope. No. No radio. So, they just know that it's a really hot day and the barometer's kind of weird. So, then a bit after 8:30, that's when things really go south in terms of the conditions of the weather.
Ben Binversie:
02:22
Okay. We're talking 8:30 at night?
Allison Haack:
02:23
Yes. Yes. In the evening. Yeah. I mean, there's some people that say, okay, well at 8:44 that's when things get under way in Kellogg, which is a bit west of here about 10 miles, but I don't know if you can be that precise given human memory and who was looking right at the clock when this happened. Was your clock accurate? I don't know.
Ben Binversie:
02:47
Yeah, but that's what we have to go off of.
Allison Haack:
02:51
Yes. Yep. That's what we know.
Ben Binversie:
02:53
So, 150 miles west of Grinnell over in Carroll County, the storm was brewing, and it made its way across the state forming multiple tornadoes along the way. Here is where the story maybe departs from what most people know about the history of Grinnell's cyclone.
Ben Binversie:
03:09
There were actually two tornadoes. That's best we can tell that met in Grinnell. So, not the cyclone, but the cyclones. So, what gives with that story?
Allison Haack:
03:18
SH Herrick who is the son of SL Herrick , whom Herrick Chapel is named for, and he's one of the Iowa band. He's a trustee member. It's in the 1890's he writes a piece for the Annals of Iowa, and he recounts. So, he's done a bunch of research, and he's talked to people all across the state. So, he's kind of tracked the path of this storm to figure out what happened.
Allison Haack:
03:41
So, it seems like one tornado kind of forms north of town. One kind of comes from the Kellogg area, and then they meet kind of right about 8th and Broad, which was the edge of town at the time. But that's also kind of right where the campus is.
Ben Binversie:
03:56
Right, yeah.
Allison Haack:
03:56
So, it was unfortunate for campus. So, it seemed to people who lived here that the tornado kind of took a U-turn, but it's actually the two tornadoes. That's kind of why there's an odd path of destruction it seems like to people.
Ben Binversie:
04:12
Gotcha.
Allison Haack:
04:13
Not that tornadoes move in predictable ways. That's kind of a hallmark of them is that they don't. I mean, Joe Wall in his book talks about it's probably two tornadoes and the Annals of Iowa says it, but we always just say the cyclone of 1882 because it was one big catastrophic event for the town and the college.
Ben Binversie:
04:28
Yeah. Yeah. Unless you're digging back into the history of it maybe for our purposes today. Cyclone, cyclones, the impact was the same whether it was one or two.
Allison Haack:
04:38
Yes.
Ben Binversie:
04:40
Why do you think that information was kind of lost or forgotten that it was two tornadoes?
Allison Haack:
04:47
Well, even the media presentation at the time, there's a great newspaper page excerpt we have from Harper's Weekly at the time. This was an out East publication writing about this massive storm, but it's got an illustration of one tornado. And devastation and destruction of the town, because it's the illustrated news and so, it gets lumped in because the destruction was all one place at least here in Grinnell. Malcolm to the east also gets hit really badly. Other towns and farms along the way, but Grinnell really gets it the worst.
Ben Binversie:
05:25
Yeah. So, what was the extent of the damage on campus and throughout the town?
Allison Haack:
05:31
Sure. Well, it always sounds a little funny to say campus was destroyed when it was only two buildings, because that isn't quite as devastating as it-
Ben Binversie:
05:40
As it would be today if campus were destroyed by a tornado.
Allison Haack:
05:42
Yes, if campus was destroyed and you say, "Destroyed," and you think, "Oh, so many buildings gone. There's only two," but it was the only two buildings that were there so, that is the end of that Iowa College campus. So, there are actually students in the buildings, particularly I believe it's the West College building that there's students up on the third floor when these tornadoes hit, and there's seven or eight of them actually in the building, and they come down with the rubble.
Allison Haack:
06:10
All but one are fine, and then one is pinned kind of lower body, and he's paralyzed. He's taken to Professor LF Parker's house where he later dies that night. Then there's another student in the Central College building, and they're attending ... There's a Literary Society meeting. I may not say this right, philologian.
Ben Binversie:
06:33
Yeah, philologian.
Allison Haack:
06:34
Yeah. Not a word that rolls off the tongue.
Ben Binversie:
06:37
No.
Allison Haack:
06:38
So, they're at that meeting, and they see it coming. It's not exactly two different accounts. They compliment each other, but it's not clear exactly what happens to him. It kind of sounds like he was maybe kind of sucked out a window, like a large kind of picture window, not just a small window, or out of a doorway. So, he's thrown quite a distance. So, the paper describes him as being fearfully mangled, which is really horrible.
Allison Haack:
07:06
So, he dies pretty quickly after that. Thankfully for him he doesn't suffer for a long time. The Central College building they're both destroyed, but Central College is a little more ... the windows are gone and half the building's gone, but it's standing a little more. You can tell it was a building. But then because it had the scientific equipment and the chemistry materials down in the basement, it then catches on fire. So, it's really an insult to injury sort of situation. It wasn't bad enough. It got knocked down. Not it's also on fire. So, then you lose everything that's in there. That's what happens on campus.
Allison Haack:
07:49
So town there's about I think it was 73, 73 houses. Yes that are destroyed. The Grinnell Herald at the time at pre Herald Register, and they report there's a Grinnell Herald extra, the day after the cyclone. And then there's an extra number two and number three, although number two and three are actually a lot of the same material. So it's very extensive list of who has died, who was injured and maybe in what way. The buildings that are blown down, the houses that are damaged. They've got some lists of damage that's out in the country, outside in the county. Kind of a list of who was in the hospital when funeral services are going to be.
Allison Haack:
08:38
So they really have all the details. So they're really great primary source for going back and looking to figure out how the town was dealing with the aftermath. So one thing that, wouldn't say good but the downtown business area is really spared. It's homes that take the brunt of the damaged. And so the newspaper reports ... there's 37 townspeople killed them. The total is 39 with the two college students. And it's about 150 total injured in the town of Grinnell. And S.H. Herrick, who's the one writing in the annals of Iowa, he thinks that because most people had a cellar, or strokes on at the time, a lot of people went down there and you think that's the reason death toll, injury toll isn't higher than it is.
Ben Binversie:
09:35
Yeah. I mean, it is already pretty high. But I know at least with the college remarkably, it was only two of the 354 students and there's another reason for that, which is-
Allison Haack:
09:49
There is. I forgot to mention it.
Ben Binversie:
09:50
We have to thank the Grinnell baseball team because of that.
Allison Haack:
09:52
We do. Now the kind of backstory there is that President George Magoun was very strict, very no nonsense man. And the rules of the time for Iowa College is that there is no away games with sports. It's only intramural athletics.
Ben Binversie:
10:12
No intercollegiate activity, intra.
Allison Haack:
10:15
Yo. And so, in defiance of this world baseball team had gone to Tama to play an away game. And so as they're taking the roll of, okay, who's here, who's wounded? They notice there's a lot of men missing. The first thought is, "Oh, no, this is what's horrible what's happened?" And then a student kind of like, "Well, they're in Tama." But nobody got in trouble because in this case you can forgive because it saved their lives.
Ben Binversie:
10:48
Yeah, I read the damages were estimated for the college at around $81,000, which in today's money amounts like $2 million or something in that ballpark, but the insurance would only pay $10,000 fraction of the cost. So they had some rebuilding to do. But before the rebuilding process really began in earnest, the college had something else to attend to commencement, which went ahead as scheduled, like a week after the cyclone. Is there any description of what commencement was like, kind of the atmosphere?
Allison Haack:
11:22
It's three days later, actually, because President Magoun is not going to be deterred. You're going to have commencement as normal. And part of the reason ... commencement was actually early that year. It had been scheduled early because there was going to be a referendum in the state about whether you could sell and the quote is use, by supposed I mean drink alcohol, and so because congregational lists are pro temperance, pro prohibition, they want to make sure they all get to the polls. You need everybody voting, so they move up commencement.
Allison Haack:
11:58
There would have been a little more time in between but there isn't in this particular year. So baccalaureate and commencement go on. President Magoun, his office was gone. So he lost whatever his speech was going to be. So he rewrites it and he calls it and God was in the whirlwind. And it's about when he has a very old testament view of things, like the book of Job being like, well, this has happened and it's terrible, but he stands over the wreckage and says, "The Lord giveth and the Lord taketh away." So he sees it as, "Well, this is what was supposed to happen, and it's terrible, but we will move on, and we will rebuild."
Allison Haack:
12:41
I imagine it was a pretty subdued commencement. The students who died we know one was finishing his first year and I'm not sure about the other. There was very little I could find on him. But I imagine with such a small group of students that that would be especially difficult time because you would have you had funerals maybe the day before and the next day you're having commencement.
Ben Binversie:
13:09
Yeah, and even if they didn't know the students personally, I imagine a lot of the students we're in a whirlwind of their own with the destruction that happened on campus and kind of a crazy event. It's interesting that they still went on and went through with commencement because I know the only time that the college has not had commencement was at the height of kind of anti-war sentiment on campus and they didn't have a commencement that year, but after a cyclone that devastated most of the town, they still were like, "Yeah, we're going to have the ceremony.
Allison Haack:
13:44
Yeah, it's interesting juxtaposition.
Ben Binversie:
13:47
Yeah, I'm not sure what it says about the college or maybe President Magoun at the time. So word of the cyclone or cyclones spread far and wide. You mentioned Harper's Weekly. How do people find out about the damage and begin to pitch in to help because eventually there's donations coming in from across the country.
Allison Haack:
14:06
Yes. One of the ways especially around the state, there's a lot of destruction anyway. So governor Sherman puts out a proclamation detailing a little bit of the damage and calling for people to make monetary donations to help in the rebuilding process. And kind of right after commencement, and JB Grinnell starts heading east in order to raise money. So his first stop is in Chicago. And he goes to the Chicago Board of Trade. And my understanding is that's the first and only time they've actually ceased trading when someone address the floor. And so he makes a plea that our campus has been destroyed, our town has been severely damaged, now could you help?
Allison Haack:
14:54
And so there's a lot of sympathy, I think rightfully so among the people that he speaks to both in Chicago and moving farther east. This little thriving town on the Prairie has had such an unfortunate event that it's a high loss of life. And that ... like you said, when you say our whole campus was destroyed. That sounds very dramatic. But a lot of money does kind of come in for rebuilding both for town and for college. So people, especially around the state of Iowa are very generous, even people on the coasts out east. And a lot of money comes from them.
Allison Haack:
15:43
Then, JB's friend, John Blair gives $16,000 which is quite a bit of money, considering insurance was only going to pay out about 10,000. And that money goes to building a Blair Hall. So post-cyclone we get Alumni Hall, which becomes a music building, we get Chicago Hall, which becomes Magoun Hall, and we get Blair Hall. And none of those are still standing, which is really a shame, because Magoun is very architectural interesting. And Blair was just beautiful, but I understand has structural problems, so I don't know.
Ben Binversie:
16:18
Yeah, those have ... I think most of them were demolished so we could have Burling.
Allison Haack:
16:23
Yes.
Ben Binversie:
16:25
Was Grinnell recovery and rebuilding process notable in terms of its expediency compared to nearby towns that maybe didn't have as much destruction but Grinnell kind of ... especially the college arose from the rubble strong.
Allison Haack:
16:42
It did, yeah, it really comes back stronger than it was. They have more buildings. They have three versus the two that they had. And so there's a real expediency to how quickly the rebuilding happens because five, six years, and it's a completely different place. They've replanted the trees that they lost, they have these three new buildings, there's a larger number of students. And JB Grinnell actually says that cyclone was a real windfall, which is maybe a little ... I would temper that considering the death toll, but it does really change the face of the college.
Ben Binversie:
17:27
So we're sitting here in the summer of 2019. And we're looking back at the cyclone of, of 1882 through the lens of the exhibition that you curated here in Burling Library with images from our collection and other local resources as well I take it?
Allison Haack:
17:41
Mm-hmm (affirmative).
Ben Binversie:
17:42
Why are we revisiting this event 130 some odd years later?
Allison Haack:
17:47
Well, the real reason is because I thought it would be a good topic for a small exhibit.
Ben Binversie:
17:56
That is a perfectly sound reason, I think.
Allison Haack:
18:02
We don't really have artifacts per se, but we do have a lot of photographs. There's not a huge number of photographs from campus the way it looked before the cyclone, but there are a lot of the destruction. Particularly we have sort of somewhere between 30 and 40 stereo scroll cards. And so for people who aren't familiar, they're kind of like a little viewfinder and they give you ... I have glasses. I've never been able to get close enough to actually see the image as you're supposed to see it, but it's supposed to be slightly 3D.
Allison Haack:
18:38
It's kind of an early iteration of that. So this was something that ... it's a little bit of a disaster tourism by proxy, is that these stereoscope cards were made and then people can look at these and see pictures of the destruction and see what happened. So those are interesting. We have stereoscope viewers in Special Collections that people can come in, look at these photographs. We have a couple of stats and I know that the historical museum here in town also has some of those same cards that were manufactured. So we don't have anything like ...
Allison Haack:
19:23
I think the college bell is damaged, I believe. We have that but not in Special Collections that's just sitting in Noyce. I know the Historical Museum has a jar of blueberries that ... the story is that it's swept away and it's deposited somewhere far from here.
Ben Binversie:
19:44
In Wisconsin, perhaps because I know debris did fly as far as Wisconsin.
Allison Haack:
19:47
Yeah, from the store, maybe not from Grinnell but there's certainly ... there's a photograph for a woman. It ends up in Belle Plaine, but it's photograph a woman from Grinnell and it has the Grinnell photo studio name on the back, apparently, still legible. So someone mails it back to the post office. And so that's how they know some debris made it that far. So yeah, but this jar of blueberries is ... I'm not sure who shared this information originally who started the story. I'm a little doubtful as to the credibility but we'd have to look back maybe see the accession records to see why do we think this is the case. It's an old jar of blueberries-
Ben Binversie:
20:34
It's definitely old blueberries. Nobody wants to eat them.
Allison Haack:
20:35
I would not. I'd be quite ill. So I'm not sure why we think it may have through a storm. Maybe it did. I don't know.
Ben Binversie:
20:43
Dubious provenance. We'll let that one be for now.
Allison Haack:
20:47
That's a good visual exhibit. And that's kind of what we tried to do with summer ones is not necessarily a lighter topic, but something that has good visual appeal.
Ben Binversie:
20:59
Did you find anything new or discover anything about the cyclone while organizing the collection and going through these resources?
Allison Haack:
21:06
Certainly the idea of that it's actually two cyclones. I read through parts of Joe Wall's book before certainly doing research in Special Collections that was kind of one of those, oh, yeah, it was two. That's interesting. That part, certainly, and I'd never read the annals of Iowa article before. So that just had a lot more information about how wide the storm was and how much of the state it actually impacted. So that information was new. So that was interesting, because kind of when we hear about it, we think it was more Grinnell centric. And it certainly had a very big impact here, but it's a big storm and it ends up beside up in Wisconsin. So that was very interesting to read about and to really look through all these photographs more in depth than I ever have.
Ben Binversie:
21:57
In the exhibition catalog, you say that the cyclone was one of the defining moments in the history of Grinnell College. What lasting impact do you think it had for today or maybe the past century of the college?
Allison Haack:
22:09
I think the rebuilding process was really defining because small Midwestern campus ... not all small Midwestern colleges made it because a lot are affected by fire, by tornadoes, other weather events or just very small enrollment, difficulty getting people to enroll to come teach there. And it really kind of spreads the word about Iowa Colleges. It was at the time up until 1909. And these buildings that were built post-cyclone are part of campus up until about 1961, which in the grand scheme of things is not actually not long ago. So there's plenty of alums who still remember these buildings on campus that were part of their Grinnell experience. And then also another big way that I think it stays with us is the yearbook, the Cyclone.
Ben Binversie:
23:21
Yeah, perhaps the only tangible legacy that we can really see of the cyclone. But yeah the student year book and magazine named in its honor.
Allison Haack:
23:30
Yep. 1889 is the first time they call the cyclone. And they write a nice little explanation in the beginning saying like, "Okay, you might think this name is a little silly and inappropriate. But actually, we went through this horrible event and we have rebuilt and we are stronger. So it's meant to be both a reminder of the challenges and destruction we as a campus in town faced, but also that you can rebuild and you can build it back stronger and be stronger for what has happened."
Ben Binversie:
24:06
Yeah, the college obviously made out okay, and came out, like you said, perhaps stronger afterward when they rebuilt, but it could have easily meant the end of the college.
Allison Haack:
24:16
Yeah, it would have been really easy to say, oh, gosh. They'd already moved campus once from Davenport to the town of Grinnell. It would be very easy to just say, "Okay, clearly, we are not meant to exist. We're just packing it in." But the don't. There seems to be no question right from the get go that we're going to rebuild, which I think takes a lot of strength.
Ben Binversie:
24:39
Well, Allison, thank you for putting this collection together and helping us think about this devastating but really important event in the history of the college.
Allison Haack:
24:48
You're welcome.
Ben Binversie:
24:51
Allison Haack works in Special Collections and Archives. She put together an exhibit this summer about the cyclone using sources from the time period to take a fresh look at the impact of the cyclone. The exhibit is no longer on display, but you can still find the images and documents in the archives in the basement of Burling. And there's pictures of the destruction and rebuilding process on digital Grinnell. You can find those on the web page for this episode as well. The Grinnell College Special Collections and Archives offers students and scholars access to printed materials from the 15th century to the present. Manuscript collections of individuals and organizations and historical records of the college and local community.
Ben Binversie:
25:28
Books, photographs, scrapbooks, diaries, audio-visual materials, and other ephemera provide rich materials for investigation. Chris Jones, the Archivist of the college took an interest in libraries from a young age. But it took a little prodding from his mother to get him to his current position at Grinnell. Jones was supervising the scanning station for the Internet Archive at the University of Illinois, but was looking for new opportunities.
Chris Jones:
25:54
I was actually visiting my parents and I were sitting one weekend and my mom was reading the Sunday paper. She saw a job ad for a library system at Grinnell College Libraries. And she took my car keys and wouldn't let me leave the house until I had written an application letter.
Ben Binversie:
26:17
That's one way to do it.
Chris Jones:
26:18
Well, I got the job done. So I am thankful for that.
Ben Binversie:
26:23
Yeah. That's funny. I'm not going to let my mother listen to this interview. So she doesn't get any ideas. Keep my keys close at hand. So how long has there been a college archivists? Can you give me a brief history of the archive here at Grinnell. When did the college start collecting and organizing this material in a comprehensive and conservative manner and when did there become a person who was in charge of that?
Chris Jones:
26:51
That's a good question. And forever uncovering more information about the archive. So I had been under the mistaken impression that it had more or less formerly coalesced under Ann Kintner, maybe back in the 70s. But speaking with another librarian about a specific type of call number that is used in Special Collections currently, her understanding that it was in use long before she arrived in the 70s and was likely around in the early 1900s. And it's only seems to be used in the college archive.
Chris Jones:
27:38
So I don't have any firm facts, but I would say that it probably started in the early 1900s. And I don't think it was a formal place. I have a feeling it was probably a collection of papers housed in somebody's office. A lot of things do start, but use of the college Special Collections I think really picked up probably in the 70s. And we didn't have a really public accessible existence, I think until the Burling Library was renovated in the early 1980s.
Chris Jones:
28:21
I may be wrong, but before that there was the Grinnell Room, which was a place to go for, I think rare and special books. But the archive aspect, I'm not sure where that was house. Again, probably in somebody's office. But then in the 1980s, when a bunch of campus offices moved out of Burling basement, and that space was renovated. Then we were given a vault facility and the reading room that we still have. So those are the facts as far as I'm aware, although half of them may be wildly inaccurate. I'm still learning myself. If anybody has any more information, I would love to know more about it.
Ben Binversie:
29:10
Yeah, it's like meta history. The archive of the archive.
Chris Jones:
29:15
Right. Yeah.
Ben Binversie:
29:15
I think oftentimes, organizations or businesses are kind of ... even if they're involved in history, they're sometimes the least aware of their own history because sometimes it's just not there. The documents aren't there.
Chris Jones:
29:29
Well, it's very true. I think that's a very good observation. And I think another reason that that may be is that sometimes you just too close. You too close. And nobody thinks, "Oh, posterity is really going to want to know about this photograph or this document in 50 years." Or you're too busy and you're too sort of in the thick of things and nobody sits down and says, "We probably should be recording or documenting the decisions that we're making." No, I think that's a good observation and I've run in instances of that in the past. So I think you're right on.
Ben Binversie:
30:10
Yeah. So you talked a little bit about your job involves a lot of work with students, whether in a supervising capacity, people working in the archives as student workers, but also students, professors that come in and interact with the archives in that capacity. And I think a lot of the classes do rely on primary source materials, not just in history classes, but other classes as well, to kind of do research and incorporate it into their classes. How do students use the archive collections for research?
Chris Jones:
30:43
I think you've you've covered it pretty well actually. We've hosted classes and individual students from ... Well, quite a few from history of course but from Spanish from French, art and art history, the art science major. They're really from a lot of different departments around campus. And each research question is a little bit different so it needs to be approached differently.
Chris Jones:
31:12
But generally my part is not just to provide access, I guess but also to help the researcher learn how to navigate the finding aids and learn how to ... what protocols to expect when visiting a Special Collections facility whether it's something like Grinnell or something larger like the University of Iowa or a private facility, like the Getty Library. There is not just education about the topic, but education about visiting and what's appropriate for that kind of that kind of thing too.
Ben Binversie:
31:54
Yeah, I know. There were a few projects during my time as a student where I enlisted your support, was very helpful because I think it can be a little overwhelming not just undertaking a research project, but then go into the archives and even if you have a really small topic. Like I know, one project I did was the history of like the co-ed dorm policy. There's so much there. I can't look at everything that's been done on it. And so it is helpful to have somebody to help kind of focus your vision a little bit.
Chris Jones:
32:24
Well, we do kind of do a lot of those sort of reference interviews when people come in because it can be overwhelming and there's a lot of fun material to access down there and so I don't want to take up more time that is necessary with the formalities. I really like to get the material to the researcher and sort of get them on their journey. I really enjoy it actually. That's one of my favorite parts I'd say.
Ben Binversie:
32:54
So speaking of favorites, do you have any favorite items in the collection, hidden gems maybe or compelling characters from Grinnell history that maybe have gone overlooked that you may be discovered. Not the Herbie Hancock's or Bob Noyce's but the little people? Or just any favorite rare books or things like that that really as a nerdy library sciences guy you just love to geek out on.
Chris Jones:
33:23
There's so many things. Our two oldest printed books were both printed in 1477. And one of them weighs in at a solid nine and a half pounds. So the front and back covers are both made out of wood. And there's a lot of manuscripts waste used in the binding and the papers good solid thick, but that one will be around a long time.
Chris Jones:
33:53
I also really like the Salvador Dali illustrated Alice in Wonderland. That's pretty trippy. There are a lot of fun instances in the college's history that are kind of interesting. During one student protest, I can't remember exactly when. A student had gotten to the American flag flown out on the out in the open space, sort of just north of the library and had turned the American flag upside down and floated upside down in the International code of distress.
Chris Jones:
34:34
And one of the professors at the time, John Crosset had seen that and kind of lost his cool. So he ran out and righted the flag and then clung to the flag pole for the rest of the day to prevent anybody else from fooling with the flag. The fact that JB Grinnell was visited by the Underground Railroad, what was his name?
Ben Binversie:
35:01
John Brown.
Chris Jones:
35:02
Thank you. John Brown visited JB with some escaped slaves in tow. And that's kind of fascinating.
Ben Binversie:
35:12
What record do we have of that? Like what ... ?
Chris Jones:
35:16
There are a lot of secondhand records, so newspaper articles and recollections from town's members of the time. And JB remembers it in his autobiography. There aren't any that I am aware of records. I don't think he kept a diary.
Ben Binversie:
35:40
Yes, no personal correspondence.
Chris Jones:
35:42
Yes, sir. Dear diary, you'll never guess who showed up at my doorstep last night after dinner. Nothing quite like that. A lot of, like I said secondhand, secondary sources. There are a lot of several little discrete episodes in the college's history that's just really fascinating. The takeover Burling Library by the student group CBS, concerned black students was a big deal. And a lot of people don't understand that at the time that that happened, the college administrative offices were located in Burling basement. And so a lot of a lot of people hear that and say, "Oh, yeah, they were taking over the library to make a statement." And in fact, they chained themselves inside of the building that house the administrative offices so that the administrators had to listen to them.
Ben Binversie:
36:35
Right. So thinking about what happens at the college nowadays, or at least in more recent history, there's so much happening. Maybe there isn't any more happening than there used to be. But it feels like there's so much happening. How do you determine what to archive of the current things that are happening on campus? Do you have a concrete kind of system or is it more touch and feel individual basis- we should keep track of this or not?
Chris Jones:
37:05
I would love to sound totally together and say no, we've got this plan and outline 38 points of my collection policy. But the fact of the matter is when collecting the college history, we use what's referred to as a sampling plan so we don't try to necessarily collect every single document that has ever been printed on a college printer. But we do try to collect enough about each event are held on campus or each lecture given to give a future researcher an idea of what was the big deal? Why might this have been important?
Chris Jones:
37:51
With all the student-led activities on campus, we try to record as many of those as possible. There are so many that it's just again, that's just not feasible. So we just try to record as many as we can and hope it's good enough.
Ben Binversie:
38:10
Yes. It's hard to as a person who is living in the present understand what will be important to someone 20, 30 years from now. So some of the projects that the Library and Archives have been involved in. One of them is digitizing the S&B archives that happened a few years ago. How did that process come about and why do you think that's important to have that resource of student newspapers dating back to what, like 1894?
Chris Jones:
38:46
Yeah.
Ben Binversie:
38:46
Available for people on the web?
Chris Jones:
38:49
They're actually a very popular research resource because they get used by people doing genealogy. "Oh, My grandfather had stories about his time at Grinnell. Could you give me an idea of what life was like then?" "Yeah, here's a link to the newspaper." Or, "Well, I heard about this time that a bunch of students chained themselves in Burling. What was that about?" "Well, here's a link to the newspaper." It actually has generated a lot of foot traffic too, because people will find it and say, "I didn't have any idea this happened or I didn't realize this speaker visited Grinnell. Do you have any more information about it?"
Chris Jones:
39:35
So it really has not been an end. It's not like we just say to people, "Yeah, here you can look at it online. Don't bother us," which would never happen anyway. But it's more like they find it or we say, "Well, here's this resource online. Let me know if you have any questions," and they come back with a whole lot of new questions, which is cool. And I love that exploring that way. So getting that digitized and out there was a pretty big event.
Ben Binversie:
40:07
Can you talk about the Poweshiek history preservation project and kind of the importance of local history and how that comes into your work?
Chris Jones:
40:15
Yeah. So, six years ago, I think, when I was still a staff person in Special Collections, and Catherine rod was the Special Collections librarian. We were approached by one of the librarians at the Drake Community Library, and the two libraries have always had a strong working relationship. But we're always looking for ways to bring our two institutions even closer. And there is so very much interest in local history and not just in Grinnell but in Poweshiek County in general because there are a lot of families who have come and stayed. And there's a lot of place based education that goes on here on campus, and so it's been a really good resource for that.
Chris Jones:
41:03
And it's been the stories that people tell. They almost always start out with, "No, nobody really wants to hear that story," or whatever. But I don't know. We spoke to one man at first year who not only did he remember interstate 80 being paved, which really, in the grand scheme of things wasn't that long ago. He actually remembered when they paved highway six. He has since passed, but he was in his very late 90s when we spoke to him. And he was a treasure trove of all of these. He had been raised here. His family had been raised here. So he had all of these really amazing stories about the history of Grinnell. I don't know. It's not everyone's thing, but I really enjoy talking to people about that because they just sort of light up and they like being able to share those things with people.
Ben Binversie:
41:59
Yeah. And it's cool when what you think is just your personal story becomes relevant to other people that are interested in history.
Chris Jones:
42:07
I do think it's fulfilling to some of the participants who have donated material, who can say, "Well, yeah, here's some family photographs that were taken at Merrill Park." For whatever that's worth, but then people get really excited about the place set in the background or something. Or, oh, man, I remember when we used to go and play baseball there at the park every Sunday or something. And so what seems like an innocuous family photograph becomes sort of a seed for a long historical discussion. It's fun to see those things develop.
Ben Binversie:
42:41
Yeah. So I imagine you've learned a lot about Grinnell's history from working in the archives. How does that kind of knowledge that you've gained change your perspective on kind of where Grinnell is at right now in 2019? That's a big question is a big question.
Chris Jones:
43:01
It is a big question. It sounds trite, but I frequently have a thought along the lines of everything old is new again. So much of history is cyclical. Not just on the world stage, but locally too. And so, you see a lot of people who are upset now about a given topic are frequently upset about the same topics that maybe their parents' generation or their grandparents' generation were also upset with. And maybe news coverage might wax and wane on that given topic, giving the impression that it has been addressed or ameliorated in some way. But then it comes back again and it becomes clear that it hasn't been addressed.
Chris Jones:
43:53
I would say especially given the college's commitment to social justice and how each every couple of years that becomes kind of a hot topic again, but the fact of the matter is that it's been an interest and passion since the college was established. I would say too working with the age of some of the things not just in the college archives, but the rare books. I mentioned the two books we have from 1477 have really screwed up my sort of temporal perspective. You get people on the phone, who will say, "Well, I graduated in 1963 and that's probably a long time ago. So you may not have the information I'm looking for." And I think 1963? That was last week. Try harder. That's really messed me up in that way.
Ben Binversie:
44:59
That's funny. Grinnell in many ways has changed quite a bit in seeing the development of certain movements and other changes through time by looking at things in archive, it's pretty fun. And there's the people, places and activities that have shaped the college down there. Thinking about the items in the archives, how much can you glean about Grinnell's past from the kind of minutiae or ephemera of things like course catalogs or things like that that at the time to any student when they received the course catalog now, it's a dry institutional material, maybe they don't actually read any of it. And it doesn't seem exciting even to maybe the average person who would look upon that even an old one, but are really important to your work as an archivist. When you approach a document like that, what are you looking for in terms of what's important here?
Chris Jones:
45:56
I would say, over the last nine years, that I've learned to sort of recognize where certain types of information are most easily and quickly accessed. So of course catalogs, for example, contain information about the classes that were taught. I think that looking at that type of resource, it's interesting to see what the type of education that was valued at the beginning of when the college was founded in 1846. It was very sort of classics heavy, the Greek, Latin. Very spiritual when it wasn't overtly Christian because it was founded by congregational ministers.
Chris Jones:
46:50
So it's that kind of thing. But if you're looking at the yearbooks, for example, you might look and see, which businesses were advertising in the yearbook at a given time, so you might look in the 1940s and notice a whole bunch of business names that just don't exist in Grinnell anymore. So there's a lot that you can kind of wheedle out of them both about the college history but also about the Grinnell community history.
Ben Binversie:
47:23
Yeah. And it's cool how a document's intended purpose isn't always the same as what it ends up serving for you as an archivist or a historian. They might be writing about this, but you're looking at it with all different angles. So it means something totally different.
Chris Jones:
47:38
Yeah, those yearbooks were never designed to be sort of time capsules of local businesses. But they sure are now. They are useful when you're looking at research questions like the co-edification of the dorms, and when do dorm photos start including photos including men and women as opposed to the men in here and the women are here? There's always another lens to look at a resource through and once you find the right lens, it's always kind of interesting to see what there is.
Ben Binversie:
48:19
Yeah, what does the term institutional memory mean to you?
Chris Jones:
48:25
Honestly, sometimes it means frustration. I most frequently hear that coming from people who are frustrated or aggravated when they don't realize that the college has an archive. And so people I hear say that are frustrated that they don't perceive that there's a place for them to go to get the answers that they're looking for. So usually it's, "Well this place just doesn't have any institutional memory." And so I've actually, on the deal reached out to a number of people who I've heard say that in public and tried to help them understand that we do. And maybe it's not as thorough as they may desire. As I say, we practice sampling. So we're not going to have every single document ever produced on campus. But we probably have something to help.
Chris Jones:
49:33
And it has become kind of a ... sometimes I hear it so much. I worry that it's becoming a cliche. And when I hear it, I wish that I could sit down with everyone, sometimes individually, preferably in small groups, and just talk about what it means to them and ask them if they've been to the archive or if they know that the archive exists. We're not going to reach out to everybody. That's not possible. But I will say that many times, certainly not most necessarily, but many times I hear that that's what I think and so those are the thoughts that stick with me, the impressions that stick with me the most, I think.
Chris Jones:
50:18
We're constantly working to fill holes in the institutional memory. So I would say for example, most recently, we've been working with some of the students who have been active within the BCC to archive their history that concerned black students and the BCC as a structure and a home to the group. And it's the populations that they serve. I think we've made good strides but there's so much history still floating out there, and I'm eager for the multicultural reunion this fall to be able to continue to fill those gaps in the memory and to help us move forward in a more considered way I think in the future.
Ben Binversie:
51:17
Yeah. Well, for people who haven't been down into the basement, check out the Special Collections and Archives. I definitely encourage them to do so because it is a treasure trove of fascinating information.
Chris Jones:
51:32
Thank you. Yeah, we try.
Ben Binversie:
51:36
I don't know if this interview will make it into the archives, but thank you, Chris for doing your part to keep the memories alive for people and share them.
Chris Jones:
51:42
It's my pleasure. Thank you.
Ben Binversie:
51:45
Chris Jones is the college archivist. He mentioned the Salisbury House collection briefly. The college has since purchased over 5,000 items from them, and you can read about that on the website. That's it for this episode. Next time we're going to talk to Dan Kaiser, professor emeritus of history about a few episodes from Grinnell history that illustrate the evolving relationship between the town and college. That's next time on All Things Grinnell. Music for today's show comes from Brett Newski and Podington Bear.
Ben Binversie:
52:16
If you'd like to contact the show, email us at podcast@grinnell.edu or check out our website Grinnell.edu/podcast for more information about the guests from today's show. And don't forget to subscribe to the podcast wherever you listen. I'm your host, Ben Binversie. Stay weird Grinnellians.