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The following post was written by our intern, Kaitlin Scott. Kaitlin is a student of the University of South Carolina’s School of Library and Information Science. She has recently completed digitizing our collection of yearbooks for the St. Alban’s School for Boys. Visit the collection here, the Promus.
St. Albans School for Boys was founded in 1892 by George W. Miles, who served as headmaster of the School. Miles founded the school after ten years as a professor at Emory and Henry College at the age of 30. Built to accommodate 50 boys in order to prepare them for university or business, th e school was founded on the premise that boys have an educational home away from the temptations and distractions of a city. St. Albans buildings were built in the colonial style with wide verandas, white columns and classic gables as can be seen from a photo taken from the 1893-1894 issue of the Promus.
The school started out very successfully, but was fully closed in 1911. In 1915, the building was bought by Dr. J.C King who established the Saint Albans Sanatorium. A substantial addition to the mental hospital was made in 1980 and continued in operation until 2004. In 2001, Carilion Health System donated the St. Albans buildings to Radford University, pursuing a plan to construct an RU West campus there. In 2008, Radford University sold much of the property at auction. Paranormal investigators have flocked to the location since its closing to see if the site lives up to its name as the most haunted location on the east coast. Public tours of the building and grounds are available between April and September.
Much has been learned about this historic school through the yearbooks it left behind. Named the Promus, its chief aim was to present the athletic records of the school. Radford University has in its Special Collections volumes of the Promus for the years 1893-1904, excluding the year 1897-1898. These copies were donated by James P. King, M.D throughout the 1970’s. Presumably, Dr. King came across these issues of the Promus while serving as the medical director of St. Albans Sanatorium, which he retired from in 1976. There is also the assumption he may have inherited the property on the death of his father, the founder of the Sanatorium, Dr. J.C King.
The Promus included the headings of Personals (background of new students and faculty), As Others See Us (superlatives), Athletics, The Promus Entertainment (plays, musical and dramatic entertainments), and Ads. Various other headings are present and change from year to year.
St. Albans School quickly gained a reputation for being a rough and competitive school where bullying was encouraged. Many of the boys were “lost” during the years of operation. These “lost” boys are enshrined in the Promus with a picture and written snapshot of that boy’s character. One such boy, Irving Malone, is thus featured in the 1895-1896 issue of the Promus.
Despite the 113-124 year age difference between them and the boys of today, they still have a few things in common. The most obvious of course is sports. As can be seen in this picture taken from the 1898-1899 edition of the Promus, football and baseball were popular even then.
And of course, you can’t forget the girls……. Apparently boys in 1904 preferred brunettes!
References
St. Albans School. (2014). Are you afraid of the golf? Retrieved from: https://roadtrippers.com/us/radford-va/points-of-interest/st-albans-sanatorium
What was There. St. Albans School/Sanatorium. Retrieved from: http://www.whatwasthere.com/browse.aspx#!/ll/37.1390113830566,-80.5801620483398/id/9608/info/details/zoom/14/
(1893, July 2) St. Albans School: It Ranks with the Best in America- A Few Points of Interest. The Atlanta Constitution. Retrieved from: https://www.newspapers.com/clip/1702272/st_albans_school_for_boys_george_w/
(2004, January 18).Obituary of James Peter King. Southwest Times. Retrieved from: http://www.rootsweb.ancestry.com/~vapulask/swtimes/k1.html
The Archives and Special Collections department here in McConnell Library at Radford University is conducting interviews of participants in any of the Women’s Marches that happened January 21, 2017. We feel the event was historic and so have started a collection of video interviews, written interviews, photographs, signs, and anything else applicable.
The video interviews are being posted on our Archives Vimeo account page- https://vimeo.com/channels/1206741 and can also be found on our library homepage in the list of digital media. Please watch and learn from these interviews. Over time many more will be added to this collection- at the time of this posting there are 5 interviews posted and 1 video preview- but again, more are coming soon.
If you participated in a march- any of the hundreds of marches around the world that day- and would like to be a part of this project, please let us know! Below is a preview video showing small bits of several of the interviews.
 On Thursday, October 13, 2016 Radford University held the Inauguration Ceremony for our seventh president, Dr. Brian O. Hemphill. He came to us most recently from serving as the tenth president of West Virginia State University in Charleston, WV. We welcome Dr. Hemphill!
Here are a few photos from the ceremony-
Radford University faculty line up in preparation to enter the ceremony grounds. The processional was led by the Radford University Highlanders Pipes and Drums under the direction of Timothy L. Channell, EdD.
The Presidential Podium sits on the stage area of Moffett Quad, the site of the Inauguration Ceremony.
Students, staff members, retired faculty, members of the public and invited guests filled Moffett Quad to be a part of the festivities.
The Radford University Choruses under the direction of Meredith Y Bowden, DMA provided choral selections.
 
The Radford University Wind Symphony under the direction of R. Wayne Gallops PhD provided musical selections.
Dr. Joseph Scartelli, Interim Provost and Vice President of Academic Affairs served as Master of Ceremonies. Throughout the ceremony many speakers addressed the audience and Dr. Hemphill, among them The Honorable Dietra Y. Trent PhD- Secretary of Education for the Commonwealth of Virginia, Peter A Blake-Director of the State Council of Higher Education for Virginia, Jacinda Jones- President of the Student Government Association, E. Carter Turner PhD- President of the Faculty Senate, Sandra Bond- President of the Administrative and Professional Faculty Senate, Marie Testerman- President of Staff Senate, Kevin M. Rogers- President of the Alumni Association, The Honorable Bruce E. Brown- Mayor of the City of Radford, Johnetta Cross Brazzell PhD- Vice Chancellor Emeritus of Student Affairs at University of Arkansas, George S. Low PhD- Dean of the College of Business and Economics, and E. Gordon Gee- President of West Virginia University.
 
The Presidential Medallion is presented to Dr. Hemphill by Christopher J. Wade- Rector of the Board of Visitors.
 
The Academic Mace is presented to Dr. Hemphill by Dr. Joseph Scartelli.
At the end of the ceremony, the recessional was led away by the Radford University Highlanders Pipes and Drums under the direction of Timothy L. Channell EdD.
We welcome Dr. Brian O. Hemphill as the seventh president of Radford University.
  
Extra music was provided by our very special Radford University Highlanders Pipes and Drums under the direction of Timothy L. Channell, EdD.
I find it fascinating to look through old issues of the Grapurchat- our original school newspaper from January 27, 1921 until May 18, 1978. I know what you are thinking- “What is the deal with that name?” Turns out, I know the answer to that one- while trying to come up with a name for the newspaper, the students at the time decided to combine the two school colors- gray and purple- and the word “chat” and came up with… Grapurchat. That must have been a good name because for the next 57 years, the paper retained the name. As far as names of school newspapers goes, I think it is a pretty good one too.
Throughout the years, the Grapurchat ran stories about all aspects of life at the college. There were articles written about dances, dating advice, real news, fashion, all manner of things. Today, while looking an issue while I digitized it, I found a story that really caught my eye and piqued my curiosity. I was not actually reading this issue, just looking at it to try and match text with the correct page but two photographs caught my eye and I had to stop and read the article associated with them. One photo showed a student standing in her doorway wearing shorts and a shirt and the caption read “Without?”, the other picture showed her in the same doorway wearing a coat and the caption read- “or With?”
Apparently, in May 1960 the students and administration were in debate over the school dress code. The idea that there was any sort of dress code at a place of higher education may certainly seem foreign to us today but many years ago, things were a bit different apparently. Here are two articles with differing opinions on the matter.
I frequently wonder what current news stories will be interesting to readers in the far distant future. Food for thought?
I enjoy finding random items that spark my interest. Here are a few random items I enjoyed looking at-
The Radford Garden Club Yearbook- This small pamphlet shows that Radford had a vibrant garden club with many members and committees and activities.
   
These two items from conferences show that conferences have been a vital part of education for a long time!
 
On May 3, 2016 Tom Nechville of Bloomington Minnesota’s Nechville Banjos stopped by our Archives offices and talked to us about banjos, his innovative ideas about banjo design, and about what it all means to him. He is an innovator in banjo design and has a lot of very interesting and unique ideas so our conversation was fascinating. We got the rare opportunity to film Tom explaining his ideas and innovations in great detail.
This interview is the newest in our Banjo Masters series and is the first banjo builder we have interviewed. Masterful players need masterfully built instruments and one is as vital as the other in music. So please check out this newest interview: Tom Nechville- Banjo Building’s Mad Scientist.
This week we are featuring the school’s Alma Mater, written by Florence C. Baird in 1914. Below you will see the sheet music that was distributed to students of the Radford State Teachers College. This particular document also contains the words to the official songs of both the Ingles and Pocahontas Literary Societies, and the State College Motto.
   
In case you are wondering how the Alma Mater would sound as a rap song, well wonder no more- Rap Version of our Alma Mater.
There are many treasures in our archive. I thought it might be interesting to occasionally show a photograph of one or two of them. Today I present a booklet written by M’Ledge Moffett with the title Youth Looks at Marriage- A guide for the study of Marriage and Family Life. The booklet was written in 1949 and this particular one was autographed by Ms. Moffett in 1954. While she was never married, she did provide insight and advice for those who were considering it for themselves.
M’Ledge Moffet was the Director of Home Economics from 1913-1944 and the Dean of Women from 1920-1962. She was born in 1892, the only child of William Ledgerwood Moffett and Mary Stoops Moffett and her name was formed from shortened versions of her parents names, Mary and Ledgerwood. We have many items from Ms. Moffett’s personal and professional life in our archive. If you are interested in seeing any of it in person, please contact us for an appointement, we would be happy to show it to you.
The following are a few random pages from the 48 page booklet.
    
We are happy to announce that we have a new book scanner available for our patrons!
The new scanner is a Zeta Comfort model from Zeutschel of Germany. This new scanner will allow patrons to scan books to their flash drive or directly email the file to themselves. The scanner software features Optical Character Recognition (OCR), page flattening, and will automatically remove thumbs from the image.
 Close up view of the scanner display monitor. Images can be saved as PDF, JPEG, or TIFF files. Come by the Reading Room and give it try!
Coal mining is a large and important part of Appalachia and Appalachian culture. Because of that, McConnell Library’s Archives and Special Collections has gathered and preserved a wide variety of items representing it. We are lucky to have several artifacts of coal mining at this time- helmets,  head lanterns, and scrip that are part of the Earl Palmer Collection; actual coal, lunch buckets and a variety of other tools on loan to us from the Appalachian Regional and Rural Studies Center; an extensive collection of personal papers from the Harley Cordle Coal Mining Collection ; items from the personal collection of union leader Bill Blizard and his son, journalist William C. Blizzard; and photographs by William O. Trevey, Willis Vail, and Rufus Ribble.
The photographs mentioned above, those of Trevey, Vail and Ribble are part of the very large George and Melody Bragg New River Coal Fields Photographic Collection which is composed of glass plate negatives, regular negatives, cirkut camera negatives, and cirkut camera prints. Many of these have been digitized and appear online for public viewing as the Trevey and Vail collections. It is partly because of this digitization of the Trevey images that we were contacted by members of a documentary team The Film Posse from Boston, Massachusetts. Through their research, they found that we owned the collection and after a full day of viewing scans and negatives with us, and several days of phone and email contact, 32 images were chosen from our collection to be used in their documentary- The Mine Wars.
Instead of trying to summarize the documentary myself, I will just copy the synopsis they provide on their website-“Go inside the coal miners’ bitter battle for dignity at the dawn of the 20th century with The Mine Wars. The struggle over the material that fueled America led to the largest armed insurrection since the Civil War and turned parts of West Virginia into a bloody war zone.”
Blue Ridge Public Television (PBS) at 9:00PM Tuesday, January 26.
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e school was founded on the premise that boys have an educational home away from the temptations and distractions of a city. St. Albans buildings were built in the colonial style with wide verandas, white columns and classic gables as can be seen from a photo taken from the 1893-1894 issue of the Promus.
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