The Library's Garden Level (Lower Level) is currently closed due to storm flooding. More about garden-level closure. (Posted on: 03/08/2024 03:24pm)
World War I was one of the most lethal battles in history that drew in major global powers from various nations to fight against one another. Over the course of four years, from 1914 to 1918, millions of combatants and civilians died as a result of the violence. The progress of the war was covered and documented by soldiers who...
Dr. Leonard Osborne was a U.S. Navy surgeon based in Maryland during the War of 1812. His personal journal, dated 1809 to 1815, is one of the many treasures held in Special Collections and Archives. In it, he describes medical lectures he attended, some medical treatments, various locations his ship visited, and his fellow seamen. He also included some...
Lee William Mayo was born on August 15, 1915 in Clover Township, Jefferson County Pennsylvania, the third child of Pennsylvania farmers, Dick and Lina Witherow Mayo. He enlisted in the United States Army on October 15, 1941 at Fort Meade in Maryland and was initially stationed at Camp Lee, Virginia. Following the Japanese attack at Pearl Harbor...
James F. Dargan was born in the town of Randolph, Norfolk County, Massachusetts in 1843. Dargan was the eldest of six children born to Irish immigrants, and by the age of seventeen worked as a boot maker in his father’s shop. On September 17, 1862, at the age of nineteen, he enlisted in the Union Army, 4th Regiment, Massachusetts Infantry....
Special Collections and Archives holds many unique and interesting diaries which chronicle the adventures of travelers from all over the world. One of these, entitled, Journal of a Trip from Liverpool to San Francisco, was penned by a young Englishwoman visiting the United States for the very first time. The journal chronicles her trip from April to June of 1895, beginning with a trip across the sea on the "luxurious" S.S Teutonic...
Fleming writes, "Here we are with no adequate guns or defenses, and trying to work as usual . . . If we put up a defense everyone will be killed, + we will put up a defense. I have a machete ready in the office." Later that same day, he learned they'd have a "blackout every nite, + no matches even are allowed..."
