Main content

Emily Lyman Storer Scrapbook

Notifications

Held at: Bryn Mawr College [Contact Us]Bryn Mawr College Library, 101 N. Merion Avenue, Bryn Mawr 19010

This is a finding aid. It is a description of archival material held at the Bryn Mawr College. Unless otherwise noted, the materials described below are physically available in their reading room, and not digitally available through the web.

Overview and metadata sections

Emily Lyman Storer, born on September 4, 1886, was a member of Bryn Mawr College's Class of 1910. She majored in History, English, Geometry, and Psychology while serving as both Class Editor and Collector. She transferred to Radcliffe in 1909 and completed her degree(s) over the next two years. Storer returned for an indeterminate time to attend the Graduate School of Social Work at Bryn Mawr College, before going on to work with both the Ellis Memorial Settlement House in Boston, Massachusetts (1909-1930) and Friendship House in Washington, D.C. (1927-1969). She passed away in November 1975.

The Emily Lyman Storer scrapbook contains the one volume scrapbook of Emily Storer, Bryn Mawr College Class of 1910. The scrapbook consists of materials from 1906-1927, largely comprising Bryn Mawr memorabilia and documentation of cultural events and extracurriculars specific to this institution. Coverage of the last decade of this range is sparse, but meaningful. It offers a valuable perspective on the social life and traditions of Bryn Mawr Students during the early twentieth century, especially regarding the topics of performance and drama as tradition.

The scrapbook consists of one volume and is organized chronologically. It contains ephemera and photographs depicting Lyman's Class of 1910, including extensive transcriptions of class song lyrics; detailed documentation of each year's conferment of degrees, complete with images of the graduating class; paper artifacts (e.g. invitations, scripts, playbills) and photographs from plays held on campus in the spirit of both recreation and inter-class year tradition(s); dance cards and notes from social acquaintances, as well as invitations to student dinners and parties; extant exam documents; photographic documentation of the varsity sports teams of the college, in particular the basketball and hockey associations; and photographs of the campus of Bryn Mawr College itself.

While documenting many Bryn Mawr traditions, this scrapbook contains a wealth of May Day material (e.g. photographs, press, itineraries).

President Taft's guest appearance at the Class of 1910 Conferment of Degrees is another highly covered event in this account.

Each of the photographs detailed above is carefully captioned, identifying persons therewithin and their activities, and the occasional paired newspaper clipping provides context of simultaneous college administrative politics and mounting suffragette movement.

This scrapbook's organization and maintenance of Bryn Mawr memorabilia sheds light on not only the standard social practices for young women of the day, but also the complex Bryn Mawr-specific events and traditions and their unique role in fostering a campus politics during the beginning of the early twentieth-century suffragette movement. The centrality of theater and performance to these events and traditions is also clarified and may be studied to glean general campus atmosphere at the time.

Publisher
Bryn Mawr College

Collection Inventory

Print, Suggest