Call Number:

Ms. Coll. 1680

Repository:

University of Pennsylvania: Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts

Extent:

.2 linear feet (1 box containing 1 volume and 1 folder with accompanying materials.)

Language:

English

Preferred Citation:

Barbara Birge Camp Wyonegonic photo album and accompanying materials, 1924-27, Ms. Coll. 1680, Kislak Center for Special Collections, Rare Books and Manuscripts, University of Pennsylvania.

Date:

1924-1927 (inclusive)

Form:

Photograph albums and Black-and-white photographs

Abstract:

Camp Wyonegonic is a summer camp for girls founded in 1902. Barbara Birge attended in the summer of 1924. This collection consists of Barbara's photo album from that summer and materials for campers and their families published by Camp Wyonegonic.

Camp Wyonegonic is a summer camp for girls, founded in 1902 by Charles and Harriet Cobb. Originally on Highland Lake, the grounds moved to Moose Pond in Denmark, Maine in 1908, where the camp still operates to this day.

Barbara Birge was born in Schenectady, New York, in 1909. She attended Camp Wyonegonic in summer 1924. On October 4, 1930, she married Charles Greenwood Roberts (b. 1904 in Oil City, PA) in Schenectady. They had two sons, Charles Jr. and Nathan. Charles Sr. died in 1950. After her first husband died, Barbara married Sherman Henry Stearns. Barbara died in July of 2002.

References

"About: The Oldest Girls' Camp in Maine," Wyonegonic Camps, https://wyonegonic.com/about/. Accessed 13 November 2025.

New York State, Marriage Index, 1881-1967. Ancestry, 1997-2025, ancestry.com. Accessed 3 December, 2025

"Barbara Birge Stearns," Find a Grave, https://www.findagrave.com/memorial/122018004/barbara-stearns. Accessed 13 November 2025.

"Where Girls of Summer Have Gone Since 1902." New York Times. 30 July, 2001, p. 13.

This collection consists of one photograph album (41 leaves) with black and white photos of summer camp activities, including canoeing, hiking, and swimming, plus portraits of campers. The album includes a sheet of handwritten notes to Barbara Birge from her fellow campers commemorating the summer, recalling camp stories, and reminding her to write or visit. The photographer may have been Barbara, but no photographer is credited explicitly. Some photographs may have been purchased.

Accompanying the photo album is 1 swimming certificate, 1 informational booklet, 3 camp newsletters (each 1 folded sheet), 2 photographs, an application for camp membership for the year 1927, and 4 camp song lyric sheets.

This collection is a part of the Caroline F. Schimmel Collection of Women in the American Wilderness.