Here in the archives of the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library, we have several collections that have come to us because of their connection to other donations. The archivists took them on because of their value to research the history of the Wilson era. However, in a few cases, the collections also contain items that would be interesting to researchers working on different periods. An excellent example of this can be found in the George L. Harrison Collection.

Arthur S. Link was one of the premier 20th-century historians of Woodrow Wilson and also the editor of the monumental Woodrow Wilson Papers. Here at the archive, we have some of Link’s research files. These include a substantial pamphlet collection on Wilson and his times. Many of the pamphlets cover debates in congress or significant news articles. A number of items give us the views of Wilson from foreign countries.

This February, I will be teaching a course for the Lifelong Learning Institute of James Madison University. The class will meet here in the Library & Research Center, so that will give us the chance to examine some of the historical sources from the archives in person. The topic is Woodrow Wilson’s early life during the years of Reconstruction.

This massive photograph album from the avid collector of all things Woodrow Wilson, Wallace McClure, includes postcards and a few cut-outs from magazines. When putting together a collection of images along a single theme, it was common to include some printed items that fit in, so that they would not be lost.

President Wilson put great effort into maintaining his correspondence, and that included many personal Christmas greetings.

The earliest historical evidence produced by Woodrow Wilson were doodles written in a school geography textbook in 1870. Alongside drawings of a greyhound and hot air balloons, there is a sketch of a baseball diamond and two line ups of the Light Foot Base Ball Club of Augusta, Georgia. As second baseman and club secretary, Wilson clearly had a great interest in the game from a young age.

In December 1920, Arthur Sweetser reported back on the first assembly of the League of Nations. He went through all of the major points of the meeting, including the discussion of humanitarian issues.

In a recent blog post, the topic ended on the owners of the Montgomery Hall plantation in Staunton, one of the larger tracts near Staunton where enslaved people were forced to work the land. The Virginia Chronicle at the Library of Virginia offers some more information from the state’s newspapers on the fate of the house. For instance, we can see the sale of the land by John Peyton’s heirs shortly before Woodrow Wilson was born. Highlights included a vineyard of catawba grapes, acres already planted in wheat, and housing for enslaved farm workers.

The Valley of the Shadow at the University of Virginia was an early example of a successful digital humanities project. Comparing northern and southern communities, the digital archive is especially valuable for us here at the Woodrow Wilson Presidential Library because Staunton and surrounding Augusta County are one of the two Civil War regions covered. The Wilson Library was even involved in the initial development of the project in the early 1990s.

We read a bit of Wilson’s diary in the last blog post when discussing his trip to the Philadelphia Centennial Exhibition. We mostly have his sparse notes on life at Princeton and then at home for summer vacations over the next two years. Wilson repeatedly lags in his writing and then berates himself for his failings as a diarist when he starts up again, often months later. As the editors of the Woodrow Wilson Papers describe his journal: “It covers the period June 3 to November 23, 1876 and consists of fifty-five pages of closely written shorthand.”