Antique 1951 Parker Hall Woodstock School Community Christmas Concert Program.

From The Archives at Woodstock

By Woodstock School

Woodstock has maintained and preserved archival materials from the beginning. The earliest documents are the land deeds that were signed and notarized to transfer the property on which the school is located into the hands of the first organizers, teachers and staff dated in 1853-54. The Archives as they exist today were established officially by the Class of 1942 in 1996 when Dorothy Vaugh Whitcomb began to encourage her class to make donations in support of the Archives. They gave $12,870 to the school with which a specific area in the alumni office on the second floor of the main administration building in the Quad was constructed. In addition, shelving, folders and other necessary archival supplies were purchased. The room has concrete walls and floor and a fire-proof door. The original layout of the archives included the adjoining space which was to be used for sorting and ascension of materials and research. Since that time a section has been closed off with a grating which is used for storage of alumni related materials and the remainder of the original space has been used for offices.

In the intervening years, 1996 to the present, Margo Warner Curl (’67) and Cate Whitcomb (’66) have worked on organizing the materials. Cate went to Woodstock in January of 1997 as the Director of Development and Alumni just after the room was built. The first task was to pick up all the materials that were piled on the floor in the middle of the newly constructed room and put them in some logical sequence into file cabinets and shelving. Margo was able to come to Woodstock that summer for two months and brought with her a suitcase full of archival supplies. The results of her work was a comprehensive cataloging list which has guided all the work and research in the archives since then.

Margo and Cate were suited for this project as they both have a century of family history related to Woodstock. Cate’s family in India began with her maternal grandparents, Mason and Clara Vaugh, arriving in India in 1921. An early picture, found in the archives, of the Presbyterian mission taken in 1929, shows her parents Bill and Dorothy seated nearly beside each other at ages 5 and 3. All of her aunts and uncles attended and graduated from Woodstock as did three of her four siblings.

Margo's career was as an academic librarian with over 20 years at The College of Wooster Libraries. This college had long ties to Presbyterian mission work: many Wooster graduates served as missionaries, and many missionary children, including numerous Woodstock grads, attended Wooster. One of her favorite activities during her time there was working with the Special Collection

One of the fascinating discoveries made while we organized the materials in the archives was a packet of large-format black and white negatives. They were donated by Rev. Bob Alter who had been principal in the 1970’s and were taken by his father Dr. Emmet Alter who has principal in the 1940’s. In Delhi we found a photographer who created digital images for us. That is when we discovered these two photos taken right after the fire in the Quad and during the reconstruction. The area that burned was where the health center is now located but what had been the business office and where all student records were stored in the 1940’s. The Woodstock School history book Vol. 1 has a two page description of the fire written by Miss Mary McGee – she writes:

“At 3 am Monday, March 3rd, Miss Parker was awakened by a bright light when proved to be a fire in the carpenter shop. The flames were following the godown below the Office and were reaching up to the Accountant’s Office above. Miss Parker spread the alarm to others in the house. A servant had been sent to call Dr. Alter and the Hostel men, as only the Office telephone was in use, and on account of the thick smoke, entrance there was impossible….What a mess! Smoked walls in all the rooms at the front of the building, all panes of glass in the windows with the exception of about four in the drawing-room and tea-room were either cracked or broken. The floors were black with cinders, while doors and windows nearest the office haven completely burned.”

We have always known of the fire but seeing the photographs brought the story to life. There are a number of student records in the archives that survived the fire – they are in special archival plastic sheets to preserve them. Miss McGee notes:

The student records for the year 1940 were completely destroyed. From the tightly packed metal files, many old students’ records were salvaged, as the edges only were charred. All the old College records were destroyed as well as a file of school registers that date back to at least Mrs. Scott’s time, and perhaps even farther back. In the centenary year [1954] we have cause to mourn the loss of this important material.

The current archives are in the space just to the right of the upstairs window, above the debris and building supplies seen in the photos. Librarian on projects relating to missionary materials. Her initial trip to Woodstock in 1997 to begin organizing the archives was made possible by a summer study leave: during that leave she also explored material related to Woodstock at the Presbyterian Historical Society in Philadelphia and in The College of Wooster Archives. She, along with her 3 siblings, graduated from Woodstock and attended for most of their 12 years.

Many other alumni and ex-staff volunteers came over the following years, including Bill Whitcomb from the class of ’42 which had given the original donation to establish the archives. Melanie Smith worked for more than a year continuing to organize and sort documents. Other volunteers helped to identify people in photographs and organize them into files that documented events. Important documents from around the school were found and added to the growing collection.

Beginning in the summer of 2013 Margo, who had retired from her position as librarian at The College of Wooster, began what would be a series of almost yearly visits to the archives to further refine and organize the holdings. Cate accompanied Margo on those visits which ended up being four more times in 2014, 2015, 2017 and 2019. On three of those visits an expert consultant, Lori Osborne, who was then the archivist for the Evanston History Center in Evanston, Illinois, accompanied Margo and Cate adding her expertise and advice to the project.

With Lori’s eyes on the project, we began to refine the collection and more fully understand its historic significance. It is really quite unique to have this much material saved. The story of Woodstock School that is saved in the archives goes far beyond simply the school’s history but to the larger stories of the community of Mussoorie and the country of India in this time period.

The process of gradually locating school records and sorting through them to reduce duplications and to put them in chronological order was tedious work. But by the end of the 2019 visit, during which the focus had been on organizing the minutes of the Board meetings for the school, it felt to Margo and Cate that the task they had begun in 1997 was complete.

During the years of those organizing visits it became more and more clear that both a better location and improved storage equipment was needed. Cate’s class celebrated their 50th year since their high school

graduation in 2016 and she encouraged her classmates to contribute to the funds at Friends of Woodstock School for the archives. Members of the Class of ‘67 also contributed to the fund. With the help of Monica Roberts, Alumni Secretary, who researched the available types of metal, four-drawer cabinets and metal shelving available from vendors in India, an order for 16 cabinets and shelving was placed in late 2019 for a total of $5,420. Then in March of 2020 the pandemic of COVID-19 caused the complete lockdown of all business and transportation activity in India. The file cabinets were in a truck on their way to Mussoorie when the lockdown occurred. Several months later as the lockdown was lifted, the cabinets arrived. After a brief period where they had to be stored on the verandah, in the fall of 2020, Krishnan Kutty, the interim Development Director, was able to have the cabinets moved into the archives room, the old file cabinets removed, and all the materials transferred. Margo and Cate had intended to be at Woodstock for that transition but the global pandemic made it impossible to travel to India.

Over the years, as the work of organizing progressed, Margo and Cate met with the principals to discuss how the school might take over the responsibility of staffing and managing the archives, and to convey the need for additional space for the growing collection. They prepared a report of the ideal amount of space that would be needed to adequately house the current and growing collection. While the discussion of other renovation projects at the school continues, the archives are still in their original location. More space would be ideal, especially for research and accessioning of the materials. At least they are safe in secure new storage cabinets and shelving. One last visit to verify the organization of the materials transferred might be possible in 2022 if the pandemic allows for international travel once again.

The question that several alumni continue to ask us is “Why aren’t your digitizing the collection?” The organization we have done to date is a crucial first step to being able to create an archival digital collection, as digitizing archival material is more than just scanning and storing it some place. Digitizing can be explored once the School has dedicated staffing for the archives and is able to bring in a consultant to advise on best digitization practices.

The overall goal of the archives is to save everything related to the school’s history that is of “enduring historical value” – an archival standard used throughout the profession. The archives of Woodstock School has really achieved this goal. Now the next phase is to implement how the archives gets shared – and how future history gets saved.