Shreve & Co. Eliza Baylies Chapin Wheaton’s Perpetual Calendar Late 19th century Sterling silver and celluloid
Donated by Lucy Howe Wild, Class of 1923 Marion B. Gebbie Archives & Special Collections 1973: Calendar donated. Lucy A. Wild, the daughter of Mr. and Mrs. Alfred Wheaton Wild, cousins of Judge Laban Wheaton, donated this perpetual calendar on May 28th 1973. It belonged to Eliza Baylies Chapin Wheaton, Judge Laban Wheaton’s daughterin-law, who is credited with convincing him of the importance of creating a female seminary in memory of his beloved daughter Eliza Wheaton Strong. Eliza Baylies Wheaton’s initials are engraved on the side of the silver frame. Mrs. Wheaton spent many busy hours at her desk, tracking the passage of time with correspondence, keeping a diary, and maintaining meticulous financial records. The calendar’s interchangeable headings and date configurations are printed on celluloid, an early form of thermoplastic first created in 1862 and featured at the Great Exhibition in London, which visited Eliza Baylies and Laban Morey Wheaton visited during their tour of Europe. The Californian jewelers and silversmiths Shreve & Co., related to the Boston firm Shreve, Crump & Low, created this Arts and Crafts-style calendar. We surmise that the calendar was given to Mrs. Wheaton either by her brother Samuel Austin Chapin, for whom Chapin Hall was named, or her niece Mary Chapin Smith, Class of 1872. Both lived in California for a number of years: Chapin went West pursuing the 1849 Gold Rush, while Smith and her husband ran a vineyard that had been purchased for them by Mrs. Wheaton.
-Written by Sophie Kilcoyne, Class of 2013
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