The Archives at Woodstock Cate Whitcomb ’66, Margo Warner Curl ’67 & Lori Osborne
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s the years have passed and the richness of the history of Woodstock School increases in depth and complexity the Archives become more and a more a treasure trove of information. There have been two written histories of the school and while the need for another edition of the history is unmet, there are documents and records that tell that history in the archives. What are the Archives? They include publications including nearly all Whispering Pine annual year books, the Quadrangle alumni magazines, the student newspaper, the Tiger and other iterations of the newspaper, correspondence from the school administrators, meeting minutes from the Board of Directors, the administrative and teaching staff, photographs and ephemera of various kinds including Miss Marley’s academic robes and dandi. These are all considered primary source documents which capture the times in which they were created.
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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
Archives room with old file cabinets
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
