History Commons^™

Ms- 241: Harry Dravo Parkin Wwi Memoir, Joy Zanghi

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This small collection includes five bound volumes of a memoir written by Harry Dravo Parkin. The collection contains information regarding his experience in WWI as a wounded prisoner of war as well as everyday life as a major.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website https://www.gettysburg.edu/special-collections/collections/.

Ms-238: Prisoner Of War Letters From World Wars I And Ii, Kelly A. Murphy

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This collection consists of various correspondence between POWs and their families, including 86 letters, 174 postcards, and about eight package slips during both world wars. Most of this correspondence was authored by the prisoners and sent to their families from camps in Europe, although it contains some correspondence from camps in Asia and Africa. The collection also contains correspondence from prisoners in concentration camps, such as Auschwitz, and from interned civilians in France and Germany. Because these letters were the main way to contact family members, most of the POW correspondence contain thoughts of homesickness and loneliness along with updates …

Ms-232: Edward A Frederick Papers, Joy Zanghi

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This collection is a small collection mostly comprised of postcards written by Edward A. Frederick to his family. The postcards follow Frederick from his training with the Aero Squadron in San Antonio Texas at Kelly Field to his service overseas in the UK and France. The collection also contains photographs, a newspaper clipping, and a ring and pins from the US Aero Squadron. Overall, the postcards and the collection as a whole do not provide much insight or detail about the life of a soldier during WWI.

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Ms-155: Lt. Francis M. Tompkins World War One Scrapbooks, Amy E. Lucadamo

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Francis M. Tompkins created three scrapbooks with images and materials that he collected during his service in WWI from 1917-1920. Most of the images are official army photographs printed on postcard stock. They are labeled on the image and sometimes dated. Additionally, Tompkins provides detailed descriptions of the locations, battles, individuals, and views pictured in the photographs. He describes the movements of the 305th Engineers and the tasks they performed in each location, often building bridges to allow for the movement of soldiers and equipment.

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Ms-153: The Fritz Draper Hurd ’16 Papers, Amy E. Lucadamo, Danielle Jones

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This collection consists primarily of materials produced by F.D. Hurd himself. The collection includes a memoir draft, photographs of his college experiences, diaries from his college and war time, and various artifacts and memorabilia from Hurd’s time in the military. The collection focuses heavily on Hurd’s college activities and his war service. While the collection does not provide much official information on Hurd’s military service and Gettysburg College experience, it does contain extensive anecdotal information from Hurd’s diaries and remembrances, dictated to his son in the 1970s. There is also a significant amount of information about his time in medical …

Ms-147: Lieutenant Andrew R. Kane Letters, Amy E. Lucadamo

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This collection is made up of 28 letters sent to Andrew R. Kane of Philadelphia, PA from May 31-July 15, 1918 while he was serving with the 112th Infantry, Company C in France. They were sent by the women in his family: his mother, two sisters, his sister-in-law, and girlfriend. His younger sister, Frances, and girlfriend, Marie wrote most often. Letters reference family and friends in Philadelphia, their pride in Andrew’s service, and their worries about his safety. They express patriotic and religious sentiments. Letters from Andrew’s mother, Mary, contain the most spelling and grammatical errors and letters from his …

Ms-148: John Alexander Kinnear Wwi Letters, Dori L. Gorczyca

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The letters of John Alexander Kinnear consist of 7 postcards and 92 letters which were written by Kinnear to his family living near Lexington Virginia. The letters range in dates from November of 1916 (before Kinnear joined the service) to May of 1919 (after he arrived home from Europe). The letters are mainly addressed to his mother, Mrs. J. J. L. Kinnear, but there are some that are addressed to his father and siblings.

Ms-130: World War I Letters Of Henry W. Straus, Devin Mckinney

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This collection comprises 48 letters from Henry W. Straus to his wife Anna. They were written between June 1918 and March 1919, when Henry, as a U.S. Army medical officer, was serving a British ambulance corps in France. Throughout the letters, Straus addresses his wife with great tenderness and yearning, anticipating their reunion and post-war life. He also displays a progressive attitude with respect to women’s independence, abilities, and right to do useful work.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information …

Ms-103: Jes Jerry Jessen World War I Letters, Kate Boeree

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This collection contains 109 letters written by Jes Jerry Jessen addressed to his family in Spokane, WA, including his mother and father, his brothers George and Ralph, his sister Helen (“La La”) and his aunt Molly between June 6th, 1917 and June 22nd, 1919. These letters follow him through his training in Vancouver, Washington; Charlotte, North Carolina; France; and Germany, where his correspondence ends.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. …

Ms-095: John Wright Collection, Kayla Lenkner

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This collection consist of letters and postcards received by John Wright between June 1917 and December 1919. Most of the correspondence is addressed to John Wright or the Knoxville Journal, however, some letters are addressed to other people who presumably passed the letters along to Wright for publication in the paper. The collection contains a mixture of letters from soldiers, sailors, cavalry men and officers.

Ms-082: Capt. Russell Miller And Claudia Lewis Miller Correspondence, 1916-1919, Amy Sanderson

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This collection consists of 297 letters written between Russell Miller and Claudia Miller from Washington in 1916-1919 during their courtship and marriage before Russell was deployed to Europe during World War I. Almost all letters are attached to their original envelopes with stamps.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/.

Ms-053: Charles D. Ryan, 66th Engineers, Meggan D. Smith

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The collection consists primarily of letters from Charles Ryan to Elizabeth Dooling, his wife-to-be. The letters to Elizabeth begin on March 29, 1918 and the final one in the collection is dated June 3, 1919. The only other items in the collection is an envelope addressed to Elizabeth Dooling from Charles Ryan, a newspaper clipping of Ryan’s marriage to Elizabeth, a blank postcard with two soldiers on the front, and a letter to Ryan from the Treasury Department.

Although Ryan briefly mentions significant events, such as Germany being defeated and Italy leaving the Peace Conference, his letters focus largely on …

Ms-048: World War I Service Questionnaires, Keith R. Swaney

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After the conclusion of the First World War, two distinct entities at Pennsylvania (Gettysburg) College—Professor S. N. Hagen and the Phi Delta Theta fraternity— endeavored to document and commemorate the experiences of the college’s graduates in the First World War.

The first section contains the Phi Delta Theta questionnaires, which the fraternity sent to its alumni to record their participation in the field or on the home front. As the questionnaires note, the historian of the Pennsylvania College chapter wished to use this information in a publication to be entitled the “Karux.”

The second section contains questionnaires that Hagen, a …

Ms-019: Donald F. Lybarger Collection, Class Of 1919, Christine M. Ameduri

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This collection consists of an unbound class memorial which has been kept in its original order. The original letters have been removed for archival preservation and replaced with copies. Almost all letters are written from Gettysburg College students stationed in stateside military training camps between 1917 and 1919 and addressed to Lybarger or "Brothers of Phi Sigma." A scrapbook kept by Lybarger while a student at Gettysburg between 1914-1919 includes photographs, programs, dance cards and other college memorabilia.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include …

Ms-032: Letters Of The Toomey Family During World War I, Jaclyn Campbell

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The Toomey collection is composed primarily of correspondence and is arranged into four sections including letters to Leo Toomey, Joe Toomey, Mary Ellen Toomey, and other miscellaneous correspondence.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our collections can be found on our website http://www.gettysburg.edu/special_collections/collections/.

Ms-024: Papers Of The Major General Charles A. Willoughby, Jaclyn Campbell

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Major General Charles Andre Willoughby was born as Adolph C. Weidenbach in Heidelberg, Germany, March 8, 1892 to Baron T. von Tscheppe-Weidenbach of Baden, Germany, and Emmy Willoughby of Baltimore, Maryland. He attended several schools in both Germany and France, learning German, French, and Spanish, before moving to the United States to be with relatives in 1910. Willoughby enlisted in the Regular Army and was a private, corporal, and sergeant between 1910 and 1913, when he entered Gettysburg College. While at Gettysburg, he founded the college’s Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC). He graduated in 1914 and received his commission as …

Ms-004: Papers Of Frank H. Kramer, Class Of 1914, Christine M. Ameduri

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The Frank H. Kramer Collection is arranged into six Series. I. Personal Information; II. Organizations, Committees & Events; III. Education Department; IV. Oriental Art; V. Scrapbooks and VI. Miscellaneous. Of special note to researchers are the photo album of campus life in the nineteen-teens, scrapbook of commencement activities between 1939 and 1948 and correspondence from soldiers in camp during WWI.

Special Collections and College Archives Finding Aids are discovery tools used to describe and provide access to our holdings. Finding aids include historical and biographical information about each collection in addition to inventories of their content. More information about our …