The Bates Bazaar is a curated, occasional offering of curious and quirky Bates-related items that are just a click away on websites devoted to what’s vintage, historical, and wicked cool.
1936 Bates Commencement folder: $175
This handsome leather Commencement presentation folder, with a schedule inside, is from 1936, and it’s notable for two of the seniors who were part of the graduation program.
Future U.S. Sen. Edmund Muskie was the class orator. Owen Dodson, who would become an acclaimed poet and playwright (he taught Toni Morrison at Howard University), offered the class poem.
Muskie was voted “Most Respected,” “Most Likely to Succeed,” and “Best Scholar,” by his classmates; Dodson was voted “Most Talented.”
First-edition Wedgwood featuring the Chapel: $62.99
Wedgwood china featuring Bates buildings is a somewhat common offering, but this sale is distinctive because the plate is from the first edition, commissioned in 1939 by the women’s Boston Bates Alumnae Club to celebrate the 75th anniversary of the college’s founding.
The first Wedgwood edition included plates depicting the Chapel and Parker Hall (seen here), plus Hathorn Hall and Chase Hall, each piece surrounded by a “stylized border of latticed pine motifs,” according to one announcement.
Trading cards featuring U.S. Reps. Jared Golden ’11 and Ben Cline ’94: $4 or less
Who knew? You can collect trading cards for members of the House of Representatives (and other legislative bodies, one assumes).
So scoop up these cards for Bates alumni Rep. Jared Golden ‘11, D-Maine, and Rep. Ben Cline ‘94, R-Va., even though they’re not rookie cards (both were first elected the 116th Congress).
Matchbook cover featuring lyrics from a Bates song: $6.29
Years ago, Bates students, as did many college students, learned and often sang a wide variety of college songs. (For this reason, schools like Bates were known as “singing colleges.”)
A lyric from one Bates song, “The Smoker,” is on this matchbook cover: “Oft times at night I light my pipe and dream of dear old Bates.”
Born to Rebel, the autobiography of Benjamin Mays, Class of 1920 (signed): $60
Inspiring, educational, and insightful, this signed copy of Mays’ memoir includes many of Mays’ sermons and speeches, including his famous eulogy for the slain Martin Luther King Jr. and anecdotes from Bates, including the experience of watching the infamously racist Birth of a Nation in a Lewiston movie theater with Bates friends.
Pre-1990 Bates captains chair: $75
If you ever want to know the age of a Bates item that features the seal, like this captains chair, look at the date. An item that has a seal with the 1864 founding date is likely pre-circa 1990.
Anything with the 1855 date on the seal was likely created after 1990, around the time that President Hedley Reynolds asked that Bates use 1855 as its founding date, the year that the Maine Legislature granted a charter for Oren Cheney’s Maine State Seminary.
1918 book about Lewiston-Auburn birds: $30
With a forward by legendary faculty member Jonathan “Uncle Johnny” Stanton, the Birds of Lewiston–Auburn and Vicinity is an ornithological time capsule.
For example, it includes spring arrival dates for migratory species that are somewhat later now than in 1918. Miller lists the bluebird’s arrival as March 15 to April 1. For years now, bluebirds have been overwintering in Southern Maine.
1926 broadside poster for Bates–Brown football game: $226
This broadside poster heralded the October 1926 Brown–Bates football game in Providence. Though Bates lost, the Bobcats put up a fight, according to the Lewiston Daily Sun, which ran its story under the headline “Crippled Bobcat Eleven Shows Sharp Claws in Battle with Bruins,” noting that the “Bobcats of Maine were a Garnet menace at Providence.”
(Bates was “crippled” because it was without its star player: halfback and defensive back Charles Barrington Ray, Class of 1927, the college’s first Black sports captain.)
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