Here are a few items from the Muskie Archives and Special Collections Library and elsewhere on campus, and our thoughts about what they are and mean.
Taking Granite
In her first-year Bates College scrapbook, Muriel Swicker ’42 collected this “piece of Mount David” during a climb to the summit with her Wilson House chums.
The climb, as it is now, was “just won-derful,” according to her notes on the page, offering a “swell view” of Mount Washington.
‘Gracious Juggernaut!’
This inscribed stone rests under the flagpoles at the northwest corner of Garcelon Field commemorates Maine’s first college football game, played on bygone Rand Field on Nov. 6, 1875, between Tufts and Bates. The stone was installed in 1975 on the 100th anniversary of the game.
“Occasionally 10 or 12 men got into a promiscuous scramble for the possession of the ball,” reported a bemused Lewiston Evening Journal reporter, “and came forth rubbing their shins and using such phrases as, ‘Gracious juggernaut.’”
Slim Slate
The 1938 fall varsity sports schedule comprised just men’s sports and just two of them: cross country and football.
Bates’ opponents were familiar ones, except perhaps Arnold College. Based in Connecticut, the physical education–focused college closed in 1953. Bates won the 1938 football game 26-2.
One of the freshmen opponents, New Hampton School, has historical ties with Bates. Like Bates, it was founded with a strong Freewill Baptist orientation. From 1854 to 1870, Cobb Divinity School was affiliated with New Hampton before moving to the Bates campus, where it existed until closing in 1908.
That year’s New England cross country title went to the University of Maine (90 points), with Bates second with 96 points.
After Dinner
According to a note in Muskie Archives accompanying this photograph, this image shows Lewis Penick Clinton, who came to the U.S. from Liberia and graduated from the Cobb Divinity School, the bygone divinity school located on the Bates campus, in 1897.
The note says the photograph was taken “after a big Thanksgiving dinner.” The year and location unknown. According to various sources, Clinton was a prince in Liberia and, following his U.S. education, returned to Liberia to work as a Christian missionary.
Categories Humanities and history
