Search

The Woman's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU) was founded in 1874 by women seeking to limit or prohibit alcohol sale and consumption in the United States. It rapidly grew to become a global organization, led by Frances Willard between 1879 and 1898. WCTU members advocated for women's suffrage, prohibition, and social reform. This collection contains a variety of WCTU materials from different regions, particularly chapters in Maine and California, and WCTU headquarters in Illinois. Items include manuscripts, printed materials, printed ephemera, photographs, and souvenirs spanning the late 19th through mid-20th century.

The Woman's College Library dates from the 1927 construction of the Woman's College campus. During the three years required to build the library on West Campus, this was the library for the entire university. In 1930 the Woman's College Library opened officially with a collection of 4,000 books. The collection contains material pertaining to the operations of the Woman's College Library including clippings, correspondence, and periodical subscriptions. The major topic in the collection is art exhibits. Materials date from 1930-1994, bulk 1930-1970.

Nine interviews with alumnae of the Duke University Woman's College conducted by Carolyn Murray Happer from 2003 to 2004. Also includes one recording of alumnae reminisces from the 75th anniversary celebration of the Woman's College Library in 2006. Interviewees discuss their experiences and perceptions from their years at Duke University during the period of the co-ordinate college which existed from 1930 to 1972. Subjects interviewed include several class leaders, a member of the Duke family, and others who have had long established ties to the school after graduation. Also includes one recording of alumnae reminisces from the 75th anniversary celebration of the Woman's College Library in 2006.

The Woman's College was established at Duke University in 1930, as a coordinate to Trinity College for men. As a coordinate college within Duke University, the Woman's College fostered a community that allowed for shared university faculty, curriculum, and educational facilities, while giving women an opportunity for leadership through their separate student government, social standards committees, and judicial board. It was merged with Trinity College in 1972. The collection includes university administrative records, correspondence, reports, memoranda, minutes, course schedules, statistics, handbooks, newsletters, calendars, financial information, photographs, audio recordings and other materials. Major topics include coordinate education at Duke University, especially administrative and curricular procedures; relationship between the Woman's College and its students (in loco parentis); social standards policies; women's student government; integration of the Woman's College; student health care; and student organizations.

The Woman's Foreign Missionary Society of East Durham was a Quaker women's group based in Durham (Androscoggin Co.), Me. Collection comprises the East Durham unit's minute book that also features a membership list, along with four items sent as part of "circular letters" mailed from the national organization to each auxiliary.

Collection comprises a four-page embroidery examination completed in ink by Mrs. Fred Kennedy in Norfolk, Nebraska, including 6 stitch samples. The exam did not provide the questions, and has been annotated by the person who graded it, who also attached four typed comments to the stitch samples. Includes original mailing envelope.

Woman's Journal was an American women's rights periodical published from 1870 to 1931. It was founded in 1870 in Boston, Massachusetts, by Lucy Stone and her husband Henry Browne Blackwell as a weekly newspaper. Collection comprises a journal recording the meeting minutes of the stockholders and directors of the Woman's Journal in Boston, 21 February 1870 through 1897, with accounts in different hands. Also includes a volume of share certificates for the proprietors of the Woman's Journal, with stubs filled out, a few of the signed certificates still present, and blanks, dated 1911-1917.

The Woman's Student Government Association (WSGA) was formed in 1918, and the organization continued when the Woman's College was incorporated on East Campus in 1930. The WSGA was responsible for the "regulat[ion] of all matters pertaining to the life of the women of the Woman's College of Duke University, not under the jurisdiction of the Faculty." This autonomy along with the segregated campus life style of the coordinate college allowed female students to develop leadership skills and confidence that an integrated student government may not have allowed them to gain. Collection contains minutes, correspondence, reports, printed matter, memos, clippings, and other official records of the WSGA and its committees, along with records of several student organizations and documents generated by the administrations of the Woman's College and Duke University. Materials range in date from 1919-1974.

Collection contains objects and ephemera relating to the women's suffrage movement in the United Kingdom and United States in the late nineteenth and early twentieth century. Various pro- and anti-suffrage perspectives are represented. The items include banners, textiles, buttons, pins, and badges, along with other related handbills and printed materials.

Collection consists of a commercially produced set of 48 hand-colored glass lantern slides entitled "Woman: The World Over," published in 1901 by Riley Brothers in Bradford, England. The original printed booklet accompanying the set lists 53 slides in all, and contains detailed lecture-format captions. The women in the portraits represent nations around the world. Subjects include women of different classes; married women and women in courtship; there are women depicted in their homes, with children, and in roles which the lecture suggests are little more than slaves. Other slides show women working in agricultural, service, and industrial settings, and gambling and climbing mountains. There is one slide of the Women's Temple in Chigago, headquarters of the Women's Christian Temperance Union. Lecture notes refer to problematic social conditions for women, particularly regarding marriage, and changing social norms as the 20th century begins. One slide is black-and-white. All titles are original, as is the slide sequence. Acquired as part of the Lisa Unger Baskin Collection at Duke University.