Pre-WWI Student Life at Wesleyan: The Lynn Smith Miller Scrapbook
The Miller scrapbook is about 160 pages with multiple items on each page and more stored in envelopes inside the scrapbook. These items either relate to Miller’s personal experience at Wesleyan or to the more general experience of a student enrolled in the university at the beginning of the 20th century. By examining the pages of the scrapbook and the myriad items they contain, one can get insight into what student life was like—what were the popular events on campus, what were the groups that formed and which stuck around, what were the prevalent courses, and what did students find were particularly important experiences to have during their time on campus.
Miller’s matriculation coincides with the conclusion of Wesleyan’s first period of coeducation, which lasted from 1872 to 1912. In 1914, 464 male students from thirty U.S. states (primarily from the northeast) and nine foreign countries attended the university. Miller’s senior class had 67 members.
The scrapbook contains a wide variety of documents and objects, including Turkish cigarettes; invitations he received, some from then-President William A. Shanklin; the ticket stubs he purchased from both live productions and movies; his schedules (lots of language classes); his admission to his fraternity, Omega Phi; photographs of students and campus scenes; and booklets from dances he attended with the names of his partners carefully penciled in next to each dance. We know of Miller’s pride in his class’s triumph in the “cannon scrap” of the Douglas Cannon in 1910 because of the numerous newspaper articles he saved.
After graduating from Wesleyan, Miller and his brother edited and managed a newspaper. He served in in World War I and then they published a newspaper in Royal Oak, Michigan. He died on January 26, 1962.