We’re officially over a month into the new year, the Spring Semester has well and truly begun, and your SCRC processing team is back with some exciting new and updated finding aids, including a 19 box (10 linear feet) World War I collection that is featured in our Spring exhibit! As usual, all of the following collections are available for use in the Special Collections Research Center and the finding aids are available on our website (or use the links included below).
Members of the 406th Telegraph Battalion battalion at work in the field, 1917, C0515
Thomas Griest World War I collection, C0515
Collection processed by Meghan Glasbrenner
Thomas H. Griest (1884-1947) joined the Bell Telephone Company in Eastern Pennsylvania in 1906 as a building inspector and would eventually be named general commercial manager in 1933. During WWI he served with the 406th Telegraph Battalion, starting as a Lieutenant and ultimately attaining the rank of Major. Only a few short months after the United States entered WWI, in August 1917, the 406th Telegraph Battalion, Signal Corps became one of the first two telegraph battalions sent to France to join the fighting, later proudly referring to itself as “The First Battalion”. Composed entirely of employees of the Bell Telephone Company in Eastern Pennsylvania, the 406th was part of the United States Army Signal Corps, the branch responsible for maintaining all military communications, or signals. Despite the men’s lack of prior military experience, the Battalion was able to mobilize quickly, after only four months of military training, due to their existing communications experience and knowledge as Bell Telephone employees.
The collection contains three series. Series 1: Personal correspondence, 1910-1944 includes sent and received letters, telegrams, and postcards. The bulk of the correspondence covers Griest’s time serving in WWI from June 1917 – March 1919 and are between Griest and his wife Mary Cooper Griest. Series 2: 406th Telegraph Battalion, circa 1900s-1920s is further divided into three subseries. Sub-series 1: Official materials, 1917-1920 includes reports, bulletins, field orders, rosters, and other materials and ephemera created by the Telegraph Battalion Signal Corps and the First Army Corps American Expeditionary Forces (AEF). Sub-series 2: Soldier personal accounts, circa 1918-1921 includes handwritten and typed first-person accounts from members of the Telegraph Battalion Signal Corps gathered by Griest for use in battalion’s history book The First Battalion. Sub-series 3: Photographs and negatives, circa 1900s-1919 includes official press and personal photographs and negatives related to the 406th Telegraph Battalion and the United States military during World War I. Series 3: Periodicals and ephemera, 1899, circa 1911-1944 includes magazines, newspaper clippings, poems, souvenir postcards, programs, and general World War I and personal ephemera collected by Griest, as well as a personal daily diary for 1899. Several volumes of Bruce Bairnsfather’s cartoon collection Fragments from France and the Bell Telephone Company’s employee magazine “The Telephone News” can be found in this sub-series.
Selections from this collection and others are featured in our Spring 2025 exhibit: Between the Lines: Life Within and Beyond the Bounds of World War I .
Wayside Theatre on Tour photographs, C0428
Collection processed by Meghan Glasbrenner
Two black and white photographs of Wayside Theatre on Tour (WTOT) taken during the post-performance talk of Anton Chekhov’s The Marriage Proposal. One photograph is of Artistic Director Gerry Slavet speaking to an audience of children and one is of the play’s three actors, Gary Filsinger, Penny Lynn White, and Bill Wiley, in costume on the stage with a child from the audience. Wayside Theatre was founded in the early 1960s by Leo M. Bernstein following his purchase of a former movie theatre located on Main Street in Middletown, Virginia. In 1968, Gerald (Gerry) Slavet took over as Artistic Director, bringing with him an interest in working with local teachers to bring theatre into the classroom, which led to the formation of Wayside Theatre on Tour (WTOT). One of the most successful outreach programs in Wayside Theatre’s history, WTOT brought professional theatrical performances, completely separate from the mainstage productions, into the local community, particularly to elementary schools. Wayside Theatre operated for 50 years, becoming the oldest professional theatre in Virginia, before financial troubles led to its sudden closing in 2013.
Leo E. Fitzgibbon at 20 years old, 1923, C0516
Leo E. Fitzgibbon papers, C0516
Collection processed by Meghan Glasbrenner
A collection of correspondence, photographs, and short writings created and owned by Leo E. Fitzgibbon (1903-1968). Fitzgibbon was an Associate Editor for James T. White Co., a New York City based publishing company. James T. White Co. was founded by James Terry White (1885-1920) in 1869 in San Francisco. In 1886 his son, George Derby White, moved the company’s headquarters to New York City where they would go on to publish the first edition of The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography in 1891. A multi-volume collection of biographies and articles focusing specifically on Americans, this “Cyclopaedia” (also spelled “Encyclopedia”) included entries based on information obtained in questionnaires sent directly to the publications’ subjects or their relatives. Correspondence in this collection consists primarily of letters sent by Fitzgibbon in 1930 regarding contributions for The National Cyclopaedia of American Biography in his role as Associate Editor for James T. White Co., with a single personal letter possibly sent by Leo’s son or grandson in 1969. One of the poems titled “Morte d’Amour” appears to be the poem attributed to actor Milton Sills for his wife Doris Kenyon and published in Photoplay magazine upon his death in 1930.
Additional collection materials processed and finding aid updated by Meghan Glasbrenner
This collection contains material collected by former George Mason College (GMC) student Bonnie Atwood from the late 1960s to the mid 1990s, with much of it focused on her antiwar activism and the broader protest movements of the 1960s-1970s, as well as news reports from student, professional, and underground publications, legal documents, and promotional materials produced by Northern Virginia Resistance. During Atwood’s time at GMC she was a member of the anti-Vietnam War organization Northern Virginia Resistance (NVR), alongside fellow students and GMC professor James Shea. She and David Lusby, another member of NVR, were arrested in 1969 for trespassing after protesting inside Draft Board #39 in Fairfax, Virginia. The American Civil Liberties Union defended them in the case Lusby v. Commonwealth of Virginia. Atwood provided articles to the GMC student newspaper Broadside while enrolled at GMC, and wrote professionally for the Manassas Journal-Messenger afterwards. Newly processed material includes a portfolio of news releases and newspaper articles written by Atwood.
First Report by Frederick N. Knapp, Special Relief Agent, September 23, 1861, C0430
Collection processed by Meghan Glasbrenner
Printed pamphlet titled “Two Reports Concerning the Aid and Comfort Given by the Sanitary Commission to Sick Soldiers Passing through Washington” written by Frederick N. Knapp, Special Relief Agent addressed to Secretary of the Sanitary Commission Fred. Law Olmsted. The United States Sanitary Commission (USSC) was a government authorized civilian organization established in 1861, at the start of the Civil War, to provide medical and sanitary assistance to Union volunteer forces. These assistance services included distribution of supplies, food, and medicine to soldiers, outfitting of hospital ships, soldiers’ homes, and relief lodges, inspecting and maintaining standards in military hospitals and relief stations, and recruitment and fundraising efforts. Rev. Frederick Newman Knapp (1821-1889), a former Unitarian Minister, was recruited in 1861 to serve the USSC as superintendent of the Special Relief Department. This department focused on helping soldiers in “irregular circumstances” or whose needs fell outside the scope of standard government provisions, such as contacting families of soldiers in cases of sickness or death, assistance with completing government paperwork, and helping soldiers return to civilian life, particularly in providing support for disabled veterans and their families.
The two reports detail and examine the measures taken to improve conditions of Union soldiers in Washington, D.C. in the early American Civil War. The First Report, dated September 23, 1861,
begins on numbered page 1 and goes through numbered page 12. The Second Report, dated October 21, 1861, begins on an unnumbered page (assumed to be 13) and ends on numbered page 19, the final printed page of the pamphlet. Both reports have been printed on a single double-sided oversized piece of paper and have not been cut into a booklet, with the exception of numbered pages 17-19 which have been cut from two smaller individual papers and adhered to numbered page 16.
Collection processed by Meghan Glasbrenner
Following Congress’ enacting of the District of Columbia Home Rule Act on December 24, 1973 public works for D.C. were provided by four city agencies: The Department of Environment, the Department of General Services, the Department of Transportation, and the Office of Surveys. In April 1980, Mayor Marion Barry proposed merging these four agencies into a single agency known as the Department of Public Works, but it was not until December 1983, after the plan had been scaled back to include the merger of only the Department of Environment Services and the Department of Transportation, that the new Department of Public Works was created. Today the District of Columbia Department of Public Works (DPW) oversees solid waste and recyclables collection, street cleaning, parking enforcement, and governmental vehicle procurement, maintenance, and fueling. This double-sided informational map was published by the Washington, D.C. Department of Public Works in March 1997 introducing and describing a new strategic transportation plan for the District of Columbia. This 20-year strategic vision and action plan was created in part to fulfill Federal regulations requiring D.C. to have a regularly updated long-range transportation plan.
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