The Stewart-Swift Research Center holds an extensive collection of scrapbooks, including over 200 volumes created by Henry L. Sheldon. The highlights of Mr. Sheldon’s scrapbook collection include: the “House Book” compiled in 1876 and updated in 1901, which details the history of every building in the Village of Middlebury; the “Annals of Middlebury,” which focuses on ephemera of local events in the 19th century; Middlebury waterways and skating ways; all known portraits of people who resided in Middlebury in 1800, and dozens more. The scrapbooks cover a broad range of subjects, some of which are unrelated to the local area, such as the book on Egyptian hieroglyphics. A detailed finding aid to Henry Sheldon’s scrapbooks is available in the Research Center.
The Center’s collection also includes numerous scrapbooks of local residents and families, such as, for example, the Upson/Wright family scrapbook detailing the planning and building of their house at 24 Chipman Park in Middlebury during the 1930s; a scrapbook about William H. Porter, the founder of the town’s hospital; and a scrapbook of the Middlebury Community House from the family papers of Jessica Stewart Swift. A recent addition to the collection is a scrapbook of West Point cadet and Middlebury native James Warner Fletcher. The extensive scrapbook provides a first-hand insight into Fletcher’s activities, interests, and social life while at West Point and his leisure time while on vacation in Addison County.
How to Find
The majority of scrapbooks are searchable through the online catalog and a limited number of published finding aids. The book, Treasures Gathered Here (E.H. Dow, 1991), and unpublished inventories to selected collections provide additional information and are available in the Research Center.
