From Memory to History: The Watkinson Library Scrapbook Collection Displays the “Ordinary” Lives Which Built American History

Erin Barbakoff ’26

Contributing Writer

The Watkinson Library, Trinity’s research library, debuted a new exhibit this September featuring an impressive collection of 19th and 20th-century American scrapbook albums that showcase the extraordinary nature of ordinary people. This exhibition, now on display in the Watkinson Library Reading Room and Level A Gallery in Raether Library, consists of 120 albums compiled between 1820 and 1965. Composed of newspaper clippings, chromolithographic trade cards, picture postcards, written correspondences and memorabilia carefully mounted into bound books, the featured scrapbook albums tell the story of the men and women whose “average” experiences have built American history.

“Historians have focused historically on great men ― of how armies were formed, battles won and lost―to tell the story of America,” says Leonard Banco, M.D., president of the Watkinson’s Board of Trustees and exhibit curator. Yet, this exhibition offers to “broaden the story,” he says, noting that the featured album pages document the lived experiences often overlooked in the annals of history. By “looking at ordinary lives, not solely those of the decisionmakers, we can observe how people lived their lives in the many generations preceding our own, without the influence of knowing what we know now,” Banco says. These accounts of trips taken, correspondence sent and memories logged are worth studying; he continued, adding that these “ordinary” lives, memorialized in the pages of Watkinson’s scrapbooks, create the extraordinary fabric of history ― “they are what moves countries.” 

Astounding in their own right, the assorted ephemera displayed on the scrapbook pages, primarily drawn from members of the greater Hartford community, are complemented by brief descriptions that tell the stories behind the albums. Among the extraordinary lives chronicled are those of Henry Barnard, a Hartford-born educator and notable 19th-century education reform advocate credited with revitalizing the American common-school system; Hartford insurance executive Fred Blakeslee, who documented his international and domestic travel in the late 19th and early 20th century, later authoring seven books military arms and armor from around the world; and Signora A. May, an avid traveler and collector, whose nine-volume scrapbook memorialized her experiences of marriage and motherhood during her life in Hartford. Banco describes these historical accounts as personal views of history that illustrate “historical events large and small.” 

Banco, a self-described “student of American history,” describes the curation process as an exciting glimpse into the seldom-seen history of our forebears, adding that the intimate nature of these artifacts allows us “to live alongside them.” Navigating the fragile condition of many of the pages, Banco intended for the exhibit to “tell stories of the ways that people lived their lives that might otherwise have been lost.” 

By amplifying these voices, the collection depicts American history as it was actually lived. Banco iterates: “These albums and others, displayed here for the first time, are a treasure trove of material, which were in the present memory for those who collected them but now comprise a history of their times.” The scrapbook albums, themselves a part of history, bring the past intimately and fascinatingly alive.

Striking in the number of stories it tells, this superb collection glimpses the diverse experiences of ordinary Americans as they lived in and around Hartford in the 19th and 20th centuries. The collective portrait of “ordinary life” depicted in the exhibit serves as a tribute to the normal lives upon which history was built and offers students the unique opportunity to consider their own role in history.