Special Collections Unbound

Stanford has recently acquired and processed two collections from American military officers operating overseas in the early 20^th century. The papers of Morris Cooper Foote (M2103) and Warren Jay Terhune (M2132) chronicle several critical episodes in Western expansionism and occupation in Asia and its responses.

Morris Cooper Foote’s papers include a variety of material (manuscripts, journals, letters, memos, reports, photographs, maps, newspapers) from his service in the United States Army’s Ninth Infantry. Most of it concerns his experiences in the Boxer Rebellion, but he was already a seasoned veteran at the time. Foote was born September 16, 1843 in New York. His great-grandfather was William Cooper, the founder of Cooperstown, and he was also related to Jacob Morris, who served in the Revolutionary War, and novelist James Fenimore Cooper.

This year, Stanford Classics turns 125, and to celebrate, we have put together an exhibit examining its early history. While small and undistinguished early on, the department quickly produced scholars of distinction. Today it is a major center of American classics, and a world leader in the study of ancient Greece and Rome. Still, the century and a quarter that intervenes between us and its foundation is often a sort of ever-advancing black box—that is, we seldom have an institutional memory that extends any further back than the recollection of the faculty's most senior member. Earlier outlines of the department's history are therefore simply lost. This exhibit hopes to shed some light on that earlier place and time.

Stanford University Library’s Department of Special Collections has completed processing for two major collections: the Helen and Newton Harrison Papers and the William Hewlett Papers. The two projects were supported with funding from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the William and Flora Hewlett Foundation, respectively.