There were educational sessions held during the day on Saturday. We attended a talk about the Emma Willard Archives which is located in the Dietl Library basement. The talk was given by Nancy Iannucci, Archivist, and History faculty member, Dr. Robert Naeher. It was fascinating.
Part of my reason for attending the reunion was two fold. I definitely wanted to get back to Emma but I also wanted to get into the archives. I have been doing family research and have discovered that I have distant cousins who attended Emma in 1822.
Ms. Iannucci was very generous with her time and opened the archives for me. There is a newspaper article in the archives reprinting a letter from a relative of mine to Emma Willard herself. The letter talks about the approval to build Emma on Mt. Ida from the City of Troy. Very exciting!
The archives are incredible. Ms. Iannucci has devoted a lot of time to organizing and cataloging the tremendous amount of material. There is still a lot of work to be done. Students are helping the collection by transcribing documents. She has done a superb job and the archives are well used by the Emma students as well as independent researchers. As you can imagine there are letters and writings from Emma herself during the Civil War Period. It is a rich resource of primary research and I encourage you all to take time to see it or use it if you are able. What a valuable resource to have at Emma.
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