The College’s bicentennial celebration may be winding down, but numerous artifacts associated with its earliest days are all around — and not going anywhere.
Tom Stamp ’73 likes to call them Kenyoniana, a term he coined with former President S. Georgia Nugent to describe objects associated with the history of the College. It’s even part of his title, as retired College historian and keeper of Kenyoniana.
Scroll down for more information about these and other archival pieces.
The Bishop Chase Chair
Lord Kenyon’s Parliamentary Robe
Cane Rush Cane
Philander Chase’s Bible Box
Over the years, Stamp has gathered quite a collection. His office in Treleaven House is packed with bits of history. There’s a 19th century wooden box that Kenyon’s Phi Beta Kappa chapter — the second oldest in the state — once used for elections. And there’s a reading stand that belonged to Episcopal Bishop Philander Chase, who founded the College in Worthington, Ohio, in 1824 and moved to Gambier four years later. (Kenyon was officially incorporated by the state legislature on Dec. 29, 1824.)
Other artifacts of the College’s early years remain as well. Some are stored for safekeeping in the lower level of Chalmers Library as part of the Kenyon Archives; others are sprinkled around campus, both in storage and in offices.
“Being able to touch history, it's a very visceral experience,” said Archivist Abigail Tayse. “Especially for students, when they come in and they see something from the 19th century that people used — I find it a very helpful tool.”
The newest addition to the collection is the parliamentary robe that once belonged to the second Lord Kenyon, who provided financial support that was essential to founding the college that bears his name. His great-great-great-great grandson, Alexander Tyrell-Kenyon, donated the robe earlier this semester when he and his mother visited campus for Founders’ Day.
Here’s an introduction to a few of the interesting pieces of Kenyoniana located around campus.
Parliamentary robes like this one — which dates back to the late 18th century — only are worn by sworn members of the House of Lords on particular occasions; the current Lord Kenyon donated this historic robe to the College after deciding to not occupy the seat. The robe is full length and made of scarlet wool with a collar of miniver, an unspotted white fur with a gray edging that was originally the winter fur of the red squirrel. Black silk satin ribbons are used to close the robe at the front. On the right side of the robe are two bars of miniver, indicating the rank of baron. The item’s back is cut long to serve as a train, but it is usually worn hooked up inside the garment. The robe is stored in the College archives in Chalmers LIbrary.
This large secretary-style desk resides in Finn House in the office of Nicole Terez Dutton, the David H. Lynn Editor of The Kenyon Review. Stamp said he acquired the desk from the descendents of the College’s very first graduate, Alfred Blake, Class of 1829. The furniture passed to Blake through Salmon P. Chase, Philander’s nephew who went on to serve as Ohio governor, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury under President Abraham Lincoln, and chief justice of the U.S. Supreme Court. Stamp described the desk as a “frontier version of a piece of Eastern furniture” and said its large size would have accommodated the bishop, who was over 6 feet tall and weighed about 300 pounds.
This piece of furniture, made to protect family Bibles, belonged to Kenyon’s founder and was “carried to Gambier on horseback over a trail through the virgin forests,” according to a slip of typed paper found inside when it was put up for auction and which added that Chase continued to use it throughout his life. The 11-inch by 25-inch box has a slanted lid and carvings on three sides; the legs are not original as this type of box was intended to be set on a table. Stored in the College archives in Chalmers Library, it dates back to about 1700 and was donated to the College in 1975 by four alumni.
This folding arm chair was presented to Chase by Oriel College of Oxford University when he visited in 1824 to secure funds for his “college in the wilderness.” It was said to originally have been from the Glastonbury Cathedral. It remained in the family for more than 125 years and was bequeathed to the College in 1956 upon the death of his great-granddaughter, Marie Chase Oge Beale. Today, it is kept in the archives in Chalmers Library.
This was the front door of Chase’s 1817 farm house on High Street in Worthington, Ohio, where Kenyon was founded as an all-male Episcopal institution in 1824. “It’s the door through which the College’s earliest students would have passed on their way to classes,” according to Stamp. The bishop’s nephew, Salmon P. Chase, lived in the home for a time as well. It was saved from demolition by a city resident, who incorporated it into their own home before donating it to the College. Currently, it is kept in a library storage facility on the eastern edge of campus.
This cane was used for years — starting in the late 1800s and continuing into the 1950s — as part of a tradition involving freshmen and sophomores known as Cane Rush. The event was described in the book, “Kenyon College: Its Third Half Century”: “A cane was placed upright in the middle of the field and the sophomores and freshmen lined up at opposite ends. At a given signal there was a rush for the cane. The class having the greater number of hands on the cane at the end of a certain time interval was declared the winner.” The winning class of each year’s event — which sometimes took place at Benson Field and sometimes on the lawn between Ascension and Ransom halls — is engraved on the cane, which is stored in the College’s archives.