Remarks on the Occasion of the 50th anniversary of the Stewart-Swift Research Center
By Jim Ralph
July 7, 2022
I know that I cannot contribute to the story of the origins of the research center, but I will share some reflections on the role of the center in the trajectory of the Henry Sheldon Museum of Vermont History and on the center’s impact on scholars, our community, and, perhaps most significantly, emerging students of history.
I first visited the Stewart-Swift Research Center in the late winter of 1981. I was a student in Travis Jacobs’ and Robert Hathaway’s research seminar on American history. It was early in the semester, on a cold, gloomy day as I recall, as my classmates and I gathered around a table in the main room of the research center. I was an avid history major, but this was the first time I had ever been to an archive.
I did not end up returning often to the research center that spring, but that exposure to the world of archival research and to the possibilities in exploring a Vermont topic led me ultimately to focus on Senator Warren Austin and his response to the Second World War by working through the Austin papers in the special collections at the University of Vermont. That project, which I loved, essentially ended my ambitions to be a doctor—I was taking the second half of Organic Chemistry at the same time—and started me down the winding path to becoming a historian of the American experience.
In fall of 1989, I returned to Middlebury College as a visiting assistant professor of history. Working with my colleague, Susan Gray, I now found myself in the position of exposing students in the research seminar on American history to the exciting world of historical research by taking them to the Stewart-Swift Research Center.
Over the next 15 years, that seminar was one of my favorite courses to teach, often co-taught with my colleagues Travis Jacobs and Bill Hart, and a key moment in each edition was the visit to the Sheldon museum. I knew from my own experience how transformative that exposure could be.
And during that stretch, when we had lots of history majors, and everyone of them was required to write a senior thesis, Middlebury College students turned out seminar papers and theses on a wide range of topics concerning Middlebury’s and Vermont’s history. I recall papers and theses on early Jewish immigrants to Vermont and the origins of several local department stores along the western side of Vermont, on the origins of the Ilsley Library, on the story of Middlebury’s YMCA, on the response of Middlebury residents to the Civil War, on the nature of the local abolitionist movement, on the development of baseball in the region, and much more. In collaboration with special collections at Middlebury College, Peggy Kline-Kirkpatrick’s senior thesis on the history of recreation and leisure in Addison County from 1790 to 1930 was published as a book.
In the late 1990s I joined the board of the Sheldon Museum, and then for three years in the new century I served as president of the board. Those too were exciting times. The staff of the museum, its board members, and its friends sought ways to ensure that the museum was actively contributing to our town and region’s civic life. And as we did so, we knew that one of the great treasures of the museum, arguably its greatest treasure, was its unparalleled collection of letters, diaries, account books, and much more documenting the history of the town of Middlebury and Addison County. Those riches were at the heart of the most popular special exhibits the museum put on including the exhibit on the Civil War.
I could go on longer, but I hope that my larger point is clear—the Stewart-Swift Research Center has had a deep and lasting impact over the past fifty years. It has been sustained by conscientious and skillful work of its past archivists, including Polly Darnell, Nancy Rucker, Andy Wentink, and now Eva Garcelon-Hart as well as other staff members and many volunteers. I know too, if well supported, this center will continue to enrich the lives of those interested in history and, more broadly, our community for decades to come.