Sasha Monks, Lexi Wallace, and Matilda Pro

The Seccombe House and our excavation of its foundation launched our class into the world of late 19th century/early 20th century Carleton. Our research lead us delving through clay and sifting through dirt, but for our group, the real digging happened in the archives. As we began to understand the campus at the time the Seccombe House still stood on its first foundation, we also began to understand the lives wrapped up in its walls. But as female Carleton students of the 21st century, our own ability to even participate in this study is far from what the very people we studied could have done. Would the women who walked the floors supported by the very foundation we were digging up have been anything like us? And what would Seccombe mean to her, if at anything at all, in her daily life? We thought that as one of the few early buildings on campus, Seccombe would have indeed been a part of her daily life as a student. Maybe she took classes there, or at least attended performances by students who practiced their instruments there. Curious about the parallels and differences, we began to develop our research question: What did a day in the life of female Carleton student during the time of the Seccombe House’s academic use look like?

Works Cited:

“Academic Catalog” 1897-1898. Collection PB001: Annual Academic Catalogs. Item 31. https://archive.carleton.edu/Detail/collections/170566. Accessed 1 November 2023.

​​“Carleton faculty” 1902-1903. Collection 8: Photographic Prints. Item a-33. https://archive.carleton.edu/Detail/collections/69264. Accessed 1 November 2023.

​​“Faculty and students of Carleton College” 1894-1895. Collection 8: Photographic Prints. Item d-231. https://archive.carleton.edu/Detail/collections/69647. Accessed 1 November 2023.

​​“Frederick E. Stratton” 1910-1930. Collection 180: Photographic Glass Slides. Item 55318. https://archive.carleton.edu/Detail/collections/123957. Accessed 1 November 2023.

“Gamma Delta Society” 1900. Collection 8: Photographic Prints. Item d-9. https://archive.carleton.edu/Detail/collections/69426. Accessed 10 November 2023.

“Sleigh ride party of Academy students, mostly Third Class” 1893-1894. Collection 8: Photographic Prints. Item d-104. https://archive.carleton.edu/Detail/collections/69520. Accessed 3 November 2023.

Stratton, Frederick E., and Merrill E. Jarchow. Letters to Alice : Life at Carleton from Strong to Sallmon. Carleton College, 1982.

“Thirteen students, male and female, at table in Gridley Hall dining room” 1896-1897. Collection 8: Photographic Prints. Item a-5. https://archive.carleton.edu/Detail/collections/69236. Accessed 5 November 2023.

“Winter scene: campus walks, Scoville Library, and Willis Hall, with snow, viewed from the east” 1900-1901. Collection 8: Photographic Prints. Item c-21. https://archive.carleton.edu/Detail/collections/69322. Accessed 5 November 2023.

Stratton, Alice B. “Scrapbook.” Carleton College.