The origin of these photographs is unknown, but they appear to have all come from one person, almost certainly a male college student attending Washington State University (then Washington Agricultural College) circa 1895-1901. The Washington Agricultural College and School of Science opened for classes in 1892.
The collection consists primarily of photographs documenting buildings and student life at the Washington Agricultural College (later Washington State University) ca. 1893 to 1902, as well as a dismantled photo album primarily containing family or friend images from approximately the same timeframe.
The images in this collection are all permanently mounted on heavy cardstock, and range from 4x5 inches to over 7x9 inches. Aside from some short pithy or humorous notes in the album pages, there are no identifications, descriptions, or dates on the photographs.
The materials from the college occupy the first 19 folders; the remaining folders are not campus related. The materials are loosely arranged by subject – campus buildings and scenes, then student life, then cadet life. Folders 21-30, at the end, are loose pages which were obviously once a photo album. They were presumably received at MASC in the loose condition they are maintained in today.
This collection is open and available for research use.
Copyright restrictions may apply.
[Item Description] Washington Agricultural College and Personal Photographs, 1895-1901 (PC 173)
Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections, Washington State University Libraries, Pullman, WA.
This collection was gifted to the Washington State University Libraries’ Manuscripts, Archives, and Special Collections (MASC) by Betty and Bill Ferguson of Flagstaff, AZ, in Sept. 1999, and accessioned as UPC-0011. The Fergusons had owned the materials for about 25 years prior to the donation, but noted them as “found” materials and did not know where they came from, nor the people depicted.
The collection was processed in October, 2018 by University Archivist Mark O’English. A decision was made to keep the materials together rather than parse them out into other subject-based collections in hopes that the context of the materials as a whole might eventually allow identification of the central student(s) and more precise dating of the materials.
WSU Libraries’ MASC contains several campus images from this era, notably in PC 4, the WSU Historical Images Collections, and PC 6, WSU Lantern Slides.