Today we are looking at Goucher College Class of 1903 Round Robin Letters almost 50 years.
It was a real treat learning about their Round Robbin Letters method of corresponding to each other as a group – remember this was 1903 – not 2016! “It sometimes took as long as three years for the Round Robin to make it through all the group members and begin the cycle again, …”
National Postal Museum – Letter Writing
in America article
You’ll want to read the 2005 Letter Writing in America article (Letter Writing as Art section) over at the Smithsonian National Postal Museum which included this excerpt.
“… On the website of Goucher College in Maryland viewers interested in the history of the school can find a link to a project known as the Round Robin. A number of women from the class of 1903 wanted to keep in touch with each other after they had graduated, married and moved, so they began by having one person write a letter to the whole group. That person then sent the letter to another person, who wrote a group letter, folded it up with the first one, and sent the letters to another member of the group. That member then wrote a letter, put it with the others, and sent the packet on. In this way each woman, when the packet reached her, would get to read all the news written by all the women who had come before her in the chain.” …
Robin Flies Again – Letters written by women of Goucher College, class of 1903
Have fun exploring the site. “Members of the class of 1903 wrote a ‘Round Robin’ letter to each other for almost fifty years.”
On the site it has reproduced letters written between the years of 1919 and 1938.
“They document suffrage, war, the depression, family life and more.”
If you have a few minutes be sure to read about Alice Dunning Flick. They have included online a handwritten excerpt of one of her letters. She was born on August 25, 1880. When she passed away on February 1, 1986 at 105 years old the site referenced her as “Goucher’s oldest alumna”. Reading that her activities included being in P.E.O found me smiling. It will be of interest to several of the AnchoredScraps email blog subscribers here just as it was to me.
Thank you for joining me today for learning about these 1903 Round Robin Letters almost 50 years which is amazing!
Anchors Aweigh,
Helen
1903 Round Robin Letters almost 50 years Attribution & Thank you to the following who are referenced today
Excerpt from Letter Writing in America. “This article, the product of a Spring 2005 internship, was written by Smithsonian National Postal Museum Intern Kathryn Burke.”
Image above upper left Goucher College Class of 1903, and images above from Robin Flies Again
