I had previously caught a glimpse of Olin Library’s rare manuscripts last year when my first-year writing seminar class took a trip to see some medieval artifacts that supplemented our curriculum.  I remember being fascinated with Cornell’s vast collection of valuable artifacts that I didn’t even know they had.  During the Kroch Tour, I was able to see a wider variety of artifacts and was amazed that there were so many invaluable pieces of history right here on our campus.

We started the tour looking at some legal documents from around Abraham Lincoln’s period.  There was one portrait in particular that I found interesting that pictured Lincoln surrounded by the U.S. Senate and House of Representatives at the time.

We then continued into a small classroom where several artifacts were laid across a table in the front.  The speaker went down the line and gave us a brief description of each object.  There were original letters from Ezra Cornell and Mark Twain, an old library book with a chain as an outdated form of security, a first edition copy of Charlotte’s Web by E.B. White, Sitting Bull’s autograph (who dotted his eyes with hearts), and even a lock of Charles Dickens’s hair cut from his head the day he died!  We were told that there is a large vault the size of a football field underneath Olin Library that contained over 80 million other artifacts like the ones we were shown.  I was amazed.  I had no idea Cornell possessed such one-of-a-kind collections and I’m very grateful I had the opportunity to learn more about them.