The day before halloween I  had the pleasure of touring Kroch library home of Cornell’s rare manuscript collection. The rare items were not spooky at all. I have always appreciated history so the chance to view primary sources was exciting to me. The current exhibition is Gods and Scholars.  Our tour guide really tried to get in as much information in the short hour we had. At the end of the tour many of us stayed a few minutes after to look at our favorite pieces. The first thing we did on the tour was talk about the Emancipation Proclamation. We viewed a powerful piece depicting soldiers announcing the proclamation to slaves. We were even lucky enough to have an Abraham Lincoln signed copy of the Emancipation Proclamation on display that day.

My favorite part of the tour was when we got to learn more about famous Cornellians. I knew that E.B White went to Cornell, but I did not even know about the contributions he made to our university before he rose to fame. I learned that F. Scott Fitzgerald was friends with Cornellians. I also learned that Mark Twain spent a lot of time in the Elmira area and that he even wrote most of uncle Tom’s cabin and Huckleberry Finn there.  I am from Lawrence, KS which is fairly close to Missouri where Mark Twain is from so I assumed that I got as close to the geographic history of Twain as any one could.

The best part of the tour was learning more about the abolitionist movement in the area. It was so powerful to read a copy of The North star. It was wonderful to learn that our university payed homage to that movement by naming various places on campus in it’s honor such as North Star Dinning room at Appel and many more.