Collection consists of a scrapbook album created by Mabel Welma Fox during her time at the University of Michigan (1921-1923). The scrapbook is covered with correspondence, photographs, newspaper clippings, ephemera, physical objects, and annotations that guide the reader through Fox’s university life.
Photographs are of Fox’s house guests, parties, field trips, prom, graduation, and members of the Betsy Barbour women’s residence hall. Newspaper clippings and full editions include Michigan Daily, College News, The Detroit News Mail edition, and Detroit Free Press, as well as others unidentified. Ephemera includes posters, invitations, tickets, and programs for events; place, calling, membership, and business cards; envelopes with receipts (including for tuition, lodging and rent, transportation, raffle tickets, and memberships); report and grade cards; poetry clippings and pages stripped from books; notebooks with course notes; cards and napkins; materials related to 1923 Commencement; and booklets for the University of Michigan Women’s League. Physical objects include decorations made with crepe paper for different events, a pencil tied to a notebook, and a mini frying pan from a dinner event, and rose leaves and petals.
The scrapbook is housed in a production scrapbook published by the College Memory Book Company from Chicago (Illinois, USA) with copyright from 1918, W.M.W. Clay, and with the title “National Memory and Fellowship Book.”
The first 25 pages of scrapbook include pre-printed sections used by Fox and/or her colleagues. Preprinted sections include annotations, drawings, photographs and ephemera (by students from Michigan, the United States, Japan, and China).
Pre-printed sections are:
- Register of friends,
- Faculty and Campus,
- Student Hall of Fame,
- Comparative Athletic Record,
- School and Social Functions,
- My Favourites,
- Entertainments, Lectures, Plays,
- Memorable Trips,
- Clubs and Societies,
- Professors I Have Met,
- Dates and Doings,
- Things Worth-Wile Noting,
- Lest you forget.
The remainder of the pages are part of the same production scrapbook but do not show section titles. Some pages are left unused. And some items look like they were clipped from another scrapbook (including several items that were inside an envelope pasted to backcover).
