Antiochiana
The Archives and Special Collections of Antioch College
Antiochiana began in 1905 as a collection of historical artifacts gathered by librarian Bessie L. Totten (1876-1963), Antioch College class of 1900.
The term “Antiochiana” first appeared in 1898, when The Antiochian, Antioch’s oldest continuously published periodical, first reported a non-circulating section of the library where “not a book is to be found there, whose author is not either an Antiochian or one who has been connected with the college, or whose subject concerns the college history.” Miss Totten, who began her long Antioch career as Assistant Librarian in 1900, recalled how the librarian told her to take special care of these books, and she began to expand the collection. Miss Totten assumed the title of Curator of Antiochiana upon retiring in 1941, which she held until her death in 1963. Remarkably, in its century of existence Antiochiana has had only four directors.
In 1983, the Olive Kettering Library was designated as the official overseer of the Antioch archives, with authority to develop policies for retention and housing of documents and historical materials.
Major Collections
The centerpieces of Antiochiana’s collections are the papers of Antioch College’s two most dynamic past presidents, Horace Mann and Arthur Morgan, and the extensive Bahnsen negative collection.
Location
Antiochiana is located on the second floor of the Olive Kettering Library.
Visit Antiochiana
The archives are currently accessible to the public by appointment only. Learn more.
Songs From the Stacks
Historical perspectives and selections from the archives by archivist Scott Sanders.
Antiochiana – Songs from the Stacks: Excerpts from the Diary of William S. Johnson
Stacks sings a song of William S. Johnson, one of the very first students of Antioch College. Of course, that’s only partially correct; to be precise, Johnson was only ever a member of the Antioch Preparatory Department, and therefore a high school student with...
Antiochiana – Songs from the Stacks: Mann Library 1853-60 by Pat Aldred
Once again “Stacks” sings a song of the Antioch College Library, featuring vocals by Patricia Aldred, class of 1952. Her brief history of the early College Library originally ran in the November 1952 Antioch Alumni Bulletin when Horace Mann Library (The Music Dept....
Antiochiana: Songs From the Stacks
By Scott Sanders, Antioch College Archivist. Sarah Hawley to Adelaide Hardy 21 May 1872 Sarah Hawley (class of 1874), known to her classmates as “Sadie,” enrolled at Antioch College in 1869. She came from Milan, Ohio, known as the hometown of...
Songs from the Stacks: Letter to the Central Committee of the Ohio Convention of Colored Freemen
by Scott Sanders, Antiochiana. In January 1852, an organization called the Colored Freemen of Ohio met at a convention in Cincinnati to decide the question posed most notably by Lenin, “What Is To Be Done?” It was just the latest in a series of Colored...
SONGS FROM THE STACKS: Emma Stebbins to Nathaniel Hawthorne 1861
By Scott Sanders, Antioch College Archivist The statue of Horace Mann, first president of Antioch College, was erected in 1936 on a site in Glen Helen that was once part of Mann’s farm by Hugh Taylor Birch, class of 1869, as part of a national celebration marking the...
Songs from the Stacks: How We Spend The Vacations At Antioch by Scott Sanders
Seasons greetings, Antiochians! What follows appeared in the very first issue of the earliest College publication in Antiochiana, not to mention the earliest known account of an Antioch Christmas break. Though unattributed, the article has the literary stamp of a...
Community Creativity and Commemoration: Remarks by RS Fogarty
Community Creativity and Commemoration: Remarks by RS Fogarty by Scott Sanders, Archivist at Antioch College. Antioch College lost a shining academic star when Robert Stephen Fogarty died in August 2021. Having retired from teaching in 2004 and editing The Antioch...
The House of the Fiery Ferns
The House of the Fiery Ferns by Scott Sanders, Antioch College Archivist Harold Igo, a playwright of some note, lived in Yellow Springs in the mid-20th century. He is said to have gathered stories of haunted houses in the village while serving as a part time mail...
Horace Mann Pioneer In Education
Suppose they gave a Commencement and no one commenced. Antioch College did just that in 1880, having no graduates that year.
For 100 years, a central component of Antioch’s progressive education model has been its flagship Cooperative Education (Co-op) Program, the first to be established as a core component in an undergraduate liberal arts program.
