WVU Libraries

The West Virginia and Regional History Center has collected a lot of WVU memorabilia over the years.  Our three main collections of memorabilia, A&M 274, 448, and 1385, contain a wide range of artifacts, ephemera, and publications dating back to 1875.  Below are a few items from these collections.

Centenary Freshmen Beanies

The two beanies below were issued in 1967 to female (white with no visor) and male (blue with gold visor) members of WVU’s class of 1971.  Back then, freshmen were expected to wear beanies for the first few weeks of class or face the wrath of a mock-fraternity of upperclassmen enforcers.  According to our own curator Harold Forbes, WVU’s centennial year (1967) was the last in which the tradition of freshmen beanies was in full force.

“Pencil me in!” “I’m sorry, my dance card is full.”

Obsolete today, dance cards were commonly used at formal dances in the 19^th and early 20^th centuries.  Though called dance cards, they were usually booklets with decorative covers.  Inside was a list of the types of dances and songs that would be played, along with blank spaces for women to fill in the names of men they intended to dance with during the evening.  Women kept hold of their cards by attaching the decorative cord to their wrists or gowns.  Some dance cards even had small pencils attached!

Blog entry by Jane Metters.