Hamilton College Discovers Letters of Noted Suffragist in Its Archives

The Hamilton College Archives holds a collection of papers from Charles Edwin Wilbour, an Egyptologist who died in 1896. Recently, special collections coordinator at Hamilton, Mark Tillson, discovered a file of letters in the Wilbour archive that contained correspondence written by his wife Charlotte.

Charlotte Wilbour was one of the founders of the Association for the Advancement of Women and a leader in the suffragist movement. Her letters include correspondence with Susan B. Anthony, Elizabeth Cady Stanton, Isabella Beecher Hooker, and many others.

Christian Goodwillie, director and curator of Archives and Special Collections at Hamilton, says it is not uncommon for a college to discover unknown treasures in its archival collection. “Every archive and every library has a backlog of material going back years or even decades,” Goodwillie said. “In a collection of tens of thousands of printed materials, correspondence, and volumes, things can sometimes get misplaced in the shuffle.”