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Wheaton Archives & Special Collections

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Wheaton Archives & Special Collections

Home to Wheaton College’s rare books, archives, and special collections.

08/13/2026

The Manuscripts Reading Room and Special Collections will be closed Friday, August 14th, for staff in-service. Regular hours will resume on Monday, August 17th.

08/11/2026

A recent look through unprocessed records documenting TEAM (The Evangelical Alliance Mission)'s early-20th century work in Venezuela offered an unexpected tour through the history of paper fastening. Across materials dating from the 1900s through the 1950s, documents were held together with everything from straight pins and string to brass fasteners and staples.

Archivists often remove or replace metal fasteners to protect records from rust and damage, but these everyday objects also have stories to tell, revealing a small but fascinating glimpse into the material history of recordkeeping.

08/04/2026

We're hiring! Wheaton Archives & Special Collections is seeking a full-time Processing Archivist. Join us in collecting, preserving, and making accessible Wheaton College’s institutional archives and special collections. Learn more and apply at: https://shorturl.at/hfyHP

07/29/2026

This month, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections received an exciting new donation of papers related to Owen Lovejoy, abolitionist, pastor, trustee of the Illinois Institute and Wheaton College, and later U.S. congressman. Dating from 1841 to 1854, the collection includes thirty-four sermons, an address, and notes documenting Lovejoy’s ministry in Princeton, Illinois, before his election to the U.S. House of Representatives.

Visit the Manuscripts Reading Room at Wheaton College to explore these sermons and other Lovejoy materials in the Archives!

07/18/2026

The Great Depression touched every corner of American life, including churches, missionaries, evangelists, and other ministries. This month on From the Vault, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections highlights a few items from our records that reveal how missionaries and evangelists responded to the economic hardships and challenges of the Depression era. Read more at: https://fromthevault.wheaton.edu/2026/07/18/a-few-voices-from-the-great-depression/

07/05/2026

This week, for the last of our series celebrating the 250th anniversary of the United States, we're featuring the special "76" flag and banner flown by Wheaton College during America's bicentennial in 1976.

Throughout the year, the College and study body marked the occasion with lectures, debates, and music, along with participating in other community events with the Wheaton City Bicentennial Commission. Starting in June, Blanchard Tower was also illuminated in red, white, and blue, and on July 4 the College joined communities across the country in a nationwide bell-ringing ceremony.

The years-long lead-up to the 1976 bicentennial sparked renewed public interest in American history, providing a significant boost to museums and historical societies nationwide. That renewed interest in history also helped shape plans for Wheaton's Billy Graham Museum, which opened in 1980.

07/02/2026

Happy Fourth of July weekend from Wheaton Archives & Special Collections!

The Special Collections Commons and Manuscripts Reading Room will be closed Friday, July 3, through Monday, July 6, in observance of the holiday. Regular hours resume Tuesday, July 7, from 9:30 a.m. to 5:00 p.m.

06/26/2026

For our fourth post in honor of America 250, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections features an item from our collections related to the Women's Christian Temperance Union (WCTU). A national organization with state and local chapters, the WCTU advocated for the prohibition of alcohol and played a major role in broader reform movements that shaped American society in the late nineteenth century.

Although temperance remained its primary concern, the organization increasingly embraced women's suffrage under the leadership of Frances Willard, who became president of the Illinois WCTU in 1874. Willard argued that granting women the vote would strengthen efforts to promote temperance and social reform.

This document from Wheaton's chapter of the WCTU illustrates the growing connection between the temperance and women's suffrage movements, consisting of two linked petitions to the Illinois Senate and House of Representatives around 1890, one calling for a constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale of alcohol and the second advocating for women's enfranchisement.

The city of Wheaton maintained a strong temperance tradition, with early participation from Mary Bent Blanchard and Julia Blanchard Fischer, among many other members of the Wheaton College community. Women college students also organized a Youth WCTU, and later formed Prohibition Clubs, continuing to advocate for temperance well into the mid-twentieth century.

Wheaton Archives & Special Collections submitted this document to the Society of American Archivists' "250 for 250" project. Explore submissions from archives across the United States and learn more about how historical collections are helping tell the story of America at 250: https://td52e01bc4f4b6253.starter1ua.preservica.com/portal/en-US/collection/sdb%3ASO%7C596fc5db-2dec-41cb-94f7-c2e591f60a42

06/19/2026

In honor of Juneteenth, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections continues our America 250 series with a letter from the Jonathan Blanchard Collection that highlights America's long struggle to end slavery and fulfill its founding promises of liberty and equality.

The first president of Wheaton College, Jonathan Blanchard, and his wife, Mary Bent Avery Blanchard, were ardent abolitionists. Many letters in their early correspondence document their advocacy for the end of slavery and reflect on the realities of slavery in the United States.

In this letter, from Jan. 13, 1849, Ruby J. Newton of Covington, Kentucky, wrote to Mary Bent Blanchard about life in a slave state and expressed particular anguish over the support for slavery she witnessed among some Southern churches and Christians: “I am in the land of slavery. If Paul’s thorn in the flesh was harder to be borne than slavery is to me, he stood in need of great grace. That slavery by the world’s people is tolerable can be borne by me with complacency, comparatively, to what it is in the church, there is it almost insupportable…”

Newton's words reveal the deep divisions that slavery created in both the nation and the American church, while also illustrating the efforts of abolitionists whose work helped lay the foundation for emancipation.

06/17/2026

This month on the new From the Vault blog post, Wheaton Archives & Special Collections features stories, photographs, and other artifacts from the event-filled life of Nina Vleck, one of the many 20th century missionaries represented in our collections.

Read more at: https://fromthevault.wheaton.edu/2026/06/12/a-practical-woman-the-purpose-filled-and-adventurous-life-of-nina-eleanor-gemmell-vleck/

Address

501 College Avenue
Wheaton, IL
60187

Opening Hours

Monday	9:30am - 5pm
Tuesday	9:30am - 5pm
Wednesday	9:30am - 5pm
Thursday	9:30am - 5pm
Friday	9:30am - 5pm

Telephone

+16307525910

Website

http://wheaton.edu/archives

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