The Washington & Jefferson College Student album (13cm x 18cm) contains 79 cartes-de-visite, 1 tintype, and 1 lithograph. The original brown leather cover, now detached, has a partially raised geometric design and two metal clasps; a floral design is carved into the sides of the pages. Most items are individual portraits of young men, though a few pictures of women and children are also present, including a group portrait of four women and three men. One carte-de-visite has a decorative border printed directly on the card backing.
Many of the individuals pictured signed their photographs and wrote brief notes; several of the men photographed in Washington and Canonsburg, Pennsylvania, mentioned their membership in the Delta Tau Delta fraternity. A large number of photographs are attributed to George C. Gillett of Ann Arbor, Michigan; the album contains a portrait of University of Michigan professors Alonzo Benjamin Palmer, Samuel Glasgow Armor, and Corydon L. Ford; and a lithograph of the University of Michigan campus in Ann Arbor. A number of the other portraits taken in Ann Arbor are signed by men who took courses in medicine at the University of Michigan during the 1860s. The volume includes one portrait of a young child that may have been taken postmortem and one carte-de-visite with artificial coloring.
This album, or some of the photographs therein, may have belonged to Rhodes Stansbury Sutton (1841-1906), a graduate of Jefferson College in Canonsburg, Pennsylvania (1862) and organizer of the college's chapter of Delta Tau Delta. The album's autographed photograph of Sutton includes a manuscript note to his sister, Clara Sutton, and many additional items include signatures of Delta Tau Delta members. Sutton practiced medicine in Pennsylvania throughout his life. No apparent connection between Rhodes S. Sutton and Ann Arbor, Michigan, where many of the album's photographs originated, has been found, and the album's original ownership remains uncertain. The album may have belonged to a student who attended medical courses at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Michigan during the late 1860s.
