Collections

Fred Hannig kept this sketchbook, likely while he was a teenager in the 1920s. It includes a watercolor painting as well as various pencil and pen-and-ink sketches of animals, people, school scenes, domestic disputes, and shopping.

Fred Hannig kept this sketchbook, likely while he was a teenager in the 1920s. It includes a watercolor painting as well as various pencil and pen-and-ink sketches of animals, people, school scenes, domestic disputes, and shopping.

The watercolor painting is entitled "A Big Thief," and it shows a boy standing on a chair attempting to steal money for Christmas presents. The rest of the volume's contents consist of nine pencil and pen-and-ink drawings. The bulk depict animals and various portraits, but several are more topical in nature. Three appear to represent school scenes, including a lunchroom, a boy being held by his collar, and students sitting at their desks. One interior scene shows a "Metropolitan Basement," and another shows a fashionably dressed woman standing beside a poster of a roguish man with a bat, entitled "Da Bad Man." Several drawings appear to be especially satirical in nature. One sketch depicts a domestic dispute with the figures speaking in dialect, where a woman chases her husband with a rolling pin because he would not allow her to use the mop she purchased. Another drawing shows someone sitting on a soap box lamenting robbers while an audience member is getting pick-pocketed, and the other depicts a shopping scene contrasting rich businessmen and a working-class family.

This collection consists of two variations of a 1912 yearbook for members of the 1915 co-ed class of Rochester High School in Rochester, Pennsylvania.

This collection consists of two variations of a 1912 yearbook for members of the 1915 co-ed class of Rochester High school in Rochester, Pennsylvania. These yearbooks include pencil and pen-and-ink portraits of students, faculty, and sports teams, as well as caricatures, cartoons, and humorous drawings. Several poems are also included. Their content touches on humor, social affairs, class members' personalities, curriculum, athletics, and gender. The content is very similar between the two volumes, with some variations of student descriptions and introductory matter.

The first volume, titled "The Nightmare," includes an introduction stating that "the only excuse for publishing this book is because the rest of the bunch have one apiece . . . [and] merely aids one in passing some idle hours in school . . . this book is strictly 'Entre Nous,' so don't tell anybody outside of America." One page, headed "Familiar Quotations" quotes Bunny Amos Rex as having said, "Aw fellows let's git together and do some devilment." On the opposite page of the "Quotations" section is a drawing of the Rochester High School with the label "Agony Building." Accompanying the student portraits are humorous descriptions of said students: Armin Barner is described as an elegant musician, politician, electrician and magician of the lowest rank.

The second volume, titled "Freshmen Class Book 1911," includes a preface claiming the book "touches on such topics as Elementary Science, Natural Science, Natural Phylosophy, Orthography, Uranography, Geodasy and Wireless Telegraphy" to emulate "when all writters chiseled out dedications for a book thereby showing their originality." It further states that the class has attempted the same "because of our first class solid ivory domes." Many pages feature illustrations or descriptions of the school's sports teams. It also contains croquet scores for the women's team, who apparently gave the class "the thing we need to brag over," as they "mopped the valley clean" in their season.