Welcome to the Littlejohn Collection

Hello and welcome to the weblog of the Littlejohn Collection at Wofford College. My name is Luke Meagher and I am the newly-hired Littlejohn Project Archivist.

The Littlejohn Collection takes its name from Broadus R. Littlejohn, Jr., from whose personal collection this collection will be acquired. Mr. Littlejohn, also known as Dick Littlejohn, is a retired local businessman here in Spartanburg, South Carolina. He was president of Community Cash grocery stores (a regional chain) like his father before him and as his son Rick Littlejohn was after him.

Throughout his life Mr. Littlejohn has maintained a great passion for and interest in history, particularly military history and the history of the American Civil War. This passion for history manifested itself in Mr. Littlejohn's collection of all sorts of historical memorabilia. Specifically, his personal collection consists of manuscripts, stamps, foreign and American money, as well as contemporary and rare books.

The Littlejohn family's association with Wofford College goes back a few years. Back in the 1970's, Dick was instrumental in having the rare books room of the College's library named after his father, Broadus R. Littlejohn, Sr., since he, too, had a considerable "love of history." Later, just a few years ago, Dick Littlejohn lent several manuscripts from his collection for an exhibit here at Wofford. Then, just about a year ago, The Dick and Margaret Littlejohn Foundation (named in honor of Dick and his wife, and run by the family) began talking with Wofford about permanently loaning a selection of Mr. Littlejohn's collection to Wofford for use by scholars and researchers. By the fall of 2006, those talks between Wofford and the Foundation solidified and an agreement was reached.

That's where I come in. In August of  2006, I finished my graduate studies at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, British Columbia. I had just received a Masters in Library and Information Science (MLIS) and a Masters in Archival Studies (MAS) and was in search of a position. Long story short, I took the Littlejohn Project Archivist position here at Wofford College.

(In case you don't know, as I didn't, Wofford College is a highly-ranked, small liberal arts 4-year college of about 1,200 students situated on an idyllic campus in Spartanburg, South Carolina, which is a small city in the Upstate just north of Greenville, SC and a bit farther south of Asheville, NC.)

The Littlejohn Collection has only recently begun in earnest. My first day of work was February 1, 2007. What we're doing right now is identifying and transferring from storage all manuscripts, archives, and rare books of scholarly interest into the newly created space for the Littlejohn Collection. This space and my office are located in the Black Annex (a.k.a. Black Science Annex or the Blacks Arts Annex, depending on who you roll with) which has been especially renovated to store the Littlejohn Collection.

Here's a shot of what it looked like the beginning of the month:

And here are a couple shots of the storage space:

It's a messy job, but somebody's got to do it!

Anyway, I'll be using this blog as an informal forum to communicate, as one of my colleagues put it, the "gee-whiz" factor about the collection. I'm finding new (or old?) and interesting things almost daily and I hope to share some of the highlights with you here.

Thanks for stopping by, and be sure to check back in in the future for new posts about the Collection.

Comments

[jhon akers]

Great work, Luke. I will be looking for updates.

Regards,

Jhon

[Jen]

Good luck! Through reading your blog I will be able to [eventually] partly satisfy my craving to arrange and describe, rather than assign classifications and retention periods!

-Jen

[Nicole Kruppi]

Good see you wrapped up that degree(s) (finally) I am going to forward your info onto John in PEI. He,as I am, would be jealous (as many from 2002-2004 intake would be). Nice work.

Nicole
Saskatoon, SK