Norwich University Archives & Special Collections

06/12/2026

Happy Birthday, Army! This is a photo from our U.S. and Allied War Exposition Photographs. The Allied War Exposition was a World War I traveling exhibit sponsored by the U.S. Government Committee on Public Information. From 1917-1918, the exhibit occupied as much as one square mile at various venues throughout the U. S. We are developing a digital and physical exhibit from this collection fo the Archives for the fall semester. More to come!

06/05/2026

In honor of the D-Day anniversary, we are sharing items from one of our most impressive collections: the Edgar R. Hyde Papers.

Dr. Hyde served in the Army Medical Corps during World War II. While in the service, he was part of a 400-bed semi-mobile evacuation hospital in the European Theater of Operations (ETO) from December 1942 to September 1945. Upon his discharge, he moved to Northfield, VT, to practice medicine with Dr. Scott Pedley. Edgar Hyde served the town of Northfield and Norwich University as college physician for more than thirty-five years.

He was in Britain on D-Day, and recorded in his journal: June 6, 1944- All last night our sleep was disturbed by the continuous rumble of passing aircraft. This morning, the cause came through. Large paratroop landings were made behind the German lines in southern France last night and early this morning, landings on the beaches of Normandy were made. So, D Day has finally come. We are spending most of the time near the radio to follow the progress of events as I imagine millions of people are doing all over the world right now. More troops continue to leave.

A few days later, on the 10th, he was across the channel himself: June 10, 1944- We came across the Channel last night. It was a smooth trip and I slept like a log. We were off the coast of France about 7:00AM. There are tremendous numbers of vessels of all types as far as one can see. There are many warships and they fire frequently, shelling various points on the land. There is a continuous roar of our fighters overhead. There are always some of them in sight. The weather is good so far, thank God. It looks like a slow process getting unloaded. We anchored about 2 miles off shore about 10:30 PM. There are a few sunken ships sticking out of the water here and there. About 2:30 PM, all personel except the vehicle party went ashore in landing craft. During the day, several flights of B26s came over and bombed an area heavily about 3 miles away on the shore. About 4:00 PM while moving closer to shore, two enemy shells screamed over the ship and landed about 200 yards away. I'll admit they gave me a rather eerie sensation.

See the journal and the hundreds of photographs from Hyde at the Archives.

05/29/2026

May's Mining for Old, Sharing with Care, is available: https://guides.norwich.edu/miningforold

Try to find the note that explains what these random images have in common!

05/18/2026

This 1939 video from the Porter Hartwell Adams Papers has a most intriguing title card: The Donor of 16mm Film Reel equipment, President Adams, shoots the custodian, who in turn gets the donor and "Pat" Carleton.

After watching the video, the description still doesn't make much sense. Students appear to be surveying, then a cut to a basketball game. Any guesses?

Dr. Charles S. Carleton, class of 1896, taught civil engineering at Norwich for nearly half a century and was popularly known as "Pat" to generations of NU students.

05/12/2026

05/12/2026

May is National Wildfire Awareness Month. Even with all our rain and snow in Vermont, we still get wildfires. Here are some images from Spring 1968 labeled "Fire Fighting" in our Norwich University Photograph Collection. Although if you look closely at the group shots, they may have been having more fun playing around than working hard...

04/30/2026

Our latest Mining for Old Blog is out! The Chameleon: Preserving Norwich's Artistic Voice explains the work we have been doing to digitize is valuable piece of NU's past and present, the special role it plays in our history, and what you might be able to do to help us complete our collection.

https://guides.norwich.edu/miningforold

04/28/2026

Every semester we add a question to our white board in the Archives. This semester: What NU sport do you follow? We had great responses and here are some photos from the Archives to match. We do not have anything for Drone Team yet!

04/21/2026

The Archives has been proud to support the Partridge School of Outdoor Learning as they have developed courses and gathered materials to coincide with our founding principles. As our provost, Dr. Williams, stated in Carrying on the Partridge Idea in the Reveille, "the University’s pilot program for summer 2026, combines academic exploration, practical leadership development, and civic responsibility through immersive outdoor education. Building upon Partridge’s vision of educating “citizen-soldiers,” it integrates Norwich’s military heritage with contemporary outdoor education to create citizen-leaders prepared for both civilian and military service."



https://home.norwich.edu/on/academics/outdoor-school
https://www.norwich.edu/news/carrying-partridge-idea

04/01/2026

We have posted our latest blog: https://guides.norwich.edu/miningforold

"The Norwich University Archives is proud to collect the correspondence of our alumni and families throughout the decades and battles. We're showcasing just a few here from the Vietnam War."