The Ripon College postcard collection is composed of notes from the early 1900s up to the 1960s.  These cards are a display of everything Ripon College, including buildings, clubs, athletics, the class baby of 1908 and even the historical pageant of 1910.  Also unique to the collection are postcards of early Ripon and Ripon’s namesake, Ripon, England.  The assortment has been built through personal collections, donated to the college and blank cards, probably obtained from a bookstore.

These postcards help to re-create each decade of Ripon College, through those who knew it best; the students, faculty and relatives.

A cyanotype print of the Ripon College campus appears on this postcard, ca. 1903.  The message on the back is a request from a student named Emma, who asks her friends to pick her up at the train station.

"Pedrick scores a homerun in the Republican and Democrats game," reads the back of this turn of the century postcard.  Sam Pedrick was a 1891 graduate of Ripon College and later became a prominent figure in civic life in Ripon, WI.

Postcards featuring the Class Baby greeted friends and family of the class of 1908.   This postcard features Ingram Hall, or the Science Hall, circa 1911.

By Megan Sikowski