There's a lot of serendipity in archives. You just never know what you might find when you visit or talk to an archivist. Things that you never expected will appear from the stacks, the vaults, or the file cabinets.
Today, for example, Dr. Anne Rodrick from our history department mentioned on Facebook that today was Charles Dickens' birthday. It happens that the Wofford archives has, in the safe, a lock of Charles Dickens' hair.
How'd we get this artifact? The booklet's cover notes that it was given to us by David Gibson of the Class of 1941. Why and how that gift was made is lost to history.
Nevertheless, if you toss out an odd fact in front of a historian, a librarian, or an archivist, you never know what you might get in response. We like to share!
So, here it is:
Note that this was taken with an iPhone camera, which may account for the lower resolution.