This scrapbook was created by Andover graduate Frederick Carleton Peck, class of 1914, and was donated by his daughter, Judith Peck Erdman, in 1996.

Having created this scrapbook over his time at Andover, Peck includes memorabilia from the four years of his Andover experience, dating from 1911 to 1914. This scrapbook is in decent condition; the pages are intact and sturdy. The scrapbook’s twenty-seven pages of contents range from sports to proms to theatre performances to dining hall menus and dorms. In his scrapbook, Peck includes newspaper articles from the Phillipian about the different sports teams at Andover such as the “badly crippled” track team and the frequently victorious football team. Information such as football game schedules can also be found in this scrapbook. The Andover team played against other schools such as Harvard (freshmen team), Yale(freshmen team), Cushing Academy, and Exeter. Judging from all of the football articles and pictures, it seems that Peck either had a lot of friends on the football team or was simply a football fan.

Several articles he included describe Andover’s eight years of crushing the Exeter “Cub Bears” (interestingly enough, their mascot at the time). A cartoon recap of the game highlights can be found, called “the Incidents of Andover’s Eighth Straight Victory Over Exeter,” featuring one of the players, Murray, known as “the most elusive human flea.” Student life is especially well documented in Peck’s scrapbook.

In this time period, Andover was entirely male and mostly of white race. There was little
to no demographic diversity among students in comparison to Andover today. There is also a graph that shows PA students’ average bedtime was 10:38 pm. Even over a century ago, Andover focused on mental health and tracked students’ sleep (similar to the sleeping contest Mr. Palfrey recently hosted). The scrapbook holds ephemera from proms, such as admit passes, and even a dried up corsage; the flowers are dead, but the original purple-blue shades of the flowers are evident, as the book itself served as a preserver for them. Dining hall menus with breakfast items including “jelly omelets” are pasted on the pages of the scrapbook. Pasted on one of the first pages of this scrapbook is the Blue Book of 1912-1913, which includes information about a Western Union telegraph, giving insight to the new inventions arising prior to World War I. Photographs of buildings and dorms, such as Bartlett, Andover Cottage, and Eaton Cottage, are also in this scrapbook. Peck seemed like a very popular man. On the first page of his scrapbook, there is a photo of him and his many friends lying on a couch in his dorm. They are making goofy faces in the picture.

by John Rex, class of 2017

Scrapbook Box 75