[Photo Album]: Album of the Class of Nineteen Nine Western Maryland College

Oblong quarto measuring 11½" x 7". Screwbound brown leather album. Contains 46 silver gelatin photographs measuring between 3¼" x 4 ½" with printed captions. Lacking the front board with chips and rubbing thus good only album with near fine photographs. A photo album used as a yearbook and given to Alice Evelyn Evans, whose name is penned on the title page, when she graduated from Western Maryland College in 1909. The beginning of the album has printed lyrics to the class song and yell, a list of class officers, album staff, and students graduating that year, and the class poem. After these pages the graduating senior are represented with a full page per student which includes a portrait of the graduate, their "history" and a "prophecy" for what their future held. The final page shows a group photograph of the students and a professor. Alice was from Baltimore, Maryland and her page begins with the quote, "From the looks, not the lips is the soul reflected." Her "history" section tells of her homesickness, although not exceptionally far from home while at school, and that she was an only child. It also tells of a beau that she was "captivated" with for a "whole year" and the break up pain followed her until her senior year. The prophecy given to Alice spoke of her marrying a naval officer who she spends time traveling with. One of Alice's classmates, Fletcher Hanks, Sr., went on to become a comic book artist during the "Golden Age" of comic books in the late 1930 and early 1940s, including the creation of an early female superhero, Fantomah. Hanks' art has recently gained cult status after the publication of an omnibus of his work. An interesting commemorative yearbook photo album.