Working to preserve the legacy of David Crockett Graham

From traveling the Burma Road to being captured by Communist troops, David Crockett Graham cataloged his 37 years of explorations in China through handwritten letters. Now, nearly 1,000 of these letters will be digitally scanned, archived and preserved by Mount Holyoke College history major Emma Backbier ’27 from New York.

“I’m really excited to be a part of the physical digitization process, to read all the letters and understand more about what he was doing and what his goals were,” Backbier said. “From what I’ve looked at already, there’s a lot of really interesting information. The very first letter that we opened was about the Japanese bombing them that morning. It was from 1939 and talked about American fears of Communism.”

This work is a collective effort between the Department of History and Archives and Special Collections. Associate Professor of History Lan Wu will oversee and work alongside Backbier throughout the process.

“The Grants Office and other administrative offices on campus brought [Hoogendyk’s] project to our attention, and essentially, we wanted to provide an institutional framework for students to be part of this,” Wu said. “We have a Nexus track in Museums, Archives and Public History, and we wanted to find a student who is interested in the project but also has an overall interest in handling materials as a potential career.”

The archiving process is possible because of a $10,000 donation made by the David Crockett Graham Historical Fund to Mount Holyoke. Christopher Hoogendyk, the fund’s executive director and eighth grandson of David Crockett Graham, kicked off the project with the donation on Monday, Dec. 16, 2024. Hoogendyk’s daughter, Johanna Hoogendyk ’12, graduated from Mount Holyoke with a B.A. in History, leading her father to pursue this connection with the College.

Crockett’s collection of letters and other items were split among his five children after his death, and the foundation seeks to bring the collection back together as completely as possible. Through painstaking work, thousands of letters have already been processed, and archives now exist in China, at the Smithsonian and at Whitman College. Hoogendyk’s goal is to have the entire collection digitized, giving everyone access for generations to come.

“It’s important to bring the archives back together, to put them in a digital form that’s accessible and make the collection available to a larger scope of scholars so that people will have a chance to look at it, and it won’t be lost,” Hoogendyk said. “It tells a lot about the time. It tells a lot about what my grandparents were doing. It tells a lot about Chinese history in that period of time in Sichuan.”

Upon learning of the project, Backbier applied for the opportunity to complete the work and was chosen by the Department of History. She says that scanning and archiving these letters has a personal connection for her.

“My grandfather and I have been working together on digitizing our own family history. That’s kind of what drew me to this project because I’m working on the exact same thing, and I understand why [Hoogendyk] wants to preserve family memories and family history,” Backbier said. “Because I think beyond wanting to spread anthropological and historical information, you’re getting closure in a way.”

The work will take place in the Archives offices in the Williston Memorial Library. Safety procedures are in place for handling items as old as the letters in Graham’s collection, according to Head of Archives and Special Collections Deborah Richards.

“All of the letters are in acid-free boxes, which protects the material from deteriorating. We do have a climate-controlled space that they will be put in,” Richards said. “I’m very happy that we can partner with the Grants Office and the Department of History to do this right.”