Back in September, five boys and two faculty members trekked to UNC-Chapel Hill in search of historical treasure.
The Thomas Cogdell Wetmore Papers is a collection housed in UNC’s Wilson Library. Most of the collection is hand-written letters between Christ School’s co-founders – Father Wetmore and his wife, Susan, from 1892 and 1893, prior to their marriage. Additionally, there are letters that Father Wetmore sent while he was traveling up north to raise funds for the school in its infancy.
Grey Edens ’25 has since been working to digitize the letters and other pieces of early school history most every afternoon. The following is an excerpt of an article that Grey wrote about the September trip for an upcoming issue of The Galax school magazine:
“After a delicious breakfast at the farmhouse of John and Joanne Preyer P’28 on a calm and overcast morning, we made the short drive to the grand Wilson Library, built in 1929 and featuring a neoclassical design. In a reading room on the fourth floor, there was a cart with six boxes with over 950 items. Since most Greenies have never learned to write cursive, reading these handwritten documents proved an immediate challenge. One thing, however, was obvious: there were palpable feelings between the Wetmores, suggesting that Christ School began as a love story. On postcards, Wetmore created his own language, a cipher, to allow privacy since postcards were not transported in envelopes.
Four Greenie alumni met us for lunch at the popular Chapel Hill restaurant, Sutton’s, and then joined us back in the archives. The third box revealed a 1901 letter from Rev. Wetmore to “my dear Christ School boys” that he wrote while fundraising in the North. After being “encouraged” and “delighted” by Mrs. Wetmore’s reports, Father Wetmore shared these words: “It is your school, and I want to see each of you take an interest in it. Just so long as you try to help yourselves, we are going to try our best to help you.”
As the first people to read these letters, we essentially opened a time capsule of Christ School’s beginning. This trip was an impactful and successful experience because, not only was a piece of early Christ school history uncovered, but also because this discovery will help future Greenies better understand our origins.”
Along with Grey, students who took the trip to Chapel Hill in September included Walker Edens ‘25, Henry Stuart ‘24, Noah Henthorn ‘24 and Leo Lagutin ‘24. The group was supervised by Dr. Spenser Simrill and Mary Dillon.