Browse Exhibits (5 total)

Greek Letter Societies

Phi Beta Kappa, the first Greek letter society in the United States, was established at the College of William and Mary in 1776.  Over the next century, fraternal organizations gained national prominence and soon became a collegiate tradition.  Several chapters of both men’s and women’s Greek letter societies originated at Indiana University, and many members of the Wylie family played a significant role in their creation and perpetuation.

, , ,

Heritage Archaeology: Agriculture to Floriculture

Cyantotype real picture postcard of Wylie House (P0071637) MAY 1907.png

Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie moved into the Wylie House in the mid-nineteenth century, when households were transitioning from large-scale agriculture to small-scale leisure gardening, or floriculture. This exhibit showcases the June 2018 field school run by a team of Indiana University students and Glenn A. Black Laboratory of Archaeology staff to learn more about the Wylies’ garden “pits,” subterranean cold-frame greenhouses that insulated their flowers from harsh weather.

, , , , ,

Horticulture Hysteria: The Wylie Family's participation in the 19th Century Gardening Craze

wyliehouse1.jpg

As Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie moved their family into Wylie House in 1859, a movement wasovertaking American society. An interest in horticulture, or appreciating plants apart from theirnutritional value, was no longer only for the elite, but became popular throughout all levels and locations of American society. Americans of the Victorian era believed that getting back to nature was the cure for industrialization and the ills of modernization. 

, , ,

Louise Bradley, 1908-1979

1925-1935 headshot.jpeg

If anyone recognizes Louise Bradley’s name today, it is probably due not to her own talent as a writer, but to her connection with Pulitzer Prize-winning poet Elizabeth Bishop. This great-granddaughter of Theophilus and Rebecca Wylie had a creative life of her own, however, and the diary she kept in the early 1930s sheds light on her writing, her time in college and after graduation, and her career as a research worker during the Great Depression and World War II.

, , , ,

Three Wylie Women: A Generation of Late Nineteenth-Century Mothers

seabrook with baby.png

The Wylie Women reflect contradictions between the maternal ideal, represented in women’s advice literature, and the complex realities of Midwestern, middle-class childrearing in the late nineteenth-century. This generational study of Elizabeth Louisa Wylie Boisen, Margaret Wylie Mellette, and Sarah Seabrook Mitchell Wylie examines the effect of social and economic factors on mothering experiences, revealing a shared struggle to uphold the expectations of nineteenth-century women. 

, , ,