Oblong silver badge w/horizontal bar pin, measuring 1.625" in width, .5" in height; bearing the following inscription: "U.S. Christian Commission,/ To the Mt. Holyoke Class of '64/ "Sow we beside all waters."/ Seminatores." Badge exhibits medium dark patina w/tarnish both front & rear. Else VG, w/inscription entirely legible.

Founded in 1837, the Mt. Holyoke Seminary has played a prominent role in American higher education ever since. A list of its notable student would include, among numerous others, the famed poet Emily Dickinson (1846-47). During the Civil War the seminary was a bastion of Union sentiment, as indicated by the student vote of 1860. Of 299 student ballots, 246 were cast for Abraham Lincoln with Stephen Douglas receiving a mere 32.

Following the attack on Ft. Sumter, the girls remaining at school during spring vacation put their sewing needles to making a large U.S. flag to wave over the campus. Within a week the seminary sent three hundred "comfort bags" were made and stocked with pins and buttons, threaded needles and other "housewifely" items, to be sent to soldiers. Through the remainder of the war the ladies of Mt. Holyoke sewed for soldiers, and the seminary received countless letters of thank. In 1864 the senior class gave the United States Christian Commission the nearly two hundred dollars they would have otherwise spent toward a class memento. Unbeknownst to the class, their pastor, Mr. Mead, then in the service of the commission, suggested that it order a number of scroll shaped silver pins similar to those worn by delegates of the commission. Purchased at the expense of Mr. Mead and his Christian Commission friends, these pins were inscribed bearing the class motto and name (see above). At commencement that year, only two or three in the audience knew of the surprise in store for the class when on the presentation of the diplomas Mr. Mead called the attention to the badge attached to the ribbon of each.

Utterly stunning Mt. Holyoke / U.S. Christian Commission Class of '64 commemorative. [JP]

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