Tom Flood, ’66, looked up. A professional autograph and collectibles dealer, he’d been rummaging through some old letters and documents at the 1995 San Mateo Expo Fairgrounds Antique and Collectibles Show. A fellow dealer was calling him over to a skirted display table.
Peering underneath, Flood saw a pile of worn composition books with Victorian illustrations on the covers that the dealer had purchased at an estate sale somewhere in San Francisco. “It’s a Stanford woman’s stuff,” his friend explained. “A lot of volumes of a diary from the 1800s.”
Flood, a retired Pacific Bell executive who earned his bachelor’s degree in history, has a soft spot for Cardinal memorabilia and has donated dozens of historic items to the Stanford Archives. He paid $200 for the diaries, placed them in a box and carried them home to his Danville, Calif., study. For the next three months he pored over Mary Freeman’s delicate handwriting. “She was such a kick,” he says, laughing. “My wife said, ‘I’ve never seen you so interested in anything you bought. You really like this woman, don’t you?’”
When Flood eventually handed the diaries over to Stanford ) ) archivist Maggie Kimball, ’80, Kimball knew right away they were a University treasure. “We also have a transcribed diary from a female member of the Class of 1895,” she says, “but the fact that Freeman’s diaries cover life before and during Stanford and are in her hand is a wonderful combination—continuity ) ) and authenticity.”
One student visitor to the Archives, Rachel Scarlett-Trotter Chaney, ’02, MA ’03, was so intrigued by the handwritten volumes that she made them the subject of her honors thesis. “It was fascinating to read about dress reform, voting rights and women’s education from the perspective of an ordinary girl growing up in the midst of all that change,” Chaney says.
