Collections Celebrated during Constitution Day

In 1789, Congress ordered the printing and distribution of 600 bound copies of the Acts of Congress that contained the founding documents of the Constitution and the establishment of the Union. Of those books, only three remain today, and one is George Washington’s personal copy.

This rare volume, which was bequeathed to Washington’s nephews in 1799, was exchanged and sold to several collectors for 165 years until it was acquired by former Wesleyan Trustee Richard Dietrich, Jr. ’60, P’92— who established the Dietrich American Foundation in 1963.

“This is the most important book that my father ever had,” said Dietrich’s son Richard Dietrich III ’92. “It immediately put him on the map as a big-time collector at a very, very early age— the age of 24.”

Dietrich III, who is now a director of the Dietrich American Foundation, shared the history of the book and his father’s legacy in collecting during Wesleyan’s annual celebration of Constitution Day and Citizenship Day on Sept. 17. Through a talk open to the entire Wesleyan community, Dietrich III and Suzy Taraba ’77, MALS ’10, director of Wesleyan’s Special Collections and Archives, offered a virtual viewing of documents that helped shaped our nation’s founding.

Although the items were presented virtually, both Taraba and Dietrich III noted that all items owned by the collections are available for in-person viewing. Special Collections and Archives houses more than 10,000 linear feet of university archives, local history, manuscripts, and 45,000 rare books including The Dietrich Foundation’s books and manuscript collection.

“We have a rich collection, and it’s meant to be a teaching collection,” Taraba said. “In a typical pre-pandemic academic year we were doing 80 to 120 class sessions a year across a very broad range of disciplines— from dance to earth and environmental sciences, history, English, many foreign language classes, to languages and literatures. Here, we can offer a very interactive class, rather than a lecture, where students can really have a hands-on opportunity to study and learn about these materials.”

Similarly, the Dietrich American Foundation offers its collection of 18th century American decorative and fine arts, books, and manuscripts to be loaned to museums for public consumption.

“My dad started collecting at Wesleyan. Wesleyan was a place that he loved … it’s a place that instilled in him a love of history and that’s really the sort of the touchstone of what this foundation is— it’s a collection of Americana furniture, paintings, other fine and decorative arts, and books and manuscripts,” Dietrich III said. “Those printed works, maps, atlases, letters, original documents—those to my father were really the raw materials of history and history was the thing that really drove him as a collector.”