Whipple Legacy Collection

SummaryThe Whipple Legacy Collection consists of ten reels of amateur 16 mm. film. The collection was shot in black-and-white and color between circa 1936 and 1943 by Robert Hoadley Whipple. The home movies include some scenes of the Whipple family and their dog, Jack, at their home on Congress Avenue in Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. The bulk of the collection records the travels taken by the Whipple family throughout the United States, Canada, and Mexico, including 1938 visits to Glacier National Park in Montana, and Washington, D.C.; 1939 travels to the New York World’s Fair and throughout the American West and Mexico; and travels through the Canadian provinces of Ontario and Quebec in the early 1940s.

Biographical/Historical NotesRobert Sterrett Whipple was born in Derby, Connecticut, in 1883 to Henry Stacy and Mary Wheeler Hoadley Whipple. In 1919, he and May Clark Sterrett married in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They resided in nearby Lansdowne, Pennsylvania. Their son, Robert Sterrett Whipple was born in 1924. As reported by his daughter, Alison Earnhart of Cape Elizabeth, Maine, “he attended his freshman year of college at Lehigh University for civil engineering, joined the Navy and was promptly sent to M.I.T. in the V-12 [Navy College Training] program. He became an ensign in the Navy, married my mother, Wanda Schleifer in 1945, and graduated from Lehigh in 1947.”

RepositoryNortheast Historic Film

AvailabilityThe Collection is open for research.

Conditions Governing Reproduction and UseAuthorization to reuse and/or reproduce must be obtained from Northeast Historic Film. See http://oldfilm.org/content/stock-footage-licensing for more information.