Twenty years ago, like the Rev. Jeremiah Chaplin, who sailed up the Kennebec River on the sloop Hero to start a new institution of higher education, I moved north from my hometown of Boston to do prospect research work at Colby College in Maine in 1993. He had a big head start, shipping out in the early 1800s with his family and seven students on a ‘venture of faith.’ His journey became my journey (although my course involved a moving van instead of a single-masted sailing boat).

The College that evolved into Colby was originally chartered as the Maine Literary and Theological Institution, renamed Waterville College and then Colby.  This year we are celebrating our bicentennial and it has been a wonderful opportunity for our small Research shop of three to work with colleagues across campus, and to make a genuine contribution to such an important endeavor as commemorating our College’s first two hundred years.

If you work for an institution that is approaching a milestone anniversary – be it a centennial, a sesquicentennial, a bicentennial, or more – don’t miss this once-in-a-lifetime chance to get your creative juices flowing and unearth some hidden treasures for your constituents to remember, embrace and enjoy.

Our bicentennial theme, In their Footsteps, was several years in the making. We started by forming a planning committee (surprise), which branched out into several subcommittees (e.g., events, exhibitions, performance, etc.). Once asked to participate, Research created a virtual timeline to use as a reference point and information source as we plotted out the past 200 years.

We searched for examples of how other peer institutions celebrated their milestones (e.g., Hamilton College designed a bicentennial walking tour, and Boston College asked all students to participate in volunteer community service). We networked with other institutions that had this experience under their belts, and reviewed their websites and materials for ideas.

Depending on your organization’s budget, consider offering a hand to assist with a bicentennial video, time capsule, town-gown event, speakers for special lectures, trivia contest minutia, and dates of importance for a bicentennial calendar.

If you are lucky enough to have an actual archivist or historian on your staff, this person can point the way toward access of archived files, photographs, and treasures in the process of unearthing the origins of quirky traditions (such as smoking the commencement day peace pipe at Colby). Our staff members were also able to explain the origin of our mascot, and the purpose of the Paul Revere bell that arrived on campus in 1824 (to call sleepy students to morning chapel).

Because our professional affinity is to go both deep and wide with information, and to indulge our own personal predilections toward all things historical, Research was uniquely positioned to offer creative ideas and suggest ways to contribute to such an important milestone. We were also not above rolling up our sleeves to do everything from reading through thick files from long ago to hand-washing gravestones.

Our shop was immersed in researching the history of our Baptist missionary heritage, digging up the stories behind various buildings on campus, and writing up biographical profiles on the people for whom they were named. We combed through the online index of our alumni magazine for various “firsts” in our college’s growth, from our first Rhodes Scholar to our first woman graduate: people who made a lasting impact on shaping the College.

In addition to resurrecting legendary faculty, we scoured ancient texts for quirky tidbits (i.e., “tuition touched the high water mark of $16 a year in 1835”), made the rounds of local historical societies, and even sited local notables buried in the town cemetery, who had been long forgotten. For us, one was a former slave who came from a Virginia plantation in 1865 and became a beloved janitor for three decades, immortalized in articles, poems and stories.

I was honored to conduct numerous personal interviews with alumni at reunion this year (for our 200 voices project) and record their stories and fond memories of their time on campus, for posterity, to link the past with the present.

The major contribution of Research, however, was proactively volunteering to trace the living descendants of our original 21 incorporators for the express purpose of inviting them to the kickoff of our bicentennial celebration. If you are a genealogy buff like me (and bona fide Who Do you Think You Are fan) this was a dream assignment, and a golden opportunity to show our budding genealogical acumen.

Of the 21 ‘founding’ gentlemen we researched - half of whom were reverends – we were able to find living descendants of 12 of them. This meant starting from as far back as 1754 and tracking each generation to the current day. We struck out a lot, and got lucky a lot. Having unusual names (like Hezekiah Prince) helped, as did resources like Ancestry.com, hometown historical records, the Maine Memory network, and online obituaries. Dots were connected. Family trees were drawn up. Eureka moments were declared! In the end, we discovered more than 200 descendants of Gardner Colby alone (who rescued the College in 1864, saving it from financial ruin).

Sally Baker, Vice President and Secretary of the College, relied on Research “immensely” to not just discover these family members, but to narrow the scope further in determining whom exactly to invite to the celebration dinner. Many of the descendants had no idea they were even connected to the college. Research was able to recommend likely attendees based on several factors, starting with those who had affiliations with Colby across several generations. These people were delighted to be invited to share in the festivities, sit at the Founders Table, and bask in the accomplishments of the past two centuries. It was a privilege to meet these individuals, and to put grateful faces to the names of these new Colby Friends.

Throughout the year Research continued to share newly discovered historical gleanings with our colleagues at staff meetings via short PowerPoint quizzes ("which of the following folk singers came to Homecoming in 1972?"). Our Alumni Relations colleagues began taking the bicentennial on the road to 16 cities across the nation, and recently to London.  As we move into our third century, having just announced a new president to take the helm next summer, we’ll continue to celebrate our institution’s long and storied history. The solid contribution that Research made to the bicentennial effort has left us feeling not so much nostalgic, as proud, of our roots, how deep they are, and with the hope that we helped to strengthen constituent involvement and commitment to our institution.

Sharing our talents, and educating ourselves, our colleagues and our alumni base, was the natural result of considering ourselves historical ambassadors on behalf of our institution. It was time well spent.