Secret Scroll, Too Big For Hiding-Place, Retired After Sixty-Seven Year History

One bright day last June a small white-haired man crossed the path between Matthews and Grays carrying a bulky, brown scroll under one arm. Entering an office he laid the scroll on the secretary's desk, gazed at it for a moment and walked out. With this simple act ended one of the strangest traditions in recent Harvard history.

The man was Connic Lynch, Matthews janitor for the past 14 years; the scroll, "The Matthews Transmittindum" which had rested in a small, dark hole in the top of a Matthews 19 bedroom door for the past 67 years.

Actually, the history of the tradition reaches back to 1876, the year of Matthews' opening. The first occupant of the room, Harcourt Amory '76, bored a hole down into the top of his bedroom door and placed in it a set of documents intended to be a Transmittindum (which in Latin means "something which must be passed on.")

It was not passed on or at least not for a long. Winthrop Wetherbee '86, the originator of the successful Transmittindum, tells us on the first page that in his freshman year he became a member of the First Corps Cadets of Boston, and was assigned a company of which Harcourt Amory was the first sergeant. "In the course of conversation it transpired that Mr. Amory had formerly occupied 19 Matthews and related how he had bored the hole and prepared his document. Though a diligent search was instituted by the two occupants of the rooms, no trace of the papers could be found."

The next sheet in the scroll is a letter dated October 29, 1886 from Frederick Almy '80 to Wetherbee, then chairman of the undergraduate literary committee of the celebration of the 250th anniversary of the College, asking for tickets to the literary exercises in Sanders Theatre. Attached to the letter is a scrap of paper which Wetherbee says was "tucked beneath the flap of the envelope as though it had been an afterthought," the message read--"Have you ever discovered a Transmittindum in your room, a parchment scroll with the names of all the occupants of the room, in an augur hole in the top of one of the doors. My brother occupied 19 Matthews in 1879 and it was there then."

Romantic Coincidence

"The coincidence," says Wetherbee, "was so romantic as well as curious that I determined to bring about a meeting of the former occupants of the rooms ... but owing to great press of work the matter was left until the last minute: the writer is obliged to write his facts in this slovenly manner ... On this day June 29, 1887, the Commencement Day of the Class of '87 misc. papers will be read to witnesses and then deposited in the door and the hole will be sealed. Any person discovering this Transmittindum in after years will confer a very great favor by communicating with the writer. May all luck be with each occupant of this old room."

And so it began. The next sheet in the scroll, dated 1913, tells of a visit by Wetherbee to the room on Commencement Day, 1913. In it, Hamilton Vaughan Ball '13 tells how Wetherbee suddenly appeared at the door, "walked to the door, of the bedroom and standing on my roommate's trunk ran his hand along the top of the door. He then asked me to do the same whereupon I discovered a round wooden plug set in the top. We removed the door found a corkscrew and with Mr. Wetherbee acting as Master of Ceremonies opened the hole." After explaining the documents to Bail and his roommate, Wetherbee then went off to find Amory and all four of them again signed the scroll.

The next discovery of the scroll came in the winter of 1952. Richard Basch '55 and David Poutas '55 contacted a Winthrop Wetherbee in Boston who turned out to be the original Wetherbee's son (class of 1926). He reported in his addition to the Transmittindum that his father often went to the room for Class Day or Commencement and when no one was around would sneak a look at the scroll to see if it had been found. "Although my father never made any effort to show me the Transmittindum," Wetherbee Jr. wrote, "it would have been a source of great satisfaction to him to know that I had seen it and had added to it even this brief message, that in turn it will be seen by my son and by his and by his."

'Guy Named Pusey'

The scroll was found again in 1953 by Morris Phinney Jr. '56 who reported "Today we got word that a guy named Pusey is our new Pres. here at Harv."

The last discovery was in late June by Mrs. Elizabeth Ransley Clementson, the wife of a 1928 rounioner, who wrote, "To those who come after us in living in these quiet beautiful and historic rooms, we hope that you will have as happy a Twenty-fifth as we have had ... Having President Pusey is really something to be proud of for the Class. of 1928... Remember 1928 is great."

In his annual cleaning rounds last June, Lynch, who, like most of the janitors before him, know about the scroll, found it "sticking halfway out of the hole and mashed against the doorframe." He tried to push it back in, but soon saw that "all those additions and things made it just too large."

Lynch, reluctantly took the scroll to the office of College Dormitories where an administrative decision was quickly handed down: the scroll would be sent to the archives and replaced with a typewritten copy.

"Its really too bad," commented Lynch, "It was a nice tradition while it lasted."