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[Identification of item], George Earle Chamberlain Papers, WLU Coll. 0247, Special Collections and Archives, James G. Leyburn Library, Washington and Lee University, Lexington, VA.
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Gift of Chamberlain's grandson, George E. Chamberlain, on 12/30/1998.
George Earle Chamberlain was an 1876 graduate of Washington and Lee University Law school, Governor of Oregon (1902-1910), and a U. S. Senator from Oregon (1909-1920). While a student at Washington and Lee, he was a member of the Virginia Beta Chapter of the Phi Kappa Psi fraternity.
This collection includes a small amount of correspondence dated 1904-1908. The primary subject matter of the correspondence refers to fundraising efforts Chamberlain was a part of that related to Washington and Lee University. He helped fundraise to build a chapter house for his fraternity, Phi Kappa Psi, a new library (Carnegie), and the Lee Memorial Association. A couple of letters refer to the Jamestown Exposition (1907). Chamberlain remarks about his political campaign in a letter dated June 5, 1906.
The collection also includes his two manuscript notebooks of class notes he took during classes taught by Professor John Randolph Tucker. Two examination broadsides were removed from between pages 12-13 of the second notebook and placed in an oversize folder. There is also photograph from January 1874 Chamberlain and two fraternity brothers, Gerard M. Effinger and Floyd Farrar.