The Archive provides for the acquisition, organization, description, preservation, and access to unique materials which preserve and document the history of St. Mary’s College of Maryland.  The collection tracks the school’s journey from a female seminary (boarding school) to a high school, a high school/junior college, a junior college, a four-year baccalaureate institution, and finally The National Public Honors College. The archive also collects items related to the history of St. Mary’s County. Some important manuscript collections include the papers of J. Frank Raley, Regina Combs Hammett, former Maryland Delegates Paul Bailey and John Bohanan, and former college president J. Renwick Jackson, Jr.

The Archive creates and maintains

• Finding aids that describe some of the archive’s manuscript collections and university record groups.
• Digital collections that provide online access to a historical documents, including the SlackWater oral history transcripts, the College’s yearbooks and student newspapers, and over one thousand digital images.
• The above online finding aids only represent a small portion of materials available to researchers. Contact the archivist (archivist@smcm.edu) for assistance searching the remainder of the collection.

The archives are open to St. Mary’s students, faculty and staff, as well as the general public.