Title: Raymond H. Stetson Papers, 1890, 1893, 1896, 1901, 1926-50, 1989

ID: RG 30/013

Extent: 4.05 Linear Feet

Predominant Dates: 1926-50

Arrangement

Creators

Administrative/Biographical History

Raymond Herbert Stetson (Ph.B., 1893, A.M., 1896, Sci.D., 1942) was born on March 1, 1872, in North Ridgeville, Ohio. Reared in a farming family, he was expected to stay and work on the farm. Stetson showed a strong interest in scientific work at Elyria High School, where he and another student named Ray Cogswell set up the high school's first chemistry laboratory. Stetson's initial curiosity and brilliance (and a financial push from a sympathetic aunt) led him to enroll in Oberlin College in 1890.

Stetson's area of undergraduate study was chemistry. After completing his studies under Frank Fanning Jewett (1844-1926) in 1893, Stetson continued this student/professor relationship by serving as Jewett's graduate assistant. During this same period, Stetson also worked on a master's degree in Zoology under Professor A.A. Wright (1846-1905). Having completed his master's in 1896, Stetson set out to work. He received an appointment as Professor of Biology at Tabor College in Iowa, which he held from 1896 to 1899. These years of experience in the laboratory led Stetson to enroll at Harvard University in order to pursue a doctorate in 1899. There he worked under Hugo Munsterberg (1863-1916), writing a dissertation entitled, “Motor Theory of Rhythm and Discreet Succession.” Shortly after he earned his Ph.D. in 1901, Stetson accepted a position at Beloit College, teaching in the areas of Psychology and Philosophy. He remained at Beloit until 1909, when he accepted the headship of the new Department of Psychology at Oberlin, this new department having been separated from the Department of Philosophy the same year.

Stetson taught at Oberlin College for the next three decades. Along with the research interests he developed at Harvard University, Stetson was influenced by the work of William Benton Chamberlain (1847-1903), who taught in speech and rhetoric at Oberlin. Stetson drew on this background when he began his lifelong research in speech, motor, and skill movements. His main contributions to the field of psychology are in the areas of speech movements and phonetics, an interest sparked by Abbe Rousselot following a year Stetson spent in France with him from 1922 to 1923. Many of his original theories and experiments are considered ahead of their time, and in most cases were not fully verified and explored until the 1960s.

In addition to his teaching and research commitments, Stetson served on a number of governing committees, including the Graduate Study Committee and the Appointments and Budget Committee of the College Council. Formally retiring in 1939, Stetson nonetheless remained active in college affairs until his death 11 years later.

Stetson's influence during his lifetime was hindered by factors such as his refusal to “politic” within the field of psychology and some limitations in his written presentation of data. Nonetheless, Stetson was recognized as a pioneer within his field. Stetson's practice of allowing undergraduate students to make meaningful contributions to his research (a rare practice, even today) resulted in a number of his assistants later becoming very prominent themselves within the field of Psychology. Some of his more famous students include Roger W. Sperry (1913-1994; A.B. 1935) and Robert Galambos (b.1914, A.B. 1935).

Stetson never married. From 1924, until his death, Stetson lived with Oberlin History professor Frederick B. Artz (1894-1983). Artz is identified as Stetson's "partner" in the 1940 and 1950 U.S. Census.

The mid-1930s saw the onset of intermittent claudication in his legs that, as time went on, limited Stetson's ability to walk and eventually led to the amputation of a leg in 1948. It is these developments that led Stetson to have an elevator installed in Peters Hall where his laboratory was located (initially at his own cost), and forced him to buy a car and employ a student driver.

Stetson remained active in retirement throughout the 1940s, but as the decade wore on, his health became a severe limitation. While working on a publication entitled “Motor Phonetics,” Raymond Herbert Stetson died on December 4, 1950.

For more biographical information see Louis D. Hartson’s 1951 biography located in the student files (28).

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Administrative Information

Acquired: 05/13/1968.

Restrictions: Certain restrictions to access apply and are noted on inventory.

Acquisition Note: The papers of Raymond Herbert Stetson were received under 11 separate accessions between 1974 and 1979. Most of these accessions were the result of mail solicitations made by William E. Bigglestone, former Oberlin College Archivist. In October 1974, letters of R.H. Stetson were received from Alfred Hubbard of Urbana, Illinois, J.M. Pickett of Gallaudet University, and Roger Sperry of the California Institute of Technology. Additional materials were sent in November 1974 by Eldora Speigelberg of St. Louis and A. T. Slater-Hammel of Indiana University. In October 1978, Mrs. Ruth Hudgins of Northampton, Massachusetts, sent one carton of letters from Stetson to Clarence V. Hudgins to the Archives. Other Stetson correspondence was sent to the Archives by Pickett in July 1979. Additional writings by Stetson were transferred from the Oberlin College Library, Department of Special Collections, in 2002. Two additional accretions include one received from Jane Pickett ’43 in 2006, and another from Carl Schwinn in 2007.

Related Materials: In addition to this collection, information present in these Archives pertaining to Raymond Herbert Stetson can be located in Stetson's staff and student files and the student file of James M. Pickett ’43 (RG 28), the papers of former Oberlin Colleges Presidents Ernest Hatch Wilkins (RG 2/7), William E. Stevenson (RG 2/8), the papers of Frederick B. Artz (RG 30/175), Louis D. Hartson (RG 30/12), Donald M. Love (RG 30/91), Warren Taylor (RG 30/15), the records of the Psychology Department (RG 9/2), and James Rokett (RG 21, Series VII, A. Published Writings).

Finding Aid Revisions: Processed by Richard Baxstrom, 1992. Revised by Melissa Gottwald, February 2002; Ken Grossi, August 2007; Archives staff, May 2008, November 2021, March 2022.

Collection Material Type: Personal Papers

Scope and Contents:

The Raymond Herbert Stetson Papers consist almost entirely of original letters that Dr. Stetson wrote to friends and colleagues. This personal paper collection was constructed by former Oberlin College Archivist William E. Bigglestone. In an effort to preserve the work of the late Professor Stetson, Bigglestone, with assistance of Stetson family members and Frederick B. Artz, solicited letters sent by Stetson to his friends (e.g. Robert Kimball Richardson [1876-1952] and James M. Snodgrass [1908-1994; A.B. 1931]), and over a period of years this collection was assembled. Given the way in which the collection was assembled, however, gaps in the record exist.

The content of the letters is overwhelmingly related to Stetson's research in the areas of speech and motor phonetics. The largest number of the letters center on his laboratory experiments and his subsequent writing on them. Letters to his peers in the Psychology field are the most detailed and useful in terms of understanding the techniques used in the experiments. Of special interest are Stetson's letters to former students and colleagues James Snodgrass, Clarence Hudgins (1897-1962) and Alfred Hubbard (b.1907) the correspondence of which represents the bulk of the collection. There are also letters to Arthur Slater-Hammel (1909-1992), James Pickett (1921-1996, A.B. 1943), and Roger Sperry (1913-1994; A.B. 1935).

The two areas that Stetson wrote about outside of his work concerned governance of the college and his service on various faculty committees. Stetson's involvement in the administration of Oberlin is outlined in his correspondence to several people, including Snodgrass, Hudgins, and Hubbard, but also in letters to associates outside of psychology like Robert Richardson.

Many of Stetson's letters from the period of 1938-45 deal with his views on World War II.

The manner in which Stetson composed many of his letters is to be noted. Stetson, for the sake of speed and space, characteristically abbreviated nearly every word of a letter over five characters in length, normally deleting most of the vowels. One is still able to ascertain the content in his letters, but this unusual style makes the task a bit more arduous for most researchers.

Aside from the correspondence, this collection also contains a number of Stetson's publications, as well as the publications of a few of his peers and students. These publications are useful when trying to place the research reported in his letters into an overall context. A volume of papers by a number of Stetson's former students appeared as a supplement to the American Journal of Psychology, in 1939 as a tribute to the retiring Stetson. These papers illustrate the various directions that Stetson's students took in their own research, and affirm the way in which Stetson's work served as a building block for their work in the field.

Detailed Description
Series I: Biographical File
Series II: College-Related Materials
Series III: Correspondence
Series IV: Publications