Vassar Yesterday

Once upon a time—in the photo above the time is 1915—Vassar students combed Dutchess County, picking daisies for the commencement Daisy Chain. The Vassar campus was one source; a photo from 1897 shows two long-skirted women standing in a meadow identified as the “Vassar daisy field” (now the lawn that spreads in front of the chapel). Nearby estates and farms were also popular destinations for the annual daisy harvest. Today, as for decades, the job of assembling the daisy chain is a florist’s.