The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
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Wheeler, William

William Wheeler Papers

1876-1930
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: RG 002/3 W54
Depiction of William Wheeler, ca.1876
William Wheeler, ca.1876

The civil engineer William Wheeler was a member of the first graduating class of Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1871, and was one of its most prominent alumni of the nineteenth century. In 1876, Wheeler joined MAC President William Smith Clark and two other alumni of the college in helping to found the Sapporo Agricultural College in Japan (now Hokkaido University), succeeding Clark as president of SAP from 1877 to 1879. In later life, he was a successful hydraulic engineer and long-time trustee of MAC (1887-1929).

A small, tightly focused collection, the Wheeler Papers consist largely of letters written home by Wheeler while working at the Sapporo Agricultural College, 1876-1880. Typically long and descriptive, the letters include excellent accounts of travel in Japan and Wheeler’s impressions of Japanese culture, but they provide detailed insight as well into the work involved in establishing Sapporo Agricultural College.

Subjects

Agriculture--JapanClark, William Smith, 1826-1886Hokkaido (Japan)--Description and travel--19th centuryHokkaido DaigakuJapan--Description and travel--19th centuryMassachusetts Agricultural CollegePenhallow, D. P. (David Pearce), 1854-1910Sapporo (Japan)--Description and travel--19th century

Contributors

Hudson, WoodwardWheeler, William, 1851-1932

Types of material

Letters (Correspondence)
Whipple, Charles L.

Charles L. Whipple Papers

1925-1991
21 boxes 10.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 360
Depiction of Charles L. Whipple, ca.1935
Charles L. Whipple, ca.1935

Charles Lewis Whipple was a noted journalist, editor, and the first ombudsperson for the Boston Globe. As a student at Harvard in the 1930s, Whipple joined the Young Communist League, carrying his radical politics with him when he joined the Globe’s staff in 1936 and became an active member of the American Newspaper Guild. Although classified as unfit for military duty due to the loss of vision in one eye, Whipple joined the Red Cross during the Second World War, and served with distinction with over thirty months of overseas service. After returning to civilian life and severing ties with the Communist Party, he resumed his position at the Globe, rising steadily to become editor of the opinion page in 1962 and ombudsperson in 1975. An editorial he wrote in 1967 is considered the first editorial in a major American newspaper to oppose the war in Vietnam. Although he formally retired from the Globe in 1979. Whipple worked an additional three years with the Xinhua News Agency in Beijing as editor of the Beijing Review and the China Daily, China’s first English-language daily. Whipple died in Northampton, Mass., in 1991, following complications from surgery.

A mixture of personal and professional correspondence, writing, and subject and clipping files, the Charles Whipple Papers document a long and exceptional career in journalism. The diverse roles that Whipple filled at the Boston Globe from the 1930s through 1970s resulted in rich documentation of his work as an organizer for the American Newspaper Guild on the eve of the Second World War; his writing and editorial work during the Vietnam War and as the Globe’s Ombudsman in the 1970s; and the three years he spent in China setting up an English-language newspaper during the late 1970s and early 1980s.

Subjects

American Newspaper GuildBoston GlobeCommunists--MassachusettsJournalists--Massachusetts--BostonLabor unions--Massachusetts--BostonNewspaper employees--Labor unions--MassachusettsVietnam War, 1961-1975

Contributors

Whipple, Charles L.

Types of material

Photographs
Whisler, Howard C. (Howard Clinton)

Howard C. Whisler Papers

1963-2007
5 boxes 7.6 linear feet
Call no.: MS 716

As an undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley, Howard Whisler was introduced to the study of zoosporic fungi, beginning what would become a lifelong interest in evolutionary protistology. During his graduate work at Berkeley, Whisler focused on fungi associated with invertebrates, receiving his doctorate in 1960 for a study of the entomogenous fungus Amoebidium parasiticum. He joined the faculty at the University of Washington in 1963, where he remained until his retirement in 1999. A prolific researcher, and developer of the fungal research program at the Friday Harbor Marine Biological Laboratory, he became noted for his work on zoosporic fungi and protists, particularly of parasites or commensals in arthropods, with publications ranging from studies of reproduction in the Monoblepharidales to the molecular systematics of Saprolegnia in salmon, and the sexual stages and life cycle of Coelomomyces, a fungal pathogen of mosquitos. An active member of the Mycological Society of America, Whisler was also a founder of the International Society of Evolutionary Protistology with Max Taylor and Lynn Margulis. Whisler died on Sept. 16, 2007, at the age of 76.

The Whisler Papers contain correspondence, notebooks, scanning electron micrographs, and motion pictures dating primarily from the mid- to late 1970s.

Subjects

Fungi--Study and teachingInternational Society of Evolutionary ProtistologyMycology

Contributors

Whisler, Howard C. (Howard Clinton)

Types of material

Motion pictures (Visual work)Scanning electron micrographs
Whitaker, Elizabeth W.

Elizabeth W. Whitaker Collection

1802-1989
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 682
Depiction of Gravestone, No. Guilford, Conn.
Gravestone, No. Guilford, Conn.

A physical education teacher from Rome, New York, Elizabeth W. Whitaker became an avid recorder of gravestone inscriptions in the 1940s. She died in 1992 at the age of 93.

The core of the Whitaker collection consists of 25 receipts and accounts relating to the early marble industry in western Massachusetts. The key figures in this series are Rufus Willson and his father-in-law, John Burghardt, who quarried stone near West Stockbridge, Mass., conveying it to Hudson, N.Y. The collection also includes a selection of photographs and postcards of gravestones, mostly in New England and New York; two folders of typed transcriptions and newspaper clippings of epitaphs from the same region, ranging in date from the early colonial period to the mid-19th century; and a price list of Barre granite from Wetmore and Morse Granite Co., 1934.

Subjects

Marble industry and trade--MassachusettsSepulchral monuments--Massachusetts

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesBurghardt, JohnWhitaker, Elizabeth WWillson, Rufus

Types of material

PhotographsReceipts (Financial records)
Whitcomb, John M.

John M. Whitcomb Collection

ca.1905-1969
ca.400 titles
Call no.: RB 038

John Merrall Whitcomb was an architect, researcher, and life-long scholar. Born in New York City in July 1907, Whitcomb earned an undergraduate degree at Yale (1930) and a degree in architecture from the University of Pennsylvania (1934) and began working his way up the ranks of the architectural profession in Boston. After wartime service in the Air Force, he resumed his career, establishing his own firm in Cambridge, Johnson and Whitcomb. He died in 1998.

Part of a large collection of books amassed over a lifetime, this collection focuses largely on Whitcomb’s interest in “seditionist” literature, including works on Anglo-American Socialism and Communism, as well as topics ranging from American labor to political and social history, the rise of fascism in Europe, Soviet studies, the Vietnam War, and political theory. The bulk of the material dates from the 1930s through early 1960s.

Subjects

Communism--Great BritainCommunism--United StatesSocialism--Great BritainSocialism--United States
White Light Communications

White Light Communications Collection

1989-1999
150 items 54 linear feet
Call no.: MS 984

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

A not-for-profit media company based in Burlington, Vermont, White Light Communications produced dozens of videos during the late 1980s and early 1990s reflecting the voices and experiences of psychiatric survivors. With initial funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, Executive Director Paul Engels and his colleagues, all psychiatric survivors themselves, built a fully-equipped television production studio and conducted nearly one hundred interviews with ex-patients and leaders in the antipsychiatry movement. Although most of the interviews were conducted in Burlington, they also produced documentaries, and covered national events such as the final two Alternatives conferences and “Self Help Live,” a broadcast that focused on highlighting consumer/survivor leaders.

The hundreds of video interviews and other productions that comprise the White Light Communications collection were produced by, for, and about psychiatric survivors. Paul Engels interviewed nearly a hundred ex-patients including important leaders in the movement such as Judi Chamberlin, Sally Zinman, Howie the Harp, and George Ebert, and several episodes focused on the mental health system and activism in Vermont. The subjects of the interviews range widely from homelessness to involuntary treatment, peer support, suicide, surviving the mental health system, and the history of the psychiatric survivors movement.

Gift of Paul Engels, May 2017

Subjects

AntipsychiatryCivil rights movements--United StatesEx-mental patientsMental health services--United StatesMental illness--Alternative treatmentMentally ill--Social conditionsPsychiatric survivors movement

Contributors

Chamberlin, Judi, 1944-2010Dart, Justin, 1930-2002Ebert, GeorgeEngels, PaulMillett, KateZinman, Sally

Types of material

Oral histories (Document genres)U-maticVideotapes
White, Cyrus

Cyrus White Daybook

1823-1829
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 085a

A cooper based in South Hadley, Massachusetts, during the first half of the nineteenth century, Cyrus White made tubs and barrels of all varieties: soap tubs, leach tubs, oil barrels and casks, cheese presses, butter churns, and buckets.

Cyrus White’s daybook is a closely focused record of the range of work of one cooper in a country town in Massachusetts. White’s work ranged from repairing wheelbarrows and making washing machines to making all varieties of a cooper’s oeuvre.

Subjects

Coopers and cooperage--Massachusetts--South HadleySouth Hadley (Mass.)--History

Contributors

White, Cyrus

Types of material

Daybooks
White, Willis H.

Willis H. White Papers

1874-1966 Bulk: 1919-1942
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 929

A convinced Friend who became an advocate for peace, Willis H. White was a member of the East Greenwich Monthly Meeting. A secretary in the Providence-based real estate firm William H. White & Sons, White was active in several organizations promoting peace and spiritual renewal within the Society of Friends in the years after the First World War.

The bulk of Willis H. White’s papers are concentrated on his activities on behalf of peace, social justice, and the Society of Friends in the period 1919-1922. The collection includes materials documenting White’s work with the American Friends Service Committee and on invigorating the Society through the London Conference of All Friends and the evangelical Forward Movement of Friends, and there is a relatively small, but interesting series of letters from the labor and peace activist, A. J. Muste.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, 2016

Subjects

Conference of All FriendsForward movement (Evangelical movement)PacifismPeace movementsQuakers--Rhode IslandWorld War, 1914-1918

Contributors

American Friends Service CommitteeBonell, Harold C. (Harold Charles), 1908-1977Muste, A. J. (Abraham John), 1885-1967

Types of material

Ephemera
Whitmore, Martha R.

Martha R. Whitmore Diaries

1937-1962
6 vols. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 807
Depiction of Philip F. Whitmore and grandchildren, July 1962
Philip F. Whitmore and grandchildren, July 1962

Shortly after graduating from college in 1920, Martha Richardson married Philip F. Whitmore, a market gardener from Sunderland, Mass., and 1915 graduate of Massachusetts Agricultural College. As a housewife and mother of three, Martha supported Philip, who became a Trustee of his alma mater and a representative in the State House (1950-1962). Philip Whitmore died in 1962, with Martha following nineteenth years later.

This small collection includes six scattered diaries of Martha Whitmore, kept somewhat irregularly during the years 1937, 1947, 1950, 1953, 1957, and 1962. Largely personal in nature, they are centered on home and family life, husband and children, and Martha’s love of nature, but they include occasional references to Philip Whitmore’s political activities and the University of Massachusetts.

Subjects

Sunderland (Mass.)--HistoryUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst--TrusteesWhitmore, Philip F.

Types of material

DiariesPhotographs
Whittemore, Amos, 1759-1828

Amos Whittemore Daybook

1817-1819
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 153 bd

Wagonwright and celebrated inventor of a machine that made cotton and wool cards from West Cambridge (now Arlington), Massachusetts. Includes records of services provided, such as repairing, cleaning, painting and varnishing chaises; providing wheels, springs, waterhooks, whippletrees, bellybands, and carpet; and mending reins and harnesses. Also contains lists of customers (including many prominent families from the town) and records of cash transactions.

Subjects

Arlington (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryArlington (Mass.)--History--19th centuryCarriage and wagon making--Massachusetts--Arlington--History--19th centuryCarriage manufacturers and dealers--Massachusetts --Arlington--History--19th centuryHarness making and trade--Massachusetts--Arlington--History--19th century

Contributors

Whittemore, Amos, 1759-1828

Types of material

Daybooks