Archive

A manufacturer of electronics and radio communications, Frank Lyman was a native of Northampton and graduate of the Williston Academy and Harvard (class of 1931). The grandson of Joseph Lyman and great-nephew of Benjamin Smith Lyman, Lyman joined Harvey Radio in the late 1930s, during a time when it was building radio transmitting equipment, purchasing the company in 1940 and becoming its president. An investor in Boston-area radio stations, Lyman oversaw the company’s post-transition into the manufacture of of autmomatic machines and tooling and its merger into the electronics firm, Cambridge Thermionic Corporation (later renamed Cambion) in 1968. Lyman died in 1992, followed by his wife, Jeanne (Sargent), in 2005.

The Lyman Papers contain business correspondence and associated documents relating to both Harvey Radio Corporation and Cambridge Thermionic Corporation, along with associated materials pertaining to Frank Lyman’s investments and personal interests. Beginning during his time at the Williston Academy and extending through his adult life, the collection includes Lyman’s diaries and a small amount of personal correspondence.

An authority in the field of low-temperature physics and superconductivity, Ernest A. Lynton was brought to UMass Amherst in 1973 to serve as the first Vice President for Academic Affairs and Commonwealth Professor of Physics. Lynton was charged with diversifying the student body and broadening the curriculum to emphasize social issues. Born in Berlin Germany in 1926, Lynton received a doctorate in physics from Yale in 1951. He served in his administrative post until 1980, when he took a position as Commonwealth Professor at UMass Boston.

Centered largely on Ernest Lynton’s teaching, the collection contains lecture notes and handouts for Physics courses (Physics 107, 171, Concepts in Physics, Thermodynamics, Statistical Physics), a copy of his dissertation Second Sound in He3-He 4 mixtures, and copies of his book on superconductivity in English, German, and French editions.

Includes letters addressed mostly to Mary Lyons or her brother Frederick D. Lyons about friends and family in Greenfield and Colrain, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. Topics discussed are sickness, death, accidents, an instance of probable wife abuse, recipes, Greenfield scandals, clothing, quilting, Methodist/Universalist bickering, and Aunt Mary’s investments.

As a journalist with the Boston Globe, a news commentator on WGBH television, and Curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, Louis M. Lyons was an important public figure in the New England media for over fifty years. A 1918 graduate of Massachusetts Agricultural College and later trustee of UMass Amherst, Lyons was an vocal advocate for freedom of the press and a highly regarded commentator on the evolving role of media in American society.

The Lyons Papers contain a selection of correspondence, lectures, and transcripts of broadcasts relating primarily to Lyons’ career in television and radio. From the McCarthy era through the end of American involvement in Vietnam, Lyons addressed topics ranging from local news to international events, and the collection offers insight into transformations in American media following the onset of television and reaction both in the media and the public to events such as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the war in Vietnam, and the social and political turmoil of the 1960s.

In the 1950s, William P. MacConnell (Class of 1943), and his photogrammetry students in the Dept. of Forestry began using aerial photography to map forests, agricultural fields, wetlands, and other land cover in Massachusetts. Their work was eventually expanded to include the mapping of all land use for Massachusetts, making this state the first in the nation to be completely mapped in this fashion, and laying the foundation for the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service’s National Wetlands Inventory.

The MacConnell Collection includes a comprehensive set of stereopair photographs derived from multiple transects of the state taken between 1950 and 2000. In addition to some original field notes, a stereoscope, and other project materials, the collection includes the following series:

• 1951: Massachusetts, black and white prints (1:20,000 scale)
• 1971: Massachusetts, black and white prints (1:20,000)
• 1985: Massachusetts and Rhode Island, infrared transparencies (1:25,000)
• 1990: Boston, Cape Cod, Buzzard’s Bay, infrared transparencies (1:12,000)
• 1991-1992: Massachusetts, infrared transparencies (1:40,000)
• 1991-1992: Merrimack River Valley, North Shore, MDC-1, infrared transparencies (1:12,000)
• 1993: Massachusetts, Cape Cod, MDC-2, Nantucket, Dukes and Plymouth Counties, Naushon, West Metro, infrared transparencies (1:12,000)
• 1999: Massachusetts. infrared transparencies and prints (1:25,000)

We are in the process of digitizing the aerial photographs — the 1951-1952 photographs are currently available online. Use the searchable map index to find all available digital images.

The Red Cross played an important relief role in Yugoslavia, helping the still volatile region recover from the devastation of the Second World War.

The sketches and essays in this scrapbook, accompanied by a handful of photographs, were apparently made by grade school students in Skopje, Macedonia, just after the Second World War. The images depict the city, countryside, and people, with a handful of more abstract designs. Red Cross imagery is prominent throughout. Although the provenance of the album is uncertain, it seems possible that it was assembled to pay homage to the organization’s relief efforts.

Enjoying one of the longest tenures of any administrator in the history of the University of Massachusetts, William Lawson Machmer served under five presidents across 42 years, helping to guide the university through an economic depression, two world wars, and three name changes. During his years as Dean, Machmer witnessed the growth of the university from fewer than 500 students to almost 3,800, and helped guide its transformation from a small agricultural college into Massachusetts State College (1931) and finally into the University of Massachusetts (1947).
Machmer’s papers chronicle the fitful development of the University of Massachusetts from the days of Kenyon Butterfield’s innovations of the 1920s through the time of the GI Bill. The collection is particularly strong in documenting the academic experience of students and the changes affecting the various departments and programs at the University, with particular depth for the period during and after the Second World War.

View selected records on women's affairs at UMass, 1924-1951

American poet, writer, and Librarian of Congress, Archibald MacLeish was associated with the modernist school of poetry and awarded the Pulitzer Prize three times. The collection features a manuscript of “An Evening’s Journey To Conway, Massachusetts,” written to commemorate the bicentennial anniversary of the town, as well as correspondence with Kenneth Murdoch documenting their friendship over three decades.

Papers of General John J. Maginnis and Colonel Arthur Howard, both of the MAC Class of 1918, from their experience as part of the American Military Government of Europe following World War II.

The Arthur Howard Papers (8 linear feet) deal with the restoration of food production in the war ravaged “breadbasket of South Germany,” Mannheim, Karlsruhe, Heidelberg, Stuttgart, and the Wurttemberg Baden area. Col. Howard (at that time a Major) was a specialist in food and food processing, and his charge extended to the rehabilitation of supporting industries; he also made repairs of the Karlsruhe and Mannheim harbors.

The John J. Maginnis papers (1.5 linear feet) deal with the processes of government of European areas just delivered from German occupation, and of German areas newly occupied by Allied troops. General Maginnis (at that time a Major and then a Colonel) was an administrator successively in Normandy and Ardennes in France; Hainaut, Belgium; and Berlin.

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

Born to Japanese parents in Tacoma, Washington, in 1909, John Maki was adopted as an infant by a white couple and raised on their farm. After receiving both his bachelors (1932) and masters (1936) in English literature at the University of Washington, Maki was persuaded to switch fields to the study of Japan. Following a fellowship from the Japanese government to study in Tokyo in the late 1930s, the war interrupted his plans. After being ordered to internment, he served with the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service of the Federal Communications Commission and in psychological warfare planning with the Office of War Information, and after the war, he took a position with the occupation authority, assisting in the drafting of the Japanese Constitution. Returning stateside, he resumed his academic career, earning his doctorate in political science at Harvard in 1948. After eighteen years on the faculty at the University of Washington, Maki moved to UMass in 1966, where he served as chair of the Asian Studies Program and in administrative posts, including as vice dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. In recognition of his efforts to promote relations between the U.S. and Japan, he was awarded the Third Class Order of the Sacred Treasure by the emperor of Japan in 1983. Although he retired from the faculty in 1980, Maki remained active as a scholar until the time of his death in Amherst in December 2006.

The Maki Papers reflect a long career in the study of contemporary Japanese politics and culture. Beginning with his earliest academic work on Japan in the 1930s, the collection documents the range of Maki’s interests, from the origins of Japanese militarism and nationalism to the development of the post-war Constitution and his later studies of William Smith Clark and the long history of Japanese-American relations. The collection includes valuable documents from the early period of the Allied Occupation, including the extensive correspondence with his wife Mary (1946).