Collecting area: Military

Born in Torringford, Connecticut in 1806, and educated at the Torringford Academy and Berkshire Medical College (MD 1827), Erasmus Darwin Hudson became well known as a radical reformer. While establishing his medical practice in Bloomfield, Conn., and later in Springfield, Mass., and New York City, Hudson emerged as a force in the antislavery struggle, hewing to the non-resistant line. Touring the northeastern states as a lecturing agent for the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society and general agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he regularly contributed articles to antislavery periodicals and befriended many of the movement’s leaders. In his professional life as an orthopedic surgeon, Hudson earned acclaim for his contributions to the development of modern prosthetics. During the carnage of the Civil War, he introduced remarkable improvements in artificial limb technology and innovations in the treatment of amputations and battle trauma, winning awards for his contributions at international expositions in Paris (1867) and Philadelphia (1876). Hudson died of pneumonia on Dec. 31, 1880.

Spanning five generations of a family of physicians and social reformers, the Hudson Family Papers include particularly significant content for Erasmus Darwin Hudson documenting his activities with the Connecticut and American Anti-Slavery societies. Hudson’s journals and writings are accompanied by a rich run of correspondence with antislavery figures such as Abby Kelley, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Isaac Hopper, and Samuel May and a unique antislavery campaign map of New York state and surrounding areas (1841). Hudson’s medical career and that of his son Erasmus Darwin Hudson, Jr. (1843-1887), a thoracic physician, is equally well documented through correspondence, medical notes, and handwritten drafts of lectures, with other material ranging from family records and writings of and other family members to genealogies of the Hudson, Shaw, Clarke, Fowler, and Cooke families, and printed material, memorabilia, clipping and photographs.

Born on December 13, 1887, Gladys Theodora Parrish to wealthy birthright Quaker Alfred Parrish and Katharine Broadwood Jennings. Gladys married Constant Davis Huntington on October 17, 1916, who had been chairman of the London office of G. P. Putnam’s publishing company since 1905. The couple first resided in Hyde Park Gardens in London and then at Amberley House in Sussex. They had one daughter on January 11, 1922, Georgiana Mary Alfreda (Urquhart). Gladys Huntington wrote many plays and novels, including the bestselling book Madame Solario, published anonymously in 1956. Other published titles include; Carfrae’s Comedy (1915, novel), Barton’s Folly (1924, play), and Turgeniev (c. 1930, play). She died at St. George’s Hospital (Westminster) on May 31, 1959, at the age of 71.

The Gladys Parrish Huntington Papers is primarily composed of the correspondence of Gladys Huntington with her mother, Katharine “Kate” Parrish, husband Constant, daughter Alfreda, various friends, relatives, and professional contacts. Additionally, the collection contains a sizable amount of Gladys’ correspondence and traded manuscripts, short stories, poetry, and drafts with fellow authors such as Leo Myers, Nicolo Tucci, Helen Granville-Barker, Viola Mynell, Eric Clough Taylor, Cynthia Asquith, Clifford Bax, and others. Many of her own manuscripts and typed drafts of novels and plays (Madame Solario, Turgeniev, her unfinished final work, The Ladies’ Mile), along with childhood writings, photo albums, datebooks, and diaries spanning her lifetime are contained within the collection.

Advances in color printing technologies combined with decreasing costs of publication led to a flowering of illustrated sheet music between 1890 and the 1920s.

This small collection is comprised of illustrated sheet music dating primarily from the first quarter of the twentieth century. Representing a cross-section of popular music at the time from minstrel tunes to patriotic marches, most of the songs were selected either for their representation of African Americans (usually in stereotypical and racist caricature) or as examples of pro-war propaganda during the First World War.

Following the Japanese invasion of China in 1937, the New Zealand expatriate Rewi Alley threw his considerable talents behind the war effort. Building upon knowledge acquired over a decade of living in China, Alley helped organize the Chinese Industrial Cooperative Movement (CIC). The CIC coordinated the creation of industrial cooperatives throughout unoccupied China to keep industrial production flowing, and it sponsored a series of industrial schools named after Alley’s friend Joseph Bailie to provide training and support.

The Indusco Bailie School Collection includes documents and photographs relating to the establishment and operation of the Bailie Schools in China during and immediately after the Second World War. Probably associated with the Indusco offices in New York City, these documents include a model constitution for industrial cooperatives, typewritten reports on Bailie Schools, and published articles describing the schools’ efforts. The reports extend through 1949, and include three mimeographed newsletters from the Shantan Bailie School for the months immediately following the school’s liberation by Communist forces. Also included are printed works by Alley and eighteen photographs taken between 1942 and 1944 of students and scenes at Bailie Schools.

A member of the American Expeditionary Force during the First World War, Charles Edward Jackson was the son of Irish immigrants and a native of Northampton, Massachusetts. Drafted into the 76th (Liberty Bell) Division and assigned to the 301st Ammunition Train of the 151st Field Artillery Brigade, he served in France for a full year beginning in June 1918, seeing front line duty only in the last few days of the war. After the Armistice, he was reassigned to a classification camp in central France where he helped process American soldiers heading home. After making his back in June 1919, he worked as a clerk in a hardware store in Northampton until his death in 1930.

Written entirely while in the military service, Charles Jackson’s letters describe his exploits during the First World War. An optimist, strong Catholic, and good soldier, Jackson describes his year overseas, from mustering at Camp Devens through life in an ammunition train and the long post-war months spent on duty in a classification camp in central France. Although nearly devoid of actual battle content due to the role his unit played and the reach of censorship, Jackson’s letters are descriptive and entertaining, describing day to day life, the late offensives of the war, the influenza epidemic and Armistice, and his growing sense of impatience while awaiting demobilization.

For seven years after the end of World War II, the United States led an occupation force in Japan that oversaw comprehensive reforms of the country’s military, economy, politics, and social order. Under the direction of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Command of Allied Powers (SCAP) dismantled and disarmed the military, conducted a series of war crimes trials, and undertook significant reforms in land tenure, industry, and the economy, culminating in the imposition of new pacifist constitution that shifted power from the Emperor to parliament. In the face of the rise of the Cold War and change in international priorities, the U.S. brokered a final peace settlement with Japan that formally ended the occupation in 1952, leaving American bases and bilateral security pact intact.

Focused on the period 1945-1952, this collection includes a sampling of printed materials aimed at average American servicemen and their dependents involved in the occupation and reconstruction of Japan. The collection includes histories and guidebooks, picture books aimed at tourists, and a few examples of instructional materials and propaganda.

Ellen M. Jones was born in Lewis, N.Y., near the western shore of Lake Champlain, on Sept. 29, 1840. The daughter of a farmer originally from Vermont, Jones attended school in nearby Keeseville and witnessed a brother, Albert, go off to fight in the Civil War.

As a young woman living on her family’s farm in upstate New York, Ellen Jones kept a brief, rapidly written diary detailing local and family news as the nation edged into Civil War. In addition to concerns over her fragile health and the passing of local men and women, she includes a nicely detailed description of a Catholic wedding, 1858, a visit to John Brown’s grave in North Elba on July 4, 1860, and several brief allusions to her brothers and friends serving in the Union Army.

The Keystone View Company was founded in Meadville, Penn., by Pennsylvania native B. L. Singley (1864-1938), who had been a salesman for the stereographic producer and distributor Underwood & Underwood. The first prints sold under the Keystone name were Singley’s own photographs of the 1892 French Creek flood. Incorporated in 1905, Keystone opened its Educational Department, creating products designed for classroom use, with an emphasis on social studies, geography, and the sciences. As the company grew, with branch offices in several major cities and staff photographers all over the world, it acquired the stereographic inventories of several of its competitors, including Underwood & Underwood, becoming the largest company of its kind in the world. In 1932, Keystone launched its Stereophthalmic Department, which included stereoscopic vision tests and products for correcting vision problems. Singley retired as Keystone’s president in 1936 or 1937, and Keystone was bought by Mast Development Company in 1963.

This 1923 boxed set, World War Through the Stereoscope, part of the “Stereographic Library” and housed in a box imitating the look of a two-volume set of books, contains 100 images of World War I and just after, taken ca. 1917-1921. The stereographic prints are pasted onto Keystone’s distinctive grey curved mounts, with extensive descriptive information on the reverse of each mount. Prints are numbered with identifiers—those beginning with “V” were originally Underwood photographs—as well as numbers indicating the order in which they are to be viewed. The stereographs are accompanied by a viewer, also manufactured by Keystone.

A wool dealer in the firm of Horswell, Kinsley, and French of Boston, Edward W. Kinsley captured his memories of the Civil War in a series of written reminiscences. These typescript copies include his memories of the raising of the 1st North Carolina Colored Regiment, his second visit South and the Emancipation Proclamation Celebration, General Tom Stevenson’s confirmation as Brigadier-General, the second election of President Lincoln, and the fall of Richmond among others. The collection also includes passages from Kinsley’s diary, letters, a scrapbook, photographs, newspaper clippings, and notes from the diary of Edward’s wife, Calista A. Kinsley.

A professor of Biology at UMass Amherst with and interest in the mangrove ecosystems of the Caribbean and the deep water environments of the Connecticut River, Ed Klekowski has become well known as a videographer and writer. He has produced documentary for PBS station WGBY on the Quabbin reservoir and the great flood on the Connecticut River in 1936, and on the Yankee Division during the First World War. He and his wife Libby have co-written two books on the First World War, Eyewitness to the Great War (McFarland Press, 2012) and Americans in Occupied Belgium (McFarland Press, 2014).

This small collection of postcards consists primarily of images of American military involvement during the First World War. The scenes depicted range from the first contingent of American soldiers to arrive in 1917 to gas attacks, tanks, and American soldiers and Marines in the trenches and combat during the summer and fall 1918. Among the more unusual form postcards are two cartoon images intended for use by soldiers on their return home, one each from the Knights of Columbus and the Jewish Welfare Board. The postcards were collected by the Klekowskis during preparations for their documentary on the Yankee Division.