Collecting area: Massachusetts (Central)

Born in the Quabbin town of Enfield, Mass., Bob Wilder (1933-2015) rose from a life of poverty to a successful career in the Marine Corps and the aerospace industry. Becoming an avid local historian in his retirement, he drew upon his rural childhood while working later as an interpreter at Old Sturbridge Village and became a popular lecturer on topics in regional history.

This small collection consists of materials relating to Wilder’s family and his research into the history of the Swift River Valley and the Quabbin Reservoir. In addition to some Wilder family photographs, the collection includes hand-drawn maps, newspaper clippings, town reports, magazine articles, oral histories, and poems about the towns of the Swift River Valley. Of particular note are several video recordings of Wilder’s lectures and an extensive series of oral histories with Wilder recorded by Marc Peloquin.

The intertwined history of the Society of Friends in Worcester and Uxbridge, Mass., began with the first meetings for worship in Uxbridge in 1767, under the care of Smithfield Monthly Meeting. Set off as a monthly meeting in 1783, Uxbridge reached its peak during the first half of the nineteenth century, but following years of decline, it changed its name and center to Worcester Monthly Meeting in 1907. A group from the pastoral meeting at Worcester broke off in 1952 to create the unprogrammed Pleasant Street Monthly Meeting, although the two meetings reunited in 1979. The Worcester-Pleasant Street Monthly simplified its name to the current Worcester Monthly Meeting before 2009.

The records of Worcester Monthly Meeting include a nearly complete set of minutes beginning in 1905, about the time it changed name from Uxbridge Monthly, and an extensive, though broken run of newsletters. The records of Uxbridge Monthly Meeting and Pleasant Street Monthly Meeting prior to the reunion with Worcester are described separately.

Mr. and Mrs. Ernest Zickler of Leominster, Massachusetts began a 3 month cross-country road trip on March 27, 1952. Mrs. Zickler created a scrapbook to document the trip. The scrapbook includes souvenir and original photographs, postcards, maps, and other miscellaneous memorabilia from the journey. Their stops include various tourist attractions as well as scenic areas throughout the Midwest and Southwest of the United States. Most of their time was spent in Oraibi, the oldest continuously inhabited community in North America, on the Navajo Gospel Mission. The Zicklers returned to Leominster in July 1952, having traveled a total of 10,404 miles.

The scrapbook spans the entirety of the Zickler’s trip. It includes postcards, souvenir photographs from tourist locations such as the Grand Canyon, Yellowstone National Park, the Big Rock Candy Mountain, Hoover Dam, the Petrified Forest (as well as a piece of wood from the Forest), placemats and matchboxes from Las Vegas, and numerous souvenir photographs of the Navajo Gospel Mission.