Collecting area: Massachusetts

Opposition to fluoridation of public water supplies in Massachusetts swelled in the 1950s, culminating in passage of a law in 1958 mandating that towns that wished to fluoridate would first put the proposal to public referendum. The primary force advocating for this law was the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association, an organization founded and directed by Norman and Mary-Louise (Shadman) Meyer of Wellesley and which remained the leading anti-fluoridation group in the Boston area for twenty years. Having met and married while students at Harvard (1943) and Wellesley, respectively, the Meyers were tireless supporters of civic activities ranging from educational and environmental causes to public television (through the Citizens for Public Television in Boston), and disability (Norman served as director of the Protestant Guild for the Blind in Watertown), and they were stalwart members of the Wellesley town meeting. Norman Meyer died in Tortola in 1986, with Mary-Louise following in 1999.

The Meyer collection is a rich assemblage of letters and other materials documenting the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association and the struggle against fluoridation in Wellesley, Newton, and other communities in eastern Massachusetts. Central figures in the movement, the Meyers maintained a wide correspondence with other activists throughout the region and published and disseminated information on the dangers of flourides in the water supply.

Country store in the village of Titicut in Middleborough, Massachusetts, owned by members of either the Clark or Pratt families of the village. Includes goods for sale (groceries, cloth, hardware, and liquor), the method and form of payment (cash, rags, straw, wood, brick, and produce), customers’ names, and ways that families and women earned credit (producing braid or carting goods for the owners).

Four generations of the Miller family from Roxbury and Hull, Massachusetts. Includes photographs mounted on twenty-eight sheets of posterboard and 158 slides stored in two slide trays that are comprised of formal and informal family portraits; family businesses; church and business gatherings; a wedding announcement; and postcards from the early 1900s depicting public recreation sites. More recent photographs reveal how the public recreation sites have changed over the years. Robert Parker Miller, a graduate of the University of Massachusetts Amherst and a member of the Miller family, displayed these images in an exhibit entitled “Trying to Live the American Dream” (1986, Wheeler Gallery).

A nearly lifelong resident of Springfield, Massachusetts, J. Wesley Miller was actively engaged in the city’s politics. Often described as an eccentric activist, Miller graduated from Colby College and later earned his law degree from Western New England College of Law. Although he never practiced as an attorney, Miller did sue the law school upon graduation for “educational malpractice,” a suit that was settled out of court. Miller taught English at Heidelberg College in Ohio and at the University of Wisconsin, and it is at the latter institution where it seems he formed his habit of collecting street literature, mostly posters and fliers. Evidently consumed by a desire to collect such materials, Miller accrued a vast quantity of street literature by the time of his death in 2005.

The collection consists primarily of flyers and posters collected by Miller in Madison, Wisconsin and throughout western Massachusetts that reflect the contemporary history of the two regions. The literature ranges from announcements of student protests and rallies to advertisements for local pubs. Miller signed each item, possibly as part of a ritual to catalog the collection. Also included is a microfilm copy of Miller’s diaries.

The journalist and activist Allen Young founded Millers River Publishing Co. in 1983 to produce “fine books about New England.” Nearly a one person shop, the company began in Athol, Mass., with what would become the most successful of its publications, North of Quabbin, Young’s own guidebook to the nine towns rimming the Quabbin Reservoir. Over the next five years, Millers River issued at least fifteen titles in regional and local history, fiction, and children’s books. Soon after Young left his job at the Athol Daily News in 1989 to accept a position in public relations at the community hospital, the company ceased its operations.

The records of the Millers River Publishing Co. document the active years of a small regional press in northern Massachusetts. In addition business records, the collection includes correspondence from authors and readers along with book proposals and manuscripts, including some for works not published. Most of the Millers River publications are available in SCUA.

Miscellaneous Manuscripts is an artificial collection that brings together single items and small groups of related materials. Although the collection reflects the general collecting emphases in SCUA, particularly the history of New England, the content ranges widely in theme and format.

Planning for construction of a nuclear power plant in Montague, Mass., in 1973, Northeast Utilities was required to conduct an environmental impact survey of the site, building a 500-foot tall weather monitoring tower to gather data. Their plans, however, were thwarted by the rise of a powerful antinuclear opposition, symbolized by a renowned act of civil disobedience in February 1974. On Washington’s Birthday, a member of the Montague Farm commune, Sam Lovejoy, took down the tower using simple farm tools, turning himself in to the police immediately afterward. The ensuing trial, the effective organizing by his colleagues, and the success of their effort to prevent construction of the power plant is often regarded as a formative moment in the history of the modern antinuclear movement.

This environmental report for the proposed Montague Nuclear Power Station includes an accounting of the purpose of the facility, its environmental, archaeological, and social impact, and an analysis of the costs and benefits of operation.

A lifelong diarist, Granby farmer Holland Montague wrote chiefly about life on the farm where he made a comfortable living supplying produce to surrounding towns. While most of his entries are bland accounts of the weather and agricultural duties, Montague occasionally offers a glimpse into his personal life, especially on the diary’s endpapers, where he records medicinal remedies for humans and livestock, purchases made and payments received, as well as a valuation of his property in 1872. Very few references are made to political events of the day, including the Civil War, although he does note on April 16, 1865 that President Lincoln is dead.

Laid into the volume is a manuscript copy of the 1826 document listing depositions to be taken from individuals in the petition of the town of Granby against the town of South Hadley relating to a dispute over the boundary line between the two towns.

Possibly a worker who boarded in Van Duesenville, a growing industrial area of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Notebook consists of poems, most of which concern religious faith and local events that were written in Cathrin Morley’s hand but may not have been created by her. Also includes a list of significant family dates.

The physician Cyrus Morton, (1797-1873) came from a notable medical family from Plymouth County, Mass. His father Nathaniel and son Thomas were both physicians, and his sister-in-law, Julia A.W. (Drew) Winslow was one of the first female medical doctors in the Commonwealth. Morton’s second wife, Lydia Hall (Drew) Morton, was one of the first teachers at the Perkins School for the Blind, and a member of the first graduating class of the Lexington Normal School. Morton died in Halifax on May 18, 1873.

Morton’s account book contains records of frequent visits to his patients, dispensing medicine, his fees and receipts for payment (often received in kind as pigs, fish, beef, hay, wood, the use of a horse, spinning done by widows or wives, digging a well, carpentry, etc.), and a copy of a prayer in Morton’s hand. Among Morton’s patients were Timothy Wood, Stafford Sturtevant, Jacob Thompson, Capts. Knapp and Cushman, and Cyrus Munroe.