Collecting area: New England

Protesting the war since before it began, the Northampton Committee to Stop the War in Iraq continues not only to speak out against the war, but to educate the community about the effects of the war on Iraqi civilians, especially children. Advocates for lifting the sanctions against Iraq in the years leading up to the war, members of the Committee have since called for an end to the war, supporting a Northampton City Council resolution to renounce the invasion of Iraq in 2003 and a subsequent proclamation to honor the dead and wounded on all sides in 2005.

Flyers, signs, and banners document the Committee’s weekly peace vigils protesting the war, and subject files provide background on the group as well as on related issues, such as financing the war, fasting for peace, and the children of Iraq.

Community Chest of Northampton, Massachusetts, that sought the federation of non-sectarian social service agencies for the raising of funds necessary to carry on the work of several agencies doing welfare work in town. Records include constitution and by-laws, Board of Directors membership lists, minutes, annual reports, campaign reports, ledgers, annual meeting planning documents, scrapbooks, and newsclippings.

The Northampton Cutlery Company was among the major firms in a region known for high quality cutlery manufacture. Incorporated in 1871 with Judge Samuel L. Hinckley, its largest stockholder, as its first President, the company was located along the Mill River in Northampton, Massachusetts, where operations continued until its closing in 1987.

Records document company operations and technology used in the cutlery manufacturing process, as well as details about employment of immigrant and working class families in the region. Includes administrative, legal, and financial records; correspondence; personnel and labor relations files; and production schedules and specifications.

Established in 1995 to gain city-wide support for a domestic partnership ordinance, the Northampton Domestic Partnership Coalition’s campaign included fund raising and neighborhood canvassing. Their early efforts succeeded, and in May 1995, the Northampton City Council passed an ordinance recognizing domestic partnerships in the city allowing people of either gender to register as a couple and entitling them to visitation and child care rights in schools, jails, and health care facilities. After a summer of campaigning on both sides, the measure failed by fewer than one hundred votes.

Consisting chiefly of newspaper clippings covering both sides of the debate over Northampton’s domestic partnership ordinance, this collection includes perspectives extending from Northampton and Boston to Washington D.C. Among the publications represented are The Catholic Monitor, The Washington Blade, and Boston Magazine.

The Northampton (Massachusetts) Meeting began as a monthly meeting set off from the Mount Toby monthly meeting in nearby Leverett, Massachusetts in 1994. In 1991, support for a Northampton meeting had begun to grow, so a preparative meeting, under the care of the Mount Toby meeting, met from 1991-1994. In 1994, a newly-established Northampton meeting was formed.

The collection includes almost all minutes from July 1991 through July 1993, as well as a State of the Society report for 1993. (See April 1993). The State of the Society report is called out in its own folder for 1994, the first year of the re-established Northampton monthly meeting. Then the minutes continue from September 1995 through July 1999.

From its origins in 1899 as the Northampton Central Labor Union, the Northampton Labor Council coordinated political activity and worked for union cooperation in strikes, boycotts, and celebrations. With 29 unions in its ranks by 1903, it was one of the few labor councils to include both AFL and CIO affiliates during the period of their intense competition during the 1930s, however from 1945 until the AFL-CIO merger, CIO unions were excluded. By 1985, the NLC had 14 affiliated local unions.

As the coordinating body for the political and social activities of fourteen labor unions in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the surrounding area, the Labor Council generated union support for strikes, boycotts, and celebrations, and hosting annual Labor Day parades. Includes photocopies of four minutebooks, spanning the years 1933-1985.

The Northampton State Hospital was opened in 1858 to provide moral therapy to the “insane,” and under the superintendency of Pliny Earle, became one of the best known asylums in New England. Before the turn of the century, however, the Hospital declined, facing the problems of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and inadequate funding. The push for psychiatric deinstitutionalization in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a steady reduction of the patient population, the last eleven of whom left Northampton State in 1993.

With the Government Documents staff, SCUA has digitized the annual reports of the Northampton State Hospital from the beginning until the last published report in 1939. The reports appeared annually from 1856 until 1924 and irregularly from then until 1939.

By the time Massachusetts ratified the Eighteenth Amendment banning the production, sale, and transportation of alcohol in 1918, the Pioneer Valley’s temperance societies had been active for over 75 years. Working “in all suitable ways … [to promote] discontinuance [of the use of alcohol] all throughout the Community”, the Northampton Temperance Association, the Factory Village Total Abstinence Society, and the Northampton Martha Washington Temperance Society recruited members, held meetings, elected presidents, and wrote explicit constitutions.

The Northampton Temperance Association collection contains copies of constitutions, meeting minutes, pledge lists, and membership records from three like-minded Pioneer Valley organizations from 1828 to 1847.

The Northeast Organic Farming Association began as the vision of a New York City plumbing supplies salesman and has grown into a large association supporting information-sharing, education, collaboration, and certification. Increasingly influential non-profit organization with chapters in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, NOFA has “nearly 4,000 farmers, gardeners and consumers working to promote healthy food, organic farming practices and a cleaner environment.”

The NOFA collection includes records, publications, ephemera, photographs, and other materials from NOFA chapters in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, along with material from the Interstate Council. The collection includes information on NOFA’s conferences and programs, educational work, lobbying, and their initiatives in organic certification and organic land care.

View issues of The Natural Farmer online.

The Northwest Quarterly Meeting of Friends consists of a collection of monthly meetings located in northwestern New England, specifically from Vermont and western New Hampshire. It was formed out of the Upper Connecticut (CT) Valley Monthly Meeting and was set off from the Connecticut Valley Quarterly Meeting in 1959. It currently includes monthly meetings from Bennington (VT), Burlington (VT), Hanover (NH), Plainfield (VT) and Putney (VT).

The collection primarily includes correspondence from the start of the QM in 1959 to 1982, and is organized by clerk, chronologically. It also includes a partial collection of minutes, mostly handwritten from 1959-1974, and a folder of Ministry and Counsel committee minutes from 1964 and from 1970. There are six folders of administrative records (mailings lists and position statements) and a folder of miscellaneous logistical information sent to the membership about preparations for various quarterly meetings. There are also 2 additional boxes with an almost complete set of issues of the newsletter “The Nor’wester” from 1959-2005.