The children of a textile investor, Mary and David Slade were students at the Friends’ Boarding School in Providence, R.I., during the late 1830s. Both died tragically of consumption at a young age, David at 24 and Mary at 28.
The Slade family papers consist largely of the personal correspondence of the ill-starred David and Mary Slade, dating from and just after their time as students at the Friends’ Boarding School in Providence, R.I. Written primarily by schoolmates and friends, with a few letters from David and Mary themselves, the letters include some fine examples of the intimacy of young people, with their sights set on their schooling or beginning to make their life.
Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, 2016
Subjects
Friends' Boarding School (Providence, R.I.)Moses Brown SchoolQuakers--Massachusetts--19th centuryStudents--Rhode Island--19th centuryWomen--Education--19th century
Contributors
Fry, John E.Slade, David, 1819-1844Slade, Mary, 1821-1850Stevens, Emily D.Wing, Rebecca A.
Channer, Nugent, Halpin and Futtner (from left), ca.1992. Photo by K.D.Halpin
The Sleeveless Theatre Company was an innovative political theater company with a strong feminist slant. Founded in 1989 by UMass Amherst alumnae Lisa Channer, Maureen Futtner, K. D. Halpin, and Kate Nugent, and Smith alumna, Terianne Falcone, Sleeveless was an actor-centered, highly collaborative ensemble company that wielded humor in staging original, socially- and politically-charged theater. Based in Northampton, Mass., the company toured nationally and internationally, presenting sometimes controversial works on themes ranging from reproductive rights to the Gulf War. As they evolved, they refined their mission to focus on telling stories about the lives and perspectives of women, but under the strains of growing within their collaborative model, they made the decision to disband in 1997.
In addition to minutes for the company’s formative years (1989-1992), the records of Sleeveless Theater Company include a small selection of production notes, background research, fliers, reviews and newsclippings, and a handful of publicity photos. Among the plays represtened are Womb for Rent (1989), War: The Comedy (1991), The F Word (1992), Emily Unplugged (1995), and Mill America (1996).
Gift of Lisa Channer, Maureen Futtner, K. D. Halpin, and Kate Nugent, June 2019 (2019-093).
An historian of twentieth century social movements, Blake Slonecker received his doctorate at the University of North Carolina in 2009 and joined the history faculty at Waldorf College soon thereafter. In a dissertation examining the utopian impulses of the New Left (published in 2012 as A new dawn for the New Left: Liberation News Service, Montague Farm, and the long sixties), Slonecker explored how the political and cultural activism of the 1960s helped reshape American political culture in the decade following.
In June 2008, Slonecker conducted oral historical interviews with four individuals who were part of the extended community centered on the Montague Farm and Packer Corners communes during the late 1960s: Tom Fels, Charles Light, Sam Lovejoy, and Richard Wizansky. In wide-ranging interviews, the former communards discuss topics ranging from the fraught politics of the era, political and cultural activism, gender roles and sexuality, and daily life on the communes.
Gift of Blake Slonecker, Aug. 2013
Subjects
Amherst CollegeBabbitt, Elwood, 1922-Bloom, Marshall, 1944-1969Brotherhood of the Spirit (Commune)Clamshell AllianceGreen Mountain Post FilmsJohnson Pasture Community (Vt.)Liberation News Service (Montague, Mass.)Montague Farm Community (Mass.)Musicians United for Safe EnergyPacker Corners Community (Vt.)Students for a Democratic Society (U.S.)
Contributors
Fels, Thomas WestonLight, CharlesLovejoy, SamWizansky, Richard
World famous handgun and handcuff-manufacturing company founded in Springfield, Massachusetts in the 1850s.
The Smith and Wesson records are comprised of incoming sales and service correspondence with some outgoing correspondence and administrative and financial/legal subject files, including categories such as ads and advertising, American Railway Express, audits, counselors at law, debtors, insurance, legal actions, newsletters, patents and trademarks, personnel, photos, sample parts, sideline ventures, stocks and bonds awards, and Western Union Telegrams. Includes correspondence with the National Rifle Association, Small Arms Industry Advisory Committee, and the United States Revolver Association.
Subjects
Pistols--Design and construction
Contributors
National Rifle AssociationSmall Arms Industry Advisory CommitteeSmith and WessonUnited States Revolver Association
A chair-maker and Revolutionary War veteran, Daniel Smith lived on High Street in Ipswich, Mass. As early as 1774, Smith was bottoming and repairing chairs, and for several decades, he produced chairs of various sorts, including waist chairs, four-back chairs, “green chairs,” great chairs, round chairs, and low chairs. Smith died in Jan. 1844.
This rough, but noteworthy volume records nearly two and half decades of production by a Massachusetts chair maker in the early National period. The volume begins as a cipher book, apparently kept by Smith in his late teens, but by the earliest accounts in 1774, Smith records “bottoming and mending” chairs and, by 1785, making “six four back chairs & a grat chair” for Thomas Smith.
Acquired from M&S Rare Books, May 2006 (2006-072).
Subjects
Chair-makers--Massachusetts--IpswichIpswich (Mass.)--Economic conditions--18th century
Gilbert Smith was a shoemaker and doctor from New Marlborough, Massachusetts, and his son Gilbert Jr. was a prosperous farmer from Sheffield, Massachusetts. Includes merchandise sales, labor accounts, lists of boarders, and documentation of the sale of homemade butter and cheese to local merchants, as well as trade with the substantial rural black community of the region.
A native of Haverhill, Mass., and graduate of the University of Maine (BF, 1925) and Harvard (MF, 1927), Hollis A. Smith attempted to establish a career in forestry in the late 1920s. Working as superintendent of the new Martha’s Vineyard State Forest and as a consulting forester associated with the Harvard Forest in Petersham, Smith worked with clients to develop planting and harvesting plans and to care for the trees. With his practice languishing, Smith settled in Martha’s Vineyard and worked as a surveyor and other positions.
This collection contains correspondence, job reports, and ephemera from Hollis Smith’s relatively brief career as a consulting forester in Massachusetts, nearly all concentrated in the years 1929-1931. Nearly half of the collection consists of correspondence with clients (or potential clients), with a few interesting reports on properties.
Acquired from the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation Archives, Sept. 2016
A prominent local politician from West Springfield, Mass., Jonathan Smith was born July 31, 1757. Among other offices, he served as town moderator, state representative, selectman, and Justice of the Peace. Most famously, lame duck Governor Elbridge Gerry appointed Smith to become the first sheriff of Hampden County shortly before the county was officially incorporated. The partisan appointment was immediately contested and brief. Smith died in Boston on February 5, 1820.
This miscellaneous collection contains a variety of professional and personal records of Jonathan Smith and other members of his family, falling almost exclusively in the first two decades of the nineteenth century.
Acquired from Dan Casavant, Jan. 2005
Subjects
Cattle--Massachusetts--West SpringfieldWest Springfield (Mass.)--History--19th century
A resident of Northampton, Mass., directly across the Connecticut River from South Hadley, Lewis Smith ran a substantial farm during the early decades of the nineteenth century. Settling in the village of Smith’s Ferry shortly after service in the American Revolution, Smith owned a part stake in a sawmill and produced and traded in an array of farm products, from grains and vegetables to grain, beef, and pork. A producer of apples and owner of his own mill, he produced large quantities of cider and vinegar.
In a standard double-column account book kept somewhat erratically, Lewis Smith recorded an extensive exchange of goods and services befitting a prosperous Northamptonite. Smith sold an array of goods he produced, from apples to dairy products, grain, beef, lard, and tallow, with cider from his mill (and briefly brandy) being the most consistent producer of revenue.
Born in Williamstown, Massachusetts, in about 1810, Nelson Smith was about thirty when he married Sallena Burnett of Granby. When Burnett’s father Bela died in 1846, Smith inherited the family farm of 125 acres, now situated on Burnett Street, where he and Sallena raised a family of at least six children. Nelson died in 1892 at the age of 81.
This slender book of accounts includes records of Smith’s financial transactions at a time in the 1830s when he was living in South Hadley, Mass. These include entries for rent, records of hiring out for work at a dairying, at Josiah W. Goodman’s brickyard (at a salary of $32 per month), or for unspecified labor. Other entries record the sale of tallow, cider, cordwood, rye, turnips, and other commodities.
Subjects
Agricultural laborers--Massachusetts--South HadleyFarming--Massachusetts--South HadleySouth Hadley (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th century