The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
CredoResearch digital collections in Credo

Collecting area: New England

Whitaker, Elizabeth W.

Elizabeth W. Whitaker Collection

1802-1989
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 682
Depiction of Gravestone, No. Guilford, Conn.
Gravestone, No. Guilford, Conn.

A physical education teacher from Rome, New York, Elizabeth W. Whitaker became an avid recorder of gravestone inscriptions in the 1940s. She died in 1992 at the age of 93.

The core of the Whitaker collection consists of 25 receipts and accounts relating to the early marble industry in western Massachusetts. The key figures in this series are Rufus Willson and his father-in-law, John Burghardt, who quarried stone near West Stockbridge, Mass., conveying it to Hudson, N.Y. The collection also includes a selection of photographs and postcards of gravestones, mostly in New England and New York; two folders of typed transcriptions and newspaper clippings of epitaphs from the same region, ranging in date from the early colonial period to the mid-19th century; and a price list of Barre granite from Wetmore and Morse Granite Co., 1934.

Subjects

Marble industry and trade--MassachusettsSepulchral monuments--Massachusetts

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesBurghardt, JohnWhitaker, Elizabeth WWillson, Rufus

Types of material

PhotographsReceipts (Financial records)
White Light Communications

White Light Communications Collection

1989-1999
150 items 54 linear feet
Call no.: MS 984

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

A not-for-profit media company based in Burlington, Vermont, White Light Communications produced dozens of videos during the late 1980s and early 1990s reflecting the voices and experiences of psychiatric survivors. With initial funding from the National Institute of Mental Health, Executive Director Paul Engels and his colleagues, all psychiatric survivors themselves, built a fully-equipped television production studio and conducted nearly one hundred interviews with ex-patients and leaders in the antipsychiatry movement. Although most of the interviews were conducted in Burlington, they also produced documentaries, and covered national events such as the final two Alternatives conferences and “Self Help Live,” a broadcast that focused on highlighting consumer/survivor leaders.

The hundreds of video interviews and other productions that comprise the White Light Communications collection were produced by, for, and about psychiatric survivors. Paul Engels interviewed nearly a hundred ex-patients including important leaders in the movement such as Judi Chamberlin, Sally Zinman, Howie the Harp, and George Ebert, and several episodes focused on the mental health system and activism in Vermont. The subjects of the interviews range widely from homelessness to involuntary treatment, peer support, suicide, surviving the mental health system, and the history of the psychiatric survivors movement.

Gift of Paul Engels, May 2017

Subjects

AntipsychiatryCivil rights movements--United StatesEx-mental patientsMental health services--United StatesMental illness--Alternative treatmentMentally ill--Social conditionsPsychiatric survivors movement

Contributors

Chamberlin, Judi, 1944-2010Dart, Justin, 1930-2002Ebert, GeorgeEngels, PaulMillett, KateZinman, Sally

Types of material

Oral histories (Document genres)U-maticVideotapes
White, Cyrus

Cyrus White Daybook

1823-1829
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 085a

A cooper based in South Hadley, Massachusetts, during the first half of the nineteenth century, Cyrus White made tubs and barrels of all varieties: soap tubs, leach tubs, oil barrels and casks, cheese presses, butter churns, and buckets.

Cyrus White’s daybook is a closely focused record of the range of work of one cooper in a country town in Massachusetts. White’s work ranged from repairing wheelbarrows and making washing machines to making all varieties of a cooper’s oeuvre.

Subjects

Coopers and cooperage--Massachusetts--South HadleySouth Hadley (Mass.)--History

Contributors

White, Cyrus

Types of material

Daybooks
White, Willis H.

Willis H. White Papers

1874-1966 Bulk: 1919-1942
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 929

A convinced Friend who became an advocate for peace, Willis H. White was a member of the East Greenwich Monthly Meeting. A secretary in the Providence-based real estate firm William H. White & Sons, White was active in several organizations promoting peace and spiritual renewal within the Society of Friends in the years after the First World War.

The bulk of Willis H. White’s papers are concentrated on his activities on behalf of peace, social justice, and the Society of Friends in the period 1919-1922. The collection includes materials documenting White’s work with the American Friends Service Committee and on invigorating the Society through the London Conference of All Friends and the evangelical Forward Movement of Friends, and there is a relatively small, but interesting series of letters from the labor and peace activist, A. J. Muste.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, 2016

Subjects

Conference of All FriendsForward movement (Evangelical movement)PacifismPeace movementsQuakers--Rhode IslandWorld War, 1914-1918

Contributors

American Friends Service CommitteeBonell, Harold C. (Harold Charles), 1908-1977Muste, A. J. (Abraham John), 1885-1967

Types of material

Ephemera
Whitmore, Martha R.

Martha R. Whitmore Diaries

1937-1962
6 vols. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 807
Depiction of Philip F. Whitmore and grandchildren, July 1962
Philip F. Whitmore and grandchildren, July 1962

Shortly after graduating from college in 1920, Martha Richardson married Philip F. Whitmore, a market gardener from Sunderland, Mass., and 1915 graduate of Massachusetts Agricultural College. As a housewife and mother of three, Martha supported Philip, who became a Trustee of his alma mater and a representative in the State House (1950-1962). Philip Whitmore died in 1962, with Martha following nineteenth years later.

This small collection includes six scattered diaries of Martha Whitmore, kept somewhat irregularly during the years 1937, 1947, 1950, 1953, 1957, and 1962. Largely personal in nature, they are centered on home and family life, husband and children, and Martha’s love of nature, but they include occasional references to Philip Whitmore’s political activities and the University of Massachusetts.

Subjects

Sunderland (Mass.)--HistoryUniversity of Massachusetts at Amherst--TrusteesWhitmore, Philip F.

Types of material

DiariesPhotographs
Whittemore, Amos, 1759-1828

Amos Whittemore Daybook

1817-1819
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 153 bd

Wagonwright and celebrated inventor of a machine that made cotton and wool cards from West Cambridge (now Arlington), Massachusetts. Includes records of services provided, such as repairing, cleaning, painting and varnishing chaises; providing wheels, springs, waterhooks, whippletrees, bellybands, and carpet; and mending reins and harnesses. Also contains lists of customers (including many prominent families from the town) and records of cash transactions.

Subjects

Arlington (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryArlington (Mass.)--History--19th centuryCarriage and wagon making--Massachusetts--Arlington--History--19th centuryCarriage manufacturers and dealers--Massachusetts --Arlington--History--19th centuryHarness making and trade--Massachusetts--Arlington--History--19th century

Contributors

Whittemore, Amos, 1759-1828

Types of material

Daybooks
Wilder, Robert W.

Robert W. Wilder Papers

1888-2013
2 boxes 2 linear feet
Call no.: MS 884

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.

Gift of Robert W. Wilder, Nov. 2015

Subjects

Enfield (Mass.)--HistoryQuabbin Reservoir (Mass.)--HistorySwift River Valley (Mass.)--History

Contributors

Peloquin, Marc

Types of material

DiariesOral historiesPhotographs
Wilderness Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends)

Wilderness Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends) Records

1991-1994
Call no.: MS 902 W5535

Wilderness Monthly Meeting originated out of an independent worship group in Shrewsbury, Vermont, in 1972. Moving to the Farm and Wilderness Camps at Plymouth, Vt., in 1977, it came under care of Bennington Monthly as the Wilderness Meeting, setting off as a monthly meeting in the following year. It has subsequently moved to Ludlow, Rutland, Tinmouth, Wallingford, and (currently) Cuttingville, Vt.

The records for Wilderness Monthly Meeting in SCUA consist solely of state of the society reports, 1991-1994.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2016

Subjects

Quakers--VermontSociety of Friends--VermontVermont--Religious life and customs

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends
Wilkie, Richard W., 1938-

Richard W. Wilkie Collection

1855-1874
3 boxes 1.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1044

The human geographer, Richard Wilkie received his doctorate from the University of Washington in 1968, the same year he joined the faculty at UMass Amherst. His research has included a long-term longitudinal study of the assimilation of Argentine migrants, a study of the periodic market system in the Guatemalan highlands, and other projects that range from the European Mediterranean to Hawaii, Malaysia, and Ecuador. Beginning in the 1990s, he turned increasingly to analyzing the concept of attachment to place and the importance of place in the lives of people. Wilkie retired in 2009, but has remained active in teaching, mentoring graduate students, travel, and photography.

This collection consists of town maps excised from mid-nineteenth century atlases, including Smith’s Map of Hartford County (1855), Clark and Tackabury’s New geographical map of the State of Connecticut (1860), and F.W. Beer’ Atlas of Litchfield County (1874).

Gift of Richard Wilkie, Dec. 2017

Subjects

Connecticut--Maps

Types of material

Maps
Williams, Roger

Roger Williams Account Book

1808-1822
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 619 bd

During the early decades of the nineteenth century, Roger Williams ran a ferry in West Springfield, Mass., carrying passengers and freight across the Connecticut River.

The Williams ledger is a combination daybook and account book, recording several dozen transactions of a Connecticut River ferryman, centered on the years around the War of 1812. Most of the entries are brief records of trips carrying individuals or freight across the river, however a few provide indications of other economic activity, including framing and joining, making a coffin, fixing sleds, and cidering.

Subjects

Ferries--Massachusetts--Connecticut RiverWest Springfield (Mass.)

Contributors

Williams, Roger

Types of material

Account booksDaybooks