Collecting area: Religion

Karen Manners Smith (“Sister Meredith”) and Chris O’Carroll (“Brother Jerome”) were both members of the Process Church of the Final Judgement (Process Church) from 1969-1974. Following their departure from the Process Church, Manners Smith and O’Carroll (then “Charles C. Smith”) moved to Amherst, Massachusetts where O’Carroll worked for The Valley Advocate, the alternative newsweekly and the UMass Magazine in the late 1970s and 1980s. 

The Process Church was founded in 1966 by Mary Ann MacLean and Robert de Grimston, former members of Scientology. While it was initially based in the United Kingdom, the Process Church also spread to the United States, where it attracted over one hundred members. In 1972, American poet and singer Ed Sanders published The Family, a memoir accusing the Process Church of working with convicted murderer Charles Manson and the Manson Family. While no connection between the Manson Family and the Process Church was ever officially established during police investigations, the Process Church faced a public decline in reputation. In the late 1970s, the Process Church split, with members loyal to MacLean joining the newly established Foundation Faith of God (“The Foundation”) in 1980. In 1983, the organization rebranded to the Best Friends Animal Society, where it continues to operate in Kanab, Utah, and throughout the United States. 

The bulk of this collection is comprised of periodicals and marketing materials, collected by O’Carroll for his research on new religious movements during his time in Amherst, Northampton, and Pelham. Most of the material pertains to the Process Church (including the Foundation Faith of God), though there are also news clippings, magazines and pamphlets about other movements, mostly from new age magazines based in Western Mass as well as materials on Scientology, Ekankar, and Transcendental Meditation. The collection also contains small pamphlets and flyers from various Christian publishing houses, with topics ranging from the dangers of Rock n’ Roll to the Satanic Rules of the Earth. 

Upon his death in 1822, Obadiah Brown bequeathed $100,000 from his sizable estate to support the Friends Boarding School in Providence, R.I., with much of the rest endowing a charitable fund that bears his name. A committed Quaker and philanthropist like his father Moses, Obadiah stipulated that the annual income from his benevolent fund be directed “principally for the benefit of our religious society” and assist in spreading “our Religious Principles where they are little known.” Independent of the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends and administered by twelve trustees, the Fund over the years has supported Quaker education, the publication and distribution of religious literature, and other projects that provide “benefits to the Religious Society,” including work in peace and social justice. The Trustees also administer a separate fund with similar purpose established by 1914 bequest from Sarah J. Swift.

Beginning with records documenting the establishment of the Benevolent Fund, the collection documents nearly two centuries of philanthropic support for Quaker causes. In addition to copies of Brown’s will and the incorporating documents and by-laws, the collection includes a nearly comprehensive set of Trustees’ minutes and treasurer’s reports, with some supporting documents.

The Orono (Maine) Monthly Meeting of Friends began meeting as an independent worship group as early as 1960, but in 1969, continued as a worship group in 1969 under the care of the Vassalboro (Maine) monthly meeting. They continued as a worship group until 1973, when they were set off as an independent monthly meeting, and a member of the Vassalboro Quarterly Meeting. In the 2010’s, membership fluctuated with members moving out of state, and new members arriving and joining, though membership remained small. In the late 2010s, membership dropped again and the meeting shifted to being a worship group as of 2017.

The largest portion of the collection consists of a partially-complete set of minutes from 1971 to 2007 (lacking 2001-2003), that included annual State of the Society Reports; these have been filed separately for easier identification. The collection also has a substantial set of treasurer’s reports from 1973-2000 (lacking 1993), and a set of newsletters from 1977-1991. There is one report from a constituent preparative meeting–Still Waters Conservative Friends Meeting–in 2005. In addition, there are several folders with correspondence, committee reports, and some vital and administrative records.

Patrick Overton started his work in community cultural development in 1976 as director of Thespian Hall, the oldest theater in continuous use west of the Allegheny Mountains. Owned by the Friends of Historic Boonville, Overton developed the theater and associated programming as a catalyst to create a Community Arts Program in Boonville, Missouri. During this time, he became involved in state, regional, and national arts organizations. He was the founding President of the Missouri Association of Community Arts Agencies (MACAA), serving as its first Executive Director (1984-1989) and served as Director of the Front Porch Institute. Overton received his Ph.D. in Communications from the University of Missouri where he was a Gregory Fellow and served as a tenured Associate Professor of Communications & Culture Studies at Columbia College in Columbia, Missouri (1987-1999). He also held a Master of Divinity Degree and a Master of Arts in Religion and was an ordained minister in the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ). He devoted his ministry to serving as a bi-vocational pastor to churches in the rural and small community setting.

The papers of Patrick Overton feature content related both to his work in community cultural development–correspondence, his testimony on behalf of the National Endowment for the Arts, conference materials, reports–and his work as a minister. Also included are copies of his books, The Leaning Tree and Rebuilding the Front Porch of America.

Mary Lou Panus documented Polish American life in Massachusetts by collecting newspaper clippings, business cards, programs, and Polish language prayer books and prayer cards.

The Panus collection includes photographs of Polish churches in Massachusetts, reflecting the important role religion played in the culture and in various communities. The collection also includes a doll dressed as a nun.

In 1801, the Limington (Maine) Preparative Meeting–the forerunner of the Parsonsfield Monthly Meeting–was launched, under the care of the Falmouth (Maine) Monthly Meeting. In 1888, the Parsonsfield Preparative Meeting, begun in 1846, became the Parsonsfield Monthly Meeting, and joined the newly-formed Parsonsfield Quarterly Meeting including Parsonsfield in Maine, and Sandwich in New Hampshire. By 1938, this quarterly meeting returned to the Falmouth Quarterly Meeting, and the Parsonsfield Monthly Meeting went with it. By the late 1990’s, the monthly meeting had moved to Kezars Falls (Maine), and was laid down a few years later.

The collection includes a single folder of four newsletters from 1984 (Feb, Mar, Apr, Jul).

Perez Peck (1786-1876) and Asa Sisson (1815-1893) of the village of Anthony (Coventry), R.I., were innovative machinists and manufacturers of cotton looms. Active members of the Society of Friends, they were supporters of the antislavery struggle and sent their children to the Friends Boarding School in Providence, R.I.

Although the Peck-Sisson-White family collection spans three families and three generations, the bulk of material is concentrated on the lives of Asa Sisson and his wife Mary Ann (Peck) and their daughter Emily, who married Willis H. White, with an emphasis on their poetry and their time at the Friends Boarding School in Providence, R.I. The family also copied verse from other writers, including works from George Miller (not otherwise identified) extracting Anthony Benezet and “Remarks on encouraging slavery” and a “lamentation over New England” which touches on the execution of early Quakers in Massachusetts Bay.

Walter Pelczynski was a native of Adams, Massachusetts and the second native-born American to be ordained by the Congregation of Marians, which has its roots in Poland. He served as head of the Marians at Eden Hill in Stockbridge, Massachusetts for many years.

Included in this small collection is a photocopy of Pelczynski’s typewritten memoirs, written in 1983, that cover the years 1934 to 1983.

The town of Pembroke, Mass., was home to one of the oldest monthly meetings in the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends. Established as the Scituate Monthly Meeting in 1672 and settled in Pembroke after 1706, the meeting operated until it was formally laid down in 1876. Worship groups met in Pembroke sporadically from 1964 to 1992.

The records of Pembroke Monthly Meeting contain an extensive series of both the men’s and women’s meetings from the early eighteenth century to 1876, when the meeting was laid down.

A Quaker investment broker and attorney, Henry H. Perry was born in Rhode Island in about 1885. A prominent figure in the New England Yearly Meeting, Perry was called upon by the American Friends Service Committee to act as director of three of the Massachusetts Civilian Public Service Camps: Royalston, Petersham, and Ashburnham. Under the Selective Service Act of 1940, negotiations between the Selective Service and the major peace churches resulted in the creation of a system by which conscientious objectors were allowed to refrain from direct participation in the war, by serving instead in Civilian Public Service camps. Assigned to “work of national importance,” they filled in for war-related manpower shortages in a variety of areas, including the Forest Service, Soil Conservation Service, mental hospitals, telephone line maintenance and repair, fire-fighting, and clearing fire debris that was left in the wake of the 1937 New England hurricane. Living in Petersham with his wife Edith (Nicholson), Perry served as director of the camps from June 1941 until they were discontinued in October 1942. Perry writes, in a letter dated November 1942, that he is “no longer connected to CPS;” his correspondence is addressed from Dover, MA, showing that he relocated to the Boston area. However, little information is available about him after the camps closed.

This collection consists of administrative and business records concerning the start up, operation, and shut down of the AFSC-run CPS Camps in Royalston, Ashburnham, and Petersham, Mass. Camp Directors were under mandatory orders to keep the strict records that make up the bulk of this collection—administrative documentation, correspondences, health records, itineraries, financial reports and budgets, all pertaining to camp operations. This documentation acted as a deliberate gesture, demonstrating the competency and legitimacy of CPS camp work to Selective Service authorities. However, this collection also contains some personal correspondence and notes not directly related to camp administration, that give a personal, everyday-life, glimpse at the stresses, struggles, and emotional labor, on the part of Quakers, who had to step up, come together, and make the best of a terrible situation: protecting and caring for conscientious objectors during a time of war.