Collecting area: Religion

Born in Middletown, R.I., on May 25, 1730, Thomas Gould was part of an extended Quaker family in Newport County and descendant of one of the first Quaker converts in Rhode Island. Enjoying success as a “mechanic” and farmer, according to Representative Men and Old Families of Rhode Island (1908), he married Alice Chase of Portsmouth in March 1757 and raised a large family of five boys and five girls. Gould died on May 3, 1795.

This slender volume includes a chronological record visits to New England by Public Friends: Quakers who were considered to have a special gift in prayer or public speaking and who often traveled widely to minister.

On April 7, 1655, after a conclave of 80 days, Fabio Chigi was elected to succeed Innocent X as Pope. Taking the name Alexander VII, Chigi was initially viewed as an opponent of papal nepotism, however little progress was made. He served as pope until his death on May 22, 1667.

Bound in 18th century leather with an prefatory letter by the Prieur Gourreau, this manuscript was apparently intended for publication and may be an 18th century transcription of a presumably earlier manuscript. Editions of the Le Conclave d’Alexandre VII, ou Relation véritable de tout ce qui s’est passé et négocié au Conclave tenu à Rome depuis le 17 janvier jusqu’au 7 avril 1655 au sujet de l’élection du cardinal Fabio Chigi appeared in 1666 and 1667.

Granted in 1737 and incorporated in 1754, Greenwich, Mass., was the first town in the Swift River Valley settled by Europeans. Sitting astride the East and Middle branches of the Swift River and forming the eastern boundary of Hampshire County, Greenwich was primarily an agricultural town with light manufacturing and, beginning in the later nineteenth century, an active tourist trade. The town’s population peaked at over 1,100 early in the nineteenth century, declining slowly thereafter.

The records of Greenwich, Mass., offer a long perspective on the history of the region inundated to create the Quabbin Reservoir. The core of this collection consists of the records of town meetings and the Selectmen of Greenwich from the Proprietary period in the 1730s through disincorporation in 1938, but there is some documentation of the town’s Congregational Church, a local school, the library, and the Greenwich Improvement Society. This finding aid reflects both materials held by SCUA and materials digitized in partnership with the Swift River Valley Historical Society in New Salem, Mass.

A small group from Greenwich Monthly Meeting in East Greenwich, R.I., separated from the larger body during the Friends’ doctrinal controversies of the 1840s to form the Greenwich Monthly Meeting (Wilburite). Established under the aegis of Rhode Island Quarterly Meeting (Wilburite) in 1844, they were laid down just one year later and its members transferred to Kingstown Monthly Meeting (Wilburite).

These three slender volumes document the short-lived Greenwich Monthly Meeting (Wilburite). A thin notebook contains the surviving minutes of the Men’s meeting, while the Women’s minutes (and partial copy) were continued after the members transferred to the care of South Kingston Monthly Meeting in 1845.

Aldin Grout was among the first American missionaries to the Zulus. Experiencing a religious conversion in his early twenties, Grout dedicated his life to the ministry, studying at Amherst College (1831) and Andover Theological Seminary (1834) before accepting an overseas appointment through the American Board of Christian and Foreign Missions. In Nov. 1835, Grout and his new wife Hannah (Davis) sailed for South Africa, destined with two other missionary couples for the Natal Province. Even after Hannah died of a lingering illness following the birth of a daughter in December 1835, Grout pressed onward in the cause, not returning home until the end of 1837. Placing his daughter under the care of family, and remarrying to Charlotte (Bailey), he wasted little time in returning to South Africa, remaining there from June 1840 until retiring in 1870, primarily at Umvoti station. In his latter years in Springfield, Grout was active in ABCFM efforts to translate the Bible into Zulu (1883) and he wrote occasionally about his missionary experiences. Aldin Grout died in Springfield on 1894, followed by Charlotte in 1896.

The roughly 195 letters in the Grout collection provided a remarkable commentary on American missionary activities in colonial South Africa, Grout’s personal religious convictions, and the lives of the Zulus to whom he ministered. The collection also includes a handful of fragmentary autobiographical and historical sketches written after Grout’s retirement, a wealth of letters from Grout’s wives and fellow missionary workers, Hannah and Charlotte.

Friends began to meet informally for worship in Guilford, Connecticut, in September 1951, and gained approval from the Connecticut Valley Quarterly Meeting to form a preparative meeting a year and a half later under the care of New Haven Monthly. Although they were accorded status as a monthly meeting in 1957, Guilford never truly thrived, and by 1966, they were officially laid down with the remaining members transferred to New Haven.

The collection is a relatively complete record of Guilford Monthly Meeting from its establishment as a preparative meeting in 1953 through its elevation to a monthly and ultimate dissolution. In addition to well-kept minutes, the collection includes some financial records, information on membership, and a small quantity of correspondence.

Residents of Worcester, Mass., Madeline and Winthrop Goddard Hall were part of an extended community of young friends and family associated with the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, including Charlotte and Edwin St. John Ward, Margaret Hall, and Ruth Ward Beach. From 1907 to 1914, Edwin Ward was sent as a missionary to the Levant, working as a physician and teacher at Aintab College in present-day Turkey and Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. Margaret Hall and Ruth Beach were stationed in China, teaching in Tientsin, at the Ponasang Women’s College in Fuzhou, and at the Bridgeman School in Shanghai.

The Hall Papers include 67 lengthy letters from the Ottoman Empire and China, the majority from Charlotte and Edwin Ward. Intimate and often intense, the correspondence provides insight into the social and family life of missionaries and gives a strong sense of the extended community of missionaries.

A theoretical physicist at University of the Sciences in Philadelphia, Paul Halpern is the author of a dozen popular books on science and dozens of scholarly articles. After spending his undergraduate years at Temple University, Halpern received a doctorate at SUNY Stony Brook, and has since written on complex and higher-dimensional solutions in general relativity theory and the nature of time as well as the history of the modern physical sciences. He has been a Fulbright Scholar and fellow of the John Simon Guggenheim Foundation.

The hundreds of ephemeral publications, fliers, and handbills in the Halpern Collection provide a window into political and social activism in Philadelphia during the late 1970s and early 1980s. The content ranges widely from publications produced by peace and disarmament groups to the literature of anti-imperialist (e.g. CISPES), antinuclear groups (SANE and post-Three Mile Island mobilization), radical political parties, and religious organizations including the Unification Church and the Church of Scientology.

After operating as an independent worship ground for five years under the care of Upper Connecticut Valley Monthly Meeting, a group of Friends, most associate with Dartmouth College, were set off in 1959 as a formal monthly meeting. Hanover Friends Meeting has been part of Northwest Corner since its inception.

Although lacking documentation for the early years, the records of Hanover Friends Meeting include a continuous run of meeting minutes beginning in the late 1980s and newsletters from 1974 on. Additional records have been retained at the meetinghouse.

Daughter of a writer and diplomat, and graduate of Wellesley College, Beth Hapgood has been a spiritual seeker for much of her life. Her interests have led her to become an expert in graphology, a student in the Arcane School, an instructor at Greenfield Community College, and a lecturer on a variety of topics in spiritual growth. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Hapgood befriended Michael Metelica, the central figure in the Brotherhood of the Spirit (the largest commune in the eastern states during the early 1970s) as well as Elwood Babbitt, a trance medium, and remained close to both until their deaths.
The Hapgood Papers contain a wealth of material relating to the Brotherhood of the Spirit and the Renaissance Community, Metelica, Babbitt, and other of Hapgood’s varied interests, as well as 4.25 linear feet of material relating to the Hapgood family.

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