Collecting area: Religion

Independent Order of Scalpers club, ca.1900

One of five villages comprising the western Massachusetts town of Montague, Lake Pleasant was founded by the New England Spiritualist Campmeeting Association in 1870 as a rustic summer resort. Formally incorporated in 1879 under the guidance of Henry A. Buddington and Joseph Beals, Lake Pleasant grew into a community of nearly 200 small cottages, hotels, train station, and a Spiritualist temple on the edge of a serene lake, with a high-season population approaching 2,000. The village began a slow decline in fortunes after a disastrous fire in 1907, but retains its small cottage feel to the present.

The collection includes an assortment of materials relating to the history of Lake Pleasant, including over forty 8×10 glass plate negatives taken by local photographer George L. Scott (ca.1900-1907), other assorted photographs (ca.1885-1905), deeds to village properties, publications, and materials relating to the Lake Pleasant Water Commission. The collection also includes a handful of other images taken by Scott from elsewhere in Franklin County.

The Lawrence Monthly Meeting of Friends evolved from Boston Monthly in the late 1880s and 1890s, achieving status as a monthly meeting in 1899. Although they became inactive in 1985, they were revived in 1994, and joined with a preparative meeting in Andover to form the present Lawrence-Andover Monthly Meeting.

The records of Lawrence-Andover Monthly Meeting include a relatively complete set of minutes, extending back to the earliest days as a preparative meeting to about the time of its becoming inactive in the mid-1980s. The collection also includes minutes and accounts for its Elizabeth Fry Missionary Circle, its Leprosy Mission, Missionary Society, and Sabbath School, along with records of births, deaths, and marriages in the meeting, 1892-1975.

An oecumenical ministry based in Amherst, Massachusetts, that sought to inspire local citizens to act upon their religious faith in their daily lives and occupations, and to reinvigorate religious dialogue between denominations.

Includes by-laws, minutes, membership records, news clippings, press releases, treasurer’s reports, letters to and from David S. King, correspondence between religious leaders and local administrators, and printed materials documenting programs and organizations in which the Laymen’s Academy for Oecumenical Studies (L.A.O.S.) participated or initiated, especially Faith and Life Meetings. Also contains questionnaires, announcements, bulletins, and photographs.

The Society of Friends has had a long, but discontinuous history in Lewiston, Maine. After periods of activity from 1785-1851 and 1867-1911, Quaker worship in Lewiston was revived in 1972, leading to reinstatement of a monthly meeting in 1980. Oxford Hills Monthly Meeting was set off from Lewiston in 1993.

The records of the Quaker meeting in Lewiston, Maine, cover its third and most recent iteration, including minutes from 1980 to 1993 ad a handful of state of society reports. The collection also include limited documentation of the Oxford Hills Worship Group prior to its setting off as a monthly meeting in 1993.

Julia Lieblich seated (left) on a bench with a notebook listening to Kaqchikel Maya actress Maria Mercedes Coroy (center) and unidentified person

Julia Lieblich was a human rights journalist and author who spent much of her career exploring the effects of war, abuse, trauma, war, despair, and terror to shed a light on these horrific acts in an effort to make the world a better place. Through reporting and books, she tackled difficult subjects like the wars in Bosnia and Afghanistan, conflict zones in Guatemala and Sierra Leone, the truth and reconciliation commission in South Africa, and clergy sex abuse in Chicago. Lieblich had deep empathy for her subjects and stayed in touch with many of them long after her stories and books were published. She became a godmother to five children in San Antonia Aguas Calientes, Guatemala and visited her adopted family twice a year over the course of 25 years. As a religion reporter and Jewish woman, she explored conflicts in Judaism, Islam, Christianity, and Catholicism. She taught writing and was an assistant professor at Loyola University Chicago, a research fellow at Northwestern University Law School’s Center for International Human Rights, and a scholar-in-residence at the Newberry Library in Chicago.

Lieblich was born on April 25, 1958 in Long Island, NY. Later, her family moved to St. Louis, MN. She attended the Interlochen Arts Academy boarding school in Michigan and received her Bachelor’s degree in literature at Washington University and a master’s in theological studies from Harvard Divinity School. During her career as a journalist she was a religion writer for the Chicago Tribune and the Associated Press, and published news and feature articles in The New York Times, Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, Boston Globe, Miami Herald, Plain Dealer, Time, Life, Ms., Fortune, The Nation, American Health, American Photo, Harvard Business Review, Harvard Divinity Bulletin and Agni literary review. She also wrote op-eds for the Los Angeles Times, Chicago Tribune, The Washington Post and others. In her twenties, she oversaw the annual billionaire’s issue for Fortune by day, while writing about nuns who had taken a vow of poverty by night. Her first book, Sisters: Lives of Devotion and Defiance about cloistered Roman Catholic nuns, was originally published as an article in the New York Times Magazine. Her other book, Wounded I Am More Awake: Finding Meaning After Terror which was co-authored with Esad Boskailo, about Bosnian concentration camps, was published in 2012.

Lieblich struggled with a bipolar disorder for much of her life and in November of 2023, feeling overwhelmed by “wars that are killing children, a refugee and housing crisis, the murder of young people on our own streets, the increasing threat of nuclear war and climate change”, she ended her own life. In her final note to friends, she stated that she could no longer handle more sadness, death and destruction and “just wanted the pain to stop”. Her ashes were scattered on the grave of her goddaughter, Kendy Carmona outside of Antigua in Guatemala.

Lieblich’s papers document the working life of a career journalist. Besides copies of many, if not all, of the articles she published, there are letters, notes, research materials, drafts, and interview transcripts gathered throughout her life. The collection also contains a book proposal that Lieblich wrote in 2023 before she died called The Sacred in the Ordinary: Spiritual Teachers of a Secular Traveler that was intended to describe her spiritual journey as a secular woman as she encountered remarkable teachers from many traditions. It was intended to be a “book of stories that address the questions and themes that have animated my quest for meaning during my thirty years as a secular religion writer.” In addition, the collection contains personal photographs, artwork, and audio and video recordings of interviews.

The Quaker Litchfield Hills Monthly Meeting began as a worship group in Watertown, Conn., that met under the care of Hartford Monthly Meeting from 1969 to 1974. Set off as a monthly meeting in 1975, the name was changed to Litchfield Hills in 1980. The meeting has been part of Connecticut Valley Quarter since its establishment.

The scant documentation of the Litchfield Hills Monthly Meeting consist solely of an incomplete run of meeting minutes from 1979-1984 and a state of the society report from 1980.

Includes letters addressed mostly to Mary Lyons or her brother Frederick D. Lyons about friends and family in Greenfield and Colrain, Massachusetts, New York, Pennsylvania, Illinois, Indiana, and Iowa. Topics discussed are sickness, death, accidents, an instance of probable wife abuse, recipes, Greenfield scandals, clothing, quilting, Methodist/Universalist bickering, and Aunt Mary’s investments.

After meeting as a worship group for thirty years in Fort Fairfield in the northern reaches of Maine, Maple Grove Monthly Meeting of Friends was set off Unity Monthly Meeting in 1890. It was a part of Vassalboro Quarterly Meeting until it was laid down in 1962 to Vassalboro Monthly.

The single volume of surviving records from Maple Grove contain a nearly complete run of minutes for the duration of the monthly meeting, lacking only the last seven years.

Quakers have a tangled history in Marion, Mass., a coastal town located on the northwestern edge of Buzzards Bay. As early as 1702, Friends established a preparative meeting in the village of Sippican (currently part of Marion), however this fed particular meetings in the neighboring towns of Rochester or Mattapoisett, rather than Marion itself. An independent worship ground was established in East Marion in 1946, followed in 1970 by a separate independent meeting in Marion under the care of Sandwich Quarter. This latter became the core of Marion Monthly Meeting, which was formally set off in 1973. The meeting was laid down in 1992.

Somewhat intermingled, this collection documents the complete, though comparatively brief history of the Quaker monthly meeting in Marion, Mass. It includes a thorough set of minutes for all but the final two years of the meeting, plus a small quantity of correspondence and financial information.

A Quaker worship group was held on Martha’s Vineyard from 1946 to 1953 under the care of Providence Monthly Meeting and was revived as an independent worship group in 1978. The group was accorded status as a monthly meeting under Sandwich Quarter in 1984.

The collection contains a nearly complete set of minutes for the Martha’s Vineyard Friends Meeting from its inception in 1984 to 2007.