Collecting area: UMass history

Born on Jan. 4, 1863, and raised in Montague, Mass., Charles Wellington Clapp entered Massachusetts Agricultural College as a freshman during the fall 1882. Shouldering the standard coursework in agriculture and engineering, Clapp graduated with the class of 1886 and went on to a career as a civil engineer in Greenfield, Mass.

Written by Clapp to family members, mostly his sister Mary, during his undergraduate years at MAC, the 31 letters in this collection provide a lighthearted and engaging glimpse into the academic work and extra-curricular activities of a typical early student at Mass Aggie. Noteworthy among these letters are early references to football being played at the college and an effective hand-drawn map of campus, both from 1882.

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

A scholar of Yeats and long-time professor of English at UMass Amherst, David Ridgley Clark was born in Seymour, Conn., in Sept. 1920, the son of a school superintendent. A convinced Quaker, Clark was part of a pacifist Ashram in Harlem in 1941 and became a conscientious objector during the Second World War, working as an orderly at a mental hospital in Concord, N.H., and as a forest fire fighter in Oregon as part of his alternative service. When he returned to civilian life, he worked his way through Wesleyan University, receiving his BA in 1947, before earning a MA at Yale in 1950 and doctorate in 1955 for a study of William Butler Yeats and the Theatre of desolate reality. Beginning at UMass while still in graduate school, Clark quickly became a key member of a rising contingent in the humanities. Along with Sidney Kaplan, Jules Chametzky, and Leon Stein, he was instrumental in founding the University of Massachusetts Press, as well as the Massachusetts Review, and he was credited with starting a program with the National Association of Educational Broadcasting that brought major poets to read their work on the radio. In the late 1970s, he served as chair of the English Department and helped to organize the Five College Irish Studies Program. After his retirement from UMass in 1985, Clark taught briefly at Williams College and served as chair of English at St. Mary’s College from 1985-87. He settled in Sequim, Wash., after his full retirement, where he died on Jan. 11, 2010.

The Clark Papers document the research and professional life of an influential member of the English faculty at UMass Amherst. The collection contains a particularly rich assemblage of Clark’s notes and writings on W.B. Yeats, but includes materials relating to his efforts in building the English program and, to a lesser degree, the UMass Press and Massachusetts Review.

The first professor of Natural History at the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Henry James Clark, had one of the briefest and most tragic tenures of any member of the faculty during the nineteenth century. Having studied under Asa Gray and Louis Agassiz at Harvard, Clark became an expert microscopist and student of the structure and development of flagellate protozoans and sponges. Barely a year after joining the faculty at Massachusetts Agricultural College at its first professor of Natural History, Clark died of tuberculosis on July 1, 1873.

A small remnant of a brief, but important career in the natural sciences, the Henry James Clark Papers consist largely of obituary notices and a fraction of his published works. The three manuscript items include two letters from Clark’s widow to his obituarist and fellow naturalist, Alpheus Hyatt (one including some minor personal memories), and a contract to build a house on Pleasant Street in Amherst.

Orton Loring Clark was an associate professor of botany and biology at the University of Massachusetts. After earning his B.A. in 1908 from the University, then the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Clark studied at the University of Strasbourg, where he earned his doctorate. He joined the faculty of his alma mater in 1913, specialized in plant physiology, and taught until his retirement in 1946. Known as a great teacher and fine artist, Clark was active in Amherst town politics. He passed away in 1965 at the age of 79.

Orton Loring Clark’s collection includes several notebooks of research notes, data, and hand-drawn field diagrams. The notebooks date from his student years in Germany to his first several years on the faculty at the Massachusetts Agricultural College. The collection also includes one letter from 1922.

Born in Ashfield, Massachusetts, in 1826, William Smith Clark graduated from Amherst College in 1848 and went on to teach the natural sciences at Williston Seminary until 1850, when he continued his education abroad, studying chemistry and botany at the University of Goettingen, earning his Ph.D in 1852. From 1852 to 1867 he was a member of Amherst College’s faculty as a Professor of Chemistry, Botany, and Zoology. As a leading citizen of Amherst, Clark was a strong advocate for the establishment of the new agricultural college, becoming one of the founding members of the college’s faculty and in 1867, the year the college welcomed its first class of 56 students, its President. During his presidency, he pressured the state government to increase funding for the new college and provide scholarships to enable poor students, including women, to attend. The college faced economic hardship early in its existence: enrollment dropped in the 1870s, and the college fell into debt. He is noted as well for helping to establish an agricultural college at Sapporo, Japan, and building strong ties between the Massachusetts Agricultural College and Hokkaido. After Clark was denied a leave of absence in 1879 to establish a “floating college” — a ship which would carry students and faculty around the world — he resigned.

The Clark Papers include materials from throughout his life, including correspondence with fellow professors and scientists, students in Japan, and family; materials relating to his Civil War service in the 21st Massachusetts Infantry; photographs and personal items; official correspondence and memoranda; published articles; books, articles, television, and radio materials relating to Clark, in Japanese and English; and materials regarding Hokkaido University and its continuing relationship with the University of Massachusetts.

View the online Clark-Penhallow Botanical Collections from Sapporo.

Receiving her Ed.D in Foundations in Education from UMass Amherst in 1982, Marie Sally Cleary has been a member of the Associates Program for independent scholars based at the Five Colleges since 1983. In her book Myths for the Millions: Thomas Bulfinch, His America, and His Mythology published in 2007, Cleary provides an in-depth study of the man behind the landmark work, The Age of Fable, which has been responsible for introducing many Americans to classical mythology since its original publication in 1855.

The collection consists of drafts and subject files related to the research and writing of Cleary’s book.

Vincent J. Cleary is a retired Professor of Classics at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, where he taught until 1997. With a particular interest in Latin poetry, Cleary is both a journalist and writer. Most of his writings reflect his love for the Pioneer Valley; Cleary was most commonly published in the Hampshire Gazette, although he also submitted articles to larger magazines and newspapers.

The Cleary Papers are comprised of articles that Cleary wrote for magazines and newspapers such as Hampshire Life, and narratives relating to the town of Amherst for his book Amherst, Massachusetts 01002: One of the Best Small Towns in America. A bound copy of the book is included with the collection, as well as narratives and Cleary’s research materials. The collection contains complete newspapers and magazines and copies of Cleary’s articles (his earlier work is centered around Virgil’s The Aeneid). Also included among the papers are unpublished writings and an array of VHS and cassette tapes with copies of his lectures and class presentations.

As an undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley in the late 1950s, Alvin P. Cohen planned on a career in engineering, but after earning his bachelors degree and working as a laboratory technician, he returned to undergraduate status and then to graduate school in Chinese. Cohen’s time at Berkeley coincided with the turbulence of the first wave of student revolt, the civil rights and antiwar movements, and the Free Speech Movement, however as a married man with children, he was more an observer than activist. After completing his dissertation, The Avenging Ghost: Moral Judgment in Chinese Historical Texts, in 1971, he joined the faculty at UMass Amherst, initially with a split appointment teaching Chinese and working as East Asian bibliographer in the library. Over the next three and a half decades, he helped build the Program in Asian Languages and Literature, becoming its Chair in the 1990s and President of the Warring States Project.

Consisting of newsclippings, fliers, and other ephemera collected as the Free Speech Movement was at its height, the Cohen collection provides a valuable window on 1960s activism and the cross-fertilization between the various student movements. The materials cover a range of issues from free speech on campus to the California legislature, civil rights, the war in Vietnam, and the House Un-American Activities Committee. Of particular interest is a letter received by Cohen from a friend Doug Wachter in 1960, shortly after Wachter had been called before HUAC.

Ed Cohen is a graduate of UMass Amherst (’75) and has been an active commercial photographer in Western Massachusetts since finishing at UMass. In addition to typical work for hire subject matter, Cohen has specialized in event and concert photography.

The Edward Cohen Photographs of Max Roach collection is comprised of seventeen mounted photographs of Max Roach at UMass in the late 1980s, early 1990s. Roach is depicting in concert, backstage, and interacting with well known musicians, UMass faculty, and members of the UMass community. The photos were purchased by the University and were exhibited in the Student Union.

A conference hosted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst on November 7-9, 1986, that examined the impact of the Constitution on politics and government, foreign policy, race relations, and the economy, and also discussed the impact on the constitution of popular struggles and the emergence of “rights consciousness.” Includes papers presented at the conference that were to be subsequently published in a special bicentennial issue of the Journal of American History.