The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
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Collecting area: Women

Lederer, Regina Berger, 1895-1988

Regina Lederer Oral History

1984
1 envelope 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 358 bd

Regina Berger Lederer was born in Vienna, Austria, in 1895 into the family of a successful manufacturing chemist. Her singing career was promising, but never fully realized. With the rise of the Nazi Party and increase in oppression of Jews, she and her husband escaped by leaving for Italy and the United States in 1939. Settling in New York, she worked as a skilled sweater repairer for many years. She died in Maryland in 1988, where she had gone to live near her son Paul.

Transcript of an oral history of Lederer.

Subjects

Jewish women--United States--InterviewsJews, Austrian--United States--InterviewsJews--Austria--History--20th century--SourcesKnit goods--Repairing--New York (State)--New YorkRefugees, Jewish--United States--InterviewsSweater industry--New York (State)--New York--Employees--Interviews

Contributors

Lederer, Regina Berger, 1895-1988

Types of material

Oral histories
Lewis, Gertrude Minnie, 1896-

Gertrude M. Lewis Papers

ca.1920-2001
6 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: FS 096
Depiction of Gertrude
Gertrude "Jean" Lewis, ca.1935

Overcoming a deeply impoverished childhood, Gertrude Lewis struggled to build a career in education, putting herself through college and graduate school. At the age of 32, she earned a bachelor’s degree from Ohio State, continuing on to a masters degree at New York University (1933), and finally, at age 51, a PhD from Yale (1947). For many years after receiving her doctorate, Lewis was employed as a Specialist for Upper Grades with the U.S. Office of Education in Washington. Among other career highlights, Lewis spent two years in Japan (1950-1951) as a Consultant in Elementary Education in the Education Section of the Allied Occupation government (SCAP). Lewis outlived her life partner, Ruth Totman, dying at home on December 10, 1996, a few months after her one hundredth birthday.

The Lewis Papers document the work and life of an educator of the masses, a traveler of the world, and a woman of the twentieth century. Documents pertaining to her work as an educator of both young students and veteran teachers show the changes within the theory and practice of pedagogy over time, over various geographic locales, and also highlight her role in that change. This collection also documents the numerous on-going side projects on which Lewis worked, including fostering creativity in schoolchildren, a biography of Franklin D. and Eleanor Roosevelt, and her own poetry and prose.

Subjects

Education, Elementary--JapanEducation, Elementary--United States--HistoryEducation--EvaluationEducation--United States--HistoryHealth Education--United StatesJapan--Civilization--American influencesStudents--Health and hygiene

Contributors

Lewis, Gertrude Minnie, 1896-Totman, Conrad DTotman, Ruth J

Types of material

Motion pictures (Visual work)Photographs
Lewis, Patricia Lee, 1937-

Patricia Lee Lewis Photograph Collection

1977-1979
3 boxes 2 linear feet
Call no.: PH 059
Depiction of Cotton Mill no. 2, Beijing, 1977
Cotton Mill no. 2, Beijing, 1977

A co-founder of the Valley Women’s Center and the Everywoman’s Center at UMass Amherst, Patricia Lee Lewis has been an important part of the vibrant activist culture in the Pioneer Valley since her graduation from Smith College in 1970, advocating for women, civil rights, peace, the environment, for small farms and rural communities, and for art. Her varied career has included service as Supervisor of Community Development for the Massachusetts Office for Children (1974-1976), as Rural Development Specialist for the Massachusetts Cooperative Extension Service, and as County Commissioner for Hampshire County (1984-1988). After receiving an MFA from Vermont College, she founded Patchwork Farm Writing Retreat in Westhampton in 1992, which offers workshops and retreats in creative writing and yoga.

As a member of a National Women’s Delegation, Lewis visited the People’s Republic of China in 1977. Having been invited by the All China Women’s Federation, Lewis and her colleagues toured the country, seeing the sights and examining the role of women, education, and agriculture, visiting Beijing, Shanghai, Nanjing, Tachai, and Guilin. The many hundreds of photographs she took during the tour are a powerful visual record of the country only a few months after the Gage of Four were arrested and the Cultural Revolution declared ended. The collection also includes approximately 100 photographs taken of agriculture and rural life in Louisiana and Texas in 1979.

Gift of Patricia Lee Lewis, Mar. 2014

Subjects

China--PhotographsLouisiana--PhotographsTexas--Photographs

Types of material

Photographs
Lillydahl, Sandy

Sandy Lillydahl Venceremos Brigade Photograph Collection

1970-2005 Bulk: 1970
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: PH 056

A 1969 graduate of Smith College and member of Students for a Democratic Society, Sandy Lillydahl took part in the second contingent of the Venceremos Brigade. Between February and April 1970, Lillydahl and traveled to Cuba as an expression of solidarity with the Cuban people and to assist in the sugarcane harvest.

The 35 color snapshots that comprise the Lillydahl collection document the New England contingent of the second Venceremos Brigade as they worked the sugarcane fields in Aguacate, Cuba, and toured the country. Each image is accompanied by a caption supplied by Lillydahl in 2005, describing the scene and reflecting on her experiences; and the collection also includes copies of the file kept by the FBI on Lillydahl, obtained by her through the Freedom of Information Act in 1975.

Subjects

Cuba--PhotographsStudents for a Democratic Society (U.S.)--PhotographsSugarcane--Harvesting--Cuba--PhotographsVenceremos Brigade--Photographs

Types of material

Photographs
Livers, Susie D.

Susie D. Livers Papers

1903-1907
1 flat box 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: FS 122

Susie D. Livers arrived at Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1903 as a member of one of the college’s first co-ed classes. After graduating in 1907, Livers worked at Ginn & Company Publishers in Boston and then as a Detail Officer at the State School for Girls in Lancaster, Massachusetts.

Included in the scrapbook are handwritten personal correspondence in the form of letters, postcards, holiday cards, and telegrams; unidentified photographs; MAC report cards dated 1904 and 1907; class papers and a class notebook; and programs and tickets for sporting events, weddings, and campus socials. In the back of the scrapbook are 35 herbarium samples which include dried plants with notations of plant names as well as dates and locations indicating where the plants were found.

Subjects

Massachusetts Agricultural College--Students

Contributors

Livers, Susie D

Types of material

EphemeraHerbariaScrapbooks
Loomis Communities

Loomis Communities Records

1909-2015 Bulk: 1980-2000
11 boxes 15.75 linear feet
Call no.: MS 685
Loomus House logo
Loomis House logo

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

In 1902, a group of residents of Holyoke, Mass., secured a charter for the Holyoke Home for Aged People, wishing to do “something of permanent good for their city” and provide a “blessing to the homeless.” Opened in March 1911 on two acres of land donated by William Loomis, the Holyoke Home provided long-term care of the elderly, and grew slowly for its first half century. After changing its name to Loomis House in 1969, in honor of the benefactor, Loomis began slowly to expand, moving to its present location in 1981 upon construction of the first continuing care retirement community in the Commonwealth. In 1988, the Board acquired a 27-acre campus in South Hadley on which it established Loomis Village; in 1999, it became affiliated with the Applewood community in Amherst; and in 2009, it acquired Reeds Landing in Springfield.
The Loomis Communities Records offer more than a century perspective on elder care and the growth of retirement communities in western Massachusetts. The collection includes a nearly complete run of the minutes of the Board of Directors from 1909 to the present, an assortment administrative and financial records, and some documentation of the experience of the communities’ residents, with the bulk of materials dating from the 1980s to the present. An extensive series of oral histories with residents of Loomis Village was conducted in 2010.

Subjects

Holyoke (Mass.)--HistoryHolyoke Home for Aged PeopleLoomis CommunitiesLoomis VillageOlder people--Care--MassachusettsRetirement communities--Massachusetts
Lyman, Florence Porter

Florence Porter Lyman Papers

1894-1931
10 boxes 5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 946
Depiction of Florence Porter Lyman with her dog (from the Lyman Family Papers)
Florence Porter Lyman with her dog (from the Lyman Family Papers)

Florence Porter Lyman (1870-1960) was born into the Chapin Moodey family in the late 19th century. She married Charles Wendell Porter, a Northampton lawyer who spent his summers in Northern Maine, in 1894. After her first husband’s death in 1899 she continued to spend her summers in Maine. She then married Frank Lyman of the prominent Lyman family in 1903. They had three children together and lived in both Northampton and Brooklyn. During her summers in Northern Maine, Florence Porter Lyman stayed in touch with her many family and friends who lived in Massachusetts and New York.

This collection contains almost forty years of Florence Porter Lyman’s in-coming correspondence. Letters refer primarily to domestic matters including: her first husband’s train accident and death, her engagement and re-marriage to Frank Lyman, and the birth of her three children.

Subjects

Northampton (Mass.)--HistoryNorthampton (Mass.)--Social life and customsPerry (Me.)--HistoryPerry (Me.)--Social life and customs

Contributors

Lyman, Frank, 1852-1938Porter, Charles Wendell, 1866-1899

Types of material

Correspondence
Lyons Family

Lyons Family Correspondence

1859-1895
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 133

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.

Subjects

Abused wives--United States--History--19th centuryClothing and dress--United States--History--19th centuryColrain (Mass.)--BiographyColrain (Mass.)--Social life and customs--19th centuryCookery--United States--History--19th centuryGreenfield (Mass.)--BiographyGreenfield (Mass.)--Social life and customs--19th centuryLyons familyMethodist Church--Relations--Universalist ChurchMethodist Church--United States--History--19th centuryQuilting--United States--History--19th centuryScandals--Massachusetts--Greenfield--History--19th centuryUniversalist churches--Relations--Methodist ChurchUniversalist churches--United States--History--19th centuryWife abuse--United States--History--19th centuryWomen--Massachusetts--Colrain--Correspondence

Contributors

Lyons, J. LLyons, Mary

Types of material

Letters (Correspondence)
Machmer, William L.

William L. Machmer Papers

1899-1953
18 boxes 9 linear feet
Call no.: RG 006/1 M33
Depiction of William L. Machmer
William L. Machmer

Enjoying one of the longest tenures of any administrator in the history of the University of Massachusetts, William Lawson Machmer served under five presidents across 42 years, helping to guide the university through an economic depression, two world wars, and three name changes. During his years as Dean, Machmer witnessed the growth of the university from fewer than 500 students to almost 3,800, and helped guide its transformation from a small agricultural college into Massachusetts State College (1931) and finally into the University of Massachusetts (1947).
Machmer’s papers chronicle the fitful development of the University of Massachusetts from the days of Kenyon Butterfield’s innovations of the 1920s through the time of the GI Bill. The collection is particularly strong in documenting the academic experience of students and the changes affecting the various departments and programs at the University, with particular depth for the period during and after the Second World War.

Connect to another siteView selected records on women's affairs at UMass, 1924-1951

Subjects

Agricultural educationFort Devens (Mass.)Massachusetts Agricultural CollegeMassachusetts State CollegeUniversity of Massachusetts AmherstUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. DeanUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of MathematicsWorld War, 1939-1945

Contributors

Baker, Hugh Potter, 1878-Butterfield, Kenyon L. (Kenyon Leech), 1868-1935Lewis, Edward MMachmer, William LVan Meter, Ralph Albert, 1893-

Types of material

Letters (Correspondence)Student records
Marino, Michella M.

Michella Marino Oral History Collection

2011-2012
23 items
Call no.: MS 812

Michella Marino received her doctorate from the Department History of at UMass Amherst in May 2013. Her dissertation, Sweating femininity: women athletes, masculine culture, and American inequality from 1930 to the present, drew on extensive oral historical and archival research to examine how feminist women negotiated the cultural boundaries surrounding gender to carve out identities as women, athletes, and mothers. Focusing on women’s participation in two sports, basketball and roller derby, Marino wrote that her goal was to “explain the tension between women’s representation and agency, between cultural constructs and women’s lives, between images of women and their individual identities.”

The Marino Collection consists of 23 oral historical interviews with female and male participants in roller derby and basketball.

Gift of Michella Marino, Feb. 2014

Subjects

Roller derbySex discrimination in sports--HistorySports for womenWomen athletesWomen's basketball

Types of material

Oral histories