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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.

An educational psychologist from Chelsea, Mass., Cora Ott was a poet, writer, and photographer of gravestones.

This small collection consists of snapshots (both color and black and white) of gravestones and cemeteries visited by Cora Ott during her travels, primarily in eastern Massachusetts and Rhode Island, but as far away as Arizona and California. Printed materials that were included with the collection will be transferred to the AGS Book Collection.

Publishers in Western Massachusetts engaged in a brisk trade in books intended for children during the antebellum years, producing chapbooks to teach reading, didactic works on morals and comportment, and toy books for reward and entertainment. Brief and most often simply produced, the books are noted for their diminutive size, stock woodcut illustrations and characteristic moralistic tone, but they are rich sources for understanding popular conceptions of childhood, education, religious life, and marketing in the book trade, among other subjects.

The majority of the works in the Early Children’s Literature Collection were products of the antebellum press in western Massachusetts, produced and distributed by printers such as John Metcalf (Wendell and Northampton), Anson Phelps (Greenfield), and A. R. Merrifield (Northampton). There are examples of chapbooks from other printers, most notably Mahlon Day of New York and the American Sunday School Union in Philadelphia.

In 1944, eighteen-year old Herman B. “Keek” Nash enlisted in the Army, and after intensive Japanese language training, was assigned for duty as an intelligence officer in American-occupied Osaka, Japan. Settling in northern New Jersey after his discharge from the service in 1947, Nash held a succession of jobs, including brakeman on the Pennsylvania Railroad, before deciding to try his hand at teaching, earning a master’s degree in education at Columbia Teachers College. A solid leftist politically and a strong supporter of social justice causes and civil rights, he marched with Martin Luther King at Selma and Washington, though his ardor and political convictions came at a cost. Investigated by the FBI for alleged Communist sympathies in the late 1950s, Nash was fired from his position teaching high school science in Teaneck, N.J., in 1969, after leading a sit-in protest against school tracking. He subsequently returned to work on the railroad, where he was active with the union and took part in efforts to increase participation by African Americans and women. Yoneko Nash, Nash’s wife of 43 years, died in 2004, with Keek following in 2010.

A rich assemblage, the papers of Herman Nash offer a glimpse into the life experiences of a socially conscious veteran of the Second World War. Nearly a quarter of the collection stems from Nash’s time in the military service, including while he was learning Japanese at the University of Chicago (1944-1945) and while he was stationed in occupied Japan from spring 1946 through the following winter. Among other noteworthy items are a thick series of intelligence reports on the reaction of the local population to the occupation, noting episodes of civil unrest, crime, and other forms of social instability. The collection also contains a significant body of correspondence with family and friends, including serval whom he met in Japan. The balance of the collection relates to Nash’s interests in social justice causes, highlighted by a significant series of photographs taken during a massive civil rights demonstration in Montgomery, Ala.

A scholar of labor studies and activist, José Soler was born in New York City to a Dominican mother and Puerto Rican father and has been an activist in the cause of Puerto Rican independence and human rights since the 1970s. While a student at the University of New Mexico (BA 1972), Soler emerged as a leader in the Chicano rights organization, the Brown Berets, and while living in Puerto Rico in the late 1970s, he joined the Puerto Rican Socialist Party. Soler has subsequently worked in the labor movement as a shop steward, union organizer with UAW District 65, and labor journalist. As a committed Marxist and prolific writer and editor, he has taken part in causes ranging from anti-imperialist work in the Caribbean and Central America to the anti-apartheid struggle, and he has served on the Executive Board of the US Peace Council. From 1993 until his retirement in 2015, Soler worked as Director of the Arnold M. Dubin Labor Education Center at UMass Dartmouth where he has continued to work on behalf of public education and human rights and national self-determination.
The Soler Papers chronicle over forty years of a life-long activist’s interests and participation in left-wing political, labor, and social justice movements. There is a particular focus on topics relating to socialism and the pro-independence movement in Puerto Rico, anti-imperialist movements in South and Central America and Africa, and issues affecting Puerto Rican and Hispanic workers in the United States, New England, and the New York City area. Published and promotional materials such as periodicals, magazines, newsletters, and pamphlets make up the bulk of the collection, with extensive coverage of the concerns of the Puerto Rican Socialist Party (Partido Socialista Puertorriqueño, PSP), the Communist Party of the United States of America (CPUSA), as well as New Jersey chapters of the unions Communications Workers of America (CWA) and District 65, which eventually joined the International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace, and Agricultural Implement Workers of America (UAW). An additional seven boxes were added to the collection in June 2016, which remain unprocessed. The new materials offer additional documentation from the Dubin Labor Education Center and Soler’s work and interests in education (testing, privatization, and unions), labor, Marxist-Leninism, and various events in the United States and Latin America.

For seven years after the end of World War II, the United States led an occupation force in Japan that oversaw comprehensive reforms of the country’s military, economy, politics, and social order. Under the direction of Gen. Douglas MacArthur, the Supreme Command of Allied Powers (SCAP) dismantled and disarmed the military, conducted a series of war crimes trials, and undertook significant reforms in land tenure, industry, and the economy, culminating in the imposition of new pacifist constitution that shifted power from the Emperor to parliament. In the face of the rise of the Cold War and change in international priorities, the U.S. brokered a final peace settlement with Japan that formally ended the occupation in 1952, leaving American bases and bilateral security pact intact.

Focused on the period 1945-1952, this collection includes a sampling of printed materials aimed at average American servicemen and their dependents involved in the occupation and reconstruction of Japan. The collection includes histories and guidebooks, picture books aimed at tourists, and a few examples of instructional materials and propaganda.

In 1948, Otto and Helen Hunerwadel were among the first cohort of Fulbright grantees to work in the newly independent nation of Burma. Having worked as a county agent in Tennessee since the height of the Depression, Otto (1891-1952) brought a wealth of experience as an agricultural teacher and advisor, while Helen (1898-1996) was an experienced instructor in canning technologies. Based near Taunggyi in the eastern Shan states, the Hunerwadels were witness to the earliest days of conflict between the central government and both Communist and ethnic Karen insurgencies, but despite the instability, they left a record of assistance that contributed both to the formation of US policy in international development and the growth of the Fulbright program. In July 1952, Otto contracted malaria and died in Rangoon of thrombophlebitis produced by his treatment. He became famous posthumously as the model for the heroic title character in William Lederer’s novel, The Ugly American. Although Helen returned to the states after Otto’s death, she continued to work with Fulbright programs, doing two-year tours of Iran (1953-1955) and Surinam.

The collection includes dense documentation of the Hunerwadel’s work in Burma and Iran, and the early years of American foreign aid in south and southeast Asia. Consisting primarily of six thick scrapbooks, the collection provides a rich visual record, combined with letters and printed materials of time abroad. One scrapbook is devoted primarily to the Hunerwadel family, and the collection also includes a plaque commemorating Otto in Burma, and a copy of Helen Hunerwadel’s engaging unpublished memoir, “Our Burma story.”

Miscellaneous Manuscripts is an artificial collection that brings together single items and small groups of related materials. Although the collection reflects the general collecting emphases in SCUA, particularly the history of New England, the content ranges widely in theme and format.

An Ecuadorian-born community activist, Carlos Vega moved to Holyoke, Massachusetts, with his family in 1955. Settling in the working-class “Flats” neighborhood at a time when many of Holyoke’s factories were relocating to the southern United States or Asia, the Vegas were one of the few Spanish-speaking families in the city, but when Carlos began to work on a local tobacco farm at the age of 14, he encountered the new influx of migrants from Puerto Rico who had been lured to the Connecticut Valley as agricultural laborers by the Department of Labor. With the Puerto Rican economy declining in the 1960s, many of these farm workers settled permanently in Springfield and Holyoke, but they soon discovered that the declining economy there combined with racism and urban decay blocked their hopes for upward mobility. Radicalized by the anti-colonial, anti-war, and Civil Rights movements of the late 1960s, Vega emerged as an important community organizer in the 1970s, working with Fair Share, New Unity, Urban Ministry, and other progressive organizations. With a backdrop of riots, arson, and racial tension, these organizations focused on issues relevant to the Puerto Rican community, particularly voter education and registration, fair housing, and education. In 1982, Vega helped found Nueva Esperanza, a non-profit community development organization whose mission was to restore and maintain blighted buildings in South Holyoke. He worked with Nueva Esperanza for over 30 years, continuing until 2010 after a brain cancer diagnosis in 1995.  He survived until April 2012.

The materials in this collection reflect Vega’s interests in left wing movements in Central America, the Caribbean, Asia, South America and Africa from the 1960s through 1980s and include leaflets, pamphlets, books, and newsletters. The approximately 300 items offer sometimes scarce documentation of internationalist liberation movements such as the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, the Tupamaros in Uruguay, and the EFLNA in Eritrea. Of particular note is a small collection documenting Vega’s participation in the 1974 Venceremos Brigade and a collection of clippings, newsletters, notes, fliers, conference material, and newspapers from various groups such as New England Action Research, Friends of the Filipino People, The Latin American Student Association, and the Ethiopian Students Union of North America. Some printed materials are cataloged and housed with the rare books collection.

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Although printing requires a substantial capital investment in equipment before any hope of profitability can be entertained, there have been numerous attempts over the years to set up printing houses in communities with astonishingly small population bases. In even the most remote Massachusetts towns, people like John Metcalf (Wendell), Ezekiel Terry (Palmer), and John and Solomon Howe (Enfield and Greenwich) operated as printers during the nineteenth century, specializing in a quotidian array of broadsides, song sheets, almanacs, toy books, and printed forms, hoping to supplement, or provide, a decent living.

This small, but growing collection consists of materials printed prior to the twentieth century in small Massachusetts towns, defined as towns with populations less than about 2,500. Although few of these houses survived for long, they were important sources for rural communities. Typically simple in typography, design, and binding, even crude, the output of such printers provides an important gauge of the interests and tastes of New England’s smallest and often poorest communities.

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