Collections: A

Contains bylaws, incorporation papers, minutes, budgets, reports, and correspondence relating to the administration and fundraising activities of the Amherst Community Association, including the Community Chest fund drive. Also included are budget proposals and agency profiles documenting organizations such as the Amherst Boys Club and Girls Club, Children’s Aid and Family Service, Hampshire County Association for Retarded Citizens and Camp Anderson.

Vigil for Peace and Justice group that peacefully protested the Vietnam War, nuclear weapons, and government policy in Central America and the Middle East by organizing a weekly vigil in downtown Amherst, Massachusetts. Includes handouts and news clippings.

Amherst Friends for the Homeless, Inc. was a corporation committed to operating a shelter for homeless single women and started in 1989. After researching homelessness in the area, the Social Concerns Committee of the Unitarian-Universalist Society of Amherst decided that the needs for emergency shelter were not being met in the community of Amherst, Hadley, Pelham, and Shutesbury. To help this problem, Amherst Friends for the Homeless opened Rosemary’s Place on December 11, 1989. However, it was shut down after less than two years of operation in 1991 when the Grove Street Inn, a new shelter for men and women, had opened in Northampton. The corporation continued with one event a year, called Shelter Sunday, in which volunteers went door-to-door for donations for the Amherst Survival Center, First Call for Help, Grove Street Inn, and Not Bread Alone. The organization was dissolved in 2017.

Included in this collection are the documents pertaining to the operations of Amherst Friends for the Homeless, including financial records, meeting minutes, Shelter Sunday records, and Rosemary’s Place records.

View of the proposed the Amherst Fields

In May 1971 Otto Paparazzo Associates announced their plans to develop 640 acres of land in East Amherst upon which a proposed 2,200 residential units, a commercial center, and a golf course would be built. Concerned about unnatural growth of the community and about the effect such a development would have on the environment, a group of residents formed the Amherst Growth Study Committee within a few months of the announcement. Despite these concerns, the Zoning Board of Appeals issued a formal permit for construction in December 1971, which the AGSC immediately appealed. Even though the group was unable to overturn the zoning board’s decision, they did achieve their ends, in part, when state and town agencies prevented the project from moving forward due to an overloaded sewage system. More importantly, the group increased public awareness about growth and housing in the town of Amherst.

Records include notes from AGSC meetings, correspondence, and newspaper clippings documenting coverage of the story in local papers.

Founded in 1963 and chartered one year later, the Amherst Railway Society is a non-profit organization of railroad enthusiasts based in the Pioneer Valley, Massachusetts. Meeting monthly, the Society sponsors lecturers and programming on railroad-related topics, and since 1968 it has hosted the annual Amherst Railway Society Railroad Hobby Show, now held at the Eastern States Exposition. Some of the proceeds from the Hobby Show are used to provide grants to support historic preservation and other railroad-related projects throughout the country.

Documenting the history of the ARS from its founding, this collection contains organizational materials, minutes of meetings, membership lists, officers’ reports, mailings and correspondence, and other materials relating to the Society’s programs.

Amherst Study Circles: Dialogues on Race and Class flier

The Amherst Study Circles: Dialogues on Race and Class were a series of dialogue and project action groups begun in 2002 to discuss and enact social change in the school districts and communities around Amherst, MA. They arose as a response by the Amherst Regional High School (ARHS) Parent Center to a question to their group: What were they going to do about racism in the Amherst Schools? The ARHS Parent Center Board suggested the study circle model, and a round of facilitated pilot groups were run in February 2003. The successful pilots stirred the organizers to seek additional support, and with funding from the Amherst Education Foundation and the Amherst Drugs Free Partnership, additional groups were organized each year, building awareness, trust, and power amongst those striving to improve the community’s schools for all students. Almost 200 people, including school administrators, teachers, staff, students, parents, and community members participated over the course of several years, and each group culminated in an action forum and set up action groups to propose and enact tangible steps towards specific goals. Action groups affected change in school climate, policies, and course offerings, and organized a standing committee of the ARHS Parent Center called RaDAR: Race and Discipline, Action, Rights.

The Amherst Study Circles: Dialogues on Race and Class Records consist of descriptive materials from the ARHS Parent Center; an organizer’s binder with sections on the origin in 2002, participants, action groups, finances, curriculum, and evaluations; and additional materials such as evaluations for study circle sessions and facilitators, newspaper clippings of articles about the group and their work, and documents for student study circles, such as advertisements, curriculum, and certificates.

The Ancient Order of United Workmen, a fraternal benefit society, was originally founded in Pennsylvania in 1868. The Massachusetts lodge was founded in 1879 with the Deerfield Valley Lodge incorporated in 1880.

The collection consists of records dating from 1895–1920, including financial documents, membership information, and correspondence.

Eastern Europe’s socialist republics of the Cold War era strove to establish national cultures that reflected communist objectives and withstood Western influences. In order to promote collectivist ideals, state authorities supervised the production of literary works, motion pictures, television programs, sound recordings, and other forms of cultural content. To centralize the manufacturing of music records for its national market of sixteen million citizens, the GDR maintained a state-owned record company. Formally under the supervision of Ministerium für Kultur (Ministry of Culture), VEB Deutsche Schallplatten (German Records, NOE) provided the GDR audience with classical, traditional, and popular music as well as literary and educational recordings.

Mandated to cover a broad spectrum of content, Deutsche Schallplatten established separate divisions to develop artists and repertoire, releasing the vast majority of its works on five major labels:

• Amiga: popular recordings for all age groups
• Eterna: classical and political recordings
• Litera: literary recordings like audio books for adults and children
• Nova: recordings that reflected socialist lifestyles
• Schola: educational recordings for use in schools

Apart from the producers affiliated with these labels, the company’s creative division also included graphic designers who crafted cover art and musicologists who documented the growth of the respective catalogs. Counting managers, administrators, technologists, and the sizeable workforce of its industrial plants, Deutsche Schallplatten after the mid-1970s had around 800 employees. Yet, in the course of German reunification and the privatization of nationally owned enterprises, the enterprise lost its cultural relevancy and failed economically. Ultimately, competing firms acquired the catalogs of Amiga and Eterna, which encompassed the master tapes of and exploitation rights to Deutsche Schallplatten’s commercially most viable recordings.

As the former monopolist underwent its eventual dissolution in the early 1990s, a time when public interest in GDR culture hit an all-time low, most of its material legacy was to be discarded. Aware that a unique cultural heritage was earmarked for destruction, the former music producer Volkmar Andrä intervened to preserve decommissioned recordings and files. With assistance from Sven Kube, an academic historian who has reconstructed Deutsche Schallplatten’s evolution, these materials were transferred to UMass Amherst.

Comprised chiefly of sound recordings and text files, but featuring other media types, this collection offers unique insights into the music life of the German Democratic Republic (GDR) between the early 1960s and the country’s demise in 1990.

A resident of New Braintree, Massachusetts, Carol Andrews became interested in the work of gravestone carvers when working on the history of her local cemetery. She has subsequently conducted research on the history and production of carvers from central and western Massachusetts during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The Andrews Collection contains photographs and research notes arranged in alphabetical order regarding the work of identified Massachusetts carvers. Among the names represented in the collection are Abercrombie, Codner, Colburn, Daugherty, Geyer, Hartwell, Hastings, Kenfield, Kilburn, Kinney, Lewis, New, Park, Pool, Pratt, Rankin, Reed, Sikes, White, and Woods. Andrews assembled more comprehensive representations of the work of the Soules (Beza Sr. and Jr., Coomer, et al.), William Young, and Thomas Harmon. The collection also includes some correspondence with Vincent Luti and Robert Drinkwater relating to her research.

Priest, lawyer, activist, war veteran, devoted father, and music lover Nigel Lyon Andrews lived a full and varied life. Born in New England May 24, 1921, he attended Yale University before becoming an Air Corps Captain in World War II. After his service, Nigel returned to New England to earn his law degree before being called to priesthood; a calling her pursued until his retirement and death in 2006. His wife, Constance Doane Young Andrews, born June 1, 1921, was a dedicated and passionate musician, choral director, organist, sailor, spouse, mother, grand and great-grandmother, and mentor who was active in her local communities before her own passing on June 17, 2018.

The collection spans almost 200 years and includes a variety of other family members and their stories and effects. The bulk of the collection is correspondence and family papers/materials such as diaries, notebooks, legal, work, and school papers, and photographs.