Collections: B

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

Sigrid Brauner was born in Hofheim, Germany, earning her BA from the University of Frankfurt before immigrating to the United States. Brauner completed her PhD in German literature at the University of California Berkeley in 1989 and later the same year joined the faculty at UMass Amherst in the Department of Germanic Languages and Literature. Brauner, who served on the executive committee of the Women’s Studies Program, remained at UMass until her death in December 1992.

The papers reflect Sigrid Brauner’s interest in race and gender as well as her research in anthropology and theology. “Witches: Myth and Reality,” the popular course Brauner taught during the fall 1992 semester, is represented in the collection along with other notes for research and teaching. Professional correspondence as well as political and social change periodicals comprise the remainder of the Brauner Papers. A fair portion of the collection is in German.

Born in Germany in 1923, Gerard Braunthal was a scholar of German politics and taught as a professor in the Political Science department from 1954. Before receiving his B.A. from Queens College in 1947, Braunthal served in intelligence during World War II, going on to receive his M.A. from the University of Michigan in 1948 and Ph.D from Columbia University in 1953. While studying at Columbia, Braunthal worked as an interviewer for US Air Force intelligence. An expert on the German Social Democratic party (SPD), Braunthal published extensively on modern German politics. His work on the subject was well regarded in Germany as well as the United States. In parallel to his academic research, Braunthal was also an anti-war and anti-nuclear activist, serving on the executive committees of both the Valley Peace Center and the Citizens for Participation in Political Action (CPPAX). Braunthal received the Order of Merit from the German government.

The collection includes Braunthal’s correspondence, article manuscripts and research materials, as well as pamphlets, form-letters, and broadsides relating to anti-Vietnam war activism, interspersed with a small amount of personal correspondence from his own antiwar activities. Among his research materials is a collection of interview transcripts with members of the Federation of German Industry (BDI). There is also a significant collection of documents from his involvement with local activist groups, which includes minutes, form-letters, reports, conference proceedings, and leaflets.

Frederick William Brazier (1852-1936) began his railroad career in 1877 as a car builder in his hometown of Boston, before working his way up the railroad business in Fitchburg, MA, where he was also involved with politics, including elected positions such as acting mayor of the city in 1893. He and his family then moved in 1893 to Chicago, IL, while he worked for the Illinois Central Railroad, and then left in 1899 for Yonkers, NY, where Brazier had an office in Grand Central Station while working for the New York Central Railroad. He concluded his career as Superintendent of Rolling Stock for the New York Central Railroad.

Brazier kept scrapbooks about the railroad throughout his life, and this collection includes two small (8×10) scrapbooks filled with clippings about the Fitchburg Railroad (and the town of Fitchburg in general), with a few pages about the New York Central Railroad. In addition to clippings, there is a small amount of related ephemera as well as personal items such as correspondence, Christmas cards, a few family photographs, and a 1904 pin recognizing Brazier as president of the Master Car Builders Association. Some scrapbook pages are stuck together and therefore inaccessible. A short biography of Brazier as well as his own essay, “My Railroad Service,” were included by the donor, a great-granddaughter of Brazier’s.

A prominent storekeeper in Northampton, Mass., at the turn of the nineteenth century, John Breck was born on April 20, 1770. Starting in business with his father as Robert Breck and Son from their store at the corner of Main and King Streets, Breck thrived dealing in “English and Hardware Goods” and “crockery and Glass ware.” According to historian Nancy Goyne Evans, he was recorded working with blacksmith Seth Pomeroy in 1800 supplying chair makers with imported and domestic turning tools.

Labeled on the cover “Petty debts B, Iron Accounts,” this volume of accounts includes records of a substantial business in selling iron and steel at the turn of the nineteenth century. Although the owner of the book is nowhere recorded, it has very tentatively been assigned to John Breck based on his signature on p. 101 (and p. 49), settling an account with the clockmaker Nathan Storrs. Most of the entries are brief, often for petty sums and often cryptic in nature, however a significant number note the sale of iron or occasionally steel.

Born into a wealthy and prominent family from Springfield, Mass., Daniel Chauncey Brewer became a prodigy in the antebellum nursery trade. While still in his teens, he was running a substantial traffic in fruits trees and ornamentals. After marrying in 1853, Brewer moved to Boston, where he died of an infection in 1862.

The accounts of Chauncey Brewer’s Springfield-based nursery operation record substantial sales of cherry, peach, apple, and fruit trees, ornamentals such as arbor vita, spruce, and rose, and seeds, vegetables, and grapes. The sales appear to have extended throughout southern New England, as far as Providence, and include charges from grafts and labor.

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

A long time teacher in the schools in Amherst, Mass., Marybeth Bridegam operated tour agency, Cross-Culture Inc., from the late 1980s through early 2000s. Cross-Culture ran small-group tours of locations around the world led by local tour leaders and specialized guides that were distinguished by itineraries that included sites outside the usual tourist routes.

The Bridegam collection consists of thousands of images taken by Bridegam during her travels, many in preparation for Cross Culture tour groups. Locations include China, Japan, Hong Kong, Australia, New Zealand, Scandinavia, and Russia.

Perched at the western boundary of Plymouth County, Bridgewater, Massachusetts, grew rapidly during the antebellum period, spurred by the growth of its industry. During the mid-nineteenth century, the town’s most valuable products revolved around the local iron industry, with large manufacturers like Lazell, Perkins, and Co. producing iron and heavy machinery as early as 1810.

The daybook of this unidentified trader and merchant in Bridgewater, Mass., reveals the quickening pace of economic activity connected to the burgeoning Plymouth County iron industry. While many of the transactions at the store are small purchases of consumable goods such as flour, fabric, sugar, tobacco, meats, and molasses, more substantial purchases ae interspersed throughout for bar iron, nails, metal plates, and other manufactured metal items.

In 1982, Eloise A. Brière received a grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for Humanities to conduct a series of oral histories with French Americans in Massachusetts. A noted scholar of Francophone communities, Brière interviewed 44 first- and second-generation immigrants of varied background, ranging from parish priests and nuns to former textile workers, activists in language preservation, and the Mayor of Holyoke.

The interviews in this collection, conducted mostly in French between August 8, 1982, and Jan. 18, 1983, document the lives and experiences of forty-four Franco-American residents of Massachusetts, concentrated in the areas around Easthampton and Lowell.

Ship’s captain and cobbler from Scituate, Massachusetts. Includes list of ship expenses (harbor master’s fees, wages, wharf fees, provisions, carpenter and blacksmith bills, and bills for loading labor, rigging, and mending the sails), debt accounts with individuals, and accounts for making and mending shoes and boots.

A prosperous family of merchants and landowners, the Brinleys were well ensconced among the social and political elite of colonial New England. Connected by marriage to other elite families in Rhode Island and Massachusetts — the Auchmutys, Craddocks, and Tyngs among them — the Brinleys were refined, highly educated, public spirited, and most often business-minded. Although many members of the family remained loyal to the British cause during the Revolution, the family retained their high social standing in the years following.

The Brinley collection includes business letters, legal and business records, wills, a fragment of a diary, documents relating to slaves, newspaper clippings, and a small number of paintings and artifacts. A descendent, Nancy Brinley, contributed a quantity of genealogical research notes and photocopies of Brinley family documents from other repositories. Of particular note in the collection is a fine nineteenth century copy of a John Smibert portrait of Deborah Brinley (1719), an elegant silver tray passed through the generations, and is a 1713 list of the library of Francis Brinley, which offers a foreshadowing of the remarkable book collection put together in the later nineteenth century by his descendant George Brinley.