The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
CredoResearch digital collections in Credo

Collections: B

Belanger, J. William, 1907-1986

J. William Belanger Papers

1932-1986
3 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: MS 117

A leader in organized labor, William Belanger began as an organizer for the AFL’s United Textile Workers in 1932, eventually becoming the New England Regional Director and International Vice President of the TWUA and in 1958, the first President of the Massachusetts AFL-CIO.

The Belanger Papers provide insight into the long career in labor activism, and include correspondence, writings, subject files, and printed materials. Of particular interest is a series of four oversized scrapbooks that cover Belanger’s career from 1934 through his final position as Director of the Massachusetts Department of Employment Security. These are especially enlightening on labor’s political activities, the CIO’s success in thwarting anti-labor referenda in 1948, and the efforts to expel Communists from the labor movement.

Subjects

Elections--Massachusetts--History--20th centuryLabor leaders--New England--BiographyLabor unions--MassachusettsMassachusetts--Politics and government--1865-1950New England--Economic conditions--20th centuryTextile Workers Organizing CommitteeTextile Workers Union of AmericaTextile industry--MassachusettsTextile workers--Labor unions--New England

Contributors

Belanger, J. William, 1907-1986

Types of material

PhotographsScrapbooks
Belcher Family

Belcher Family Account Books

1847-1858
2 vols. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 208 bd

Owners of a butcher shop in Foxborough, Massachusetts. Includes customer names, prices of meat, form of payment (principally cash), and Belcher family information.

Subjects

Belcher familyButchers--Massachusetts--FoxboroughConsumers--Massachusetts--FoxboroughDiet--Massachusetts--FoxboroughFoxborough (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryMeat--Prices--Massachusetts--FoxboroughShopping--Massachusetts--Foxborough

Contributors

Belcher, Lewis T., b. 1798Belcher, Lewis W., b. 1826

Types of material

Account books
Belchertown Sentinel

Belchertown Sentinel Collection

1915-2003
1283 digital items
Call no.: MS 845

A weekly community newspaper from a small town in western Massachusetts, the Belchertown Sentinel began publication in 1915. Featuring a mix of news and features focusing on Belchertown and adjoining communities of Amherst and Granby, the Sentinel was edited and published by its founder, Lewis H. Blackmer, for fifty years. Since changing hands twice in the period 1965-1975, the Sentinel has been published by Turley Publications. In 2013, with the centennial of the paper drawing near, the publisher and the Belchertown Historical Society cooperated on a project to digitize 88 years of the Sentinel funded by a grant from the Community Preservation Committee.

The Sentinel collection consists of digital copies only of the newspaper from its founding through 2003.

Subjects

Amherst (Mass.)--History--20th centuryBelchertown (Mass.)--History--20th centuryGranby (Mass.)--History--20th centuryNewspapers--Massachusetts--Belchertown
Belchertown State School Friends Association

Belchertown State School Friends Association Records

1954-1986
30 boxes 20 linear feet
Call no.: MS 302

The Belchertown State School Friends Association was established in 1954 to promote improved conditions at Belchertown State School and better treatment of “retarded” or “mentally challenged” citizens in Massachusetts more generally. The School was formally opened in 1922 as an institution to train children with developmental disabilities and prepare them for integration into society. By the 1960s, conditions at the school had deteriorated to a degree detrimental to the residents, precipitating a string of lawsuits, beginning with Ricci v. Greenblatt in 1972, eventually leading to closure of the facility in 1992.

The bulk of the School’s Friends Association collection consists of records of court appearances, briefs, the consent decree, and related materials, along with reports and correspondence relating to Massachusetts v. Russell W. Daniels, Ricci v. Greenblatt (later Ricci v. Okin), and other cases. Accompanying the legal files are clippings and photocopied newspaper articles; speeches; newsletters; draft of agreements; and scrapbooks.

The Massachusetts State Archives has a small amount of records related to Belchertown State School. They are housed under the Health and Human Services division in the archives — see the archives collection guide for Health and Human Services at https://www.sec.state.ma.us/arc/arcpdf/collection-guides/FA_HS.pdf. There may be more records related to the Belchertown State School under the Dept. of Mental Health and Dept. of Mental Retardation records groups, listed in the same collection guide as above. Note: Mental health client information is restricted by statutory provision MGLA c123, s36. Mental retardation client information is restricted by statutory provision MGLA c123B, s 17. For conditions of access, consult the Massachusetts State Archives.

Subjects

Persons with mental disabilities--Institutional care--MassachusettsRicci, Robert Simpson

Contributors

Belchertown State SchoolRicci, Benjamin
Belfast Area Friends Meeting

Belfast Area Friends Meeting Records

1990-1994
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 B454

The Belfast (Maine) Area Friends Meeting began as an independent worship group under the care of Vassalboro Quarterly Meeting in 1982. Two years after being set off as a monthly meeting in 1988, it changed its name slightly to the current Belfast Area Friends Meeting.

The Belfast Area Friends Meetings is sparsely documented, with only three state of the society reports from the early 1990s and an address listing of members.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017

Subjects

Belfast (Me.)--Religious life and customsQuakers--MaineSociety of Friends--Maine

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends
Bell, Upton

Upton Bell Collection

1915-2015
15 boxes
Call no.: 1120

Upton Bell is the son of Bert Bell, National Football League Commissioner from 1946 to 1959. Growing up inside the early NFL, Upton witnessed his father’s leadership: implementing a proactive anti-gambling policy; negotiating a merger with the All-America Football Conference (AAFC); bringing professional football successfully to television; creating the NFL Draft; and initiating the Sudden Death rule, which launched the meteoric rise in the popularity of professional football. Bell’s mother, Frances Upton, was a Broadway actress and movie star of the 1920s and 1930s and funded Bert Bell’s creation of the Philadelphia Eagles. Bell’s grandfather, John C. Bell, helped found the NCAA and served on the Walter Camp Intercollegiate Football Rules Committee which negotiated with President Teddy Roosevelt to save college football.

Upton Bell’s career in professional football began in the early 1960s working at the Baltimore Colts training camp and ticket office, advancing to head scout by the late 1960s. Bell served the team through two NFL Championships and two Super Bowls, winning Super Bowl V in 1971. After leaving the Colts, Bell was hired as general manager of the Boston Patriots, encouraging their name change to the New England Patriots. He then bought the Charlotte Hornets, a team in the short-lived World Football League. Soon after the WFL folded, Bell began a broadcasting career in Boston, where for more than 40 years he has been a host and commentator covering the country’s top newsmakers. He is a three-time AP Talk Radio Award winner and author of Present at the Creation: My Life in the NFL and the Rise of America’s Game (University of Nebraska Press, 2017).

Bell’s collection of sport artifacts and memorabilia from his and his father’s careers in professional sport includes hundreds of items, with a selection of items, including the Baltimore Colts Super Bowl ring, on permanent exhibit in the Special Collections reading room.

The digital exhibit “Upton Bell Collection: In the huddle of football history” includes essays on family history, Upton Bell’s career, and a selection of digitized items.

Gift of Upton Bell, 2018.

Subjects

Football--HistoryNational Football League--HistorySuper Bowl--History

Contributors

Bell, Bert, 1894-1959Bell, UptonUpton, Frances

Types of material

CorrespondenceMemorabiliaNewspaper clippings
Benedek, Tom

Tom Benedek Collection

1967-1973
3 boxes 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: PH 073
Depiction of Passengers on a plane, ca.1973
Passengers on a plane, ca.1973

A screenwriter and visual artist, Tom Benedek majored in film as an undergraduate at UMass Amherst, earning the distinction of becoming the first graduate of the Bachelor’s Degree with Individual Concentration program in 1971. From early in his college career, Benedek worked as a photographer the newspaper, the Collegian, while studying with faculty such as Jerome Liebling (at Hampshire College) and Jerrold Maddox (at Amherst), and he spent his junior year in Paris studying at the Ecole du Louvre and l’Institut de Formation Cinematographique. In his career in Hollywood, he has written screenplays for the movies Cocoon, Zeus and Roxanne, and The Adventures of Pinocchio and worked with Robert Zemeckis, Lawrence Kasdan, Ron Howard, Martin Scorsese, Sydney Pollack, Richard Rush, and Harold Ramis, among many others. He is a member of the Writers Branch of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences and teaches screenwriting at the University of Southern California and the University of Michigan.

The hundreds of images in the Benedek Collection document the development of a talented photographer. While some of the images stem from his work for the Collegian, most were taken on his own around campus and beyond, including trips to Boston and New Orleans, and his year studying abroad in Paris following shortly after the events of 1968. The collection consists entirely of 35mm black and white negatives and color slides.

Gift of Tom Benedek, 2016

Subjects

Amherst (Mass.)--PhotographsBoston (Mass.)--PhotographsNew Orleans (La.)--PhotographsParis (France)--PhotographsUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--Photographs

Types of material

Photographs
Benes, Peter

Peter Benes Collection

ca.1975-1986
1 box 1 linear feet
Call no.: PH 017
Depiction of Soule Fishwing
Soule Fishwing

Peter Benes might be called the father of the Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS). In 1976, he organized a meeting in Dublin, New Hampshire, of people interested in colonial gravestones, naming the group the Dublin Seminar. Following a committee meeting in December 1976, the group met again in the summer 1977 to organize as the AGS. Benes served as Treasurer in 1977 and Archives Officer in 1978. He received the Forbes Award of the AGS in 1979 for his role in founding the organization and in recognition of the contributions made to gravestone studies by his first book, The Masks of Orthodoxy: Folk Gravestone Carving in Plymouth County, Massachusetts, 1689-1805 (1977). He is currently (2009) Director of the Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife at Boston University.

The Benes Collection contains 2,826 black and white photographic prints documenting a majority of the eighteenth century grave markers in southeastern Massachusetts, taken for his book The Masks of Orthodoxy. The images were taken in Plymouth and surrounding counties.

Subjects

Sepulchral monuments--MassachusettsStone carving--Massachusetts

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesBenes, Peter

Types of material

Photographs
Bennett, John W., collector

John W. Bennett Labor Collection

ca. 1880-2000
118 boxes
Call no.: MS 443
Depiction of

Labor historian John W. Bennett has researched the history of the labor movement since his days as an undergraduate at the University of Massachusetts (Class of 1952). A born collector, he began accumulating memorabilia associated with unions, drawn to their potential as a visual record of labor iconography and self-representation.

Extending back to the 1880s, the Bennett Collection includes examples from around the country, but with a particularly strong representation of New England unions between the mid-1930s and mid-1970s.

Subjects

Labor unions--Massachusetts

Contributors

Bennett, John W

Types of material

BadgesButtons (Information artifacts)EphemeraRealia
Bennington Monthly Meeting of Friends

Bennington Monthly Meeting of Friends Records

1958-2004
4 boxes 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 B466

Beginning as an independent worship group in Arlington, Vermont, in 1949, the Bennington Monthly Meeting settled in Bennington in about 1959. It has been affiliated with the Northwest Quarterly Meeting in 1962, and two monthly meetings have been set off from it since: Putney (1969) and Wilderness (1978). Bennington has also cared for worship groups in Pawlet (1988-1989), Putney (1964-1968), and Williamstown, Mass. (1989-1992), as well as the Wilderness Preparative Meeting in Plymouth, Vt. (1977-1978).

Although lacking the earliest years of the meeting minutes, the records of the Bennington Friends Meeting contain consistent coverage between 1970 and 2004, along with a handful of state of the society reports and a disbound scrapbook that includes some details on the early years.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017

Subjects

Bennington (Vt.)--Religious life and customsQuakers--VermontSociety of Friends--Vermont

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)Newsletters