Collections: H

A diplomatic and military historian, Waldo H. Heinrichs was the product of a family with a unique global perspective. A descendant of missionaries to Hawaii and South India and son of a man who led the YMCA mission in Palestine, Heinrichs grew up traveling internationally. After military service during the Second World War, he received both a bachelor’s degree (1949) and doctorate (1960) in history from Harvard, sandwiching in post-baccalaureate study at Brasenose College, Oxford, and stint in the foreign service and advertising. A long-time member of the faculty at Temple University, he has written extensively on U.S. foreign relations in the twentieth century. His first book, Joseph Grew, American Ambassador (1966), was awarded the Allan Nevins Prize and in later works he explored both the diplomatic and military history of the Pacific.

A tireless researcher, Heinrichs left a rich record of correspondence, writing, and notes relating to his work as an historian, and especially to his work on the diplomatic and military background of the Pacific during the Second World War. His collection, however, is still broader, including content relating to his own military service during and after the war and fascinating materials relating to his family. Of particular note are records of his father, Waldo Huntley Heinrichs, including copies of a diary kept as a fighter pilot in the 95th Aero Squadron during the First World War and a memoir of his experiences being shot down and taken as a prisoner of war, along with later materials documenting his YMCA service, and his on faculty at Middlebury College and as an intelligence officer with the 8th Fighter Command during the Second World War.

Three women stand outside under a banner which reads "The Helping Hand Society bid you come and rest."

Formed in 1887, the Helping Hand Society began as a missionary society for young girls who learned about the world (foreign missions) while also learning how to sew, developed by Emily Graves Williston. Within that same year, the Emily Mission Circle transformed into The Young Ladies’ Missionary Society, a society which became devoted to charitable work in Easthampton. The Society’s name was changed to the Helping Hand Society in 1894, and the group was incorporated in 1913. In 1919, the Society started operating out of a house purchased and endowed by Franklin W. Pitcher. The Society went on to establish a Visiting Nurse program, providing room for the nurse in the house, as well as an apartment rented out to caretakers, and at one time the Society operated a Benefit Shop. Membership in the Society has fluctuated over the years, and while specific projects may have been discontinued over time, the Society continues forward with its mission to provide help to those in need by donating time and resources to Easthampton and the surrounding communities that serve Easthampton residents.

The collection documents the history of the Helping Hand Society from its inception to around 2017. This includes minutes and annual reports, by-laws, and ledger books. There are also scrapbooks and photo albums, the framed incorporation document, and the original sign that adorned the Helping Hand House.

The tanner Phinehas Hemenway was born in Bolton, Worcester County, Mass., in September 1794, the fourth of six children born to Simeon and Mary (Goss) Hemenway, but he resided nearly his entire adult life in the Franklin County hill town of Shutesbury. Although little is known about his life, Hemenway appears to have married twice, to a Polly or Mary Gray in about 1816, and to the widow Mary Sears of Prescott in Aril 1838. Hemenway died in Shutesbury on December 21, 1850.

With approximately 150 pages of brief, but closely written records of daily transactions, the Hemenway daybook documents the range of activities of rural tannery in antebellum Massachusetts. Along with the names of clients, the date and amount, and a brief notation on whether the work was for dressing, tanning, currying, or (apparently) the sale of finished product, Hemenway records work in a variety of leathers, from calf to sheep, hog, and horse and from sole leather to upper leather, sometimes specified as for shoes. The daybook also includes credit entries for labor performed, the purchase of hemlock bark or hides, or more rarely for cash to settle accounts.

A farmer, activist, and writer, Elizabeth Henderson has exerted an enormous influence on the movement for organic and sustainable agriculture since the 1970s. Although Henderson embarked on an academic career after completing a doctorate at Yale on the Russian poet Vladimir Mayakovsky in 1974, by 1980, she abandoned academia for Unadilla Farm in Gill, Mass., where she learned organic techniques for raising vegetables. Relocating to Rose Valley Farm in Wayne County, NY, in 1989, she helped establish Genesee Valley Organic CSA (GVOCSA), one of the first in the country, and she continued the relationship with the CSA after founding Peacework Organic Farm in Newark, NY, in 1998. Deeply involved in the organic movement at all levels, Henderson was a founding member of the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA) in Massachusetts, has served on the Board of Directors for NOFA NY, the NOFA Interstate Council, SARE (Sustainable Agriculture Research and Education) Northeast, and many other farming organizations at the state, regional, and national level, and she has been an important voice in national discussions on organic standards, fair trade, and agricultural justice. Among other publications, Henderson contributed to and edited The Real Dirt: Farmers Tell about Organic and Low-Input Practices in the Northeast and co-wrote Sharing the Harvest: A Citizen’s Guide to Community Supported Agriculture (1999, with Robyn Van En) and A Manual of Whole Farm Planning (2003, with Karl North).

Offering insight into the growth of the organic agriculture movement and the organizations that have sustained it, the Henderson Papers document Henderson’s involvement with NOFA, SARE, and the GVOCSA, along with her work to establish organic standards and promote organic practices. Henderson’s broad social and political commitments are represented by a rich set of letters from her work educating prisoners in the late 1970s, including correspondence with Tiyo Attallah Salah-El and John Clinkscales, and with the American Independent Movement in New Haven during the early 1970s, including a nearly complete run of the AIM Bulletin and its successor Modern Times.

Born into an affluent Reform Jewish family in Cincinnati in 1913, Carl Henry Levy studied philosophy under Alfred North Whitehead at Harvard during the height of the Great Depression. A brilliant student during his time at Harvard, a member of Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in the class of 1934, Henry emerged as a radical voice against social inequality and the rise of fascism, and for a brief time, he was a member of the Communist Party. Two days before the attack in Pearl Harbor in December 1941, Henry met Edith Entratter, the daughter of Polish immigrants from the Lower East Side of New York, and barely three weeks later, married her. Shortly thereafter, however, he dropped his last name and enlisted in the military, earning a coveted spot in officer’s candidate school. Although he excelled in school, Henry was singled out for his radical politics and not allowed to graduate, assigned instead to the 89th Infantry Division, where he saw action during the Battle of the Bulge and liberation of the Ohrdruf concentration camp, and was awarded a Bronze Star. After the war, the Henrys started Lucky Strike Shoes in Maysville, Ky., an enormously successful manufacturer of women’s footwear, and both he and Edith worked as executives until their retirement in 1960. Thereafter, the Henrys enjoyed European travel and Carl took part in international monetary policy conferences and wrote under the name “Cass Sander.” He served as a Board member of AIPAC, the American Institute for Economic Research, the Foundation for the Study of Cycles, among other organizations. His last 17 years of life were enlivened by a deepening engagement with and study of traditional Judaism and he continued to express a passion for and to inform others about world affairs and politics through a weekly column he started to write at age 85 for the Algemeiner Journal. Edith Henry died in Sept. 1984, with Carl following in August 2001.

The centerpiece of the Henry collection is an extraordinary series of letters written during the Second World War while Carl was serving in Europe with the 89th Infantry. Long, observant, and exceptionally well written, the letters offer a unique perspective on the life of a soldier rejected for a commission due to his political beliefs, with a surprisingly detailed record of his experiences overseas.

Digitized travel films of pre-World War II Europe available online as part of the Carl Henry Collection at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Recognized for her coverage of historic events and personalities, the photographer Diana Mara Henry took the first steps toward her career in 1967 when she became photo editor for the Harvard Crimson. After winning the Ferguson History Prize and graduating from Harvard with a degree in government in 1969, Henry returned to New York to work as a researcher with NBC News and as a general assignment reporter for the Staten Island Advance, but in 1971 she began to work as a freelance photographer. Among many projects, she covered the Democratic conventions of 1972 and 1976 and was selected as official photographer for both the National Commission on the Observance of International Women’s Year and the First National Women’s Conference in 1977, and while teaching at the International Center for Photography from 1974-1979, she developed the community workshop program and was a leader in a campaign to save the Alice Austen House. Her body of work ranges widely from the fashion scene in 1970s New York and personal assignments for the family of Malcolm Forbes and other socialites to political demonstrations, cultural events, and photoessays on one room schoolhouses in Vermont and everyday life in Brooklyn, France, Nepal, and Bali. Widely published and exhibited, her work is part of permanent collections at institutions including the Schlesinger Library, the Library of Congress, Smithsonian, and the National Archives.

The Henry collection is a rich evocation of four decades of political, social, and cultural change in America beginning in the late 1960s as seen through the life of one photojournalist. This diverse body of work is particularly rich in documenting the women’s movement, second wave feminism, and the political scene in the 1970s. Henry left a remarkable record of women in politics, with dozens of images of Bella Abzug, Elizabeth Holtzman, Shirley Chisholm, Liz Carpenter, Betty Friedan, Jane Fonda, and Gloria Steinem. The collection includes images of politicians at all levels of government, celebrities, writers, and scholars, and coverage of important events including demonstrations by Vietnam Veterans Against the War, the Women’s Pentagon Action, and marches for the ERA. The many hundreds of exhibition and working prints in the collection are accompanied by the complete body of Henry’s photographic negatives and slides, along with an array of ephemera, correspondence, and other materials relating to her career.

See the exhibit Photographer: DMH

Born in Amherst, Mass., in 1788, Samuel Henry became a relatively well to do justice of the peace, merchant, landowner, and entrepreneur from the Quabbin towns of Prescott and Shutesbury, Massachusetts. Predeceased by his wife Cynthia, and three daughters, he died on April 24, 1862 and is buried in Shutesbury.

The nine surviving volumes of Henry’s contain descriptions of his duties as justice of the peace, a book of deeds and mortgages from local real estate transactions, account books of sales in his general store and from his palm leaf hat business, and notes of accounts with individuals.

William E. Heronemus underwent a radical transformation during his tenure as Professor of Civil Engineering at the University. After serving in the U.S. Navy, engineering the construction of submarines from 1941 until his retirement in 1965, Heronemus disavowed his work with nuclear energy and joining the University faculty in 1967, dedicated his life to the study of alternative energy. Born in Madison, Wisconsin, Heronemus earned his B.S. from then United States Naval Academy and two M.S.s (Naval Architecture and Marine Engineering), from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Heronemus was invited to the University to help develop a research program in Ocean Engineering and focused his work on alternative energy to sources that could make use of oceanic power. William Heronemus retired from the University in 1978 and died of cancer on November 2, 2002.

The William E. Heronemus Papers document his research in alternative energy and his quest for harnessing wind and thermal power from the ocean through technical reports on alternative energy systems written from 1972 to 1974.

A particle physicist educated at Johns Hopkins (PhD, 1965), Stanley S. Hertzbach joined the Physics faculty at UMass Amherst in 1965. Over the course of his career, he took part in high-energy experimental work at Brookhaven National Laboratory, the CERN hadron collider, the Cornell electron synchrotron, and beginning in 1979, at the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory (Stanford Linear Accelerator Center). With his colleague Richard Koffler, Hertzbach joined the SLD collaboration at SLAC in 1986 studying Z particles, and the BaBar (B Meson) group in 1994. A major contributor to the SLD “beamline group,” Hertzbach took part in the BaBar calorimeter beam test and in testing of its calorimeter modules. He was an active member of the SLD advisory group and chaired the SLAC Users Organization (SLUO) in the 1990s. Hertzbach’s contributions to UMass included service on several committees relating to student achievement, including a stint as Undergraduate Advising Dean of the College of Natural Sciences and Mathematics. Hertzbach retired from UMass in 2009.

The Hertzbach collection consists of two distinct parts: six laboratory notebooks kept while conducting research at SLAC (1987-2002), and approximately 0.5 linear feet of records from university committees on which Hertzbach sat (e.g. the Space and Calendar, 1977-1983).

Harvard educated and a veteran of the American Revolution, Benjamin Heywood was a jurist and prosperous farmer from Worcester, Mass.

Includes documentation of civic and farming activities, such as which animals were put to pasture on what date, which pastures were leased to others, the names and terms of indentured laborers, and the sale/exchange of agricultural products to customers such as Isaiah Thomas, William Eaton, Nathaniel Stowell, Ithamar Smith, and Jonathan Rice. Also contains references to family members.