Collections: H

Born in 1792, Ashley Hubbard was raised on a farm in Sunderland, Mass., and spent a life invested in agriculture. Prospering in both work and family, Hubbard owned one hundred acres of land at the height of his operations and had a successful, though relatively small scale run of livestock, including horses, oxen, milk cows, and sheep.

In this slender volume, a combination daybook and memorandum book, Hubbard maintained a careful record of breeding and maintaining his livestock. Succinctly, the memos make note of the dates and places on which he serviced horses, took heifers or cows to bulls, or pastured his stock, and there are occasional notices on sheep.

Born in Torringford, Connecticut in 1806, and educated at the Torringford Academy and Berkshire Medical College (MD 1827), Erasmus Darwin Hudson became well known as a radical reformer. While establishing his medical practice in Bloomfield, Conn., and later in Springfield, Mass., and New York City, Hudson emerged as a force in the antislavery struggle, hewing to the non-resistant line. Touring the northeastern states as a lecturing agent for the Connecticut Anti-Slavery Society and general agent of the American Anti-Slavery Society, he regularly contributed articles to antislavery periodicals and befriended many of the movement’s leaders. In his professional life as an orthopedic surgeon, Hudson earned acclaim for his contributions to the development of modern prosthetics. During the carnage of the Civil War, he introduced remarkable improvements in artificial limb technology and innovations in the treatment of amputations and battle trauma, winning awards for his contributions at international expositions in Paris (1867) and Philadelphia (1876). Hudson died of pneumonia on Dec. 31, 1880.

Spanning five generations of a family of physicians and social reformers, the Hudson Family Papers include particularly significant content for Erasmus Darwin Hudson documenting his activities with the Connecticut and American Anti-Slavery societies. Hudson’s journals and writings are accompanied by a rich run of correspondence with antislavery figures such as Abby Kelley, Wendell Phillips, Frederick Douglass, William Lloyd Garrison, Isaac Hopper, and Samuel May and a unique antislavery campaign map of New York state and surrounding areas (1841). Hudson’s medical career and that of his son Erasmus Darwin Hudson, Jr. (1843-1887), a thoracic physician, is equally well documented through correspondence, medical notes, and handwritten drafts of lectures, with other material ranging from family records and writings of and other family members to genealogies of the Hudson, Shaw, Clarke, Fowler, and Cooke families, and printed material, memorabilia, clipping and photographs.

A 1967 graduate of Springfield College, Judith Collings Hudson earned doctoral degree in 2001 through the UMass Amherst School of Education for her dissertation, Freedom teachers: Northern White women teaching in southern Black communities, 1860s and 1960s. The project was an ambitious comparative study of the experiences of White teachers, mostly northern women, living and teaching in southern Black communities during the Reconstruction era south and those who taught during Mississippi Freedom Summer.

The Hudson Papers focus closely on the second half of her dissertation, relating to the Freedom Schools and educational initiatives associated with the Mississippi Freedom Summer and the civil rights movement. In addition to her dissertation, research notes, some correspondence, and background materials, the collection includes an important array of audio interviews with teachers and participants in the Freedom Summer, most of which have been transcribed.

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.”

The proprietor of a general store and postmaster in Wendell Depot, Mass., W. W. Hunt carried on a thriving business for a small Franklin County town during the 1880s and 1890s. Selling a range of dry goods, foodstuffs, and other goods, Hunt catered to residents in Wendell and neighboring communities up and down the Miller River.

An extensive ledger, marked No. 5, the W.W. Hunt account book contains records of sales of a surprising range of dry goods and foodstuffs, snaths and scythes, stamps and envelopes, and other goods useful to a rural community. Although most of Hunt’s customers were individuals seemingly purchasing for personal consumption, he also sold goods to the Farley and Goddard Wood Paper Companies, the Ladies Aid Society, and the town of Wendell, with some accounts marked “Town Farm.”

Actress, producer/director, theater company founder, teacher, activist, avid gardener, and devoted family-member, colleague and friend, Catharine Sargent Huntington was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts on December 29, 1887. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1911, and taught English and Theater at The Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut from 1911 to approximately 1917. By the end of 1918 she had begun her theater career in earnest, working as a dramatic coach in the Boston area. In January 1919, she became the Radcliffe College representative to the Wellesley unit of the Y.M.C.A., working in France on war reconstruction before returning to Massachusetts to continue her work with the theater, particularly experimental theater, which was to endure for the next 60-plus years through her patronage, and her many performances, productions, and theater companies.

Spanning as it does almost a century from the late 1800s to the late 1900s, this collection captures Catharine Sargent Huntington’s many interests, professional and personal activities and connections, and close family relationships, through more than 2,300 pieces of personal and business correspondence; photographs; photographic negatives; theater programs; scripts; original manuscripts of her poems, speeches, stage notes, and theater production scenarios; newspapers and newspaper clippings; estate and will information; organizational documents of the many organizations she helped direct; personal financial documents; and other printed material and items of ephemera.

Born on December 13, 1887, Gladys Theodora Parrish to wealthy birthright Quaker Alfred Parrish and Katharine Broadwood Jennings. Gladys married Constant Davis Huntington on October 17, 1916, who had been chairman of the London office of G. P. Putnam’s publishing company since 1905. The couple first resided in Hyde Park Gardens in London and then at Amberley House in Sussex. They had one daughter on January 11, 1922, Georgiana Mary Alfreda (Urquhart). Gladys Huntington wrote many plays and novels, including the bestselling book Madame Solario, published anonymously in 1956. Other published titles include; Carfrae’s Comedy (1915, novel), Barton’s Folly (1924, play), and Turgeniev (c. 1930, play). She died at St. George’s Hospital (Westminster) on May 31, 1959, at the age of 71.

The Gladys Parrish Huntington Papers is primarily composed of the correspondence of Gladys Huntington with her mother, Katharine “Kate” Parrish, husband Constant, daughter Alfreda, various friends, relatives, and professional contacts. Additionally, the collection contains a sizable amount of Gladys’ correspondence and traded manuscripts, short stories, poetry, and drafts with fellow authors such as Leo Myers, Nicolo Tucci, Helen Granville-Barker, Viola Mynell, Eric Clough Taylor, Cynthia Asquith, Clifford Bax, and others. Many of her own manuscripts and typed drafts of novels and plays (Madame Solario, Turgeniev, her unfinished final work, The Ladies’ Mile), along with childhood writings, photo albums, datebooks, and diaries spanning her lifetime are contained within the collection.

A pioneer in the chemistry of protists, Seymour H. Hunter (1911-2003) was among the founders of the Haskins Laboratories in 1935, helping to establish its programs in microbiology, genetics, and nutrition (now affiliated with Pace University). His diverse research interests centered on protist nutrition, and he is credited with significant advances in understanding the ecology of marine plankton and the development of culturing methods for algae and protists. Stemming from his work on nutrition in Euglena, he developed microbiological assays for the determination of vitamin B12 in human tissues, and other research was foundational for understanding of the role of chelation for metals in culture systems and clinical use. Sometimes called a “protozoology missionary,” Hutner was a founding member of the Society of Protozoologists And was noted for his ability to recruit and inspire students and colleagues.

The Hutner Papers contain a significant run of scientific correspondence concentrated in the 1970s and 1980s, relating to Hutner’s research, publications, and the Haskins Lab, along with a small amount of material relating to his position at Pace University and some personal correspondence.

Little is known about Dan Hyde other than he appears to have been a resident of Ontario County, New York, during the period of the Second Great Awakening, probably in either the town of Farmington or Manchester.

This small paper-bound booklet includes some miscellaneous accounts along with three poems, “The Genesee song,” “Remember Lot’s wife,” and “Encouragement to pray.”

John Edward Higginson retired from the Department of History, University of Massachusetts Amherst in 2024, where he taught since 1989. Higginson received a B.A. in Journalism from Northwestern in Chicago, where he was also a student activist alongside John Bracey (UMass W.E.B. Du Bois Department of African American Studies) in 1968. He went on to receive his Ph.D. in History from the University of Michigan, with research focusing on the history of Southern Africa and comparative labor history. His publications include The Hidden Cost of Industrialization: State Violence and the Economic Transformation of Southern Africa, 1900-1980 (forthcoming), Collective Violence and the Agrarian Origins of South African Apartheid, 1900-1948 (Cambridge University Press, 2014), and A Working Class in the Making: The Union Miniere du Haut-Katanga and the African Mineworkers, 1907-1949 (University of Wisconsin Press, 1989). In 1993-94, he was the recipient of the Research and Writing Fellowship from the MacArthur Foundation.

The John Higginson Papers include documents collected from the South African National Archives, the Historical Papers of the University of Witwatersrand, the Sterling Library at Yale University, Archives africaine in Brussels, Belgium, and Arquivó Historico Ultramarino in Lisbon, Portugal. The papers also include published articles by Professor Higginson and the manuscript versions of his monographs A Working Class in the Making: Belgian Colonial Labor Policy, Private Enterprise and the African Worker, 1900-1947 (Madison, Wisconsin: University of Wisconsin Press, 1989) and Collective Violence and the Agrarian Origins of South African Apartheid, 1900-1948 (Cambridge and New York: Cambridge University Press, 2015). It includes correspondence, class material, readings, lecture notes, course syllabi and materials for his teaching in the History Department, copies of research materials from South African and Congo archives, journal articles on South Africa and Katanga, WPA slave narratives, and minutes and notes from Goodwin AME Zion Church 1993-2005. It also contains William Burr’s dissertation on the Cold War and the Marshall Plan in Europe. These papers were a gift of John Higginson, 2024.