The University of Massachusetts Amherst
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Litchfield Hills Monthly Meeting of Friends

Litchfield Hills Monthly Meeting of Friends Records

1979-1991
1 folder 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 L583

The Quaker Litchfield Hills Monthly Meeting began as a worship group in Watertown, Conn., that met under the care of Hartford Monthly Meeting from 1969 to 1974. Set off as a monthly meeting in 1975, the name was changed to Litchfield Hills in 1980. The meeting has been part of Connecticut Valley Quarter since its establishment.

The scant documentation of the Litchfield Hills Monthly Meeting consist solely of an incomplete run of meeting minutes from 1979-1984 and a state of the society report from 1980.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017

Subjects

Litchfield (Conn.)--Religious life and customsQuakers--ConnecticutSociety of Friends--Connecticut

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)
Lithuania

Lithuanian Revolution Collection

1973-1991
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1025
Depiction of Sajudis button, ca.1989
Sajudis button, ca.1989

The dissolution of the Soviet bloc after 1989 was hastened in the Baltic republics by mass popular resistance waged through non-violent cultural and political means. In Lithuania, the revolutionary efforts that began in the spring 1988 culminated in a formal declaration of independence in March 1990. After demands to submit to Soviet authority were ignored, the Soviets sent troops to occupy key buildings in Vilnius killing fourteen protesters in the process. In the face of a resilient resistance and international pressure, the Soviets held on to power for several months, until turmoil at home forced them to recognize Lithuanian independence on September 6, 1991.

This small collection contains a selection of publications dating roughly from the time of the Lithuanian revolution of 1988-1991. Along with a series of mostly pro-independence newspapers and magazines, the collection includes some interesting ephemera, including a series of scarce appeals for independence issued by Sajudis and their Latvian and Estonian partners, a pair of buttons, posters, fliers, and pamphlets. Although most of the materials are in Lithuanian, the collection includes a few written in Russian or English, and there are a few items relating to Lithuania reflecting a Soviet provenance.

Gift of James and Sibylle Fraser
Language(s): Litruseng

Subjects

Communism--LithuaniaLietuvos Persitvarkymo sajudisLithuania--History--1945-199

Types of material

Buttons (Information artifacts)Maps (Documents)NewspapersPosters
Livers, Susie D.

Susie D. Livers Papers

1903-1907
1 flat box 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: FS 122

Susie D. Livers arrived at Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1903 as a member of one of the college’s first co-ed classes. After graduating in 1907, Livers worked at Ginn & Company Publishers in Boston and then as a Detail Officer at the State School for Girls in Lancaster, Massachusetts.

Included in the scrapbook are handwritten personal correspondence in the form of letters, postcards, holiday cards, and telegrams; unidentified photographs; MAC report cards dated 1904 and 1907; class papers and a class notebook; and programs and tickets for sporting events, weddings, and campus socials. In the back of the scrapbook are 35 herbarium samples which include dried plants with notations of plant names as well as dates and locations indicating where the plants were found.

Subjects

Massachusetts Agricultural College--Students

Contributors

Livers, Susie D

Types of material

EphemeraHerbariaScrapbooks
Lloyd, Richard E., b. 1834

Richard E. Lloyd Daybook

1859-1862
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 229 bd

Born in Wales in 1833, Richard E. Lloyd found great financial success after migrating to Vermont in the 1850s. Beginning as the proprietor of a dry goods business in Fair Haven, Vermont, he diversified and expanded his holdings, eventually becoming a senior partner in the slate manufacturing firm Lloyd, Owens, and Co.

The daybooks from Richard Lloyd’s dry goods firm include numbered accounts of customers (many with Welsh surnames), lists of items purchased, price per measure, forms of payment (cash, goods, services, credit, making clothes), and the goods sold. Lloyd dealt in a typical range of goods found in a rural general store, including fabrics, ready-made clothes, eggs and dairy products, fruits and nuts, garden seeds, cutlery and tinware, and jewelry.

Subjects

Consumer goods--Vermont--Fair Haven--Prices--19th centuryFair Haven (Vt.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryFair Haven (Vt.)--History--19th centuryGeneral stores--Vermont--Fair HavenWelsh Americans--Vermont--Fair Haven--19th century

Contributors

Lloyd, Richard E.

Types of material

Daybooks
Locke, Samuel A.

Samuel A. Locke Account Book

1821-1829
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 168

Businessman from West Cambridge, Massachusetts with additional dealings in Charlestown, Quincy, Waltham, and Tyngsboro.

The volume includes lists of personal and business purchases, services provided for his family, and business services such as whitewashing, carting coal, sawing wood, carrying letters, collecting debts, relaying a brick fireplace, and “work loading Sloop Rapid,” and barter and cash transactions. References made to Locke’s involvement with Universalism and members of the Tufts family of Cambridge and Middlesex County.

Subjects

Arlington (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryBarter--Massachusetts--HistoryBuilding materials industry--Massachusetts--ArlingtonBuilding trades--Massachusetts--ArlingtonCharlestown (Boston, Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryQuincy (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryTufts familyTyngsboro (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryUniversalismUniversalist churches--United States--History--19th centuryWaltham (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th century

Contributors

Locke, Samuel A

Types of material

Account books
Loomis Communities

Loomis Communities Records

1909-2015 Bulk: 1980-2000
11 boxes 15.75 linear feet
Call no.: MS 685
Loomus House logo
Loomis House logo

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

In 1902, a group of residents of Holyoke, Mass., secured a charter for the Holyoke Home for Aged People, wishing to do “something of permanent good for their city” and provide a “blessing to the homeless.” Opened in March 1911 on two acres of land donated by William Loomis, the Holyoke Home provided long-term care of the elderly, and grew slowly for its first half century. After changing its name to Loomis House in 1969, in honor of the benefactor, Loomis began slowly to expand, moving to its present location in 1981 upon construction of the first continuing care retirement community in the Commonwealth. In 1988, the Board acquired a 27-acre campus in South Hadley on which it established Loomis Village; in 1999, it became affiliated with the Applewood community in Amherst; and in 2009, it acquired Reeds Landing in Springfield.
The Loomis Communities Records offer more than a century perspective on elder care and the growth of retirement communities in western Massachusetts. The collection includes a nearly complete run of the minutes of the Board of Directors from 1909 to the present, an assortment administrative and financial records, and some documentation of the experience of the communities’ residents, with the bulk of materials dating from the 1980s to the present. An extensive series of oral histories with residents of Loomis Village was conducted in 2010.

Subjects

Holyoke (Mass.)--HistoryHolyoke Home for Aged PeopleLoomis CommunitiesLoomis VillageOlder people--Care--MassachusettsRetirement communities--Massachusetts
Loomis, Lyman

Lyman Loomis Daybook

1836-1857
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 626 bd

Born on July 31, 1818, the fifth of eight children of Squire and Patience (Root) Loomis, Lyman Loomis spent his life as a farmer and agricultural worker in Westfield, Mass. Loomis married Elmina Hayes in March 1846, and died in May 1902.

A slender and rough hewn volume kept by a farm laborer, the Loomis account book contains sketchy records detailing work performed and crops tended, with occasional notes on commodities purchased.

Subjects

Agricultural laborers--Massachusetts--WestfieldWestfield (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th century

Contributors

Loomis, Lyman, 1818-1902

Types of material

Daybooks
Loring, George G. (Gid)

Gid Loring Collection

1947-1996
1 box 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1138

Jazz musician and collector George G. Loring, known as Gid, played the cornet with a number of bands including his own (Gid’s Giddy Gang), especially after retiring from a career in the financial industry. Although he never considered himself a professional musician, he kept busy playing professional and semi-professional gigs and casual jam sessions in the Boston area, occasionally in his own home in Manchester, Mass. In addition to jazz, he played swing and Dixieland. Also dedicated to the environment, he was a founder of the Manchester Conservation Trust in 1963.

This collection contains an assortment of material relating to and describing jazz music and performances mainly from the 1940s through the 1960s, including collections of letters by musicians Jim Wheaton and James Weaver (mostly written in the early 1990s), notes about Boston Jazz Society performances, and ephemera including programs and clippings, with an emphasis on Louis Armstrong.

Gift of George G. Loring, Dec. 2020

Subjects

Jazz musicians--Massachusetts

Types of material

CorrespondenceEphemeraNewsclippings
Ludwig, Allan I.

Allan I. Ludwig Collection

1956-1966
10 boxes 10 linear feet
Call no.: PH 034

An historian and photographer, Allan I. Ludwig’s book Graven Images: New England Stonecarving and Its Symbols, 1650-1815 (1966) played a critical role in the rise in interest in gravestone studies in the 1960s. Born in Yonkers, N.Y., in 1933, Ludwig received his PhD in art history from Yale in 1964 and became involved with the Association for Gravestone Studies beginning with the initial Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife in 1976. He received the AGS Forbes Award in 1980 in recognition of his contributions to gravestone studies. He has been a professor of art history at Dickinson College, Bloomfield College, Rhode Island School of Design, Yale University, and Syracuse University. In addition to his books Reflections Out of Time: A Portfolio of Photographs (1981) and Repulsion: Aesthetics of the Grotesque (1986), Ludwig has curated numerous art exhibitions and exhibited his own photographs worldwide.

The Ludwig Collection consists of many hundreds of photographs of New England and English gravemarkers organized either by the deceased’s name or by the town, as well as copies of all photos used in Graven Images. Also included in the collection is a copy of Ludwig’s dissertation on gravestone iconography and offprints of several of his articles.

Subjects

Sepulchral monuments--New England

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesLudwig, Allan I

Types of material

Photographs
Lyman Family Papers

Lyman Family Papers

1839-1942
7 boxes 2.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 634
Depiction of Edward H.R. and Catharine A. Lyman on their wedding day
Edward H.R. and Catharine A. Lyman on their wedding day

The descendants of Joseph Lyman (1767-1847) flourished in nineteenth century Northampton, Mass., achieving social prominence, financial success, and a degree of intellectual acclaim. Having settled in Northampton before 1654, just a generation removed from emigration, the Lymans featured prominently in the development of the Connecticut River Valley. A Yale-educated clerk of the Hampshire County courts, Joseph’s descendants included sons Joseph Lyman (an engineer and antislavery man) and Samuel Fowler Lyman (a jurist), and three Harvard-educated grandsons, Benjamin Smith Lyman (a geologist and traveler in Meiji-era Japan) and brothers Joseph and Frank Lyman (both trained in the natural sciences).

Consisting of the scattered correspondence and photographic record of three generations of an intellectually adventurous Northampton family, the Lyman collection explores the ebb and flow of family relations, collegiate education, and educational travel in Europe during the mid-nineteenth century, with important content on antislavery and the Free State movement in Kansas. Although the family’s tendency to reuse names (repeatedly) presents a challenge in distinguishing the various recipients, the focal points of the collection include the geologist Benjamin Smith Lyman, his uncle Joseph (1812-1871), cousins Joseph (1851-1883) and Frank, and Frank’s son Frank Lyman, Jr. Antislavery is a major theme in the letters of Samuel F. Lyman to his son Benjamin, and in the letterbook of the Kansas Land Trust, an affiliate of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, of which the elder Joseph was Treasurer.

Gift of Christine Lyman Chase, 2009.

Subjects

Antislavery movements--MassachusettsGermany--Description and travel--19th centuryHarvard University--StudentsKansas Land TrustKansas--History--1854-1861New England Emigrant Aid Company

Contributors

Lawrence, Amos Adams, 1814-1886Lyman, Benjamin Smith, 1835-1920Lyman, Joseph B, 1812-1871

Types of material

Photographs