Collections: mss

In the summer of 1967, members of University of Massachusetts Amherst campus groups, such as the Faculty Group on War and Peace and the Students for Political Action, joined with individuals from other area colleges and from the community at large to form the Valley Peace Center of Amherst for the purposes of opposing the Vietnam War, providing draft counseling, eliciting pledges from the government to avoid first use of nuclear and biological weapons, and reduction of the power of the “military-industrial complex”. The Center was active for more than five and a half years, drawing its financial support largely from the community and its human resources from student and community volunteers.

Correspondence, minutes, volunteer and membership lists, financial records, newsletters, questionnaires, notes, petitions, clippings, posters, circulars, pamphlets, periodicals, other printed matter, and memorabilia. Includes material relating to alternative service, boycotts, war tax resistance, prison reform, environmental quality, and political candidates.

The Valley Women’s Union was established in 1974 by members of the Valley Women’s Center, Northampton, Massachusetts, who were committed to political change benefiting women. They were concerned that the Valley Women’s Center had become a static umbrella organization and that many of its formerly vital functions had been absorbed by local social service agencies The VWU sought to unify groups that were working for political change beneficial to women.

Records include newsletters, agendas for meetings, reports, position papers, and mailings.

During the early phases of second wave feminism (1968-1978), the Pioneer Valley served as a center for lesbian and feminist activity in western Massachusetts, and was home to over 400 hundred, often ad hoc, groups, such as the Abortion and Birth Control (ABC) Committee, ISIS Women’s Center, the Mudpie Childcare Cooperative, and the Springfield Women’s Center.

The records of the Valley Women’s History Collaborative document the activities of these groups as well as the efforts of the founders of the Women Studies program and department at UMass Amherst to preserve this history. Of particular value are the many oral histories conducted by the collaborative that record the history of women’s activism in the Pioneer Valley, especially as it relates to reproductive rights.

Tinsmith and plumber from Stockbridge, Massachusetts. Mentions items he repaired and cleaned (stoves, furnaces, pots, pans, tinware, glassware, and crockery), goods sold (lamps, wash basins, kitchen utensils, shovels, fuel, and furnaces), occasional mention of payment with goods, lists of suppliers, and lists of customers, many of whom were prominent people in the community.

Friends began to gather for worship in Vassalboro, Maine, in 1780, shortly after Quakers began to settle the Kennebeck Valley to escape the American Revolution. Their numbers grew sufficiently to be granted states as a monthly meeting in 1787, and they have subsequently been the sponsor for a number of worship groups and preparatory meetings in central Maine, as well as the source from which five monthly meetings have been laid off.

The records of Vassalboro Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends) are spotty and incomplete, but include minutes of meetings for business from 1950s through 1980s, sporadic financial records, and a substantial, but incomplete series of newsletters from 1987-2010.

Serving as a Quaker quarterly meeting for central Maine, Vassalboro Quarterly was set off from Falmouth Quarter in 1813. Over the years, it has coordinated nearly two dozen monthly meetings extending as far north and east as Cobscook. Farmington Quarter was set off from it in 1841, but returned in 1952.

The records for Vassalboro Quarterly are substantially incomplete, but document the Quaker meeting from the 1970s through 2000s. Among other records are a highly incomplete set of minutes (and “records,” which are the materials distributed during meetings); a more complete, but still partial run of newsletters; and the records of Ministry and Counsel from the mid-1990s through mid-2000s.

An Ecuadorian-born community activist, Carlos Vega moved to Holyoke, Massachusetts, with his family in 1955. Settling in the working-class “Flats” neighborhood at a time when many of Holyoke’s factories were relocating to the southern United States or Asia, the Vegas were one of the few Spanish-speaking families in the city, but when Carlos began to work on a local tobacco farm at the age of 14, he encountered the new influx of migrants from Puerto Rico who had been lured to the Connecticut Valley as agricultural laborers by the Department of Labor. With the Puerto Rican economy declining in the 1960s, many of these farm workers settled permanently in Springfield and Holyoke, but they soon discovered that the declining economy there combined with racism and urban decay blocked their hopes for upward mobility. Radicalized by the anti-colonial, anti-war, and Civil Rights movements of the late 1960s, Vega emerged as an important community organizer in the 1970s, working with Fair Share, New Unity, Urban Ministry, and other progressive organizations. With a backdrop of riots, arson, and racial tension, these organizations focused on issues relevant to the Puerto Rican community, particularly voter education and registration, fair housing, and education. In 1982, Vega helped found Nueva Esperanza, a non-profit community development organization whose mission was to restore and maintain blighted buildings in South Holyoke. He worked with Nueva Esperanza for over 30 years, continuing until 2010 after a brain cancer diagnosis in 1995.  He survived until April 2012.

The materials in this collection reflect Vega’s interests in left wing movements in Central America, the Caribbean, Asia, South America and Africa from the 1960s through 1980s and include leaflets, pamphlets, books, and newsletters. The approximately 300 items offer sometimes scarce documentation of internationalist liberation movements such as the PAIGC in Guinea Bissau and Cape Verde, the Tupamaros in Uruguay, and the EFLNA in Eritrea. Of particular note is a small collection documenting Vega’s participation in the 1974 Venceremos Brigade and a collection of clippings, newsletters, notes, fliers, conference material, and newspapers from various groups such as New England Action Research, Friends of the Filipino People, The Latin American Student Association, and the Ethiopian Students Union of North America. Some printed materials are cataloged and housed with the rare books collection.

View the book collection

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

After receiving his doctorate from the University of Rhode Island for a study of the physiology and ecology of tintinids in 1984, Peter G. Verity joined the faculty at the Skidaway Institute of Oceanography. As a Professor of Biological Oceanography, Verity was interested broadly in the ecology of plankton and trophic interactions in the pelagic food web, studying the process of eutrophication and dissolved oxygen in the water column among other topics, and conducting a significant long-term analysis of nutrient variation in estuarine waters. Becoming deeply concerned about the future of oceanic environments and the accelerating decline of coastal ecosystems as a result of his research, Verity took on an increasingly active role in educating teachers about environmental issues. For his efforts, he was awarded the Nick Williams Award for Coastal Sustainability from the Center for a Sustainable Coast. Verity died unexpectedly at home on Dec. 31, 2009.

An important resource for marine ecology and scientific study of the environment, the Verity Papers contain an array of correspondence, research and grant proposals, manuscripts of papers, reprints, and notes of meetings.

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

Emerging out of the College Art Association, the Art Libraries Society of North America, and other related organizations, the Visual Resources Association was established formally in 1982 to further research and education in the field of image management. A broadly multidisciplinary organization, they have played an important role in public and professional discussions of issues on intellectual property rights relating to visual materials and have been instrumental in the development of protocols for dissemination of digital materials and standards of cataloging supporting the ideal of broad public access to cultural information.

The records of the VRA chart the gradual origins and growth of a professional organization dedicating to establishing standards for visual materials and promoting access to cultural information. The records begin prior to the official establishment of VRA, when the group was a semi-formal association of interested professionals, and documents the expanding disciplinary scope of the organization, its adaptation to the evolving demands of a digital environment, and its increasing commitment to expanding public access and literacy in visual materials.

Citizens of Wendell raising barn of Jonathan von Ranson

In 1978, after years of working in the fast paced world of journalism, writing for Life Magazine and later serving as editor and publisher of several New England newspapers, Jonathan von Ranson was burnt out. In the summer of that year, after divorcing his wife Linnea and selling his newspaper business, von Ranson moved from Newington, Connecticut to a property in Wendell, Massachusetts. It was here, two miles off a maintained state forest road, that he erected a tent and began constructing a stone house.

To von Ranson, the quiet serenity of rural Massachusetts offered refuge from the hustle and bustle of his previous life. An advocate of subsistence living, he and his second wife Susan fed and sheltered themselves in the home they built together. Von Ranson established himself as a local journalist by writing for the Wendell Post, a humble town newspaper known for its distinctive local perspective. He also contributed to local publications like the Greenfield Recorder, usually penning op-eds about environmental issues both local and global. A passionate craftsman, his writing in other publications focused on sustainable home-building. Von Ranson’s personal writings, particularly those he refers to as his “unintelligible nighttime musings,” reveal a sensitive and introspective man with a spiritual connection to the land he cultivated.

Von Ranson held various positions in Wendell town government, taught fourth graders homesteading skills, and held workshops ranging from writing to masonry, becoming a pillar of the community in his small rural town. He expressed his environmental, political and social convictions in ways large and small, whether it was reusing paper by typing manuscripts on the back of fliers, or refusing to pay taxes in protest of military spending.

The Jonathan von Ranson papers document von Ranson’s time as a journalist, simple living advocate/homesteader, and Wendell/Franklin County activist and community leader. This is reflected through clippings of many of von Ranson’s articles for Maine, Connecticut and Franklin county newspapers, meeting agendas and correspondence from his various positions in Wendell town government, and schematics for his first stone house built in 1978/1979 and his simple living apartment completed in 2015. The collection also includes confessional hand-written manuscripts, fliers for Wendell community events, von Ranson’s Peace Corp application which reveals a breadth of biographical information, and even self-authored root cellaring guides. Other material reveals his involvement in a myriad of social and political groups dealing with environmentalism, the feminist men’s movement, rural development, policing, and much more.