Collections: mss

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.

A great-grandson of Revolutionary War general Henry Haller, William H. Grindol (1840-1927) settled with his family in Decatur, Illinois, in 1864, building a successful career in the retail marble trade. Beginning in partnership with Paul F. Jones, and later with his son, Grindol advertised his firm as dealers in “all kinds of foreign and American monuments,” selling marble and granite monuments, building stone, and iron reservoir vases. He was one of the founders of the Retail Marble and Granite Dealer’s Association of Illinois, serving as President of the Central District in 1897. Grindol died in Decatur in 1927 and is buried at Fairlawn Cemetery.

Grindol and Son’s letterpress copy book contains approximately 900 outgoing letters, 1895-1900, to marble and granite suppliers, in Vermont, Massachusetts, and other states. The majority of the correspondence consists of orders for gravemarkers, with many letters including measurements and other details, along with rough sketches of monuments, decorative motifs, and inscriptions.

After receiving his medical degree from the University of Heidelberg in 1921, George L. Waldbott accepted a residency at Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, and embarked on a pioneering career in the study and treatment of allergic diseases. He is noted for his fundamental research on human anaphylaxis and penicillin shock, allergy-induced respiratory problems, and later in his career, the health impact of air pollutants. In 1955, Waldbott began conducting research in fluoride toxicity, becoming one of the first physicians to warn of the health effects of mass fluoridation. A founder of the International Society for Fluoride Research, he was considered one of the key figures in the antifluoridation movement for over two decades, contributing dozens of books and articles, including the influential The American Fluoridation Experiment (1957) and Fluoridation : The Great Dilemma (1978). He died in Detroit on July 17, 1982, from complications following open heart surgery.

The Waldbott Papers document one physician’s long struggle against the fluoridation of the American water supply. In addition to a considerable quantity of correspondence with other leading antifluoridation activists, the collection includes an array of subject files relating to fluoridation, air pollution, and allergens, as well as drafts of articles and offprints, newsclippings, and notes.

An avid botanist and naturalist, Mary (Morris) Walker was born in Stamford, Conn., on April 1, 1923, the daughter of renowed surgeon and naturalist Robert Tuttle Morris. After graduating from Vassar in 1944, Morris took her MA in Geology at the University of Michigan, marrying a fellow geologist Eugene H. Walker in 1947. Moving to Kentucky, Iowa, and Idaho before settling in Concord, Mass., in 1968, the Walkers raised three children. In Concord, Walker studied for an MA in library science at Simmons College (1971), but her work in botany and natural history became increasingly important. As a plant collector, writer, and educator, Walker traveled widely in the United States and the Caribbean, and she became a leader in organizations including the New England Wild Flower Society, the New England Botanical Club, the Thoreau Society, and the Appalachian Mountain Club. Walker died in Concord on Oct. 2, 2012.

The Walker Papers are a rich assemblage of materials documenting the life of an energetic amateur botanist. Beginning during her time as a student at Vassar, the collection offers insight into Walker’s growing interest in the natural sciences, her botanizing, and her commitments to several organizations devoted to natural history. The collection also includes a small number of letters and photographs of Walker’s father, Robert T. Morris.

Sheila S. Walker, PhD, cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, has done fieldwork, lectured, and participated in intellectual and cultural events in most of Africa and the Global African Diaspora, and her goal is to educate the public about this diaspora. Her edited book, African Roots/American Cultures: Africa in the Creation of the Americas, resulting from her international conference on “The African Diaspora and the Modern World,” has a companion documentary, Scattered Africa: Faces and Voices of the African Diaspora. Her also edited volume, Conocimiento desde adentro: Los afro-sudamericanos hablan de sus pueblos y sus historias/Conhecimento desde dentro: Os afro-sul-americanos falam de seus povos e suas histórias [Knowledge from the Inside: Afro-South Americans Speak of their People and their Stories] (in Spanish and Portuguese, not yet English), features chapters by Afrodescendants from all the Spanish-speaking countries in South America. She co-produced the documentary, Slave Routes: A Global Vision for the UNESCO Slave Route Project. And her most recent documentary is Familiar Faces/Unexpected Places: A Global African Diaspora, which was shown at the United Nations as the 2018 Black History Month program for the UN International Decade for People of African Descent. It was sent for showings at UN Information Centers in the Americas, Africa, Asia and the Pacific, and Europe. Dr. Walker was a Professor of Anthropology and Director of the Center for African and African American Studies, and held an endowed chair in the College of Liberal Arts at the University of Texas at Austin, and was a Distinguished Visiting Professor, Professor of Anthropology, and Director of the African Diaspora and the World Program at Spelman College.

The Sheila S. Walker Collection highlights how the life experiences of an African American cultural anthropologist and documentary filmmaker, focusing on the Global African Diaspora and relationships between the Diaspora and Africa and among African Diasporan societies, allude to, exemplify, and elucidate significant issues of her era. It provides archival materials of various sorts that characterize dynamics of the period both nationally and internationally. The Collection reveals information that does not fit the usual narrative, such as that Operation Crossroads Africa, founded by an African American minister, inspired the creation of the United States Peace Corps, a U.S. government institution helmed by a relative of the then president of the nation. Also, U.S. northern, urban African Americans continued to participate in Mutual Aid Societies, as were so important historically, and sometimes presently, in much of Africa and the African Diaspora.

In June 1917, Lloyd Walsh volunteered for duty in the American Field Service, and for three months he served as an ambulance driver for Service Section 68 (S.S.U. 68), a unit that included a number of Amherst College students. When the United States entered the war later in the year, however, most AFS units were transferred to the American Expeditionary Forces or disbanded, and Walsh transferred to ambulance duty with the American Red Cross. He continued to serve with the Red Cross after the war, stationed in Vienna, eventually rising to the rank of Captain.

The collection includes a thorough paper trail of Walsh’s work as a volunteer with the AFS and Red Cross during and after the First World War, along with a capsule service record, correspondence, and news clippings that flesh out his experiences. Adding to the picture is Walsh’s decorated Red Cross footlocker, two German helmets, and two Hungarian posters.

Carl Walz was a high school teacher in the town of Montague, Mass., in May 1942 when his status as a conscientious objector cost him his career. Although the School Committee claimed that Walz had been dismissed due to a “marked decrease” in demand for German, a non-required subject, and that his other courses were simply assigned to “higher priority” teachers, the key factor in his dismissal appears to have been his decision to register as a conscientious objector. With support from the Massachusetts Civil Liberties Union, Walz sued the Montague School Committee for wrongful dismissal. He was unsuccessful.

Walz’s suit against the Montague School District over his firing for being a conscientious objector was argued in the Superior Court held in Greenfield in 1943. The typescript is a verbatim transcript of testimony given, including direct and cross-examination of members of the School Board, and re-direct and re-cross examination.

David Wangerin (1962-2012) was a noted soccer historian, writing for When Saturday Comes, a British soccer magazine, and authoring several highly-respected books on the history of soccer in America, including Soccer in a Football World: The Story of America’s Forgotten Game (2006) and Distant Corners: American Soccer’s History of Missed Opportunities and Lost Causes (2008). Born in Chicago and growing up in Wisconsin, Wangerin was a soccer enthusiast all his life and in 1978 helped to set up one of the first adult soccer leagues in the Jefferson County area. He also coached the first girls’ and boys’ soccer teams at Fort Atkinson High School in 1986. He moved to the U.K. in 1987, in part as a fan of Aston Villa Football Club, and was employed at an Edinburgh-based asset management firm. He passed away from cancer in 2012 at 50.
The Wangerin collection encompasses research materials for his books and articles, almost extensively photocopies of newspaper articles on American soccer matches, plus approximately 200 books on the history of soccer and the NFL. Wangerin plots the ebb and flow of American soccer through stories in major publications and, more significantly, small local newspapers. A rare collection of sources on a topic that can almost only be researched through the press it garnered, a selection of materials documents early St. Louis and Wisconsin soccer leagues.

Gideon Wanton, a two-time governor of colonial Rhode Island, and his son John were Quaker merchants from Newport. During the middle years of the eighteenth century, they carried on an active trade who took an active part in the triangular trade.

This diminutive cash account book offers a window onto the business ventures of a powerful Newport Quaker family during the mid-eighteenth century. Kept during a five-year period, 1753-1759, the book contains terse records of cash expenditures in exchange for goods and services to Gideon and John Wanton. Records of the coastwise trade in commodities such as pork, flour, and mackerel to Philadelphia and other ports accompany notices of molasses from Surinam and rum. The lack of payments relating directly to enslaved people is likely the result of the sale of the human cargo in the West Indies prior to returning to Newport.