Collections: mss

One of the most prominent and dedicated attorneys of our time, Kenneth R. Feinberg has assumed the important role of mediator in a number of complex legal disputes, often in the aftermath of public tragedies. Frequently these cases necessitate not only determining compensation to victims and survivors but also confronting the very question of the value of human life. A native of Brockton, Massachusetts, and a graduate of UMass Amherst (1967) and New York University School of Law (1970), Feinberg served as a clerk to Chief Judge Stanley H. Fuld, as a federal prosecutor, and as Chief of Staff for Senator Edward M. Kennedy. After acting as the mediator and special master of the high-profile Agent Orange settlement, he administered the September 11th Victim Compensation Fund, Virginia Tech’s Hokie Spirit Memorial Fund, and the BP Gulf Coast Claims Facility (GCCF). Feinberg has taught at several law schools; is the author of the books What is Life Worth? (the basis of the film Worth) and Who Gets What and numerous articles; and is a devotee of opera and classical music. He practices law in Washington, D.C., and continues to be guided by a commitment to public service.

The Feinberg Papers contain correspondence, memos, drafts, reports, research files, and memorabilia. The collection is arriving in stages and is being processed. Some materials will be restricted.

Thomas Weston Fels is an artist, author, art historian, writer, and curator. Born in Baltimore, Maryland, 1946, Fels spent his teenage years at The Putney School, a private boarding school in Southern Vermont. Upon completion, Fels enrolled in Amherst College, and after graduating in 1967, moved to the Montague Farm commune. 

Fels lived on the farm from 1969 to 1973, and was an integral member of the larger communard community, extending from the Wendell Farm and Johnson Pasture, to Packer Corners and the Tree Frog Farm. While there, Fels associated with prolific writers, artists and photographers of 1960s counterculture, such as Harvey Wasserman, Ray Mungo, Peter Simon, and others. 

Sometime after leaving the commune, Fels returned to school, attending Williams College. He graduated in 1984, earning a Masters in the History of Art. Following the completion of his degree, Fels was awarded multiple prestigious fellowships. In 1986, he became a Chester Dale Fellow of the Metropolitan Museum of Art, while between 1998-1999, he was a Fletcher Jones Foundation Fellow of the Huntington Library, California. His career has seen him employed by numerous museums across North America, ranging from the J. Paul Getty Museum of Art in California, the Elizabeth de C. Wilson Museum in Vermont, and the Canadian Centre for Architecture in Quebec. 

 Fels has organized many exhibitions throughout his career, some internationally. In California, Fels’ exhibition Carleton Watkins: Western Landscape and the Classical Vision was presented at the J. Paul Getty Museum of Art; while his exhibition Fire and Ice: Treasures from the Photograph Collection of Frederic Church at Olana, was shown at both the Dahesh Museum in New York, and the Van Gogh Museum in Amsterdam.

In addition to his curatorial duties, Fels’ work as a researcher and writer has led him to publish a variety of catalogs and companion pieces to his exhibitions alongside various articles and books. In 1989, he published O Say Can You See: American Photographs 1839-1939, and in 1994, he edited a single issue of Farm Notes, in some ways a successor to the Montague Commune’s Green Mountain Post (formerly New Babylon Times). In 2008, Fels published the memoir Farm Friends, reflecting on his life, the counterculture era, and his time on the Montague Commune. In the same year, Fels helped found the ‘Famous Long Ago Archive’ at the University of Massachusetts Amherst; collecting the personal papers of several members of the communard community. These collections contain articles, manuscripts, photos, posters, oral histories, and more. He continued to reflect on the Montague Farm, publishing Buying the Farm in 2012, providing an in-depth history of the commune, connecting with communards decades later, while chronicling the farm from its beginning in 1968 through the following thirty-five years of its existence. 

Since 2013, Fels has been showcasing his unique cyanotypes throughout the American Northeast, and by 2015 his art would take him to Europe and the United Kingdom. In 2016, his large, life-sized renderings were subject to sale at one of the world’s most renowned auction houses, Christie’s London. Beyond his photography and historical work, Fels can be found giving lectures throughout New England, or at his home in Southern Vermont. 

The Thomas W. Fels Montague Farm Collection reflects the work of the many friends he made while living on the Montague Farm. Their works make up the bulk of the collection, containing articles, manuscripts, publications, photographs, posters, and audio recordings. Of particular interest is the 25th Anniversary reunion of the Montague Commune. The 10-day celebration is memorialized through photos, audio recordings, and a publication. 

The title Earl of Derwentwater was created under King James II in 1688 for Francis Radcliffe of Northumberland, and for sixty years thereafter, members of the Radcliffe family stood among the most prominent Jacobites in the north of England. One of Francis’ grandson, James, the third Earl of Derwentwater, became embroiled in the Rebellion of 1715 and was beheaded in the London Tower for high treason, and another son, Charles, the so-called 4th Earl, was beheaded for his part in the Rebellion of 1745.

Assembled by John Fenwick, who may have been a distant relative of the Radcliffes, this collection of Radcliffiana includes a mixture of original documents, 19th century transcriptions of originals, published works, and prints, all pertaining to the Jacobite Earls of Derwentwater. Set into paper frames and bound into more or less elaborate leather volumes, the documents cover the period from the English Civil War through the fallout after the execution of the 3rd Earl. They are focused primarily on the personal fates of the Earls, their Northumberland estates, and the genealogy of the Radcliffe family.

Esma-Marie N’Doi Booth was born into a missionary family in the Belgian Congo in Dec. 1932, and attended school there until entering Boston University. She earned her degree in art and art history in 1954, the same year she married the philosopher Frederick Feree, and for much of the next four decades, she worked as an archivist at the colleges and universities where her husband found an academic home: Vanderbilt, Mount Holyoke, and Dickinson. After retiring to Northfield, Mass., in 2000, she became active in local history and historic preservation, including working as archivist for the Association for Gravestone Studies. She died in Greenfield, Mass., in 2016 at the age of 83.

The Ferre collection contains articles, news clippings, and notes on New England gravestones, along with several dozen images taken by Ferre in graveyards during the early 2000s, primarily in Massachusetts.

Authorized in March 1799, the Fifth Massachusetts Turnpike Company constructed a toll road through miles of rough terrain and sparse settlements, connecting Leominster, Athol, Greenfield, and Northfield. Having opened areas to land travel that had previously been accessible only over rivers, the Fifth Massachusetts Turnpike ceased operations in 1833 after years of declining revenues.

The collection consists primarily of one volume of records of the directors of the Fifth Massachusetts Turnpike, including minutes of meetings, accounts of tolls collected, and drafts of letters.

Karl S. Finison was an undergraduate (class of 1975) and then graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, studying Anthropology and local agricultural history. His 1979 master’s thesis “Energy Flow on a Nineteenth Century Farm,” was a part of a Anthropology Department research series on the ecological anthropology of the Middle Connecticut River Valley, studying demographic and other trends from 1650 to 1900 in the area. Part of this work was supported in 1970s by the Connecticut Valley Population Ecology Project. While doing this work, Finison also began to collect agricultural journals, books, and original manuscripts about the ecological history of Upper and Middle Connecticut River Valley.

This collection consists of five original accounting logs and ledgers from western Massachusetts and southern Vermont, offering insight into the commerce and community in these areas in the 19^th-century and early 20^th-century:

• An 1803-1826 account book covers agricultural and business transactions in the Middle Connecticut River Valley, including in such Massachusetts towns as Chester, Granby, Northampton, Northfield, and Shelburne.
• A ledger of the accounts of E. F. Reed and Co. (Dummerston, VT) from 1883-1894, is the only volume with a known authorial origin.
• A mixed-use logbook includes 1845-1846 worker logs (lumber industry) in Ashfield, MA; 1849 diary and expense entries from Shelburne Falls, MA; diary entries from 1851, ca. 1855, and 1878; and undated “little sermons.”
• An account book of unknown origin, 1881-1905, mainly transactions regarding  shoes, boots, and harnesses.
• A “Time Book,” tracking the labor of agricultural workers at an unknown location in summer 1912.

Noted critic of music, literature, and the arts, as well as a writer and an active member of the Communist Party U.S.A. Includes letters to and from Mr. Finkelstein; original manuscripts of reviews, articles, essays, and books; legal documents, educational, military, and personal records, financial papers, contracts, photographs, and lecture and course notes.

The Fitchburg Railroad was incorporated in 1842 to build a rail line across northern Massachusetts from Boston to Fitchburg, but eventually extended its operations through the Hoosac Tunnel, and into Vermont and New York. In 1900, the Fitchburg Railroad was leased for 99 years to the Boston and Maine. It operated as the Fitchburg Division until the two companies merged in 1919.

Organized station by station and by date, this ledger is a ticket account from Fitchburg and connecting railroads. Each page is printed as a form covering one year of transactions for a single station, with a running account of highest number of tickets received, highest sold, and (occasionally) the cost of tickets.

John J. Fitzgerald, 1968

A graduate of Holyoke High and UMass Amherst (BA 1963), John J. Fitzgerald entered the Army after graduation and served in Vietnam as a Captain in the 25th Infantry Division. He earned a Bronze Star and Purple Heart for his service, having been wounded at Cu Chi in June 1966, before leaving active duty in 1968. Returning home to Holyoke, Fitzgerald entered the master’s degree in political science at UMass (MA 1978) and renewed his longstanding interest in politics. Taking an interest in the progressive, antiwar candidate Eugene McCarthy, he became head of the McCarthy campaign in Holyoke and won election as a delegate to the Democratic national convention. Fitzgerald remained involved in local Democratic politics, and in addition to teaching history in local schools for many years, he wrote and lectured on topics ranging from nuclear power to his experiences in Vietnam.
The Fitzgerald collection contains four scrapbooks relating to his involvement in politics in the late 1960s and early 1970s. Two of the scrapbooks document national and local reaction to the McCarthy campaign and include some articles on Fitzgerald and some ephemera. The other scrapbooks document the McGovern campaign in 1972 and politics in Holyoke in mid-1970s. The collection also includes a copy of Fitzgerald’s commission as a Reserve Commissioned Officer in the Army (1964) and two posters: Jack Coughlin’s, Weapons often turn upon the wielder. . . (1968) and Viet-nam veterans speak out. . . Viet-nam Veterans for McCarthy (1968), an antiwar petition signed by Fitzgerald. Books that arrived with the collection have been transferred and catalogued into SCUA’s general collection.

Ken Fitzpatrick was long time organizer and official of the American Postal Workers Union, serving as President of Local 497 and Secretary and Treasurer for the American Postal Workers Union of Massachusetts before his retirement in about 2010.

The Fitzpatrick collection includes a selection of posters, hats, and ephemera related to the APWU.