The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
CredoResearch digital collections in Credo

Collections: mss

Mexican Playwrights

Mexican Playwrights Collection

1967-1978
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 399

Photocopies of typescripts of plays by Mexican playwrights, such as Carlos Ancira, Wilberto Canton, Marcela del Rio, and Margarita Urueta.

Subjects

Plays--Mexican

Types of material

Plays
Meyer, Helen C.

Helen C. Meyer Collection

ca.1911-2020 Bulk: ca. 1940-1995
13 boxes 9 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1084

Adolph and Helen Meyer, Mass. Federation Presentee Ball, at Hotel Statler Hilton Boston, 1959 Nov.

A founding member of the Massachusetts Federation of Polish Womens’ Clubs, holding every post in the organization, Helen (Gorecka) Meyer (1908-2003) was incredibly active in the Polish community in Boston, Cambridge, and later Cape Cod. Born in Poland, Helen came to America at the age of three, living with her parents in Lynn and Wilmington, before moving to Cambridge. She married Adolph Meyer in 1928, and both were important business owners (establishments included the White Eagle Restaurant in Cambridge, the Log Cabin Restaurant in Waltham, South Boston Liquors, and Al’s Bottled Liquors) and community members. Honored by the Mass. Federation of Polish Womens’ Clubs in 1963 as their “Woman of the Year,” Helen was also actively involved in the St. Joseph and Sacred Heart Societies of St. Hedwig’s Parish, local and national Polish Roman Catholic Union groups, and the Kosciuszko Foundation Presentation Balls.

Compiled from Helen Meyer’s papers by her nephew Stan Bartosiak, this collection of personal, family, and community papers – including published materials, photographs, slides, correspondence, audiovisual material, news clippings and ephemera – documents the Polish community in the Boston area from the 1930s through the 1990s. Some records concerning the Meyer, Gorecka, and connected families are from earlier. Various Polish clubs and organizations are represented through society badges, souvenir programs, financial records, correspondence, and photographs, with the Kosciuszko Foundation Presentation Balls particularly well documented. Additional audiovisual recordings document Bartosiak and his work an educator.

Gift of Stan Bartosiak, 2019-2020.

Subjects

Boston (Mass.)--Social life and customsPolish Americans--Massachusetts

Types of material

Audiovisual materialsPhotographsSouvenir programs
Meyer, Norman

Norman and Mary-Louise Meyer Papers

1942-1984 Bulk: 1960-1980
3 boxes 4 linear feet
Call no.: MS 778
Depiction of Norman and Louise Meyer
Norman and Louise Meyer

Opposition to fluoridation of public water supplies in Massachusetts swelled in the 1950s, culminating in passage of a law in 1958 mandating that towns that wished to fluoridate would first put the proposal to public referendum. The primary force advocating for this law was the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association, an organization founded and directed by Norman and Mary-Louise (Shadman) Meyer of Wellesley and which remained the leading anti-fluoridation group in the Boston area for twenty years. Having met and married while students at Harvard (1943) and Wellesley, respectively, the Meyers were tireless supporters of civic activities ranging from educational and environmental causes to public television (through the Citizens for Public Television in Boston), and disability (Norman served as director of the Protestant Guild for the Blind in Watertown), and they were stalwart members of the Wellesley town meeting. Norman Meyer died in Tortola in 1986, with Mary-Louise following in 1999.

The Meyer collection is a rich assemblage of letters and other materials documenting the Massachusetts Citizens Rights Association and the struggle against fluoridation in Wellesley, Newton, and other communities in eastern Massachusetts. Central figures in the movement, the Meyers maintained a wide correspondence with other activists throughout the region and published and disseminated information on the dangers of flourides in the water supply.

Subjects

Antifluoridation movement--MassachusettsDrinking water--Law and legislation--MassachusettsWater--Fluoridation--Law and legislation--Massachusetts
Mick, Robert J. H.

Robert J. H Mick Papers

1950-1991
1 box 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 677

Originally a proponent of fluoridating the water supply, the dentist Robert J.H. Mick became an ardent opponent following animal studies he conducted in the late 1940s. Although he alleged that he was threatened with court martial for his views while serving in the Army in Germany between 1953 and 1956, Mick has remained a high profile professional critic of fluoridation, famously offering a $100,000 prize to any one who could prove that fluoridation of water was healthy. The prize remained unclaimed. Mick ran as a Republican for congress in New Jersey in 1970, largely as an antifluoridation crusader.

The Mick Papers contain a small quantity of correspondence, talks, and affidavits relating to a deacdes-long career in the antifluoridation movement, as well as publications and other materials relating to fluoridation of water supplies.

Subjects

Antifluoridation movement--New JerseyFluorides--Toxicology

Contributors

Mick, Robert J. H.

Types of material

Letters (Correspondence)
Midcoast Friends Meeting

Midcoast Friends Meeting Records

1964-2023
2 boxes 0.75 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 M533

Founded in coastal Camden, Maine, the Midcoast Friends Meeting began as an independent worship group in 1962 and was set off as Camden Monthly Meeting in 1964. After the meeting moved to Damariscotta, it changed name in 1972 to Midcoast Friends Meeting.

The records of Midcoast Monthly Meeting (formerly Camden Monthly) are comprised of a nearly unbroken run of minutes from 1964 to 2009, lacking only 2002.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017

Subjects

Camden (Me.)--Religious life and customsDamariscotta (Me.)--Religious life and customsQuakers--MaineSociety of Friends--Maine

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)
Middleborough (Mass.) country store

Middleborough (Mass.) Country Store Daybook

1825-1827
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 221

Country store in the village of Titicut in Middleborough, Massachusetts, owned by members of either the Clark or Pratt families of the village. Includes goods for sale (groceries, cloth, hardware, and liquor), the method and form of payment (cash, rags, straw, wood, brick, and produce), customers’ names, and ways that families and women earned credit (producing braid or carting goods for the owners).

Subjects

Barter--Massachusetts--Middleborough--19th centuryBraid--MassachusettsFreight and freightage--MassachusettsGeneral stores--Massachusetts--MiddleboroughMiddleborough (Mass.)--Commerce--19th centuryTiticut (Middleborough Mass.)--Commerce--19th century

Types of material

Daybooks
Middlebury Friends Meeting

Middlebury Friends Meeting Records

1979-2023
2 boxes 1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 M5335

Middlebury, Vermont, was home to a Quaker worship group affiliated with Burlington Monthly Meeting from 1956 to 1962, and again beginning in 1970. This latter group led to formation of a preparative meeting in 1971 and to setting off as a monthly meeting in 1976 under the care of Northwest Quarter. Middlebury Friends Meeting has overseen the preparative meeting in South Starksboro Monthly (1982-1996) and a worship group in Rochester.

The meticulously maintained records of Middlebury Friends Meeting include a comprehensive set of minutes and extensive newsletters for the meeting beginning at the time of its establishment.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017

Subjects

Middlebury (Vt.)--Religious life and customsQuakers--VermontSociety of Friends--Vermont

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)Newsletters
Middletown Monthly Meeting of Friends

Middletown Monthly Meeting of Friends Records

1983-2023
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 M5337

Friends in Middletown, Connecticut, began holding meetings under the care of Hartford Monthly Meeting by 1943 and were set off as a monthly meeting of their own in 1956. Drawing heavily from the faculty and staff at Wesleyan College, at least in their early years, the meeting is part of Connecticut Valley Quarter.

The records of Middletown Monthly Meeting document more than sixty years of a Quaker meeting in the lower Connecticut Valley beginning in the mid-1950s.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017

Subjects

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

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)Newsletters
Miller, Cynthia

Cynthia Miller Papers

1973-1995
6 boxes 2.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 869

Known in the psychiatric survivors’ movement as Kalisa, Cynthia Miller was a radical activist on behalf of the mentally ill. An ex-patient based in New York, she became a member of Project Release in the early 1970s, one of the first wave of organizations fighting for the civil rights of mental patients and combatting forced institutionalization, and was a contributor to Madness Network News and other publications. A poet, writer, and a committed feminist and out lesbian, she took part in civil disobedience to oppose electroconvulsive therapy, working with Judi Chamberlin, George Ebert, Leonard Roy Frank, and others.

Though varied and fragmentary, Cynthia Miller’s collection is a rich resource for study of the early history of the psychiatric survivors movement and the work of one activist in resisting psychiatric oppression. The collection contains some of Kalisa’s writings and correspondence along with ephemera and a varied collection of newspapers, newsletters, and other publications relating to Project Release and several other organizations that Kalisa supported, including the Mental Patients Liberation Front and the Alliance for the Liberation of Mental Patients.

Subjects

AntipsychiatryElectroconvulsive therapyEx-mental patientsFeminismMentally ill--Civil rightsPsychiatric survivors movement--New York (City)

Contributors

Alliance for the Liberation of Mental PatientsChamberlin, Judi, 1944-2010Mental Patients Liberation FrontProject Release

Types of material

Newsletters
Miller, J. Wesley (John Wesley), 1941-

J. Wesley Miller Papers

ca.1970s-2005
9 boxes 13.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 460

A nearly lifelong resident of Springfield, Massachusetts, J. Wesley Miller was actively engaged in the city’s politics. Often described as an eccentric activist, Miller graduated from Colby College and later earned his law degree from Western New England College of Law. Although he never practiced as an attorney, Miller did sue the law school upon graduation for “educational malpractice,” a suit that was settled out of court. Miller taught English at Heidelberg College in Ohio and at the University of Wisconsin, and it is at the latter institution where it seems he formed his habit of collecting street literature, mostly posters and fliers. Evidently consumed by a desire to collect such materials, Miller accrued a vast quantity of street literature by the time of his death in 2005.

The collection consists primarily of flyers and posters collected by Miller in Madison, Wisconsin and throughout western Massachusetts that reflect the contemporary history of the two regions. The literature ranges from announcements of student protests and rallies to advertisements for local pubs. Miller signed each item, possibly as part of a ritual to catalog the collection. Also included is a microfilm copy of Miller’s diaries.

Subjects

Activists--MassachusettsPopular cultureStreet literature

Contributors

Miller, J. Wesley (John Wesley), 1941-

Types of material

DiariesMicrofilm