Collections: mss

During the late 1960s, the Department of History at UMass Amherst created a new undergraduate course entitled New Approaches to History, relying almost exclusively on primary sources. The theme of the course varied from the Salem witch trials to Daniel Shay’s Rebellion to the Lizzie Borden murders.

The collection includes the course proposal, correspondence, syllabi, course assignments, and resources for three units: Salem witchcraft, Shay’s Rebellion, and Lizzie Borden.

New Bedford began meetings for worship in 1772, and was set off from Dartmouth Monthly Meeting in 1792. This meeting was divided by the split of 1845. Members of the Nantucket Monthly Meeting were received in 1867, and from Pembroke Monthly Meeting in 1876. Mattapoisett Monthly Meeting was set off in 1992.

Records for the New Bedford Monthly Meeting include minutes, correspondence and reports, worship and ministry, vital records, financial and property, New Bedford Preparative, and Long Plain Preparative.

Formed during the separation of 1845, the Wilburite monthly meeting in New Bedford, Mass., was active until 1865. A member of Sandwich Quarterly Meeting (Wilburite), its members were joined to Dartmouth Monthly Meeting (Wilburite) after it was laid down.

The records of the New Bedford Monthly Meeting (Wilburite) include comprehensive minutes for both the men’s and women’s meetings, along with records of births, deaths, marriages, and removals.

After dissolution of the New England Research Council on Marketing and Food Supply in 1955, a group of agricultural economists from the six state universities in New England formed the New England Agricultural Economics Council to carry on with the mission of promoting education and research on economics and the social problems relating to the production, marketing, and consumption of agricultural products.

Concentrated on the first ten years of the NEAEC, the collection include organizational materials, correspondence, minutes and proceedings, financial records, and newsletters.

Established in 1901, the New England Association of Teachers of English (NEATE) was the first association of English teachers in America. Through conferences, executive board meetings, and the regular publication of The Leaflet, NEATE aimed to bring together New England’s English teachers to study the methodology and history of the field, as well as observe innovations and new practices in the world of education.

While the collection is expected to grow, it currently consists of meeting minutes, conference records, correspondence between members, issues of The Leaflet, two published histories of the organization, and two early record books of NEATE ranging in date from 1901-1938.

The New England Federation of Agricultural Students was organized in 1907 for the purpose of bringing together agricultural students of New England colleges for the study and advancement of agriculture and allied sciences and to learn about each others’ work. The Federation organized annual contests in fruit grading and packing, poultry, field crops, and stock.

Correspondence (1915), minutes (1915), constitution, treasurer’s report (1914-1915), records of the secretary and treasurer (1907-1915), contest scores and results (1914), and judging regulations (1913-1916).

The New England Historical Association, the regional branch of the American Historical Association, was founded in 1965 in an informal meeting at the University of Connecticut. The purpose of the NEHA is to serve the interests of New England historians of all levels: professional, academic, or amateur. These interests include a means to share their research and work, learn about history resources that are available to them for personal study or teaching, or simply to meet socially. NEHA aims to maintain the pursuit of history through both regional and national dimensions.

This collection holds the records of the New England Historical Association including an organizational history, constitution and meeting minutes, correspondence, financial records, membership lists, committee reports, meeting programs, and newsletters.

The New England Homestead, a magazine published in Springfield, Massachusetts from 1842 to 1969, conducted a contest in 1884 to which farmers submitted notebooks recording their farm accounts for the one year period, April 1, 1883 to March 31, 1884.

The collection includes bound and unbound farm accounts submitted as entries to the contest contest. The Library holds The New England Homestead, 1842-1850 on microfilm, and 1894-1968 in bound volumes.

When Charles Marsters founded the Boston Lacrosse Club in 1913, the club was the only one in New England to play teams from outside of the region. Under Marsters’s leadership, however, participation in the sport rose steadily at both the high school and collegiate level, helping establish New England as one of the centers of the American game. In 1935, he and Tom Dent founded the New England Intercollegiate Lacrosse League (NEILL) to continue to build the sport.

The NEILL records document the growth of lacrosse from informal club team play to a more regulated, interscholastic and intercollegiate varsity sport. The bulk of the collection consists of correspondence, minutes, and agendas kept by co-founder Charles Marsters and a handful of other NEILL officers, but with material documenting the growth of the sport at UMass Amherst from the 1950s onward and the addition of women’s lacrosse as a collegiate sport. The collection also includes some printed material (including rulebooks), news clippings, and photographs.

Includes eleven of the thirteen newsletters published by the Labor and Community Network, a group of academics and trade unionists interested in labor issues in Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Rhode Island.