Collections: mss

On March 13, 1903, Joseph Michael Bajgier was born in Odrzykon, Poland, the youngest of three sons in a farming family. Schooled only through the third grade, Joseph served as a young man in the First Air Division of the Polish Army before following his older brother in emigrating to the United States in 1927. Settling in Chicopee, Mass., with its large and active Polish community, Bajgier began work as a slaughterer of pigs for a meat processing company, but within a few years, he had saved enough money to purchase a small grocery store in Longmeadow. In about 1935, he returned to Chicopee, purchasing a grocery and deli, Bell Market, that his family ran for 36 years. Bajgier was deeply involved in the local Polish community as a member of the Polish National Alliance, the Holy Name Society of St. Stanislaus Parish, and an organization of Polish veterans in exile (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantow). He and his wife Martha (Misiaszek) had two sons, Casimir and Edward

The Bajgier collection documents the lives of a Polish family in Chicopee, Mass., from the time of immigration through the 1970s. The core of the collection surrounds the life of Joseph Bajgier, and includes a number of documents and a diary from the time of his emigration in 1927, a fascinating series of letters from relatives in Turaszowka, Poland before and after the Second World War, and several photographs of the family and their business in Chicopee.

James Baker was a member of the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune (later the Renaissance Community) in the early 1970s, and a key contributor to the Free Spirit Press, the commune’s publishing operation. Part promotion, information, and entertainment, the Free Spirit Press magazine ran for four issues in the winter and spring 1972-1973.

The Baker collection consists of the surviving materials from the production of Free Spirit Press concentrated heavily in the period between winter 1972 and summer 1974. Accumulated mostly while preparing a brochure for the commune, the manuscript material contains copies of the commune’s by-laws and membership rolls, comments from community members on how they wished to be represented, and a story board for the brochure and series of quotes from community members to be included. The second half of the collection contains hundreds of images, mostly 35mm negatives, taken of or by the commune and its residents. The images depict the production and distribution of Free Spirit Press and the commune band (Spirit in Flesh, later called Rapunzel), but they also include several rolls of film taken by commune members of major rock and roll acts of the era, including the Grateful Dead, Taj Mahal, Jethro Tull, Santana, Chuck Berry, Hot Tuna, and Fleetwood Mac.

Born in New York City in 1914, William Balamuth enjoyed a long career in protistology. Introduced to the field as a graduate student in Harold Kirby’s laboratory at the University of California Berkeley, Balamuth received his dissertation in 1939 for a study of regeneration in the heterotrichous marine ciliate, Licnophora macfarlandi. After several years at the University of Missouri and Northwestern, he returned to Berkeley in 1953 to replace his mentor. During the course of his career, Balamuth worked on fundamental issues in the biology of organisms ranging from parasitic amoebae to amoeboflagellates, publishing over 80 papers on culturing, nutritional requirements, cell cycling, and encystment. He died suddenly on June 10, 1981.

The Balamuth Collection consists of 114 drawings of ciliates prepared by William Balamuth for use in courses and publications between the 1930s and early 1960s, along with a handful of offprints of articles and scattered research notes.

Collection of letters from Du Bois to various members of the Bell family, the earliest written in September 1926 to Katherine Bell and the latest written in December 1960 to Thomasina Bell Fitzroy. These letters offer a unique perspective of Du Bois’s personal life.

Born in Amite County, Miss., in 1914, William S. M. Banks received his early education from his mother at home, who instilled in him an abiding respect for education. Despite the hardships of the Depression years, Banks used his athletic skills and work ethic to earn a degree at Dillard College, where he attracted the attention of Horace Mann Bond. Bond encouraged him to continue for a MA in Sociology and helped him land a position at Fort Valley State. After service during the Second World War, where he rose to rank of Captain and was awarded a Silver Star, Banks returned to Fort Valley State, completed a doctorate at Ohio State. He retired from Fort Valley after 38 years in 1978.

In his autobiography, a study of the impact of racial and class attitudes as much as personal achievement, William Banks describes his experiences growing up in a poor African American family in rural Mississippi and working his way up through distinguished military service and concerted effort to earn a doctorate at Ohio State and a career as a professor of sociology at Fort Valley State University.

Founded in 1938, the Society for the Preservation and Encouragement of Barber Shop Quartet Singing in America was one of the earliest organziation devoted to promoting barbershop harmony singing.

Mostly undated, the dozens of printed SPEBSQSA songbooks and sheet music in this collection appear to have been printed between the early 1950s and mid-1980s.

The paleobotanist Elso Barghoorn exerted an enormous influence on the scientific understanding of the early evolution of life on earth. After receiving his doctorate at Harvard in 1941, Barghoorn taught briefly at Amherst College before returning to Havard five years later, eventually becoming the Richard A. Fisher Professor of Natural History. A pioneer in paleopalynology, he he and two colleagues announced the startling discovery of a well-preserved Archaean fossil flora in 1954, including the first solid record of fossil bacteria and cyanobacteria from the Gunflint chert of Ontario. Culminating in a landmark 1965 publication (with Stanley Tyler), his work demonstrated conclusively the existence of unicellular fossils and helped to revolutionize study of deep evolutionary time.

The Barghoorn collection consists of seven bound journals containing notes from trips to Panama (1944), Europe (1957-58); Ghana, South Africa, and Tonga (1971-1972); Europe (1972); Hawaii, the South Pacific, and Africa (1975); Greenland (1977); South Africa and Australia (1978); and Australia and the South Pacific (1981). Comprehensive typescripts are available for each journal.

Lumbering was an important part of the economy in northern Franklin County, Massachusetts, during the late nineteenth century, particularly in the region abutting the border with New Hampshire.

These two volumes document a sawmill that appears to have operated in Franklin County, Mass., perhaps Northfield, in the latter half of the nineteenth century. One volume is a work record for employees at the mill (1871-1875), the second is a daybook with sales records (1874-1876) either from a company store or country store. Many of the transactions are with the mill’s employees. Most of the (relatively) high value exchanges recorded in the daybook are for lumber, shingles, or board, but there are numerous small cash records and the sale of miscellaneous goods such as tobacco (and tobacco boxes), bricks, hay, nails, rubber boots, meat and flour, corn, and even a watch. Although the precise location of the mill is uncertain, Northfield seems most likely. Several names recorded in the volume can be traced through the census to the vicinity of northern Franklin county, including Romanzo Hill, listed in the federal census for 1880 as living in Warwick, Mass., and “works in sawmill”; Jackson Doolittle of Hinsdale, N.H. (1870 and 1880); T. B. Stratton, who operated a country store in Millers Falls in 1872; and Roswell Stratton, a carpenter in Northfield (1880). We have been unable to identify G. A. Barrett beyond his name.

As the Commissioner of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission for thirty years, Elmer C. Bartels became a national leader on issues related to vocational rehabilitation and independent living for people with disabilities. While studying physics at Colby College in 1960, Bartels broke his neck in an inter-fraternity hockey game, but returned to complete his degree and then to earn an MS at Tufts. While working as a computer programmer at the Laboratory for Nuclear Science at MIT and later at Honeywell, he became involved in coordinating services and access that members of the community needed to survive. To address the range of issues relating to employment, housing, and architectural barriers for people with disabilities, he helped found three significant organizations: the Massachusetts Association of Paraplegiacs (1964), the Massachusetts Council of Organizations of the Handicapped (a cross-disability organization created in the late 1960s with Harold Remmes) and the Boston Center for Independent Living (1972). Bartels was a key figure in securing passage of the Rehabilitation Act of 1973, considered the first civil-rights statute for persons with disabilities. In 1977, Bartels was appointed to the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission by Gov. Michael Dukakis, serving under seven successive administrations, leaving an important mark on public policy. Since leaving the MRC, Bartels has remained active as a teacher and advocate for disability issues.
The Bartels Papers are an important resource for study of the early history of disability advocacy and public policy in Massachusetts. The collection includes a wealth of material on the formation and activity of the Massachusetts Association of Paraplegiacs, the National Paraplegia Foundation, and the Mass Rehabilitation Commission; correspondence with other leading figures in the disability rights movement; and publications relating to legislation on disability issues, vocational rehabilitation, and independent living.

Judith Barter is an art historian and curator of American art. She is currently the Field-McCormick Chair, American Art at The Art Institute of Chicago (AIC), where she has worked since 1992. Born in 1951 in Chicago, IL, she earned degrees at Indiana University and the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign before completing a PhD in Cultural and Social History at UMass Amherst in 1991. While earning her PhD, she worked as the curator of collections and associate director at the Mead Art Museum at Amherst College. She has written and contributed writing to a number of exhibition catalogs for exhibitions held across the United States; notable among these is Mary Cassatt: Modern Woman, which originated at the AIC in 1998. She was awarded the Chancellor’s Medal at UMass in 1999.

The papers document Barter’s professional career as a celebrated scholar of American art. The collection includes documentation of her research, writing, and lectures on topics such as trompe l’oeil and photography. Also included are VHS and cassette tapes documenting exhibitions and lectures.