Collections: mss

Born in December 1931, Friedrich Karl Azzola fled with his family to Germany in 1944. Settling in the state of Hesse, he earned a degree in chemistry at the University of Giessen and doctorate at the Technische Hochschule Darmstadt in 1965. After five years in the chemical industry, he was called to the Fachhochschule Wiesbaden-Russelsheim as professor, teaching chemistry and materials science to engineers until his retirement in 1997. Beginning in the 1950s, Azzola earned a wide reputation for his research on gravemarkers and “cemetery culture,” publishing widely on Medieval and early modern monuments in Germany.

Part of the Association for Gravestone Studies Collection, the Azzola collection consists of a run of Friedhof und Denkmal (2000-2009, with a few earlier issues), along with a suite of offprints of articles and pamphlets by Azzola and others on cemeteries and gravemarkers.

Clairvoyant from youth, Elwood Babbitt developed his psychic abilities at the Edgar Cayce Institute, and by the mid-1960s, was well known in Western Massachusetts through his readings and lectures, often opening his home to other seekers. Charles Hapgood, a professor at Keene State College, worked closely with Babbitt studying the physical effects of the medium’s trance lectures, and by 1967, he began to take on the painstaking process of transcribing and copying them. With communications purporting to come from Jesus, Albert Einstein, Mark Twain, and the Hindu god Vishnu, among others, these lectures formed the basis for several books by Hapgood and Babbitt, including Voices of Spirit (1975) and The God Within (1982). In 1970 Babbitt became involved with the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune in Leydon, Massachusetts and was a “spiritual mentor” to Michael Metelica, the community leader there. He helped Metelica develop his psychic abilities, but they eventually had a falling out, along with others from the community, in the late 1970s. Babbitt ultimately established a non-profit, alternative school, the Opie Mountain Citadel, which was essentially run out of Babbitt’s home in Northfield. He continued to involve himself in spiritual groups up to his failing health and eventual death in the Veteran’s Administration Hospital in White River Junction, Vermont on April 25, 2001

The collection consists of proofs of publications, lectures, some correspondence, film reels, and transcripts of spiritual communications for which Babbitt was the medium.

Ebenezer Bailey was a wholesale shoe purchaser and distributor from Massachusetts. The collection comprises just over 100 items, the bulk of which are receipts for the purchase and sale of shoes and slippers, covering the period from 1852 to 1882.

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.