Collections: mss

The oldest continuously-organized Quaker meeting in North America, Sandwich Monthly Meeting began holding meetings for worship on 1657 and has been a center for the faith in Cape Cod ever since. Surviving the turbulence of nineteenth century Quakerism in relatively good order, the meeting today oversees three meetinghouses and four centers for worship on the Cape.

The records of Sandwich Monthly Meeting are suitably rich for a meeting of such age, including over three hundred years of minutes of meetings for business. Although the early years of the twentieth century are underdocumented and records of committees are mostly absence, coverage since the 1980s is relatively strong.

One of the first quarterly meetings to be established within the New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, Sandwich has been conducting meetings for business since 1705, with meetings for worship extending back to as early as 1680. Sandwich Quarterly oversees monthly meetings primarily in Bristol County, Mass., Cape Cod, and the Islands. The Wilburite Sandwich Quarterly separated in 1845 and remained apart until the general reunion of Friends in New England in 1945.

Spanning more than three centuries, the records of Sandwich Quarterly Meeting contain a nearly complete run of minutes of meetings, records of Ministers and Elders, and other miscellaneous materials.

Sandwich Quarterly Meeting was one of four original Quarterly Meetings comprising the New England Yearly Meeting (Wilburite), along with Rhode Island, Dover, and Salem. Formed in the split of 1845, Sandwich oversaw Monthly Meetings in Dartmouth, Nantucket, New Bedford, and Westport. It suffered its own split when the Nantucket Monthly Meeting separated to form an “Otisite” meeting between 1863 and 1911. Sandwich absorbed the Wilburite Salem and Dover Quarterly meetings in 1881, and was eventually merged itself into the combined Rhode Island and Sandwich Quarterly Meeting in 1935. After the reunification of New England Friends in 1944-1945, it became the Narragansett Quarterly Meeting.

The records of the Sandwich Quarterly Meeting (Wilburite) include minutes of the Men’s and Women’s meetings from the start of the meeting in 1845 to its merger into the Rhode Island and Sandwich Quarterly Meeting in 1934, along with two volumes of records of Ministers and Elders. One volume containing minutes of the Men’s Meeting (1845-1863) paired with the records of Ministers and elders (1845-1857) is part of the collections of the Nantucket Historical Association.

A life-long resident of Illinois, Myrtle Sapora was born on February 14, 1916, the daughter of William and Jeanie Kenney. After marrying Allen I. Sapora, a member of the teaching staff in leisure studies at the University of Illinois, in 1948, and settling in Champaign-Urbana, Myrtle became an ardent activist in the antifluoridation movement, working a both the state and national levels. She was a member of the Illinois Pure Water Committee for many years and died on August 3, 1995 at the of 79.

The depth of Sapora’s commitment to the antifluoridation movement is reflected in this rich collection, which includes research materials, newsletters and ephemera from antifluoridation groups, informational handouts, news clippings, and a few audiotapes of meetings. Concentrated in the later 1970s through early 1990s, Sapora’s correspondence is particularly revealing, with interesting exchanges with politicians, letters to the editor, and other lobbying targets, as well as a number of important figures in the movement, including Albert Burgsthaler, Ellie Rudolph, and John Yiamouyanis.

Prosperous, slave-owning farmer from Amesbury, Massachusetts, who also served as town warden, selectman, and representative. Includes details of the purchases of agricultural products (corn, potatoes, lamb, rye, hay, molasses, wood, cheese), and related services with some of the town’s earliest settlers, widow’s expenses, expenses in support of his grandmother, and family dates.

Access restrictions: Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA in advance to request materials from this collection.

Distinguished researchers in the Department of Anatomy and Structural Biology at Albert Einstein College of Medicine, Birgit and Peter Satir have made fundamental contributions to the study of exocytosis and the ultrastructure of cellular motility. While working on his doctorate at the Rockefeller Institute, Peter spent 1958 studying at the Carlsberg Biological Institute in Copenhagen, where he met Birgit. After completing their degrees in 1961 and marrying the next year, the couple went on to academic appointments at the University of Chicago and Berkeley. Although they are considered the first couple to be allowed to work in the same department at Berkeley, Birgit was never fully salaried, prompting the Satirs to move to more favorable circumstances at Einstein in 1977. Birgit’s research has centered on the nature of microdomains in cell membranes and how cells secrete chemical products, while Peter has studied the role of the structure and function of cilia and flagellae in cell motility.

The Satir collection contains professional correspondence, journals, and several thousand electron micrographs and motion picture films of ciliates and flagellates taken in the course of their research.

A lifelong resident of Springfield, Mass., Athena Savas was a passionate collector who assembled a massive trove of cookbooks over the course of almost forty years.

The Savas Cookbook Collection contains many hundreds of commercially-produced and community cookbooks, primarily from New England. As a collector, Savas was particularly interested in ethnic and regional cookery, but she ranged widely to include corporate cookbooks and works relating to subjects such as waiting tables, home entertainment, and restaurants.

At the turn of the twentieth century, Albert Sawin and his wife Elizabeth (nee Young) lived on Taylor Street in Holyoke, Massachusetts, with their three children, Allan, Ralph, and Alice. Elizabeth’s brother, also named Allan, traveled in the west during the 1880s, looking for work in Arizona, Utah, and Montana.

The bulk of the Sawin-Young Family Papers consists of letters exchanged between Elizabeth “Lizzie” Sawin, her sisters, and Jennie Young of nearby Easthampton. Later letters were addressed to Beatrice Sawin at Wheaton College from her father Walter E. Sawin, who contributed to the design for the Holyoke dam. The photograph album (1901) kept by Alice E. Sawin features images of the interior and exterior of the family’s home, as well as candid shots of family and friends and photographs of excursions to nearby Mt. Tom and the grounds of Northfield School.

Jennifer P. Schneider, M.D., Ph.D., is a physician certified in Internal Medicine, Addiction Medicine and Pain Management. She is the author of 15 books and numerous articles in professional journals. She is a nationally recognized expert in two addiction-related fields: addictive sexual disorders and the management of chronic pain with opioids. She also has experience and interest in the area of osteoporosis and its drug treatment, and maintains an email support group for people who have experienced atypical femur fractures related to the use of bisphosphonate medications. Dr. Schneider has written several articles in medical journals about egg donation and its potential long-term risks. Now retired from direct patient care, her professional activities include writing, lecturing at conferences, serving as an expert witness in legal settings, and appearing as a media guest on television and radio. One of her main current activities is to teach a remedial 21-Continuing Medical Education course on appropriate prescribing of controlled substances for chronic pain, under the auspices of Professional Boundaries Education in multiple locations in the U.S. 

The collection contains Dr. Schneider’s published articles, books, and book reviews on sex addiction and its effects on the partner; use of opioids in the treatment of chronic pain; femur fractures caused by the usual osteoporosis treatment with bisphosphonates; and potential cancer risk from egg donor protocol. In addition to her professional work, the collection also documents the family history of Raphael Patai and Naomi Nir along with their children, Daphne Patai and Dr. Schneider, through extensive correspondence, original paintings by Naomi Nir, a journal kept by Nir and Raphael Patai from 1949-1951. SCUA holds the papers of Naomi Nir and Daphne Patai.

Born in Richmond, Va., in 1946, Ronald Wayne Schrum served as a corporal in the 9th Engineer Battalion, US Marine Corps, during the Vietnam War. Based in Chu Lai, on the coast 56 miles southeast of Da Nang, the 9th Engineers were responsible for the maintenance of bridges and roads, and perhaps most importantly mine sweeping. Schrum was wounded in action in August 1967, returning to duty after a short recuperation. While on leave in May 1968, Schrum married his fiancee Carolyn Ann Garrett, and the two settled in Virginia after the end of his time in service. Schrum died in Glen Allen, Va., on June 20, 1995.

A compact record of one marine’s service in Vietnam, this collection contains letters written by Ronald Schrum to his fiancee describing his duties as a combat engineer near Chu Lai. Covering only the months from Jan. 1967 to Nov. 1968, they include accounts of mine sweeping, fire fights with the Viet Cong (including one in which he was wounded in action), the Tet Offensive, and life on base, and increasingly as the couple approach their marriage, the letters are marked by a longing for his wife and home and a literal counting down of days remaining in service.