Collections: mss

An attorney from Northampton, Mass., Carl Russo was a co-founder of the Florence Poets Society in 2004 with his friend Tom “Twilite” Clark. Born in Watervliet, NY, Russo worked as a social worker for several years after graduating from the University of Buffalo in 1967. Moving to Massachusetts to take a position with the Veterans Administration, he left social work for the law, earning his degree at Western New England College and setting up practice in Northampton. Creative and community-minded, he was a member of the city’s Arts Council and produced shows for Northampton Community Television and co-hosted a radio show on Valley Free Radio, in addition to writing poetry and supporting other local writers. Russo passed away in October 2012 at the age of 63.

The Russo Collection consists of drafts of Russo’s poetry, his poetry notebooks, and scattered ephemera from the Florence Poets Society.

The collection includes publications, ephemera, periodicals, and other communications from a range of radical groups. Much of the collection relates to the sedition trial of Raymond Luc Levasseur and the Ohio Seven, but ranges into related topics, including political prisoners, Communist and revolutionary action, Puerto Rican independence, African liberation movements, and anti-Klan and antiracist activity. It is organized into six series: Ohio Seven (3 boxes), Political Prisoners (2 boxes), John Brown Anti-Klan Committee (1 box), Subject Files (5 boxes), and Radical Periodicals (4 boxes).

The Sagendorph Woolen Company of East Brookfield, located about sixty miles southwest of Boston in Worcester County, Massachusetts, maintained sixteen looms and specialized in the carding of shoddy and the manufacture of cashmeres, repellents, and suitings. There is some evidence that Sagendorph also spun raw materials for other companies and sold some textile goods on commission.

This daybook records the daily transactions between the Sagendorph Woolen Company and other businesses, local residents, and the company’s labor force. These detailed entries present a dynamic picture of the company’s manufacturing operations ranging from the purchase of raw materials to the sales of finished products.

Named for a Polish saint, Stanislaus Kostka, the Saint Stanislaus Society of Turners Falls was Lodge 549 of the Polish Roman Catholic Union of America, the oldest Polish fraternal organization in the United States. Like many ethnic fraternal societies, it served as a buffer between the customs and language that immigrants brought with them and the new traditions and language they were expected to learn upon entering American society. Fraternal societies like St. Stanislaus offered members a place to celebrate their Polish heritage and Roman Catholic faith, while also assisting them with some of the more practical matters of living in a new country, such as securing life insurance and home mortgages.

The two volumes in this collection contain minutes of monthly meetings of the Saint Stanislaus Society. The minutes are recorded in Polish.

While serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison, Tiyo Attallah Salah-El transformed himself into an activist, scholar, and advocate for the abolition of prisons. An accomplished jazz musician, Salah-El has distinguished himself for educational and scholarly work, his musical career, his close relationship with activists and educators, and for the non-profit organization he founded, The Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons (CAP).

The Papers of Tiyo Attallah Salah-El document his experience in the State Correctional Institution in Dallas, Pennsylvania, from 1977 until his death in 2018 at the age of 85, providing information on his education, teaching, and activism. The bulk of the collection consists of his extensive correspondence with educators, musicians, and activists. Other highlights include a manuscript copy of his autobiography and the founding documents of the The Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons.

One of the small number of Wilburite quarterly meetings, the Salem and Dover Quarter was established in 1851 when the Salem Quarterly Meeting and Dover Quarterly Meeting were merged. It oversaw two Wilburite monthly meetings: Berwick, Maine, and Salem, Massachusetts. When Salem and Dover was laid down in 1881, its remaining members were transferred to Sandwich Monthly Meeting (Wilburite).

This small collection is comprised solely of a complete set of minute from the men’s quarterly meeting.

Conflict over doctrinal matters in the Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends was endemic in the first half of the nineteenth century, beginning with the New Light agitation after the War of 1812. With the Separation of 1845, a Wilburite monthly meeting was established there that persisted until 1863. Part of the Salem Quarterly Meeting (Wilburite) from 1845-1851 and Salem and Dover Quarterly (1851-1863), Salem Monthly’s remaining members were officially transferred to Berwick, however many members chose to join the Otisite (or Primitive) Nantucket Monthly Meeting instead. Their worship group lasted until about 1911.

The slender collection for the Salem Monthly Meeting of Friends (Wilburite) include complete minutes for both the men’s and women’s meetings.

Among the oldest Quaker quarterlies in the United States, Salem Quarterly Meeting of Friends began meetings for business in 1705. Over the years, two additional quarterlies have been set off from Salem: Falmouth in 1794 and Dover in 1815. Salem Quarter currently oversees ten monthly meetings, all in Massachusetts, however historically it included meetings in both Maine and New Hampshire.

The records of Salem Quarter are a fairly robust cross section of the activity of one of the oldest quarterlies in New England. The records are relatively richer for the eighteenth century and quite sparse for the mid-twentieth.

In the mid-1970s, the Center for the Study of New Russian Literature in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UMass Amherst began collecting the self-published and underground literature of the Soviet Union as a means of documenting social and political dissent in the Communist state.

The Samizdat collection includes writings in several genres — chiefly fiction, poetry, drama, and literary, social, and political criticism — in handwritten, photocopied, and printed form, as well as photos, a passport application for Mikhail Baryshnikov, and memorabilia from an American production of one of the plays in the collection.

Iron foundry in Taunton, Massachusetts that produced stoves for individuals and several large local companies. Includes monthly labor payments to workforce of thirteen, as well as monthly accounts of sales, merchandise on hand, and rent. Also documents the company’s worth, annual profits, and the worth of company partners in 1870.