Collections: mss

In 1589, Pedro Guillén de las Casas of Jaen, Andalusia, began the effort to petition the crown to have his claim to a noble lineage recognized. The carta executoria de hidalguia he sought was the written culmination of a legal process that began with assembling a “pruebas de hidalguia” containing evidence of a noble lineage and testimonies from town or regional officials. The request was submitted to one of two chancelleries that handled lawsuits of nobility, the Real Chancillería in Granada (for southern Spain) or Valladolid (for the north), and if approved, the carta executoria was issued acknowledging, rather than granting, nobility. De las Casas’s petition was approved in May 1590.

Issued in the name of King Philip II of Spain and Portugal at the time of his marriage to Mary I (1554-1558), this document is an exceptional example of the patents of nobility produced in Granada during the late sixteenth century. Bound in contemporary red velvet, it bestows the rank of hidalgo (gentleman) on Pedro Guillén de las Casas, and is illuminated with a series of exquisite miniatures, including one of Philip II, aged 33. The carta appears to be missing a frontispiece and text leaf, but includes a single paper leaf loosely inserted at the beginning with a nineteenth-century depiction of Christ carrying the Cross.

Pat Spaulding camera returning home, 1956 Sept.

In 1956, the graphic designer Pat Spaulding left for a tour of Europe. During her seven months abroad, she and her friend Maureen Jones traveled by motor scooter through France, Italy, Switzerland, Austria, and Germany, staying in hostels and taking in the sights. Perhaps most memorably, Spaulding tore her Achilles tendon while visiting in Siena, Italy, receiving generous care from her hosts during the four-week period of her recovery.

A refreshing record of two young American women traveling alone in Europe during the mid-1950s, this scrapbook is populated with dozens of well laid-out photographs of sites seen, along with Spaulding’s letters home and a raft of ephemera such as picture postcards, copies of ticket stubs and passport pages, an international driver’s license, smallpox immunization certificate, maps, newsclippings, and beer coasters. Notably, the album also includes a number of beautiful, skillfully-rendered line drawings.

In the early 1970s, the Springfield Environmental Coalition emerged as one of the grassroots organizations dedicated to environmental causes in the lower Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts. Under the leadership of its president, Wilfred R. Lenville, the Coalition took part in regional planning efforts relating to urban expansion in the city of Springfield as well as issues relating to regional land use, agriculture, and water quality in the Connecticut River.

A tightly-focused assemblage of formally and informally published materials from the lower Pioneer Valley, the SEC collection addresses a range of issues in regional planning during the early 1970s, including land use, agriculture, water resources, zoning, and urban growth. Of particular note are a series of interesting typewritten studies of individual neighborhoods in Springfield, 1970-1972. The collection includes one folder of correspondence regarding the Coalition’s work.

Polish family who emigrated to the United States in 1912-1913 and settled in Chicopee, Massachusetts, working in meat packing firms and textile factories, and also as seamstresses and farmers.

Includes birth and wedding certificates, military and employment documentation, residential and passport applications, photographs, and lists of baptisms, weddings, and deaths. Also contains a family history written by Gary Sroka, correspondence, payment book for the Society of St. Joseph (Chicopee, Massachusetts), and a news clipping. All materials exist as photocopies and are written primarily in Polish, German, and Hungarian, though some are in English, Ukrainian, and Russian.

The St. Kazimier Society was an early mutual aid society formed in the Polish community in Turners Falls, Massachusetts. Established in 1904, the Society preceded the founding of Our Lady of Czestochowa Church by five years.

Records of the St. Kazimier Society of Turners Falls include administrative files, financial records, educational materials, and photographs. Account books generally reflect members’ premium payments and benefits, the income and expenses of the society itself, and of the club.

A renowned independent film maker and founder of Gabriel Films, Jonathan Stack has written and produced over two dozen documentary films and fifty television programs. Born in New York City in 1957, Stack graduated from UMass Amherst in 1979. From the time of his film Damned in the USA (1992), Stack has taken on challenging subjects, earning a reputation for gaining access into forbidden and often dangerous situations, from crack dens in Harlem to war-torn Liberia. The recipient of numerous honors in his career, Stack has been awarded five Emmy Awards, has twice been nominated for the Academy Award, and his film The Farm, on Angola Prison, won Sundance Film Festival’s Grand Jury Prize in 1998.

The films and videos in the Stack collection include copies of his work in Liberia and Haiti and material from his documentary on prison rodeos at Angola Prison. The collection includes film from Damned in the USA (1992), Final Judgment (1996), and The Farm (1998), as well as footage from Harlem, Angola Prison, St. Gabriel Women’s Prison, and on body piercing, rodeo, and the prisoner Vincent Simmons.

Russell Stacy (2nd from L, front row) and Squadron, ca. 1942

When drafted into the Army Air Corps in late December 1942, Russell Stacy (1922-2009) was as apprentice at the General Electric plant in Pittsfield, Mass., and was pursuing an engineering degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Training for active duty aboard the new B-29 Superfortress, it was not until April 1944 that planes were ready for operations, at which point Staff Sgt. Stacy became the central fire control gunner on the plane “Totin’ to Tokyo.” As part of the 793d Squadron, 468th Bomb Group, 20th Bomber Command, he was based in Kharagpur, India, with a forward base on Chengdu, China, and took part in bombing raids throughout southeast Asia, including the first mission to bomb Japan from China in July 1944. The logistical challenges of operating from China led the Air Corps to abandon the base in Jan. 1945, at which time Stacy returned to the United States for additional training. After the war’s end, he continued as a draftsman at GE, later working as an engineer in New England and Virginia for nearly forty years. Russell’s father, William H. Stacey served in France during World War I, as did his mother, Mary Ellen Barns, a Red Cross nurse.

Writing home consistently throughout the war at least once a week, Stacy left a remarkably dense and thorough record of his service. Beginning at the point of his induction, the letters provide discussions of training to become a B-29 gunner; his time in India and China; bombing raids over Japan and Sumatra, and China; and his return to the States for additional training. Well written, though somewhat lacking in detail due to censorship, the collection provides a valuable perspective on a crew members’ experience in the China-Burma-India theater. Other parts of the collection detail the Stacy and Barnes family, and their war service dating back to the era of the American colonies, particularly William Stacy’s service as an ambulance driver and Mary Ellen Barnes’s service as a Red Cross nurse, both in World War I.

A theater company of older adults based in Oakland, Calif., Stagebridge is recognized as a pioneer in the field of creative aging. Founded by Stuart Kandell in 1978, the organization sponsors workshops, performances, and other opportunities for lifelong learning that provide a creative means to transform the lives of older adults and their communities through the performing arts. Organized “for and of” older adults, Stagebridge is testimony to the ways in which elders enrich our culture and communities.

The Stagebridge collection contains scrapbooks, photograph albums, news clippings, and some scripts beginning in the earliest years of the organization. Digital materials in the collection are even richer, ranging from videos of performances to promotional materials and organizational records.

George Clifford Stamper was a movie projectionist in the 4th Special Services during World War II. Born and raised in Somerville, Massachusetts, he enlisted in the U.S. Army on September 1, 1943 and participated in the European Theater from April 6, 1944 until December 12, 1945, when he was sent home and then honorably discharged in January 1946.

The papers of G. Clifford Stamper consist primarily of his incoming and outgoing letters during his training and service from 1943-1945. Correspondence is mostly with his family, but also includes his letters with neighbors, as well as friends that were serving. The collection contains, too, Stamper’s post-war letters received from 1946-1955. In addition, the outgoing letters of James C. Doyle, Jr. during his service in the U.S. Marines from 1958-1959 are a part of this collection. Doyle’s connection to Stamper is unclear.

Established in 1921 in St. Louis Missouri, the Stanze Monument Company was family-owned and operated until it was sold in the mid-1980s. The company custom-cut gravestones for more than sixty years and was one of the last monument companies to cut gravestones by hand.

The collection consists of gravestone, monument, and mausoleum technical and architectural drawings. Most of the tracings and drawings of headstone patterns were used to make glass molds for sand-blasting granite headstones, while the rubbings represent reproductions of designs and font sizes and styles. Some of the architectural drawings depict conceptual plans for a typical forty-acre cemetery. The drawings were transferred from the Kibbe Hancock Heritage Museum in Illinois; a small portion of the materials were identified as being part of the “Gustafson Collection.”