The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
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Collections: T

Totman, Ruth J.

Ruth J. Totman Papers

ca. 1914-1999
6 boxes 3 linear feet
Call no.: FS 097
Depiction of Ruth Totman and Jean Lewis, ca.1935
Ruth Totman and Jean Lewis, ca.1935

Trained as a teacher of physical education at the Sargent School in Boston, Ruth J. Totman enjoyed a career at state normal schools and teachers colleges in New York and Pennsylvania before joining the faculty at Massachusetts State College in 1943, building the program in women’s physical education almost from scratch and culminating in 1958 with the opening of a new Women’s Physical Education Building, which was one of the largest and finest of its kind in the nation. Totman retired at the mandatory age of 70 in 1964, and twenty years later, the women’s PE building was rededicated in her honor. Totman died in November 1989, three days after her 95th birthday.

The Totman Papers are composed mostly of personal materials pertaining to her residence in Amherst, correspondence, and Totman family materials. The sparse material in this collection relating to Totman’s professional career touches lightly on her retirement in 1964 and the dedication of the Ruth J. Totman Physical Education Building at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Supplementing the documents is a sizeable quantity of photographs and 8mm films, with the former spanning nearly her entire 95 years. The 8mm films, though fragile, provide an interesting, though soundless view into Totman’s activities from the 1940s through the 1960s, including a cross-country trip with Gertrude “Jean” Lewis, women’s Physical Education events at the New Jersey College for Women, and trips to Japan to visit her nephew, Conrad Totman..

Subjects

College buildings--Massachusetts--Amherst--History--SourcesConway (Mass.)--GenealogyDairy farms--MassachusettsFamily farms--United StatesFarm life--United StatesPhysical Education for womenTotman familyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--HistoryWomen physical education teachers

Contributors

Drew, Raymond Totman, 1923-1981Lewis, Gertrude Minnie, 1896-Totman, Conrad DTotman, Ruth J

Types of material

Genealogies
Towle, Gifford H.

Gifford H. and Marjorie B. Towle Papers

1970-1987 Bulk: 1945-1980
24 boxes 33 linear feet
Call no.: MS 881
Depiction of Gifford and Marjorie Towle, 1957
Gifford and Marjorie Towle, 1957

As a student at Mount Hermon School in the late 1920s, Gifford Hoag Towle met Marjorie Ripley Blossom, a young woman at the Northfield School for Girls. When Giff went on to the Massachusetts Agricultural College (BS 1932) and Marjorie to a midwestern Bible College for a year (before being called home due to a family crisis), they remained connected and after Giff’s graduation in 1932, they married. By the time that Giff graduated from Hartford Seminary, he had left his Quaker upbringing to enter the Congregationalist ministry, and he and Marjorie filled three pulpits near Pelham, Mass. In 1939, however, they were called by the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions to serve as missionaries in the American Marathi Mission in Maharashtra State, central India. Following two years of intensive study of the Marathi language in Ahmednagar, they settled in Vadala, a rural village on the semi-arid plains, where they worked for thirty-four years, counting furloughs. In 1946 on furlough in the U.S., Giff earned a master’s degree in agricultural engineering from Cornell while pastoring a small church in the suburbs of Ithaca. In his agricultural work in India, Giff used the mission farm to demonstrate crop diversity and farm animal improvement; created co-operatives to enable poor farmers to use appropriate modern tools and machinery for pennies; taught good irrigation and soil conservation; and later built a Mechanical Unit and trained local Indians as mechanics to repair machinery and drill wells. Giff also invented a pump for which he never filed a patent, wanting instead to make it as widely available as possible. He built networks with relatives, churches, and non-profits to fund these efforts and get supplies.

The Towle Collection contains a wealth of information for research in three distinct areas: missions and religious matters; agriculture in “developing” countries; and the cultural and socio-economic context of social change in rural India. The Towles’ voluminous correspondence and reports offer a particularly rich view into mission life in India, including American participation through churches, relations between Hindus and Christians or between Christians, and the viability of these efforts. Marjorie’s letters are particularly vivid, adding significantly to our understanding of mission lives and experiences. The collection is equally rich in revealing the impact of the Towles’ agricultural work and for study of the efficacy of government agencies and non-profits seeking to understand cross-cultural issues.

Gift of Jean Reed, 2015

Subjects

Agriculture--IndiaIndia--Description and travelMaharasthra (India)--Economic conditionsMissionaries--India

Contributors

Towle, Marjorie Blossom, 1907-1994

Types of material

Photographs
Tracy, Susan

Susan Tracy Papers

1966-1985
9 boxes 4.5 linear feet
Call no.: FS 005

Susan Tracy, Dean of Humanities, Arts, and Cultural Studies and Professor of American Studies and History at Hampshire College, received a B.A. in English and an MA. in history from the University of Massachusetts Amherst before earning her PhD. in history from Rutgers University. Her primary interests are in American social and intellectual history, particularly labor history; Afro-American history; and women’s history. She has taught United States history and women’s studies courses at the UMass Amherst.

The Susan Tracy Papers consist largely of Tracy’s files during her tenure as a student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst (ca. 1966) and her time as a member of the University staff (ca. 1984). Included in the collection are documentation of the campus Everywoman’s Center and the Chancellor’s Committees on Sexual Harassment and Human Relations; issues of the “What’s Left” newsletter; records of the Women’s Studies Policies Board; and research for a student project on the Southwest Residential area.

Subjects

University of Massachusetts Amherst. Everywoman's CenterUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. StudentsWomen college students

Contributors

Tracy, Susan
Tragle, Henry I.

Henry I. Tragle Papers

1968-1978
3 boxes 4.5 linear feet
Call no.: FS 021

Henry I. Tragle served in the United States Army from 1941 until his retirement in 1964. He was a company commander of the 8th Armored Division during World War II and earned a Bronze Star for singlehandedly capturing a German general and his staff. After his retirement from the Army, he earned a B.A. (1966), M.A. (1967), and Ph.D in history (1971) from the University of Massachusetts, where he became a professor of history and assistant dean of the graduate school. Tragle was born in Richmond, Virginia in 1914 and worked in the Virginia dairy industry before joining the Army. Tragle studied military history but wrote his dissertation on the slave revolt led by Nat Turner in 1831. Tragle continued his historical research after his retirement from the University in 1972, collecting material on General Douglas MacArthur as well as editing several of Jackdraw Publications’ history packets. Tragle died December 15, 1991.

The Henry I. Tragle Papers contain Tragle’s historical research from 1968 until 1978, which includes scrapbooks of photos, notes, and clippings, bound together by research topic. There are also several shrink wrapped editions of Jackdraw Publications packets that Tragle was likely to have edited.

Subjects

University of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of History

Contributors

Tragle, Henry I
Traprock Peace Center

Traprock Peace Center Records

1979-2008
ca.50 boxes 75 linear feet
Call no.: MS 080

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

The Traprock Peace Center is a grassroots organization based in Deerfield, Massachusetts, that trains and educates people locally and globally in matters relating to disarmament and nonviolence. In 1980, the Center organized the first successful attempt in the United States to get a nuclear weapons moratorium referendum on the ballot, and the Center has served as a focal point for organizing on a wide array of issues in peace and social and environmental justice.

The records of Traprock Peace Center include correspondence, campaign materials (resolutions, organizing committee records, legislative packets), program reports, newsletters, newsclippings, and posters relating to the nuclear freeze campaign and many subsequent initiatives. Recent additions to the collection document the group’s work to end the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; these later additions are open for research, but are not processed.

Subjects

Antinuclear movement--MassachusettsDeerfield (Mass.)--Social conditions--SourcesNonviolence--Massachusetts--History--SourcesNuclear disarmament--History--SourcesPacifists--MassachusettsPolitical activists--Massachusetts

Contributors

Traprock Peace Center
Restrictions: unprocessed materials in this collection have been temporarily moved offsite; these boxes are closed to research. Contact SCUA for more information.
Travel Brochures

Travel Brochures Collection

1916-1949
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 490

Long a favored destination for travelers due to its scenic coastline and rural landscapes, New England’s tourist industry evolved in parallel with transportation technologies. Rail lines opened summering opportunities in the interior of the region in the nineteenth century, and the expansion of roadways and the automobile after the First World War drove the industry further, leading to a proliferation of summer camps, inns, and tourist sites, even in remote locales, serving shorter-term vacationers from the working class through the moneyed elite.

This small collection of travel brochures gathered by Faith Brainard and her husband Homer W. Brainard in the 1920s and 1930s, documents camps, inns, hotels, and touristic sites throughout New England. Most of the brochures advertise accommodations or attractions in a natural setting, including room rentals at farms, hiking in the White Mountains, and the rivers and mountains of Vermont. The target audience for many of the brochures was women traveling alone, featuring the promise of clean accommodations and wholesome activities.

Gift of Sharon Domier, 2004

Subjects

Hotels, motels, etc.--New EnglandSummer resorts--New EnglandTaverns (Inns)--New EnglandTourism--United States

Types of material

BrochuresPamphletsPostcards
Trehub, Arnold

Arnold Trehub Papers

ca. 1950-2017
6 boxes 9 linear feet
Call no.: FS 187
Depiction of Draft of a synaptic matrix for Trehub's book, The Cognitive Brain, ca. 1987.
Draft of a synaptic matrix for Trehub's book, The Cognitive Brain, ca. 1987.

Arnold Trehub, born in Malden, Mass. in 1923, was an active and very well respected cognitive scientist and researcher, artist, and World War II veteran. Trehub earned his BA from Northeastern University and his PhD from Boston University, though his undergraduate education was interrupted by the War. Serving in the Pacific Theater, he worked as a radio technician for B-29 bombers, two of which were the Enola Gay and the Bockscar. For most of his professional life, Trehub was the director of a research lab at the VA Hospital in Leeds, Mass. and an adjunct professor at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. His research on the neurophysiology of the human brain and the nature of consciousness appeared in numerous journals and edited volumes and his best known book, The Cognitive Brain, was published by MIT press in 1991. Trehub was a resident of Amherst since 1954 and passed away on April 3rd, 2017.

The Arnold Trehub Papers primarily document his work as a cognitive scientist, including drafts and copies of articles, research data, research notes on paper and as digital files, and a rich collection of Trehub’s professional email correspondence. In addition to the content of his research, the Trehub Papers also exhibit the processes and approach of early personal computer-aided research design, data design, and research graphics. There is also a small amount of Trehub’s undergraduate student work.

Gift of Aaron Trehub.

Subjects

Brain--Computer simulationCognitive scienceUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst . Department of PsychologyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--Faculty
Trent family

Trent Family Papers

1850-1996
3 boxes 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 373

Five generations of an African-American family that achieved commercial success and wealth through the restaurant and catering business as well as extensive real estate investments at the turn of the 20th century in New York City, Brooklyn, and Sea Cliff, Long Island, New York. Includes letters, public and church records, news clippings, ephemera, a videotape, and 87 photographs.

Subjects

African American capitalists and financiers--New York (State)--BiographyAfrican American families--New York (State)--HistoryAfrican Americans--Genealogy--Handbooks, manuals, etcAfrican Americans--New York (State)--BiographyAfrican Americans--New York (State)--Social life and customsBurleigh, H. T. (Harry Thacker), 1866-1949Capitalists and financiers--New York (State)--BiographyFuller, Meta Warrick, 1877-1968Landowners--New York (State)--BiographyRestauranteurs--New York (State)--BiographySmith familySmith, William H. (William Henry), 1836-1923Trent family

Types of material

Baptismal certificatesDeedsGenealogiesPhotographsVital statistics recordsWills
Trent, Lloyd A., Jr.

Lloyd A. Trent Family Collection

1850-1996
3 boxes 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 375

Over five generations, the African-American Trent worked toward commercial success and wealth through the restaurant and catering business as well as extensive real estate investments at the turn of the 20th century in New York City, Brooklyn, and Sea Cliff, Long Island, New York.

Focused primarily on family and genealogy, the Trent family collection contains letters, public and church records, news clippings, ephemera, a videotape, and 87 photographs

Gift of Brooke Trent, widow of Lloyd A. Trent, Jr., 1995

Subjects

African American families--New York (State)African Americans--New York (State)

Types of material

Photographs
Tucker, Mary E.

Mary E. Tucker Journal and Receipt book

ca.1854-1890
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 076 bd

The second child of attorney George J. Tucker and his first wife, Eunice, Mary E. Tucker was born in Lenox, Mass., ca.1835, and raised there with her elder brother Joseph and sisters Maria, Harriett, and Sarah. Mary died at a tragically young age on August 20, 1855. She is buried with her father and sister Maria in the town’s Church on the Hill Cemetery.

As small as the volume is, it is a complex book, consisting of two main parts, neither with certain authorship. Approximately the first third of the volume is comprised of brief notes on sermons delivered by Congregational minister Edmund K. Alden and other, 1854-1862, while the rest is a well-organized receipt book kept in a different hand. The receipts are arranged in sections devoted to bread and cake, soups, fish, meats, vegetables, pastry, puddings, other desserts, cake, preserves and jellies, miscellaneous, and pickles and sauces. Several recipes are attributed to other writers, including the well-known cookbook author Juliet Corson.

Subjects

Cooking, American--Massachusetts--LenoxLenox (Mass.)--History--19th centurySermons--Massachusetts--Lenox

Contributors

Alden, Edmund K.

Types of material

Cookbooks