Collections: U

The present day United Congregational Church of Holyoke is the product of complex history of growth and consolidation of five separate churches responding to the changing demographics and spiritual needs of the city. Established in 1799, the First Congregational Church in Holyoke was initially a small congregation perched above the floodplain south of the center of town, sharing preachers with the equally sparse population of Baptists until the establishment of the First Baptist Church in 1826. The First Congregational Church was finally erected in 1838, and ten years later, the Second Church was established in to serve the needs of the growing Protestant population in the city center, building their own church in 1853 as the mill economy was booming. Reaching out to the millworkers, members of the Second Church opened the Grace Mission in 1870, which spun off into its own church in 1896. Skinner Chapel was founded in 1909 as an addition to the Second Congregational Church, dedicated to the prominent Skinner family. Finally, the German Reformed Church was organized in 1892, though meetings were held years earlier. In the latter part of the twentieth century, however, declining memberships in each of these churches led to a series of mergers, beginning in 1961 when the German Reformed Church united with the First Congregational to become the First United Congregational Church. Grace Church and the First UCC merged in 1973 to become Grace United, and in 1996, Grace joined with the Second Congregational Church to become the present UCC of Holyoke.

The records of the UCC of Holyoke document over 200 years of the ecclesiatical history of an industrial city. In addition to records of membership, baptisms, marriages, and church governance, the collection includes valuable records of the women’s missionary society, the German Maenner Bund, and a long run of church newsletters that offer insight into the weekly course of events in the religious community. Materials relating to Skinner Chapel are part of the collections of Wistariahurst Museum.

Established in Springfield, Mass., in 1938, Local 1459 of the United Food and Commercial Workers International Union represents the interests of its members in the workplace and the community in western Massachusetts and Vermont. The UCFW was formed in June 1979 from the merger of the Retail Clerks International Union and Amalgamated Meat Cutters and Butcher Workmen of North America, creating the largest affiliated union in the AFL-CIO. Mergers with the Barbers, Beauticians and Allied Industries International Association and United Retail Workers Union followed in 1980 and 1981.

The records of UFCW Local 1459 include the 1979 constitution and merger agreement with UFCW, contracts with local businesses, and several issues of the newsletter, The Union Leader, both before and after chartering with UFCW.

The United Hatters, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union (UHCMW) was formed in 1934 by the merger of the United Hatters of North America and the Cloth Hat, Cap and Millinery Workers International Union, settling deep rifts between the competing unions. For five decades, the UHCMW organized the declining hat and millinery trade in the United States until it merged into the Amalgamated Clothing and Textile Workers Union (ACTWU) in 1983, which merged in 1995 into the International Ladies Garment Workers Union to form UNITE (Union of Needletrades, Industrial and Textile Employees).

The collection documents UHCMW Local 4, representing workers in Boston and Framingham, from 1945 through the time of its merger into the ACTWU. The series of ledgers and documents in the collection include documents concerning health and retirement benefits for union members, bargaining agreements, and financial records for the local, as well as a small assortment of correspondence, memoranda, and minutes of meetings.

The collection contains the records of the United Paperworkers International Union as well as their predecessors including the International Brotherhood of Papermakers; United Paperworkers of America; United Papermakers and Paperworkers; and the International Brotherhood of Pulp, Sulphite and Paper Mill Workers.

By February 1988 members of of United Paperworkers International Union Local 14 of Jay, Maine, had been on strike for seven months. With the support of their state officials and officials of Massachusetts and Northampton AFL-CIO, a caravan of strikers traveled to Northampton to inform the public of their struggle. Collection is limited to a city of Northampton resolution and a brief report of the strikers position and their trip to the city.

Under the federal New Deal in the late 1930s, the Works Project Administration authorized a series of surveys of major watersheds to gauge water quality and sources of pollution. In Massachusetts, the studies were coordinated by the Massachusetts Department of Health and resulted in a series of more or less detailed reports issued between September 1936 and January 1938.

The pollution survey collection contains reports for six major watersheds in New England — the Blackstone, Hoosic, Housatonic, Merrimack, Nashua, and Ten Mile — measuring the impact of both civic and industrial waste on regional water resources.

Local 3654 of the United Steel Workers of America was organized in Whitinsville, Massachusetts. Records include Minutes, by-laws, newsletters, grievances, company reports, and publications.

Founded in September 1989, the University Anti-Intervention, Disarmament & Conversion Project was developed by individuals in the UMass Amherst community who wanted to eliminate the university’s dependence on defense research. The purpose of the project was to serve as a resource center for students, faculty, and community activists working to break the link between the nation’s institutions of higher learning and the military industrial complex.

The collection consists of a resource guide created by the group.

Established in 1863 as the Massachusetts Agricultural College, the University of Massachusetts Amherst is a national research university and the flagship campus of the states five-campus University system. UMass, one of the founding members of the Five College Consortium established in 1965, offers reciprocal student access among the University and Amherst, Hampshire, Mount Holyoke, and Smith Colleges. The University currently enrolls approximately 24,000 undergraduate and graduate students, and offers 87 bachelor’s degree programs, 6 associate’s, 73 masters, and 51 doctoral programs in 10 schools and colleges.

Collocated for reasons of preservation and convenience of storage, the sound recordings in this series were produced under a variety of circumstances by a range of individuals and units in the university. Although they represent only a small proportion of the audio materials in UMass collections, they include a handful of recordings of administration activities, such as the Board of Trustees meetings and the Chancellor’s Committee investigating the women’s occupation of the Daily Collegian offices, along with selected recordings from the Distinguished Visitors Program.

The new Massachusetts Agricultural College welcomed its first contingent of 34 students to campus on October 1, 1867, resulting in the first graduating class of 28 — the Pioneer Class of 1871. The student body waxed and waned in ensuing years as the college slowly began to diversify its curriculum and the students population itself, admitting international students as early as 1870, followed by graduate students (first degree awarded 1896), African Americans (class of 1901), and women (class of 1905). Enrollment at the university first topped 1,000 in 1945 rising to 6,000 by 1960. Following a tumultuous period of great expansion, UMass had over 23,000 students in 1970.

Organized by class year, this series includes a diverse body of material generated by undergraduate students at Massachusetts Agricultural College, Mass. State College, and UMass Amherst from its beginning to the present day. Although the content varies widely from class to class and by period of time, typical years includes basic data on the graduating class, publications by alums, reunion information, class notes, photographs, or small collections of letters written while in school. In a few cases, the quantity representing an individual almuna or alumnus has led SCUA to treat the materials as a separate collection with its own finding aid.