The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
CredoResearch digital collections in Credo

Collections: W

Wilkie, Richard W., 1938-

Richard W. Wilkie Collection

1855-1874
3 boxes 1.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1044

The human geographer, Richard Wilkie received his doctorate from the University of Washington in 1968, the same year he joined the faculty at UMass Amherst. His research has included a long-term longitudinal study of the assimilation of Argentine migrants, a study of the periodic market system in the Guatemalan highlands, and other projects that range from the European Mediterranean to Hawaii, Malaysia, and Ecuador. Beginning in the 1990s, he turned increasingly to analyzing the concept of attachment to place and the importance of place in the lives of people. Wilkie retired in 2009, but has remained active in teaching, mentoring graduate students, travel, and photography.

This collection consists of town maps excised from mid-nineteenth century atlases, including Smith’s Map of Hartford County (1855), Clark and Tackabury’s New geographical map of the State of Connecticut (1860), and F.W. Beer’ Atlas of Litchfield County (1874).

Gift of Richard Wilkie, Dec. 2017

Subjects

Connecticut--Maps

Types of material

Maps
Williams, Gray

Gray Williams Photograph Collection

ca.1988-2000
3 boxes 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: PH 027

The editor, writer, and photographer Gray Williams was born in New York City in 1932, and spent most of his life in Chappaqua (Westchester County), N.Y. A 1954 graduate of Yale, Williams worked in the publishing industry for many years, including for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, and since 1988, he has been a freelance writer, editor, and photographer. Long dedicated to history and historical preservation, he has served as New Castle Town Historian, chair of the New Castle Landmarks Advisory Committee, trustee of the Westchester County Historical Society, and as a member of the Property Council at the National Trust property Lyndhurst. He is the author of Picturing Our Past: National Register Sites in Westchester County (Westchester County Historical Society, 2003). A specialist in the early stone carvers of New York and Connecticut, as well as the use of grave monuments to illuminate and enrich the study of American history, art, and culture, Williams is a former trustee of the Association for Gravestone Studies and has contributed articles to its annual journal, Markers, and its Quarterly. In 2007, he was awarded the Association’s Harriette Merrifield Forbes Award for contributions to scholarship and preservation in the field.

The photographs and research materials he has contributed to the Association for Gravestone Studies are largely devoted to the subjects of three articles in the AAGS journal, Markers: “‘Md. by Thomas Gold’: The Gravestones of a New Haven Carver,” in collaboration with Meredith M. Williams, Markers V (1988); “Solomon Brewer: A Connecticut Valley Yankee in Westchester County,” Markers XI (1994); “By Their Characters You Shall Know Them: Using Styles of Lettering to Identify Gravestone Carvers,” Markers XVII (2000). The collection also includes photographs taken during AGS conferences, principally in New England, as well as a small group taken in Natchez Cemetery in Mississippi.

Subjects

Sepulchral monuments--New YorkStone carving--New York

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesWilliams, Gray

Types of material

Photographs
Williams, Paul, 1948-2013

Paul Williams Papers

ca. 1958-2005
53 boxes 79.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1158
Depiction of Paul Williams, ca. 1973
Paul Williams, ca. 1973

Born in 1948 in Boston, Paul Williams was an avid reader of science fiction and published his first fanzine, Within, in 1962 at the age of 14. A few years later, after completing his first semester at Swarthmore, Williams hitchhiked to New York City. There he wrote and published—typing up the mimeo stencils himself—the first issue of Crawdaddy! With the birth of this publication, Williams is widely recognized as the founder of serious rock and roll journalism. He left Crawdaddy! in 1968 and went on to establish Entwhistle Books with David Hartwell, Chester Anderson, and Joel Hack. Williams continued to write, collecting his early works on rock and roll in two books and contributing articles as a freelancer for Rolling Stone. During the early 1970s, Williams lived on several intentional communities, including the Fort Hill Community in Cambridge, and wrote the surprise best seller Das Energi and its follow-up, Apple Bay during this period. In 1975, his profile of friend Philip K. Dick launched P.K.D. to a national audience, and Williams later served as the literary executor of the Dick estate following the death of his friend in 1982. His extensive writing on Bob Dylan spanned forty years and resulted in a significant body of publications including a multi-volume work on the artist. In 1995, Williams suffered a near fatal bike accident that left him partially disabled. A remarkable initial recovery proved to be short-lived and within a few years after the accident, Williams began exhibiting symptoms of early-onset dementia, a result of the traumatic brain injury he sustained. He died in 2013 leaving behind a tremendous legacy as author, editor, and publisher.

The Paul Williams Papers is comprehensive collection of materials that documents the writings and relationships that shaped the field of rock and roll journalism. Alongside manuscripts of the numerous books and articles Williams wrote are notebooks, correspondence, and media. Early issues of Crawdaddy! and Williams’s writings on science fiction author Philip K. Dick (including audio cassette tapes of the 1974 P.K.D. interview) are featured as well as his working files on Bob Dylan. Correspondence includes Theodore, Sturgeon, Chester Anderson, David Hartwell, Susan Ann Protter, Julian Moody, Raymond Mungo among many others.

Subjects

Communal livingCrawdaddy! (New York, N.Y.)Rock musicScience fiction

Contributors

Williams, Paul, 1948-2013

Types of material

CorrespondenceManuscriptsPhotographs
Williams, Roger

Roger Williams Account Book

1808-1822
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 619 bd

During the early decades of the nineteenth century, Roger Williams ran a ferry in West Springfield, Mass., carrying passengers and freight across the Connecticut River.

The Williams ledger is a combination daybook and account book, recording several dozen transactions of a Connecticut River ferryman, centered on the years around the War of 1812. Most of the entries are brief records of trips carrying individuals or freight across the river, however a few provide indications of other economic activity, including framing and joining, making a coffin, fixing sleds, and cidering.

Subjects

Ferries--Massachusetts--Connecticut RiverWest Springfield (Mass.)

Contributors

Williams, Roger

Types of material

Account booksDaybooks
Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963

William Carlos Williams Letters

1946-1986
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 367

An obstetrician from Rutherford, N.J., William Carlos Williams (1883-1963) was a key figure in modernist poetry in the United States. Innovative and experimental in his poetry, Williams was a member of the avant garde poetically and politically, writing in a simple though never simplistic style that was unencumbered by the formalism and literary allusion of peers such as T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound.

This collection consists of a small group of eleven letters and postcards written by Williams during the years 1946-1962, the majority of which were sent to Marie Leone, a nurse at the Passaic General Hospital in Passaic, New Jersey. In these letters Williams thanks Marie and her coworkers for the cards, good wishes, and gifts they sent to cheer him up. The letters are friendly and humorous even though they are for the most part written from Williams’s hospital bed during one of the frequent illnesses he suffered from in the later years of his life.

Acquired from Paul Mariani, 1993

Subjects

Poets, American

Contributors

Williams, Florence H. (Florence Herman), d. 1976Williams, William Carlos, 1883-1963

Types of material

Letters (Correspondence)PhotographsPostcards
Willis, F. L. H. (Frederick Llewellyn Hovey), 1830-1914

F. L. H. Willis Papers

1806-1974 Bulk: 1856-1921
13 boxes 7.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1116
Depiction of F. L. H. Willis, ca.1887
F. L. H. Willis, ca.1887

In 1857, Frederick L. H. Willis earned the singular distinction of being expelled from Harvard Divinity School for acting as a spirit medium. An important figure in the post-Civil War Spiritualist movement, Willis lived a long and eclectic life in which he was at turns an intimate of the family of Bronson Alcott, an ardent proponent of Spiritualism, a lecturer, preacher, homeopathic physician, and writer.

A wide-ranging intellect and steadfast opposition to orthodoxy suffuse the Willis Papers. The heart of the collection is an extensive collection of sermons, lectures, and essays by Frederick L. H. Willis dating from the late 1850s to the turn of the twentieth century. These works veer into commentary on ancient history, art and aesthetics, medicine, astrology, Eastern religion, and social reform, but are rooted firmly in the framework of a Spiritualist worldview. The collection also includes a large number of family photographs, some correspondence, and a few works by Willis’s wife, Love, and daughter, Edith.

Acquired from Michael Brown, Jan. 2020

Subjects

AstrologySpiritualism--MassachusettsUnitarian churches--Clergy

Contributors

Forbes, Edith Willis Linn, 1865-1945Willis, Love M. Whitcomb

Types of material

LecturesPhotographsSermons
Wilson, Douglas Fir

Douglas Fir Wilson Papers

1975-2012
6 boxes 9 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1059

A philosopher, writer, activist, and artist, Douglas Wilson founded the Rowe Conference Center affiliated with the Unitarian Universalist camp in Rowe, Mass. Born in Vancouver, B.C., in 1946, but raised primarily in California, Wilson earned degrees at UC Santa Barbara (1967) and the Starr King School for the Ministry in Berkeley (1970), before being ordained at the First Uniarian Congregational Society in Brooklyn. He first came to Rowe in 1971 to work as assistant director of the Junior High summer camp, but soon proposed building a center at Rowe modeled on the Esalen Institute which would offer year-round retreats and workshops founded in Unitarian Universalist principles of equality, justice, freedom, peace, and the respect for the interdependent web of all existence. Serving as Executive Director (and after 1985, as co-Executive Director with his partner Prue Berry), Wilson brought together people who were “politically aware, psychologically sophisticated, and religiously based,” ranging from the Berrigans and Nearings to Jean Houston and Abbie Hoffman. The Wilsons retired from Rowe in December 2012.

The Wilson collection contains nearly forty years of files accumulated during Douglas Wilson’s time as Director of the Rowe Conference Center. In addition to a nearly complete run of the Center newsletter, Wilson retained materials on dozens of the thinkers, writers, and activists who came to Rowe, with each file containing correspondence (usually both directions), background notes and clippings.

Gift of Douglas Fir Wilson and Prue Berry, Nov. 2018

Subjects

Peace movements--MassachusettsUnitarian Universalist Rowe Camp & Conference CenterUnitarians--Massachusetts

Types of material

Newsletters
Wilson, John S.

John S. Wilson Collection

1970-1983
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 858
Depiction of Amos Foster stone, 1793, New Salem Cemetery
Amos Foster stone, 1793, New Salem Cemetery

As an undergraduate at UMass Amherst, John S. Wilson undertook of study of gravestones in New Salem, Mass. Working under George Armelagos, he receiving a BA in Anthropology with honors (1971) for his work on the “social dimension of New England mortuary art,” and returned for an MA in (1976). Wilson later worked as Regional Historic Preservation Officer and Archaeologist for the Northeast Region of the US Fish and Wildlife Service.

Part of the collections of the Association for Gravestone Studies, the collection includes two copies of John Wilson’s senior honors thesis, a card file associated with the thesis, and several dozen slides (both color and black and white) of New Salem headstones. Some images appear to be later prints of images taken in 1970-1971.

Subjects

New Salem (Mass.)--HistorySepulchral monuments--Massachusetts--New Salem

Types of material

Photographs
Wilson, Rand

Rand Wilson Papers

1977-2004
15 boxes 22.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1026

A union organizer and labor communicator, Rand Wilson became a rank and file organizer for the Oil, Chemical and Atomic Workers Union and helped win the first-ever contract for workers at Clinical Assays in Cambridge, Mass., in 1982. He has since taken part in dozens of successful organizing and contract campaigns, both regionally and nationally, for the Communications Workers of America, the Paperworkers, Carpenters, Teamsters and Service Employees International Union, and other unions. Wilson’s notable achievements include coordinating solidarity efforts with the CWA and IBEW during the massive NYNEX telephone workers’ strike in 1989; founding the Massachusetts branch of the community-labor coalition, Jobs with Justice; coordinating communications for the Teamsters in 1997 during the lengthy contract campaign and historic 15-day strike by the 185,000 workers at UPS; and organizing an AFL-CIO-led effort focused on financial institutions’ conflicts of interest that helped to thwart the Bush administration’s efforts to privatize social security. He served as national coordinator for “Labor for Bernie” during the presidential campaign on 2016, and currently works for SEIU Local 888 in Boston.

Documenting forty years of labor activism, the Wilson papers include important material from most of his major initiatives, including organizing campaigns with the CWA, files relating to the Justice at Work/Just Cause for All initiatives, organizing high tech, health care and telephone workers, and Jobs with Justice. Nearly half of the collection is comprised of a comprehensive collection of source materials and documents from the Teamsters’ UPS contract campaign and strike.

Subjects

Labor unions--MassachusettsNYNEX CorporationStrikes and lockoutsUnited Parcel Service

Contributors

Communications Workers of AmericaInternational Brotherhood of TeamstersJustice at Work
Wing, Paul, 1792-1822

Paul Wing Account Book

1805-1824
1 vol. 0.2 linear feet
Call no.: MS 215 bd

Seaman from Rochester, Massachusetts. Accounts provide information on work done, cargo and passengers carried, wages, ship expenses, and port charges. Also includes accounts of Philip Wing, Paul’s older brother, for agricultural, butchering, and ship carpentry work, as well as a loose sheet concerning probate court proceedings probably relating to the settling of Paul Wing’s estate after his death.

Subjects

Agriculture--Accounting--History--19th centuryHarbors--Port charges--History--19th centuryMerchant mariners--Salaries, etc.--History--19th centuryRochester (Mass. : Town)--Commerce--History--19th centuryRochester (Mass. : Town)--Economic conditions--19th centuryShipping--Accounting--History--19th centuryShips--Cargo--History--19th centuryShips--Equipment and supplies--History--19th centuryShips--Maintenance and repair--History--19th century

Contributors

Wing, Paul, 1792-1822Wing, Philip, 1788-

Types of material

Account books