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

Collecting area: Photographs

Abbe, Edward H.

Edward H. Abbe Papers

1828-2004
22 boxes 28.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 736
Depiction of Ed Abbe in Bora Bora, 1987
Ed Abbe in Bora Bora, 1987

Born in Syracuse, N.Y., in 1915 and raised largely in Hampton, Va., Edward Abbe seemed destined to be an engineer. The great nephew of Elihu Thomson, an inventor and founding partner in General Electric, and grandson of Edward Folger Peck, an early employee of a precursor of that firm, Abbe came from a family with a deep involvement in electrification and the development of street railways. After prepping at the Rectory and Kent Schools, Abbe studied engineering at the Sheffield School at Yale, and after graduation in 1938, accepted a position with GE. For 36 years, he worked in the Industrial Control Division in New York and Virginia, spending summers at the family home on Martha’s Vineyard. After retirement in 1975, he and his wife Gladys traveled frequently, cruising both the Atlantic and Pacific.

Ranging from an extensive correspondence from his high school and college days to materials relating to his family’s involvement in engineering, the Abbe collection offers an in depth perspective on an educated family. An avid traveler and inveterate keeper, Ed Abbe gathered a diverse assemblage of letters, diaries, and memorabilia relating to the history of the Abbe, Peck, Booth, Gifford, and Boardman families. The collection is particularly rich in visual materials, including albums and photographs, depicting homes, travel, and family life over nearly a century.

Gift of Edward Abbe, Mar. 2012

Subjects

Abbe familyBoardman familyBooth familyElectrical engineersGeneral ElectricGifford familyKent School--StudentsPeck familyRectory School--StudentsYale University--Students

Contributors

Abbe, Edward HAbbe, Gladys HowardAbbe, William ParkerPeck, Edward FPeck, Mary Booth

Types of material

DiariesLetters (Correspondence)Photographs
Activism of the 1980s

Activism of the 1980s Photograph Collection

1985-1987
0.5 linear feet
Call no.: PH 012
Depiction of Die-in at the Student Union
Die-in at the Student Union

During the academic year 1986-1987, the campus at UMass Amherst was a hotbed of political protest, fueled in part by the US intervention in Central America. The arrival on campus of a CIA recruiting officer in November set off a string of demonstrations that attracted the support of activists Abbie Hoffman and Amy Carter, daughter of former president Jimmy Carter. The occupation of the Whitmore Administration Building was followed by a larger occupation of adjacent Munson Hall, resulting in a number of arrests. Hoffman, Carter, and eleven co-defendants were tried and acquitted on charges of disorderly conduct were tried in April 1987.

The Collection contains 61 mounted photographs of marches, demonstrations, and protests in Amherst and Northampton, Mass., taken by Charles F. Carroll, Byrne Guarnotta, and Libby Hubbard, all students at UMass Amherst. The photographs are a vivid record of campus and community activism, and particularly the mobilization against the CIA and American intervention in Central America, as well as the arrest and trial of Abbie Hoffman and Amy Carter.

Acquired Aug. 12, 1999

Subjects

Amherst (Mass.)--PhotographsAnti-apartheid movements--MassachusettsCIA on Trial Project (Amherst, Mass.)Carter, AmyCentral America--Foreign relations--United StatesDemonstrations--MassachusettsHoffman, AbbieNorthampton (Mass.)--PhotographsStudent movementsUnited States--Foreign relations--Central AmericaUnited States. Central Intelligence AgencyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst--Students

Contributors

Carroll, Charles FGuarnotta, ByrneHubbard, LibbyRadical Student Union

Types of material

Photographs
Albertson, Jeff

Jeff Albertson Photograph Collection

ca.1966-2005
7 boxes 10.5 linear feet
Call no.: PH 057
Depiction of Jeff Albertson, ca.1970
Jeff Albertson, ca.1970

Born in Reading, Mass., on Sept 13, 1948, Jeff Albertson was still a student at Boston University, working on the staff of the BU News, when he was hired as a photographer by the Boston Globe. Reflecting the youth culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s, his photographs earned him positions with several prominent Boston alternative media outlets. Covering news, music, and the political interests of his generation, he served as photo editor for the Boston Phoenix and associate publisher for the Real Paper, and his work appeared regularly in mainstream publications such as Rolling Stone, People, and Boston Magazine. After becoming photo editor for the Medical Tribune News Group and moving to New York City in the 1980s, he met and married Charlene Laino. In later years, he became involved in early efforts to create websites devoted to issues surrounding health. Albertson died in 2008.

As a photographer, Albertson covered a wide range of subjects, with particular focus on music and social change. The many thousands of prints, slides, and negatives in the collection include stunning shots of Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and John Lee Hooker, activists such as Abbie Hoffman, politicians, and public personalities. The collection also includes several photographic essays centered on poverty, old age, fire fighting in Boston, and prisoners in Massachusetts (among other issues) along with a wide array of landscapes and street scenes.

Gift of Charlene Laino, Oct. 2013

Subjects

Boston (Mass.)--PhotographsRock musicians--PhotographsVietnam War, 1961-1975--Protest movements

Contributors

Simon, Peter

Types of material

Photographs
Allen, Frances and Mary

Frances and Mary Allen Collection of Deerfield Photographs

1900-1910
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: PH 001
Depiction of Deerfield, Mass.
Deerfield, Mass.

Influenced by the arts and crafts movement, Frances and Mary Allen began taking photographs of their native Deerfield, Mass., in the mid-1880s. Displaying a finely honed pictorialist aesthetic, the sisters specialized in views of Deerfield and surrounding towns, posed genre scenes of life in colonial times, and the local scenery, earning a reputation as among the best women photographers of the period.
The Allen sisters photograph album contains ten gelatin developing out prints of street scenes in Deerfield, ca.1900-1910. Among these are two shots of the house they inherited from their aunt Kate in 1895, which thereafter became their home and studio.

Subjects

Deerfield (Mass.)--PhotographsWomen photographers--Massachusetts

Contributors

Allen, FrancesAllen, Mary E. (Mary Electa), 1858-1941

Types of material

Photographs
Arena, Natalie C.

Natalie C. Arena Photograph Collection

1956-1961
1 box 1 linear feet
Call no.: PH 087
Depiction of Joanne Fortune in her dorm room, photo by Nancy Arena
Joanne Fortune in her dorm room, photo by Nancy Arena

Raised in Short Hills, New Jersey, Natalie “Nancy” Arena’s early education included the Lexington School for the Deaf in New York and the Bruce Street School in Newark, N.J. In 1956, her father transferred her to the Clarke School for the Deaf because of the school’s emphasis on speech and use of the English language. She stayed at Clarke until she graduated with honors in 1961. After Clarke, Arena went to Millburn High in Millburn, N.J., where she was integrated with hearing students. Arena had a long career in data processing and translated the love of sewing she learned at Clarke into a life-long hobby of quilting.

The Natalie C. Arena Photograph Collection consists of photographs taken by Arena of her friends, teachers, and Clarke School outings and activities. Her photographs show the life of a student at the Clarke School during the late-50s and early-60s. Subjects include dorm rooms, camping trips, gym activities, and class trips.

Subjects

Clarke School for the DeafDeaf--Education

Types of material

Photographs
Ashcraft, Barr G.

Barr G. Ashcraft Photograph Collection

1972-1975
2 boxes, ca.125 items
Call no.: PH 007
Depiction of Vietnamese soldiers, ca.1973
Vietnamese soldiers, ca.1973

A graduate of the Northfield Mount Hermon School, Wake Forest University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (MA, 1966), Barr Gallop Ashcraft (1940-2005) lived what he called a “gypsy” life in the late 1960s, traveling through the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, and eventually settling on a career in photojournalism. As a stringer for news organizations and magazines, he covered the war in Vietnam, Cambodia, and Laos from 1972 to 1975, taking other assignments throughout Asia for magazines ranging from Life to National Geographic, Newsweek, and Time. For several years, he lived in Japan, working as a teacher, but returned to Amherst to join his father in the building trade. He remained in Amherst, lecturing occasionally on his experiences as a war correspondent, until his death at his home in Shutesbury in 2005.

The Ashcraft Photograph Collection represents a small fraction of the images he took as a freelance photographer in Southeast Asia during the early 1970s. In both black and white and color prints, the collection provides stark and often graphic evidence of the destruction of the war in Vietnam, emphasizing its latter years and the period of Vietnamization, but also includes documentary work on Cambodia. The remainder of Ashcraft’s 22,000 negatives and accompanying notes were destroyed in a house fire in 1995.

Subjects

Cambodia--PhotographsPhotojournalistsVietnam War, 1961-1975Vietnam--Photographs

Contributors

Ashcraft, Barr G

Types of material

Photographs
Bajgier Family

Bajgier Family Papers

1925-1986
2 boxes 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 400
Depiction of Joseph and Martha Bajgier at Bell Market, Chicopee, 1937
Joseph and Martha Bajgier at Bell Market, Chicopee, 1937

On March 13, 1903, Joseph Michael Bajgier was born in Odrzykon, Poland, the youngest of three sons in a farming family. Schooled only through the third grade, Joseph served as a young man in the First Air Division of the Polish Army before following his older brother in emigrating to the United States in 1927. Settling in Chicopee, Mass., with its large and active Polish community, Bajgier began work as a slaughterer of pigs for a meat processing company, but within a few years, he had saved enough money to purchase a small grocery store in Longmeadow. In about 1935, he returned to Chicopee, purchasing a grocery and deli, Bell Market, that his family ran for 36 years. Bajgier was deeply involved in the local Polish community as a member of the Polish National Alliance, the Holy Name Society of St. Stanislaus Parish, and an organization of Polish veterans in exile (Stowarzyszenie Polskich Kombatantow). He and his wife Martha (Misiaszek) had two sons, Casimir and Edward

The Bajgier collection documents the lives of a Polish family in Chicopee, Mass., from the time of immigration through the 1970s. The core of the collection surrounds the life of Joseph Bajgier, and includes a number of documents and a diary from the time of his emigration in 1927, a fascinating series of letters from relatives in Turaszowka, Poland before and after the Second World War, and several photographs of the family and their business in Chicopee.

Subjects

Chicopee (Mass.)--Social life and customsPolish Americans--MassachusettsWorld War, 1939-1945

Contributors

Bajgier, Joseph M

Types of material

Photographs
Baker, James

James Baker Free Spirit Press Collection

1969-2005 Bulk: 1969-1974
3 boxes 1.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 834
Depiction of Spirit in Flesh tour bus
Spirit in Flesh tour bus

James Baker was a member of the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune (later the Renaissance Community) in the early 1970s, and a key contributor to the Free Spirit Press, the commune’s publishing operation. Part promotion, information, and entertainment, the Free Spirit Press magazine ran for four issues in the winter and spring 1972-1973.

The Baker collection consists of the surviving materials from the production of Free Spirit Press concentrated heavily in the period between winter 1972 and summer 1974. Accumulated mostly while preparing a brochure for the commune, the manuscript material contains copies of the commune’s by-laws and membership rolls, comments from community members on how they wished to be represented, and a story board for the brochure and series of quotes from community members to be included. The second half of the collection contains hundreds of images, mostly 35mm negatives, taken of or by the commune and its residents. The images depict the production and distribution of Free Spirit Press and the commune band (Spirit in Flesh, later called Rapunzel), but they also include several rolls of film taken by commune members of major rock and roll acts of the era, including the Grateful Dead, Taj Mahal, Jethro Tull, Santana, Chuck Berry, Hot Tuna, and Fleetwood Mac.

Subjects

Berry, ChuckBrotherhood of the Spirit (Commune)Communal living--MassachusettsGrateful Dead (Musical group)Grateful Dead (Musical group)--PhotographsMetelica, MichaelRenaissance Community (Commune)Rock music--1971-1980--PhotographsTaj Mahal (Musician)Taj Mahal (Musician)--Photographs

Contributors

Geisler, Bruce

Types of material

Photographs
Barton, George W.

George W. Barton Papers

1889-1984 Bulk: 1914-1920
4.5 linear feet
Call no.: RG 050 B37

George W. Barton was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts in 1896. After attending Concord High School in Concord, Barton began his studies in horticulture and agriculture at Massachusetts Agricultural College.

The Barton collection includes diaries, scrapbooks, photographs, newspaper clippings, programs, announcements, and his herbarium, and relates primarily to his career at the Massachusetts Agricultural College where he studied horticulture and agriculture from 1914-1918.

Subjects

Botany--Study and teachingHorticulture--Study and teachingMassachusetts Agricultural College--Students

Contributors

Barton, George W

Types of material

DiariesHerbariaPhotographsScrapbooks
Beato, Felice, b. ca. 1825

Felice Beato Photograph Collection

ca.1863-1871
1.5 linear feet
Call no.: PH 004
Depiction of Kaisando temple
Kaisando temple

A pioneer in war and documentary photography, the Anglo-Greek photographer Felice Beato was an important chronicler of late-Edo and early-Meiji era Japan. Between 1863 and 1877, Beato took a stunning array of views, portraits, ethnographic images, and genre scenes and helped train the first generation of Japanese photographers.

The Beato Collection includes ten images taken by Felice Beato in Japan between 1863 and 1871, including his famous view of Daibutsu, the Great Buddha at Kotokuin Temple, Kamakura; his view of one of the residences of the Shimabara clan; two very scarce views of a farmhouse and agricultural laborers, probably taken along the Tokaido Road; two views of Yokohama; and a fine view of a naval fleet at Nagasaki.

Subjects

Japan--PhotographsJapan--Social life and customsNagasaki (Japan)--PhotographsTemples--Japan--PhotographsYokohama (Japan)--Photographs

Contributors

Beato, Felice, b. ca. 1825

Types of material

Albumen printsPhotographs