Collecting area: New England

Citizens of Wendell raising barn of Jonathan von Ranson

In 1978, after years of working in the fast paced world of journalism, writing for Life Magazine and later serving as editor and publisher of several New England newspapers, Jonathan von Ranson was burnt out. In the summer of that year, after divorcing his wife Linnea and selling his newspaper business, von Ranson moved from Newington, Connecticut to a property in Wendell, Massachusetts. It was here, two miles off a maintained state forest road, that he erected a tent and began constructing a stone house.

To von Ranson, the quiet serenity of rural Massachusetts offered refuge from the hustle and bustle of his previous life. An advocate of subsistence living, he and his second wife Susan fed and sheltered themselves in the home they built together. Von Ranson established himself as a local journalist by writing for the Wendell Post, a humble town newspaper known for its distinctive local perspective. He also contributed to local publications like the Greenfield Recorder, usually penning op-eds about environmental issues both local and global. A passionate craftsman, his writing in other publications focused on sustainable home-building. Von Ranson’s personal writings, particularly those he refers to as his “unintelligible nighttime musings,” reveal a sensitive and introspective man with a spiritual connection to the land he cultivated.

Von Ranson held various positions in Wendell town government, taught fourth graders homesteading skills, and held workshops ranging from writing to masonry, becoming a pillar of the community in his small rural town. He expressed his environmental, political and social convictions in ways large and small, whether it was reusing paper by typing manuscripts on the back of fliers, or refusing to pay taxes in protest of military spending.

The Jonathan von Ranson papers document von Ranson’s time as a journalist, simple living advocate/homesteader, and Wendell/Franklin County activist and community leader. This is reflected through clippings of many of von Ranson’s articles for Maine, Connecticut and Franklin county newspapers, meeting agendas and correspondence from his various positions in Wendell town government, and schematics for his first stone house built in 1978/1979 and his simple living apartment completed in 2015. The collection also includes confessional hand-written manuscripts, fliers for Wendell community events, von Ranson’s Peace Corp application which reveals a breadth of biographical information, and even self-authored root cellaring guides. Other material reveals his involvement in a myriad of social and political groups dealing with environmentalism, the feminist men’s movement, rural development, policing, and much more.

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.

After earning her masters degree from Smith College in 1951, Doris Abramson (class of 1949) returned to UMass in 1953 to become instructor in the English Department, remaining at her alma mater through a long and productive career. An historian of theatre and poet, she was a founding member of the Speech Department, Theatre Department, and the Massachusetts Review. In 1959, a Danforth grant helped Abramson pursue doctoral work at Columbia. Published in 1969, her dissertation, Negro Playwrights in the American Theatre, 1925-1969, was a pioneering work in the field. After her retirement, she and her partner of more than 40 years, Dorothy Johnson, ran the Common Reader Bookshop in New Salem.
An extensive collection covering her entire career, Abramson’s papers are a valuable record of the performing arts at UMass, her research on African American playwrights, her teaching and directing, and many other topics relating to her diverse interests in literature and the arts.

The Acadia Friends Meeting in Northeast Harbor, Maine, began as an independent worship group in 1975 under the care of Vassalboro Quarterly Meeting. It was accorded status as a monthly meeting in 1978.

This small collection consists of an imperfect run of meeting minutes and newsletters for the Acadia Monthly Meeting.

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.

Acton Monthly Meeting of the Society of Friends began in 1956 as a worship group under care of Cambridge Monthly. By 1965, Acton was set off as a monthly meeting of its own, part of Salem Quarterly.

The records of Acton Monthly Meeting include a nearly complete set of minutes from its days as a worship group through its formal establishment as a monthly meeting to the present, along with less complete material on membership and finances. The minutes are somewhat sporadic in the early years, but have been regularly maintained since 1965.

Georgiana and Mason Adams, ca. 1880.

Son of Nathaniel Dickinson Adams and Harriet Hastings, Charles Dickinson Adams (1839-1889) was valedictorian at Amherst College, finished the 2-year law program at Columbia in one year, and practiced law in New York City until his early death. He was active in church and community work, and married Mary Clark Wood. The couple had two children, Georgiana and Mason. In 1905, Georgiana Wood Adams (1874-1957) married Franklin Hubbell Mills, the only son of George Franklin Mills, a classics teacher and later Dean at the Massachusetts Agricultural College. George’s father, Benjamin F. Mills, started the Greylock Institute which was active several decades, and both Franklin and his father George were graduates of Williams College. Franklin and Georgiana Mills lived in New York City, and had one child, Mary Mills (1908-1963). Mason Tyler Adams (1877-1933) married Juliette Emily Hubbell, and the couple had two children. Many in the Adams-Mills-Wood extended family are buried at Wildwood Cemetery in Amherst, MA, as Mary Clark Adams and her mother-in-law Harriet bought two side-by-side lots for the family.

The Adams-Mills Family papers document three core generations of the Adams and Mills families with roots in western Massachusetts. Manuscript material, ephemera and numerous photographs document Charles Dickinson Adams, his wife Mary Clark Wood Adams, and George Franklin Mills; the merging of their families through Georgiana Wood Adams Mills and Franklin Hubbell Mills; and their children, other family, and friends. Highlights include Mary Mills’ baby book, over 20 years of correspondence from Mason to his sister Georgiana, correspondence between other family members reflecting attitudes and events in the late 1800s through mid-1900s, several travel journals and scrapbooks, and records from local schools such as Massachusetts Agricultural College, Amherst College, and Williams College. Over one-third of the collection is photographs, reflecting photographic technology, clothing styles, vacation spots, and home aesthetics from the 19^th and 20^th centuries.

Maurianne Adams was one of the pioneers in social justice education at UMass Amherst. Arriving at the university in 1973 as Coordinator of Academic Affairs for Project 10, the experimental residential education program in the Southwest Residential Area, she developed an elective curriculum focused on racism, sexism, heterosexism, classism, and ableism. When that project was ended in 1982, she took her ideas to the School of Education, where she became the Director for Social Issues and Instructional Development for Residential Academic Programs (RAP). Over the next several years, she and her colleagues developed one of the first general education diversity courses and she became part of the founding faculty for the graduate program in Social Justice Education. Since her retirement in 2015, she has remained active in promoting social justice activities working with the Coalition of Amherst Neighborhoods (CAN) and the Amherst Community Land Trust, which provides opportunities for affordable homeownership.

The Maurianne Adams Papers document a career committed to teaching, learning, and writing about diversity and equality on this campus and in the residential neighborhoods nearby. The papers offer an important perspective on the emergence of social justice courses in the General Education Program and the formation of the Social Justice Education Program within the College of Education, and given the extensive collaboration among social justice education faculty, it includes materials from several of Adams’ colleagues. The collection includes early drafts of curricula; course and workshop materials on diversity, inclusive teaching, religious oppression, anti-Semitism, and classism; and materials relating to grants to support her efforts.

During the 1870s, William A. Adams maintained a blacksmithing shop close to the intersection of Walnut and Hickory Streets in Springfield, Mass. His trade ran from farriery to repairing iron work, wheels, and wagons, and situated as he was near the southern end of Watershops Pond, one of the industrial centers of the city, his customers ranged from local residents to manufacturing firms, the city, and the Armory.

The Adams account book contains approximately 150 pages containing brief records of blacksmithing work for a range of customers located in the immediate area. Among the more names mentioned are the grocers Perkins and Nye, W. and E.W. Pease Co., J. Kimberley and Co., and Common Councilman William H. Pinney and J. W. Lull, all of whom can be located within a few blocks of Adams’ shop.

The Hampshire-Franklin Central Labor Council is a democratically-elected body drawn from among AFL-CIO-affiliated unions in Hampshire and Franklin Counties, Mass. The Labor Council advocates for workers’ interests at the state and local level and works with its members and communities on social and economic justice issues.

This slender collection consists of the minutes of monthly meetings of HFCLC for three decades beginning in 1977, with some brief gaps in the latter years.