Collecting area: Massachusetts (West)

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.

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.

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.

A long-time faculty member at UMass Amherst, Dean Albertson was an historian of the twentieth century United States with a specialty in oral history. A veteran of the Second World War, Albertson received his BA from University of California Berkeley (1942) and doctorate from Columbia (1955), joining the Department of History at UMass in 1965 after several years at Brooklyn College. The author of books on Dwight Eisenhower, Claude Wickard (Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture), and the student movements of the 1960s, Albertson was interested throughout his career in new methods in research and teaching history. He died at his home in Longmeadow, Mass., on March 31, 1989, at the age of 68.

Dean Albertson’s History 384 class at UMass Amherst, required students to conduct oral histories relating to a theme in contemporary U.S. history chosen each year. Between 1975 and 1977, Albertson’s students interviewed social activists of the 1960s and early 1970s, participants and observers in the North End riots of 1975 in Springfield, Massachusetts, and war and nuclear power resisters. The collection includes transcripts of 15 interviews conducted during this period, as well as the students’ papers, which put the transcripts into context.

Mark Bartlett Aldrich was employed for many years at the Montague Rod and Reel Co. in Montague City. His grandfather, Eugene Bartlett, was the founder of the firm, which made split-bamboo fishing rods. He owned and operated Aldrich’s New England store from 1948 until selling it in 1962. Aldrich then sold cars for Spenser Brothers Ford in Northfield until he and his wife Edith moved to Florida in 1964.

The collection consists primarily of family records relating to the wedding, anniversaries, and funerals of Edith and Mark Aldrich. The Aldrich Family Papers are organized into three series: Wedding and Anniversaries, Funeral and Legal, and Personal.

Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the small town of Alford in far southwestern Massachusetts was the site of significant marble quarrying operations. Highly profitable for several decades, the quarries began to decline in profitability by mid-century when new sites became accessible by rail. By the early 1870s, the Alford Marble Works stood as one of the last quarries in the region to remain active.

The Alford Marble Works ledger includes pay and work records for quarrymen during its last years of operation. Although the Marble Works is sometimes recorded as suspending activity in 1872, it is clear from these records that their work continued through the end of 1873.

A influential and flamboyant educational reformer, Dwight W. Allen served as Director of Teacher Education at his alma mater Stanford from 1959 until accepting a position as Dean of the School of Education at UMass Amherst in 1967. A proponent of integrating technology into teaching and co-developer of the technique of microteaching, Allen cemented his reputation as an innovator during his time at UMass (1968-1975), a time that coincided with the rapid expansion of the university. Allen helped recruit students of color to the graduate program in significant numbers, opened admissions to students with unconvential credentials, allowed students a voice in directing and governing the program, and abolished grading, among other initiatives, but while supporters lauded the creativity and excitement of the period, his radical ideas elicited considerable opposition as well. He resigned in 1975, in part due to the increasing demands his international consulting, later accepting a position at Old Dominion University, where he remained until his retirement in 2008. Allen is author of nine books, including American Schools: The $100 Billion Challenge, written with his former graduate student Bill Cosby.
The Allen papers contain a wealth of materials pertaining to the tumultuous years at UMass, including Allen’s curricular and teaching reforms, special projects, and his efforts to recruit African American students and address institutional racism. The correspondence, memos, and private reports that Allen maintained are particularly valuable for understanding the period as are the various surveys, studies, and reports on the state of the School of Education. The collection also includes material relating to some of Allen’s academic interests in education, including microteaching, alternative schools, and certification.