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

Collecting area: Massachusetts (East)

Brinley Family

Brinley Family Papers

1643-1950
4.75 linear feet
Call no.: MS 161
Depiction of Deborah Brinley and infant son Francis, 1729<br />Copy by Charles U. Bond (1830)<br />after John Smibert
Deborah Brinley and infant son Francis, 1729
Copy by Charles U. Bond (1830)
after John Smibert

A prosperous family of merchants and landowners, the Brinleys were well ensconced among the social and political elite of colonial New England. Connected by marriage to other elite families in Rhode Island and Massachusetts — the Auchmutys, Craddocks, and Tyngs among them — the Brinleys were refined, highly educated, public spirited, and most often business-minded. Although many members of the family remained loyal to the British cause during the Revolution, the family retained their high social standing in the years following.

The Brinley collection includes business letters, legal and business records, wills, a fragment of a diary, documents relating to slaves, newspaper clippings, and a small number of paintings and artifacts. A descendent, Nancy Brinley, contributed a quantity of genealogical research notes and photocopies of Brinley family documents from other repositories. Of particular note in the collection is a fine nineteenth century copy of a John Smibert portrait of Deborah Brinley (1719), an elegant silver tray passed through the generations, and is a 1713 list of the library of Francis Brinley, which offers a foreshadowing of the remarkable book collection put together in the later nineteenth century by his descendant George Brinley.

Subjects

American loyalists--MassachusettsBook collectors--United States--History--19th centuryBrinley familyBrinley, George, 1817-1875--LibraryBusinessmen--Massachusetts--HistoryBusinessmen--Rhode Island--HistoryCraddock familyLandowners--Massachusetts--HistoryLandowners--Rhode Island--HistoryLibraries--Rhode Island--18th centuryMassachusetts--Economic conditions--18th centuryMassachusetts--Politics and government--19th centuryRhode Island--Economic conditions--18th centuryRhode Island--GenealogyRhode Island--Politics and government--19th centurySlavery--United States--HistoryTyng familyUnited Empire Loyalists

Types of material

DeedsRealia
Broadside (Cambridge, Mass.)

Broadside (Cambridge, Mass.) Collection

1962-1968
1 box 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1014
Depiction of Bill Keith on the cover of Broadside, Feb. 1, 1967
Bill Keith on the cover of Broadside, Feb. 1, 1967

When The Broadside first appeared in March 1962, it immediately became a key resource for folk musicians and fans in New England. Written by and for members of the burgeoning scene, The Broadside was a central resource for information on folk performances and venues and throughout the region, covering coffeehouses, concert halls, festivals, and radio and television appearances.

Assembled by Folk New England, the collection contains a complete run of the Boston- and Cambridge-based folk music periodical, The Broadside, with the exception of the first issue, which has been supplied in photocopy.

Gift of Folk New England, Oct. 2017

Subjects

Folk music--New England--PeriodicalsPopular music--New England--Periodicals

Contributors

Wilson, David

Types of material

Periodicals
Brown, Ken

Ken Brown Collection

1971-2021
Call no.: MS 1141

Ken Brown, born March 12, 1944 in Dayton, Ohio, is a filmmaker, photographer, cartoonist, designer and collector. He was raised in Amherst, Massachusetts, where he briefly attended UMass Amherst, before moving to Cambridge where he also attended Boston University. In the late 1960s he joined the thriving arts scene in Boston, where his most notable contribution was his film work, now known as Psychedelic Cinema. This live music project was projected onstage at the Boston Tea Party while musical acts like the Velvet Underground and Jimi Hendrix played. Brown made experimental films, using tricks like double exposure and stop motion, with a Super 8mm camera. He also worked as a film teacher in the early 1970s.  

In 1975 his career took a fortuitous turn when he started to sell postcards featuring his own drawings. This venture was so successful that he expanded the postcard line to include photographs and collages, mining his own collections, which are characterized by kitsch. From there he expanded the business further to include rubber stamps, eventually adding t-shirts, coffee mugs, tea towels, and wrapping paper to the line; he worked with local businesses to put his art and designs on the products. His unconventional business model attracted the attention of the Harvard Business School, which conducted and published a study of his work. He also continued to make films, which have been featured on MTV and Sesame Street. Since 1985 he has lived in New York City with his wife and frequent collaborator, artist and filmmaker Lisa Crafts. He continues to take photographs and make films about life in the city. 

The collection comprises a wide variety of the products Brown has produced and marketed throughout his career. It includes near-complete runs of his postcards, rubber stamps, and wrapping paper; a selection of t-shirts, tea towels, placemats and magnets; published books; and a variety of editioned screen prints made from his cartoons and drawings. The collection also contains ephemera documenting Brown’s career and early artwork in an anti-nuclear publication. The collection is expected to grow over time to include drawings, films, and recent digital photographs.

Acquired from Ken Brown, October 2021

Contributors

Brown, Ken, 1944-

Types of material

Postcards
Bruskin, Gene

Gene Bruskin Papers

1963-2018
6 boxes 8 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1020
Depiction of Gene Bruskin
Gene Bruskin

Gene Bruskin arrived at Princeton in 1964 as a basketball player and left as a political radical. After taking part in the Second Venceremos Brigade, Bruskin got involved in antiracist and labor organizing in Boston. As president of the United Steelworkers of America local during the busing crisis of the 1970s, he helped win overwhelming support among the city’s bus drivers to have the union represent them, leading successful campaigns for better wages and working conditions. In the years since, he has held numerous high-profile positions nationally and internationally, including as labor director for Jesse Jackson’s Rainbow Coalition, Secretary Treasurer for the Food and Allied Service Trades Department of the AFL-CIO, and co-convener of U.S. Labor Against the War, an organization promoting peace and the demilitarization of U.S. foreign policy. Bruskin was a major figure in the largest private union election in the history of the United Food and Commercial Workers when he led the successful campaign to unionize 5,000 workers at Smithfield Foods in North Carolina. Since retiring in 2012, he has continued to consult with unions. In addition he has returned to some of his earlier undertakings in producing cultural works as a poet, songwriter, and playwright, centered on social justice and working class themes.

Documenting nearly fifty years of activism, Gene Bruskin’s papers are an exceptional resource for the labor movement in the 1970s through early 2000s, and particularly its radical end. Although Bruskin’s early years are relatively sparsely represented, there is a significant run of Brother, the first anti-sexist, “male liberation” journal that he helped found while in Oakland, and the collection includes important material from his work in Boston with the Hyde Park Defense Committee, the Red Basement Singers, and especially with the School Bus Drivers and their tumultuous three-week strike in 1980. The collection also contains a rich assortment of material on labor left and antiwar organizing in the 1990s and 2000s, the Justice at Smithfield campaign, and Bruskin’s work on behalf of single payer insurance, for International Solidarity, the American Federation of Teachers, and the Brotherhood of Maintenance of Way Employees.

Gift of Gene Bruskin, April 2018

Subjects

Boston (Mass.)--HistoryBus drivers--Labor unionsCharter schoolsJackson, Jesse, 1941-Labor unions--MassachusettsLabor unions--North CarolinaNational Rainbow Coalition (U.S.)Public schoolsSmithfield Foods, Inc.Strikes and lockouts--Bus driversWeatherman (Organization)

Contributors

Boston School Bus Drivers UnionUnited Steelworkers of America
Bucklin, Thomas, 1771-1843

Thomas Bucklin Daybook

1841-1843
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 260 bd

Daybook of physician Thomas Bucklin who, for twenty-three years, practiced medicine in and around Hopkinton, Massachusetts. Accounts are listed chronologically and by surname; patients included women and local Irish laborers. Entries are brief and in medical shorthand. The book contains prescriptions, some for specific patients and some borrowed from other doctors; a list of deaths in Hopkinton for 1841-43, with the age of the deceased and cause of death; and personal notations in the margins of the book, noting holidays, weather conditions and trips.

Subjects

Bowker familyBullard familyClaflin familyHopkinton (Mass.)--Social conditionsMcFarland familyMedicine--Practice--Massachusetts--HopkintonMortality--Massachusetts--HopkintonPhipps familyPhysicians--Massachusetts--HopkintonRockwood familyVaccination of children--Massachusetts--Hopkinton

Contributors

Bucklin, Thomas, 1771-1843

Types of material

Daybooks
Buczko, Thaddeus

Thaddeus Buczko Photographs

ca.1960-1980
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 299

Former Massachusetts legislator, state auditor, and justice in the Essex Court, active in the Boston, Massachusetts-area Polish community. Fifty-five photographs including portraits of Judge Buczko with Pope John Paul II, Robert and Edward Kennedy, Carl Yastrzemski, Francis Sargent, Hubert Humphrey, and various Massachusetts politicians and friends.

Gift of John Buczko, 1990

Subjects

Humphrey, Hubert H. (Hubert Horatio), 1911-1978John Paul II, Pope, 1920-Kennedy, Edward Moore, 1932-Kennedy, Robert F., 1925-1968Polish Americans--MassachusettsSargent, FrancisYastrzemski, Carl

Contributors

Buczko, Thaddeus

Types of material

Photographs
Buffington, Zephaniah, 1771-

Zephaniah Buffington Account Book

1803-1808
1 envelope 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 226

Quaker merchant and farmer from Dartmouth, Massachusetts. Includes two major notations about a large cheese purchase and the sale of hoes in Washington County, New York. Also contains inventories of goods, notations for notes payable and notes receivable, and accounts of his farm (including amounts of cheese made, accounts of farm tools, and the keeping of cows and sheep).

Subjects

Bristol County (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryCheeseCheesemakers--Massachusetts--DartmouthDairying--Economic aspects--MassachusettsDartmouth (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryFarmers--Massachusetts--DartmouthHoesMerchants--Massachusetts--DartmouthQuakers--Massachusetts--Bristol CountyQuakers--New York (State)--Washington CountyWashington County (N.Y.)--Economic conditions--19th century

Contributors

Buffington, Zephaniah, 1771-

Types of material

Account books
Cambridge Central Labor Union

Cambridge Central Labor Union Minute book

1926-1932
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 482 bd

The Central Labor Union was active in the Boston and Cambridge area as early as the 1870s, and by the turn of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Central Labor Union was a thriving organization. Active in many of the significant labor campaigns of the day, including the struggle for an eight hour day, the regulation of child labor, and the fight for collective bargaining, the Cambridge Central Labor Union was said in the late 1930s to represent nearly 30,000 workers in the city.

The minutes of the Cambridge Central Labor Union document the day to day operations of a union representing a cross-section of trades in the city of Cambridge, its relations to other organized labor groups, and the impact of the Depression of 1929 on working people in Massachusetts.

Subjects

Cambridge (Mass.)--History--20th centuryLabor unions--Massachusetts--Cambridge

Types of material

Minute books
Chalfen family

Chalfen Family Papers

ca.1890-2011
51 boxes 76.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 770

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

Born into a Jewish family in Khotyn, Bessarabia (now Ukraine), in 1888, Benjamin Chalfen emigrated to United States as a young man, arriving in New York City in 1910 before making his way to Boston. Taking work as a clerk with the Roxbury Crossing Steamship Agency, he married a fellow Russian immigrant, Annie Berg in 1914 and, after their divorce a few years later, married a second time. Benjamin and Annie’s son, Melvin (1918-2007), studied Forestry at Massachusetts State College (BA 1940) and Yale (MF 1942) before enlisting in the Army Air Corps in Aug. 1942. Moved to active duty in 1943 as a communications specialist, he rose to the rank of Lieutenant. After he returned home, Mel met and married a recent Smith College graduate, Judith Resnick (1925-2011), with whom he raised three sons. The couple settled into a comfortable life in the Boston suburbs, where Mel carved out a successful career as a home inspector and educator while Judith became well known as a supporter of the arts and as one of the founders of Action For Children’s Television (1968), an important force in promoting quality television programing for children.

A massive archive documenting three generations of a Jewish family from Boston, the Chalfen family papers contain a rich body of photographs and letters, centered largely on the lives of Melvin and Judith Chalfen. The Chalfens were prolific correspondents and the collection includes hundreds of letters written home while Mal and Judy were in college and while Mel was serving in the Army Air Corps during the Second World War — most of these in Yiddish. The thousands of photographs cover a broader span of family history, beginning prior to emigration from Bessarabia into the 1960s. Among many other items of note are rough drafts of a New Deal sociological study of juvenile delinquency and the impact of boys’ clubs in the late 1930s prepared by Abraham Resnick (a Socialist community organizer and Judith’s father); materials from the progressive Everyman’s Theater (early 1960s); and nearly three feet of material documenting Judy Chalfen’s work with Action for Children’s Television.

Gift of the Chalfen family, 2011.
Language(s): Yiddish

Subjects

Action for Children's TelevisionJews--Massachusetts--BostonMassachusetts State College--StudentsSmith College--StudentsWorld War, 1939-1945

Contributors

Chalfen, BenjaminChalfen, Judith, 1925-2011Chalfen, Melvin H. (Melvin Howard), 1918-2007

Types of material

Photographs
Chandler, John S., 1836-1916

John Chandler Account Book

1853-1914
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 287 bd

A mariner and whaleman originally from Provincetown, Massachusetts, John S. Chandler (1836-1916) relocated to Bucksport, Maine, in the 1870s to provide care for his aging in-laws.

Chandler’s account book and diary includes records of crewmembers on various voyages, accounts for labor, supplies, and merchandise, pasted-in bills for taxes, clothes, coal, boots, and other commodities, and a journal of Chandler’s farming activities, consisting of notes on labor performed, items and livestock sold, weather accounts, new purchases, and notation of personal visits and trips.

Subjects

Bucksport (Me.)--Economic conditionsBucksport (Me.)--Social life and customsFarmers--Maine--BucksportMerchant mariners--Massachusetts--History--19th centuryProvincetown (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryShip captains--Massachusetts

Types of material

Account books