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

Collecting area: New Hampshire

Perkins, Carol A.

Carol A. Perkins Collection

2001-2002
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: PH 033

Carol A. Perkins was born April 25, 1926 in Rochester, N.Y., where she attended Madison High School. Her father, Vernon Perkins, was a World War I Army Air Service photographer in France, and she became interested in photography through his photograph albums. She graduated from a correspondence program at the New York Institute of Photography and graduated from the Rochester Institute of Technology School of Art in 1950. After matriculating from the Rochester General Hospital School of Medical Photography, she was employed at the Toledo Hospital Institute of Medical Research for twenty-two years, and then by the Medical College of Ohio for eleven years. While searching through New England graveyards for her Perkins ancestors, she became interested in gravestone studies and became a member of the Association for Gravestone Studies.

The Carol Perkins Collection consists of 1.5 linear feet of material, primarily color photographs of grave markers in Connecticut, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, New Hampshire, New York, Ohio, Rhode Island, and Vermont. Box 1 has two indices: one alphabetical by deceased’s surnames, and the other alphabetical by state, then town, then cemetery. Box 2 photographs include transcriptions of the deceased’s names, dates of birth/death, and inscriptions, and are organized by state, then town. The collection includes one folder of genealogical material and 20 black & white photographs of markers in England. Photographs taken at AGS conferences include some AGS members and were taken in the following years: 1980, 1981, 1982, 1987, 1988, 1990, 1991, 1992, 1993, 1995, 1996, 1997, and 2003.

Subjects

Sepulchral monuments--ConnecticutSepulchral monuments--IndianaSepulchral monuments--MassachusettsSepulchral monuments--MichiganSepulchral monuments--New HampshireSepulchral monuments--New YorkSepulchral monuments--OhioSepulchral monuments--Vermont

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesPerkins, Carol A

Types of material

Photographs
Quaker City Unity Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends)

Quaker City Unity Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends) Records

1990-2008
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 Q354

Situated in a rural area halfway between White River Junction and the Massachusetts border, the Quaker City Unity Monthly meeting gathered initially in Friends’ homes beginning as early as 1813. Recognized as a preparative meeting in 1822, the meeting was laid down only a few years later in 1855. Regular meetings for worship were revived in Unity in 1984, using the historic meetinghouse, and Quaker City Unity was set off as a formal monthly meeting in 1993.

The records of Quaker City Unity Monthly Meeting consist of minutes of business meetings beginning 1990, with a set of photocopies of earlier records drawn from the minutes of Weare Monthly Meeting.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, Apr. 2016

Subjects

Quakers--New HampshireSociety of Friends--New HampshireUnity (N.H.)--Religious life and customs

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)
Richmond Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends)

Richmond Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends) Records

1792-1850
6 vols. 1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 R534

Meetings for Quaker worship began in Richmond, N.H., as early as 1766. Situated in a small town on the border of Massachusetts, the new meeting was initially placed under the care of Smithfield Monthly meeting, transferring to Uxbridge Monthly in 1783. Having achieved a degree of stability, the meeting was set off as the Richmond Monthly Meeting in 1792, although it was laid down in 1850. Its remaining members were attached to Uxbridge Monthly Meeting.

The records of Richmond Monthly Meeting contain a complete set of minutes from both the men’s and women’s meetings, along with records or births, deaths, marriages, and transfers within the membership.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, Apr. 2016

Subjects

Quakers--New HampshireRichmond (N.H.)--Religious life and customsSociety of Friends--New Hampshire

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)Vital records (Document genre)
Rotundo, Barbara

Barbara Rotundo Photograph Collection

ca.1970-2004
9 boxes 10 linear feet
Call no.: PH 050
Depiction of

A long-time member of the English Department at the University of Albany, Barbara Rotundo was a 1942 graduate in economics at Mount Holyoke College. After the death of her husband, Joseph in 1953, Rotundo became one of the first female faculty members at Union College, and after earning a master’s degree in English at Cornell University and a doctorate in American Literature from Syracuse University, she served as an associate professor of English at the University of Albany, where she founded one of the first university writing programs in the United States. Avocationally, she was a stalwart member of the Association for Gravestone Studies, helping to broaden its scope beyond its the Colonial period to include the Victorian era. Her research included the rural cemetery movement, Mount Auburn Cemetery, white bronze (zinc) markers, and ethnic folk gravestones. Her research in these fields was presented on dozens of occasions to annual meetings of AGS, the American Culture Association, and The Pioneer America Society. In 1989, after residing in Schenectady for forty-six years, she retired to Belmont, NH, where she died in December 2004.

Consisting primarily of thousands of color slides (most digitized) and related research notebooks, the Rotundo collection is a major visual record of Victorian grave markers in the United States. The notebooks and slides are arranged by state, with an emphasis on the eastern states, and white bronze (zinc) markers also are represented in photographs and a separate research notebook. The collection also includes several rare or privately published books.

Subjects

Cemeteries--New York (State)Sepulchral monuments--New JerseySepulchral monuments--New York (State)Sepulchral monuments--Pennsylvania

Contributors

Rotundo, Barbara

Types of material

Photographs
Salem Quarterly Meeting (Society of Friends)

Salem Quarterly Meeting (Society of Friends) Records

1706-2004
17 vols., 2 boxs 6.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 S2548

Among the oldest Quaker quarterlies in the United States, Salem Quarterly Meeting of Friends began meetings for business in 1705. Over the years, two additional quarterlies have been set off from Salem: Falmouth in 1794 and Dover in 1815. Salem Quarter currently oversees ten monthly meetings, all in Massachusetts, however historically it included meetings in both Maine and New Hampshire.

The records of Salem Quarter are a fairly robust cross section of the activity of one of the oldest quarterlies in New England. The records are relatively richer for the eighteenth century and quite sparse for the mid-twentieth.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, Apr. 2016

Subjects

Quakers--MaineQuakers--MassachusettsQuakers--New HampshireSociety of Friends--MaineSociety of Friends--MassachusettsSociety of Friends--New Hampshire

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)
Stokes, Ann R.

Ann R. Stokes Papers

ca. 1911-2013 Bulk: ca. 1960-2010
10 boxes 15 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1124
Ann Stokes hugging Nanette the large white dog, 1972
Ann Stokes with Nanette the dog, 1972

Ann Richardson Stokes (1931-2016) was an activist, artist, and community builder across such issues as progressive politics, women’s and lesbian/gay rights, and the environmental and antinuclear movements. Stokes was born and educated in New Jersey, the daughter of Dr. Emlen Stokes and Lydia Babbott Stokes, and the great grand-daughter of Charles Pratt. A lifelong Quaker and longtime member of Putney Friends Meeting, Ann moved to Welcome Hill in West Chesterfield, NH in 1959. She helped build and run the studio retreat for women artists, Welcome Hill Studios, which has been inspiring and nurturing artists since the 1970s, and in 1985 Stokes published an account of the all-woman-built first studio in “A Studio Of One’s Own.” Ann purchased a large parcel of land in West Chesterfield with stone ruins left by Madame Sherri, a vaudeville costume designer known for her entertaining, and carried on her party tradition by hosting Nina Simone, Odetta, the Arthur Hall African-American Dance Troupe and many others. Ann eventually donated the parcel now known as the Madame Sherri Forest with many sites and trails, including the Ann Stokes Loop named in her honor. A talented writer and painter, Ann penned numerous thoughtful letters to editors across the country, but was happy to engage personally in social action as well, such as when she was jailed for two weeks for protesting the Seabrook Station nuclear power plant in 1977 or when she ran, unsuccessfully, for Sheriff in West Chesterfield.

The Ann R. Stokes Papers document Ann’s varied and passionate life of art, community building, Quakerism, and activism. The building and story of Welcome Hill Studios, as well as Ann’s famous parties, are well documented with scrapbooks, photographs, and posters. Her engagement with the Putney Friends Meeting is evident through numerous records and correspondence. Family photo albums and scrapbooks document the Stokes extended family history, and Ann’s own writing, photographs, and art (mostly original paintings and prints) make up a bulk of the collection. Ann’s collection of women/lesbian organization’s newsletters, mostly from the 1980s-2000s, with titles such as Lezzie Fair, Open Closet, Lesbian Connection, the Revolutionary & Radical Feminist Newsletter, show her engagement with local and national women’s issues.

Gift of ARS, Inc. and Welcome Hill Studios, 2020.

Subjects

Antinuclear movement--United StatesArtists' studios--New HampshireLesbian community--New EnglandQuakers--New HampshireWomen artists

Contributors

Stokes, Ann

Types of material

CorrespondenceNewslettersPaintings (visual works)Photographs
Toppan, C. S.

C.S. Toppan Account Book

1845-1861
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 084

A wealthy merchant from Portsmouth, New Hampshire. Includes details of his ventures in ship owning and his investments in manufacturing companies and real estate. Also contains total assets of his “property in possession” as of January 1845, and lists of debtors, including men, women, businesses, religious groups, and political groups.

Subjects

Debtor and creditor--New Hampshire--Portsmouth--History--19th centuryInventories of decedents' estates--New Hampshire--PortsmouthMerchants--New Hampshire--Portsmouth--Economic conditions--19th centuryPortsmouth (N.H.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryShipowners--New Hampshire--Portsmouth--Economic conditions--19th centuryToppan, C. S. (Christopher S.)--Estate

Contributors

Toppan, C. S. (Christopher S.)

Types of material

Account books
Twiss, Thomas D.

Thomas D. Twiss Account Book

1829-1873
1 fol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 921 bd

A farmer and laborer in Antrim, N.H., Thomas Dimon Twiss was born in Beverly, Mass., in 1801. At the age of 24, Twiss married a local Antrim woman, Betsey Brackett, with whom he raised a family of three children.

This typical single-column account book of the mid-nineteenth century records Twiss’s diverse economic transactions, providing labor for the town in “braking rods” [breaking roads] and “digin graves”and to neighbors and for a wide variety of manual farm labor, including killing hogs, plowing, threshing, haying, and assorted carpentry work.

Subjects

Antrim (N.H.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryFarmers--New Hampshire--19th centuryGrave diggers--New Hampshire--19th century

Types of material

Account books
Undertaker (Wilton, N.H.)

Undertaker's Daybook

1855-1884
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 904 bd

A small town situated on the Southegan River in the southern tier of New Hampshire, Wilton had a population of over 1,300 in 1860. Fed by an influx of Irish and Canadian immigrants, the economy at the time was based on a mix of agriculture and small-scale manufacturing, including woolen and yarn mills and factories for furniture and shoes and boots.

Although the identity of the undertaker who kept this volume is nowhere recorded, research into the names of his clients strongly suggests that he operated in or near Wilton (Hillsborough County), New Hampshire. The entries are invariably brief but informative, noting the name of the deceased, date of death and age, notes on the services provided (coffin plate, handles, “sexton service,” “grave”), and the cost of those services. On rare occasions, there are notes on the cause of death, including a cluster of deaths by consumption in the winter of 1858-1859.

Acquired from M&S Rare Books, Mar. 2016

Subjects

Undertakers and undertaking--New Hampshire--WiltonWilton (N.H.)--History

Types of material

Daybooks
Weare Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends)

Weare Monthly Meeting (Society of Friends) Records

1989-2018
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 W437

Quaker worship in Weare, New Hampshire, began in 1769, and by 1785, it was set off from Seabrook Monthly Meeting as a monthly meeting. Initially a part of Salem Quarter, Weare was transferred to Dover Quarter in 1958.

The records of Weare Monthly Meeting include minutes and newsletters from 2010-2018 (including reports on the ministry in Kenya), and a scattering of earlier state of the society reports. Older records of Weare were still held at the Meeting as of 1997.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2016

Subjects

Henniker (N.H.)--Religious life and customsQuakers--New HampshireSociety of Friends--New Hampshire

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)Newsletters