Close-up of records from 1779

Originally settled by Europeans in 1762, the town of Westhampton, Massachusetts, was separated from adjacent Northampton and incorporated in September 1778. Situated in the western reaches of Hampshire County, it was principally an agricultural town until the later twentieth century, producing apples, other fruit, and maple sugar, with only minor industry. The town still retains its rural character: a century after incorporation, the population had grown to just over 500, and nearly 1,500 by 2000.

The Westhampton collection provides an extensive record of public life and local governance in a typical small Hampshire County town. Spanning from 1779, just after the date of incorporation, through the turn of the twentieth century, the collection includes extensive records of town meetings, including warrants, agendas, and summaries; records of the Overseers of Poor, the schools, militia service, and parish; materials on roads and highways; and a large quantity of financial records.

The Congregational Church in Westhampton, Mass., was formally organized on Sept. 1, 1779, with the installation of a young graduate of Yale, Enoch Hale, brother of the patriot Nathan Hale. At the end of Hale’s fifty years in the Westhampton pulpit, the church experienced a crisis that resulted in the separation of a portion of the membership as the Union Church, led by the charismatic evangelical preacher John Truair. The churches were reunited in 1850.

The records of the Westhampton Congregational Church document nearly two hundreds of religious life in a rural western Massachusetts community. Beginning with the founding of the church in 1779, the collection include a nearly unbroken record of church activities including thorough records of membership, transfers, marriages, baptisms, deaths, and church discipline, and for the latter century, a complete record of church finances. Of particular note is a volume recording the activities of the secessionist Union Church, 1829-1849.

An ornithologist by training, David Kenneth Wetherbee lived in the Franklin County town of New Salem for many years. Transforming his house, Hop Brook Farm, into a sort of commune, Wetherbee became a student of the history and natural history of New Salem, self-publishing and distributing works such as Heare Lyes Salim New Grant (1980) and Natural History West of Walden (1980) under the Hop Brook Community imprint.

Collection consists of Wetherbee’s history of the early settlement of New Salem, Massachusetts, including transcripts of eighteenth century documents as well as his rough research notes on the demography and settlement of the town. These materials were used in preparation of Heare Lyes New Salim Grant.

A resident of Haydenville, Mass., during the 1930s, C. H. Wheeler was evidently captivated with the profound political changes sweeping the nation during the years of the Great Depression.

Containing hundreds of political cartoons clipped from local newspapers and national media, C. H. Wheeler’s scrapbook documents media reactions to the Great Depression and New Deal, the presidential election of 1936, Alf Landon and Franklin D. Roosevelt, and national and international political currents.

One of twelve children of Obadiah and Agnes (Tuttle) Wheeler, Truman Wheeler was born in Southbury, Conn., on Nov. 26, 1741. After completing his education, reportedly at Yale, Wheeler moved north to Great Barrington, Mass., in the spring of 1764. Acquiring property about a mile south of the center of town, he soon established himself as a general merchant trading in silk, fabrics, and a variety of domestic goods.

The Wheeler account book represents the initial years of a thriving, late colonial mercantile business in far western Massachusetts. Beginning in June 1764, not long after Wheeler set up shop in Great Barrington, the account book includes meticulous records of sales of domestic goods ranging from cloth (linen, silks, and osnabrig) to buttons, ribbons, and pins, snuff boxes, a “small bible,” “jews harps,” and tobacco. Among the prominent names that appear as clients are members of the Burghardt and Sedgwick families.

A noted journalist, editor, and first ombudsman for the Boston Globe, Charles L. Whipple was born in Salem, Mass., on May 8, 1914. A descendant of both a Salem witch and of a signer of the Declaration of Independence, Whipple was a political radical as a young man, joining the Young Communist League during his sophomore year at Harvard in 1933, and taking part in a small communist study group within the American Newspaper Guild after joining the staff of the Boston Globe in 1936. Unfit for military duty due to a bad eye, Whipple served with the Red Cross for 30 months in Europe during the Second World War, earning a purple heart. He severed ties with the Communist Party when he returned to the Globe and civilian life, becoming the paper’s first opinion page editor, garnering attention in the 1960s for writing the first major newspaper editorial opposing the war in Vietnam. His last positions were as the paper’s first ombudsman in 1975 and, following his retirement from the Globe, as editor of the Beijing Review and the China Daily, China’s first English-language daily. Whipple died in Northampton, Mass., in 1991 from complications following surgery.

Containing both personal and professional correspondence, the Charles L. Whipple Papers document a long and distinguished career in journalism. The collection includes important information on Whipple’s experiences during the Vietnam War, as an employee of the Boston Globe, and as an American living in China in the late 1970s. Many of the correspondents in the collection reflect upon Whipple’s feelings toward his profession and the people he encountered along the way. Of particular note is the extensive correspondence relating to the American Newspaper Guild, including meeting minutes, schedules, and correspondence. The Subject Files include groupings of articles, news clippings, and writings collected by Whipple over his lifetime. The balance of the collection consists of printed materials with a few photos.

As an undergraduate at the University of California Berkeley, Howard Whisler was introduced to the study of zoosporic fungi, beginning what would become a lifelong interest in evolutionary protistology. During his graduate work at Berkeley, Whisler focused on fungi associated with invertebrates, receiving his doctorate in 1960 for a study of the entomogenous fungus Amoebidium parasiticum. He joined the faculty at the University of Washington in 1963, where he remained until his retirement in 1999. A prolific researcher, and developer of the fungal research program at the Friday Harbor Marine Biological Laboratory, he became noted for his work on zoosporic fungi and protists, particularly of parasites or commensals in arthropods, with publications ranging from studies of reproduction in the Monoblepharidales to the molecular systematics of Saprolegnia in salmon, and the sexual stages and life cycle of Coelomomyces, a fungal pathogen of mosquitos. An active member of the Mycological Society of America, Whisler was also a founder of the International Society of Evolutionary Protistology with Max Taylor and Lynn Margulis. Whisler died on Sept. 16, 2007, at the age of 76.

The Whisler Papers contain correspondence, notebooks, scanning electron micrographs, and motion pictures dating primarily from the mid- to late 1970s.

BJ White with students

A celebrated instructor of anatomy and physiology, Barbara Jeanne (BJ) White joined the UMass faculty in 1961 and became a fixture of the School of Nursing’s core curriculum, teaching the year-long service course on anatomy and physiology. She was awarded the University’s Distinguished Teaching Award in 1971 and by the time she retired in 1978, had taught nearly 2,000 aspiring nurses. White was born in Indianapolis, Indiana in 1918 and earned her A.B in 1939 and her A.M in zoology in 1941, both from Mount Holyoke College.

Documenting her teaching activities at UMass, White’s papers contain recorded lectures on audio cassettes, notes, handouts, and articles used in her classes.

Wagonwright and celebrated inventor of a machine that made cotton and wool cards from West Cambridge (now Arlington), Massachusetts. Includes records of services provided, such as repairing, cleaning, painting and varnishing chaises; providing wheels, springs, waterhooks, whippletrees, bellybands, and carpet; and mending reins and harnesses. Also contains lists of customers (including many prominent families from the town) and records of cash transactions.

Marshall P. Wilder

A merchant and amateur horticulturalist from Dorchester, Mass., Marshall P. Wilder (1798-1886) was a key figure in American pomology during the mid-nineteenth century and a major supporter of agricultural education. A supreme organizer and institution builder, he was a founder and president of the American Pomological Society and United States Agricultural Society, and president of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society and New England Historic Genealogical Society. His 1849 address before the Norfolk Agricultural Society is often credited as an important catalyst for the creation of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, and he served as trustee of the College from its opening in 1867 until his death in 1886.

The Wilder Collection consists primarily of printed works written or collected by Marshall P. Wilder, including materials pertaining to early meetings of the American Pomological Society and the United States Agricultural Society, his 1849 address to the Norfolk Agricultural Society, and his address to the first graduating class at MAC. Among the handful of manuscripts are a draft proposal to hold a national meeting of fruit growers (the inaugural meeting of the American Pomological Society), two letters regarding his donation of a large number of books to the MAC library, and a bound set of 22 beautiful watercolors of pear varieties painted by Louis B. Berckmans.