The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
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Collections: N

Northampton Friends Meeting

Northampton Friends Meeting Records

1991-2022
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 N678

The Northampton (Massachusetts) Meeting began as a monthly meeting set off from the Mount Toby monthly meeting in nearby Leverett, Massachusetts in 1994. In 1991, support for a Northampton meeting had begun to grow, so a preparative meeting, under the care of the Mount Toby meeting, met from 1991-1994. In 1994, a newly-established Northampton meeting was formed.

The collection includes almost all minutes from July 1991 through July 1993, as well as a State of the Society report for 1993. (See April 1993). The State of the Society report is called out in its own folder for 1994, the first year of the re-established Northampton monthly meeting. Then the minutes continue from September 1995 through July 1999.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017

Subjects

Northampton (Mass.)--Religious life and customsQuakers--MassachusettsSociety of Friends--Massachusetts

Types of material

Annual reportsMinutes (Administrative records)
Northampton Labor Council (AFL-CIO)

Northampton Labor Council Minutebooks

1933-1985
2 boxes 0.75 linear feet
Call no.: MS 055

From its origins in 1899 as the Northampton Central Labor Union, the Northampton Labor Council coordinated political activity and worked for union cooperation in strikes, boycotts, and celebrations. With 29 unions in its ranks by 1903, it was one of the few labor councils to include both AFL and CIO affiliates during the period of their intense competition during the 1930s, however from 1945 until the AFL-CIO merger, CIO unions were excluded. By 1985, the NLC had 14 affiliated local unions.

As the coordinating body for the political and social activities of fourteen labor unions in Northampton, Massachusetts, and the surrounding area, the Labor Council generated union support for strikes, boycotts, and celebrations, and hosting annual Labor Day parades. Includes photocopies of four minutebooks, spanning the years 1933-1985.

Subjects

Central Labor Union (Northampton, Mass.)Labor unions--Massachusetts--NorthamptonNorthampton (Mass.)--Economic conditions--20th centuryNorthampton (Mass.)--Social conditions--20th century

Contributors

Northampton Labor Council (AFL-CIO)
Northampton State Hospital

Northampton State Hospital Annual Reports

1856-1939
74 items (digital)
Call no.: RB 035

The Northampton State Hospital was opened in 1858 to provide moral therapy to the “insane,” and under the superintendency of Pliny Earle, became one of the best known asylums in New England. Before the turn of the century, however, the Hospital declined, facing the problems of overcrowding, poor sanitation, and inadequate funding. The push for psychiatric deinstitutionalization in the 1960s and 1970s resulted in a steady reduction of the patient population, the last eleven of whom left Northampton State in 1993.

With the Government Documents staff, SCUA has digitized the annual reports of the Northampton State Hospital from the beginning until the last published report in 1939. The reports appeared annually from 1856 until 1924 and irregularly from then until 1939.

Northampton Temperance

Northampton Temperance Collection

1828-1847
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 194

By the time Massachusetts ratified the Eighteenth Amendment banning the production, sale, and transportation of alcohol in 1918, the Pioneer Valley’s temperance societies had been active for over 75 years. Working “in all suitable ways … [to promote] discontinuance [of the use of alcohol] all throughout the Community”, the Northampton Temperance Association, the Factory Village Total Abstinence Society, and the Northampton Martha Washington Temperance Society recruited members, held meetings, elected presidents, and wrote explicit constitutions.

The Northampton Temperance Association collection contains copies of constitutions, meeting minutes, pledge lists, and membership records from three like-minded Pioneer Valley organizations from 1828 to 1847.

Subjects

Temperance--Massachusetts--Northampton
Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA)

Northeast Organic Farming Association Records

1977-2007
12 boxes 6.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 461

The Northeast Organic Farming Association began as the vision of a New York City plumbing supplies salesman and has grown into a large association supporting information-sharing, education, collaboration, and certification. Increasingly influential non-profit organization with chapters in Connecticut, Massachusetts, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New York, Rhode Island, and Vermont, NOFA has “nearly 4,000 farmers, gardeners and consumers working to promote healthy food, organic farming practices and a cleaner environment.”

The NOFA collection includes records, publications, ephemera, photographs, and other materials from NOFA chapters in Massachusetts, Connecticut, New Hampshire, New York, and Vermont, along with material from the Interstate Council. The collection includes information on NOFA’s conferences and programs, educational work, lobbying, and their initiatives in organic certification and organic land care.

Subjects

Agriculture--MassachusettsOrganic farmingOrganic gardeningSustainable agriculture

Contributors

NOFA Massachusetts
Northwest Quarterly Meeting of Friends

Northwest Quarterly Meeting of Friends Records

1957-2005
2 boxes 1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 N67848

The Northwest Quarterly Meeting of Friends consists of a collection of monthly meetings located in northwestern New England, specifically from Vermont and western New Hampshire. It was formed out of the Upper Connecticut (CT) Valley Monthly Meeting and was set off from the Connecticut Valley Quarterly Meeting in 1959. It currently includes monthly meetings from Bennington (VT), Burlington (VT), Hanover (NH), Plainfield (VT) and Putney (VT).

The collection primarily includes correspondence from the start of the QM in 1959 to 1982, and is organized by clerk, chronologically. It also includes a partial collection of minutes, mostly handwritten from 1959-1974, and a folder of Ministry and Counsel committee minutes from 1964 and from 1970. There are six folders of administrative records (mailings lists and position statements) and a folder of miscellaneous logistical information sent to the membership about preparations for various quarterly meetings. There are also 2 additional boxes with an almost complete set of issues of the newsletter “The Nor’wester” from 1959-2005.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017

Subjects

New Hampshire--Religious life and customsQuakers--New HampshireQuakers--VermontSociety of Friends--New HampshireSociety of Friends--VermontVermont--Religious life and customs

Types of material

CorrespondenceMinutes (Administrative records)Newsletters
Norton (Mass.) & Mansfield (Mass.)

Norton (Mass.) Merchant's Daybook

1828-1839
1 vol. 0.15 linear feet
Call no.: MS 203 bd

Norton, Mass., was a manufacturing center during the early days of the industrial revolution. During the 1830s and 1840s, its mills turned out sheet copper, cotton goods, boots and shoes, leather goods, iron castings, ploughs, and baskets.

The unidentified owner of this daybook was a general provisioner in the Bristol County, Massachusetts, towns of Norton and Mansfield. This daybook records a relatively brisk trade in relatively small quantities of food, cloth, fuel, wood, shoes, paper goods, glassware, and iron. While the Norton Manufacturing Company (a textile manufacturer) was among the steady customers, the storekeeper also dealt extensively with individuals.

Subjects

General stores--Massachusetts--MansfieldGeneral stores--Massachusetts--NortonMansfield (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryNorton (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryNorton Manufacturing Company

Types of material

Daybooks
Norwegian Information Service

Norwegian Information Service Photographs of Sami (Lapp) People

1 envelope 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 297
Depiction of Sami girls
Sami girls

During the Second World War, the Nazi occupation and subsequent liberation of the arctic regions of northern Norway resulted in the near total devastation of the existing infrastructure and the displacement of most of the population, including the native Sami (Lapps). The end of the war did not signal an end to hardship: the challenges of post-war resettlement was accompanied by a sustained effort by the Norwegian government to modernize and assimilate the Sami, largely through the systematic suppression of Sami culture. The language was banned from use in schools until 1958 and other forms of suppression persisted longer, and it was decades more before the rights of the Sami as an indigenous people were codified into law.

The dozen photographs that comprise this collection document Sami life in northern Norway during the period just after the end of the Second World War when Sami people were returning home after years as refugees. Taken by the Norwegian Information Service and presumably associated with the Norwegian modernization program, the collection includes images of traditional Sami sod dwellings, men at work on construction of sled and boat, and portraits of women and children.

Subjects

Dwellings--Norway--PhotographsGeneral stores--Norway--PhotographsSami (European people)--PhotographsSleds--Norway--PhotographsSod houses--Norway--PhotographsTents--Norway--Photographs

Contributors

Norwegian Information Service

Types of material

Photographs
Norwich (Conn.) Ironmonger

Norwich (Conn.) Ironmonger's Account book

1844-1847
1 vol., 270p. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 540 bd

Straddling three rivers with easy access to Long Island Sound and the Atlantic, Norwich, Conn., was an important center during the mid-nineteenth century for the shipment of goods manufactured throughout eastern Connecticut.

Despite covering a limited period of time, primarily 1844 and 1845, the account book of an unidentified iron monger from Norwich (Conn.) provides insight into the activities of a highly active purveyor of domestic metal goods. The unidentified business carried a heavy trade in the sale or repair of iron goods, as well as items manufactured from tin, copper, and zinc, including stoves of several sorts (e.g., cooking, bricking, coal), ovens, pipes, kettles and coffee pots, ice cream freezers, lamps and lamp stands, reflectors, and more. The firm did business with individual clients as well as mercantile firms, corporations such as the Mill Furnace Co., organizations such as the Methodist Society, the city of Norwich and County of New London, and with local hotels.

Subjects

Hardware industry--ConnecticutIron industry and trade--ConnecticutNorwich (Conn.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryStoves

Types of material

Account books
Nourse, Rebecca Towne

Rebecca Towne Nourse Collection

1944-1993
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1023

Rebecca Nourse, born on October 5, 1928, was Laurence G. Nourse’s second child. Laurence, a graduate of Dartmouth College, was a long time educator and served as the Superintendent of Schools for Norton, Mass. from 1924 to 1958. Rebecca was born with intellectual disabilities and after attending the Norton Public Schools and the Deveraux School, now known as Devereux Advanced Behavioral Health, she was committed to the Belchertown State School in 1949. She remained at Belchertown for eleven years, transferring to the Laconia State School in Laconia, New Hampshire so she could be closer to her parents’ home in Deery. Rebecca died on March 12, 1993.

The Rebecca T. Nourse Collection though small, paints a rich portrait of the challenges of managing a daughter’s care in a State institution. The collection is made up of Laurence’s correspondence leading up to Rebecca’s commitment and with State School administration about issues ranging from replacing Rebecca’s broken glasses to attempts to make her tuition more affordable for their family. There are also a small number of letters from Rebecca to her father and mother and Rebecca’s commitment papers, school reports, certificates, brochures, and her death certificate.

Subjects

Mental retardation--Social aspectsPeople with disabilities--Civil rightsPeople with disabilities--Institutional care--Massachusetts

Contributors

Belchertown State SchoolNourse, Laurence G.

Types of material

Correspondence