Digital Commonwealth

During the academic year 1986-1987, UMass Amherst was awash in political turmoil, 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... more

Founded in 1953 by a multi-racial collective of educators including Horace Mann Bond, then President of Lincoln University, and William Leo Hansberry, a professor of history at Howard University, the Africa American Institute has encouraged and supported African students in pursuit of higher... more

Aldin Grout was among the first American missionaries to the Zulu nation. After experiencing a religious conversion in his early twenties, Grout dedicated his life to the ministry, studying at Amherst College (1831) and Andover Theological Seminary (1834) before accepting an... more

A native of Rockland, Maine, Alton H. “Blackie” Blackington (1893-1963) was a writer, photojournalist, and radio personality associated with New England “lore and legend.” After returning from naval service in the First World War, Blackington joined the staff of the Boston Herald,... more

This collection consists of items from the Amelia Earhart’s Underground Flying Society Records collection hosted by University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. Information about the items has been provided by the holding institution so that they may... more

The Antislavery Collection contains several hundred printed pamphlets and books pertaining to slavery and antislavery in New England, 1725-1911. The holdings include speeches, sermons, proceedings and other publications of organizations such as the American Anti-Slavery Society and... more

In 1943 Col. Juan Peron took part in a successful military coup in Argentina, beginning over a decade in which he dominated the nation’s political life. After promoting populist policies as Minister of Labor under the military government, Peron built a deep well of support among the working... more

Arthur Mange taught in the Biology Department at University of Massachusetts Amherst for 31 years before retiring in 1995. A co-author of numerous works in human genetics, Mange served on the chair of the Conservation Committee in Amherst, and currently serves on the Burnett Gallery... more

Over the years, SCUA has become home to both two-dimensional and three-dimensional works of art pertaining to three of its key thematic collecting areas: the University of Massachusetts Amherst, New England, and social change. The Artwork Collection is comprised of miscellaneous works... more

This collection consists of items from the Association for Gravestone Studies Book collection hosted by University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. Information about the items has been provided by the holding institution so that they may be included... more

Trained as a linguist, Audrey R. Duckert was a pioneer in the study of American regional English. Born in the small town of Cottage Grove, Wisconsin, Duckert took up the study of dialect while a student at the University of Wisconsin during the 1940s, and after completing her... more

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... more

A graduate of the Northfield Mount Hermon School, Wake Forest University, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst (MA, 1966), Barr Gallop Ashcraft (1940-2005) lived what he called a “gypsy” life in the late 1960s, traveling through the Middle East, Africa, and Asia, and eventually... more

The papers of Benjamin Smith Lyman (1835-1920), a native of Northampton, Massachusetts, and a geologist/mining engineer who worked in Japan at the request of the Meiji government to introduce modern geological surveying and mining techniques, illuminate aspects of late nineteenth... more

This collection consists of items from the Berkshire Community College Oral History collection hosted by University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. Information about the items has been provided by the holding institution so that they may be... more

A New York native with a deep commitment to social justice, Bernard Jaffe was an attorney, confidant, and longtime friend of W.E.B. Du Bois and Shirley Graham Du Bois. In 1951, Jaffe joined Du Bois's defense team at a time when the civil rights leader was under indictment for failing to... more

A fixture of the Boston Jazz scene, Bernie Moss began taking photographs in the early 1960s, capturing musicians on stage and after hours in the clubs he frequented. Musicians that Moss would meet at Connelly’s, the Savoy Cafe, Lennie’s on the Turnpike, and later the Jazz Workshop, would often... more

A pioneer in organic agriculture in New England, Bill Duesing has been as an environmental educator, writer, artist, and lecturer over for four decades. After graduating from Yale University (1964), Duesing worked as a Cooperative Extension agent before turning to organic principles... more

A stylistic innovator and influential perfomer on the five string banjo, Bill Keith is credited with transforming the instrument from a largely percussive role into a one where it carried the melody. A native of Boston and 1961 graduate of Amherst College, Keith cut his teeth as a performer in... more

In 1970, just fourteen years-old, Bill Lichtenstein began working as a volunteer on the listener line at WBCN-FM in Boston, moving up to become a newscaster and announcer and helping to pioneer the station’s innovative on-air sound with montages of actualities, music, and comedy. As... more

An historian at Waldorf College, Blake Slonecker has written frequently on the intersections between the varied social movements of the 1960s and 1970s, including the civil rights and student movements, gay and women's liberation, environmentalism and pacifism. Building from his... more

This collection consists of items from the Blanchard-Means Family Papers collection hosted by University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. Information about the items has been provided by the holding institution so that they may be included in... more

Massachusetts Governor John A. Andrew incorporated the Board of Trustees for the Massachusetts Agricultural College on April 29, 1863. The first board of fourteen trustees was charged with the task of creating a new agricultural college. The following year, members of the Board were... more

Guillaume Claude Robinet, an avocat du roi from Issoudun (Indre), France, married Catherine Tabouet on Jan. 15, 1591. A medieval book of hours of the use of Bourges, this manuscript is illuminated with six miniature paintings, each above a four-line initial and accompanied by an originally... more

A member of a distinguished family of New England educators and clergymen, Brainerd Taylor played an key role assisting the U.S. Army in taking its first steps into modern mechanized warfare. Born in Newtonville, Massachusetts, in 1877, Taylor entered Harvard with the class of 1899, but... more

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... more

A sociologist of science and engineering and member of Science for the People, Britta Fischer traveled to the People's Republic of China in 1978 as part of a tour arranged by the U.S.-China Peoples Friendship Association. Organized in 1974 to foster people-to-people diplomacy and a... more

Printers and bibliographers use a bevy of terms to refer to works printed on one side (or sometimes both sides) of a single sheet, classified primarily by size. From large to small, posters, broadsides, and fliers refer to works used to convey a more or less focused message to an audience,... more

This collection consists of items from the Broadside (Mass.) collection hosted by University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. Information about the items has been provided by the holding institution so that they may be included in Digital Commonwealth.

Brother David Steindl-Rast was born Franz Kuno in Vienna, Austria, in 1926. He discovered The Rule of St. Benedict as a young man, which sent him on a search for an authentic version of Benedictine practice. This search brought him through the Second World War in Vienna, where he earned a... more

The Bullard family were among the early settlers of New Salem, Massachusetts, a small, rural town incorporated in the western part of the state in 1753. Assembled by a member of the Bullard family at the turn of the twentieth century, this scrapbook contains an apparently complete set... more

Born in 1908 to Louis and Sarah Kessel Burgett, Katherine grew up on the family farm outside of Oquawka, Illinois. In 1924 her parents purchased their own farm in Monmouth, which they later lost due to the devastating impact of the Depression on agriculture, and it was there that she... more

The artist Burt Vernon Brooks was one of the outstanding chroniclers of daily life in the Swift River Valley before it was inundated to create the Quabbin Reservoir. Born in Brimfield, Mass., in 1849 and raised in Monson, Brooks moved to Greenwich with his family in the 1870s, where... more

A legal scholar and pacifist, Caleb Foote was born in Cambridge, Mass., on March 26, 1917, the son of a Unitarian minister and Quaker mother. Earning degrees in history from Harvard (AB 1939) and economics from Columbia (MA 1941), Foote was hired by the Fellowship of Reconciliation to organize... more

Born into an affluent Reform Jewish family in Cincinnati in 1913, Carl Henry Levy studied philosophy under Alfred North Whitehead at Harvard during the height of the Great Depression. A brilliant student during his time at Harvard, a member of Phi Beta Kappa and magna cum laude in the class of... more

Born in 1902, Carl Halpern grew up in the Bronx where he attended elementary school. Upon leaving school, he took several jobs, including shoe salesman and accounting clerk, before he was hired as an errand boy in 1917 at the Electro-Chemical Engraving Company. Halpern stayed with the... more

Reflective, critical, and radical, Carl Oglesby was an eloquent voice of the New Left during the 1960s and 1970s. A native of Ohio, Oglesby was working in the defense industry in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1964 when he became radicalized by what he saw transpiring in Vietnam. Through his... more

This collection consists of items from the Carlos Heiligmann collection hosted by University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. Information about the items has been provided by the holding institution so that they may be included in Digital Commonwealth.

Since his youth in Mexico City, Carlos Heiligmann has traveled with a camera in hand. An industrial engineer by training and documentary photographer by nature, he has captured images throughout his world travels, and recently has concentrated on recording libraries in the small towns of... more

Simultaneously prolific and tragic, Cesare Pavese was a major figure in 20th century Italian letters. Born in the Piedmont region in 1908 and educated in Turin, Pavese was drawn to English-language literature as a student, writing his thesis on Walt Whitman (1930). Nearly overnight,... more

Charles Edgar Eshbach, Jr., a 1937 graduate of Massachusetts State College, and Maude Sybil Hartley met in late 1939, while she was a student at Simmons College and he was working for the New England Radio News Service, part of the USDA's Agricultural Marketing Service. They soon began dating... more

The entomologist Charles F. Clagg was born in Barnstable, Mass., in 1904 and received his bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1927. Although never able to complete his graduate degree, Clagg enjoyed a long and productive career in entomology. Listed as a... more

Raised in suburban Boston, Charlie Frizzell became a well-known photographer of the music scene during the height of the folk revival of the early 1960s. At the age of 14, Frizzell took up photography after landing his first job at a camera shop, and he developed his talents under the... more

Charles Lewis Whipple was a noted journalist, editor, and the first ombudsperson for the Boston Globe. As a student at Harvard in the 1930s, Whipple joined the Young Communist League, carrying his radical politics with him when he joined the Globe staff in 1936 and became an active member of... more

The C.C.C. was a relief program established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to assist unemployed men through the worst years of the Great Depression. In Massachusetts, the C.C.C. was largely engaged in tree planting, fire fighting, insect control, and tree and plant disease control. Contains... more

Born out of a unique collaboration between the United States government and the historic peace churches, the first Civilian Public Service camps were established in 1941 to provide conscientious objectors the option of performing alternative service under civilian command. Nearly 12,000... more

To raise funds for the restoration/occupation of the nuclear power plant at Seabrook, N.H., and to support the young Clamshell Alliance, antinuclear activists raffled off a hand-made quilt, a bicycle, totebag, and t-shirts at the 1978 Towards Tomorrow Fair at UMass Amherst. Designed by Carrie... more

Ordained as an Episcopal priest in 1911, Dr. Clark accepted the position of director of the Chapel of the Comforter in Greenwich Village, New York, a mission that abandoned its traditional Christian practices in favor of the teachings of theosophy. A prolific writer and lecturer, Clark stressed... more

With a $50,000 grant from the philanthropist John Clarke, Gardiner Green Hubbard founded the Clarke Institution for Deaf Mutes in 1867, a school predicated on the importance of acquiring oral skills for children with hearing loss. Opened in Northampton, Mass., under the direction of Harriet B.... more

A noted figure in the alternative press and a former president of the Association of Alternative Newsweeklies, Clif Garboden was a long-time editor and writer for the Boston Phoenix. Arriving as a student at Boston University in 1966, Garboden was drawn into a close-knit, creative community on... more

In 1918, Clinton Melville Tilman Brann, a dentist by training, served with in the 17th Field Artillery of the American Expeditionary Forces in France, a unit cited for gallantry in five critical engagements of the First World War. During his time overseas, Brann maintained an intense... more

Co-owned by Dorothy Johnson and Doris Abramson, the Common Reader Bookshop in New Salem, Massachusetts, specialized in women's studies materials, or in their words, "books by, for, and about women." A couple for almost 40 years and married in 2004, Johnson and Abramson opened the... more

A branch of the Communist Party of the United States of America, the Communist Party of Massachusetts enjoyed strong popularity during the 1930s and 1940s, organizing the textile and other manufacturing industries. This small collection is comprised of a miscellaneous assemblage of fliers,... more

Born from a $10,000 state appropriation from the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, the Cooperative Extension Service at Massachusetts Agricultural College brought practical, modern agricultural techniques into farms, homes and schools. The Extension Service grew and evolved under the... more

When Capt. Henry Guertin, a native of Leominster, Mass., was ordered to active duty with the 24th Infantry Division during the Korean War, his wife Rita relocated to Japan to raise their growing family in Kokura (Kyushu), Japan. Just 13 at the time and already used to the regular... more

Known in the psychiatric survivors’ movement as Kalisa, Cynthia Miller was a radical activist on behalf of the mentally ill. An ex-patient based in New York, she became a member of Project Release in the early 1970s, one of the first wave of organizations fighting for the civil rights of mental... more

D. H. Coggeshall (1847-1912) made his living as an apiculturist in Tompkins County, N.Y., on the southeast edge of the Finger Lakes. Beginning by 1870, he sold honey or extracted honey, and occasionally bees, to customers and commission merchants as far away as the Midwest. ... more

An educator and scholar of educational assessment, Monty Neil is the Executive Director of the National Center for Fair and Open Testing (FairTest). For his doctorate at Harvard in the mid-1980s, Neill examined the impact of the 1974 desegregation order affecting Boston's public... more

Incorporated from parts of Greenwich, Hardwick, and Petersham in 1801, the town of Dana, Massachusetts, was situated in the northeastern reaches of the Swift River Valley. A fairly sparsely populated town (695 residents in 1890), Dana benefited from a relative abundance of flat and... more

Having joined the the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune in 1973, Dan Brown remained a member for a decade as it evolved first into Metelica’s Aquarian Concept and then into the Renaissance Community. Throughout his time as a member, he photographed his fellow communards as they moved... more

Located in South Dartmouth, Mass., the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting is one of the oldest Friends meetings in the United States, having been founded by Quakers seeking a haven from religious persecution in nearby Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies. Private worship may have begun in area homes... more

A worker in the struggle against poverty and racism for five decades, David Entin was raised in New York City environs until his family moved to Jacksonville, Florida in 1953 when he was twelve years old. He began his anti-poverty work with the North Carolina volunteers, a pioneering early... more

The experimental ciliatologist David L. Nanney spent much of his career studying the protozoan Tetrahymena. Under Tracy M. Sonneborn at Indiana University, he completed a dissertation in 1951 on the mating habits of Paramecium, but soon after joining the faculty at the University of... more

During the latter months of the Second World War, Edmund F. Franz served with the U.S. Army's War Crimes Branch in Wiesbaden, Germany. Part of the team involved in war crimes investigation, Franz processed hundreds of pages of first-hand accounts by perpetrators, eye witnesses,... more

David R. Inglis enjoyed a distinguished career in nuclear physics that ranged from theoretical work on the structure of the nucleus in the 1930s to the development of the atomic bomb in the 1940s and work on renewable energy in the 1960s and 1970s. A Professor of Physics at UMass from... more

Recognized for her coverage of historic events and personalities, the photographer Diana Mara Henry took the first steps toward her career in 1967 when she became photo editor for the Harvard Crimson. After winning the Ferguson History Prize and graduating from Harvard with a degree... more

The co-owner with Alan Peterson of Krackerjacks, a psychedelic clothing store in Boston, Donald “Jack” Levy grew the boutique he started in 1966 into a staple of the counterculture in the Boston area and eventually a franchise. Levy was at the center of a controversy in Cambridge when the city... more

The Economic Research and Action Project (ERAP) was a community organizing project sponsored by the Students for a Democratic Society (SDS). Begun in 1963, SDS activists began working in low-income urban neighborhoods to help residents come together to identify and agitate for... more

A wife and husband team of photographers based in Provincetown, Mass., Maxine Smith and John Economos, known collectively as Econosmith, are photographers of the folk music scene, social action, and the landscape and people of outer Cape Cod. Social activists themselves, the Econosmiths... more

A professor of Biology at UMass Amherst with and interest in the mangrove ecosystems of the Caribbean and the deep water environments of the Connecticut River, Ed Klekowski has become well known as a videographer and writer. He has produced documentary for PBS station WGBY on the Quabbin... more

A noted figure in modernist theater, Edward Gordon Craig was born in Stevenage, Hertfordshire, on Jan. 16, 1872, the illegitimate son of the renowned actress Ellen Terry and the architect Edward William Craig. Although the most productive portion of his career was brief, he exerted a strong... more

Raised on Long Island, Ed Judice embarked on a path in photography at the age of 13 when he took a job sweeping floors in a local photo studio. After picking up work photographing locally and a stint in the army, he moved to New York city, Judice began doing commercial work for ad... more

A community arts organization founded by Susan Perlstein in 1979, Elders Share the Arts was a pioneer and national leader in the field of creative aging. Beginning as a single living-history theater workshop in the South Bronx, ESTA grew into a citywide organization with national impact that... more

Elizabeth Battey served as a Housekeeper for aristocratic English families during the Victorian and Edwardian eras. At the turn of the century, she was employed by Frances Evelyn Greville the Countess of Warwick, and former mistress of the Price of Wales, to oversee the female staff... more

A native of Waterloo, Quebec, Ella Dot Martin Blake emigrated to Worcester County, Mass., in about 1927. She and her husband Sydney farmed and raised two sons. Ella Blake died in 1987. Assembled by Ella Dot Martin Blake, this collection consists of eighty pieces of sheet music, more than... more

As the Commissioner of the Massachusetts Rehabilitation Commission for thirty years, Elmer C. Bartels became a national leader on issues related to vocational rehabilitation and independent living for people with disabilities. While studying physics at Colby College in 1960, Bartels broke his... more

In 1982, Eloise A. Brière received a grant from the Massachusetts Foundation for Humanities to conduct a series of oral histories with French Americans in Massachusetts. A noted scholar of Francophone communities, Brière interviewed 44 first and second generation immigrants of varied... more

Situated at the confluence of the east and west branches of the Swift River in western Massachusetts, Enfield was the largest and southernmost of the four towns inundated in 1939 to create the Quabbin Reservoir. Incorporated as a town in 1816, Enfield was relatively prosperous in the... more

The wheelwright Ephraim Snow was born in Rochester, Mass., on Sept. 9, 1821, the son of Samuel and Rhoda (Stewart) Snow. Apparently beginning as a general carpenter, he moved to neighboring Mattapoisett shortly after 1850, where he worked as a wheelwright for many years. He married Silvia... more

A pioneer in war and documentary photography, the Anglo-Greek photographer Felice Beato was an important chronicler of late-Edo and early-Meiji era Japan. Between 1863 and 1877, Beato took a stunning array of views, portraits, ethnographic images, and genre scenes and helped train the... more

Florence Porter Lyman (1870-1960) was born into the Chapin Moodey family in the late 19th century. She married Charles Wendell Porter, a Northampton lawyer who spent his summers in Northern Maine, in 1894. After her first husband’s death in 1899 she continued to spend her summers in Maine. She... more

This collection consists of items from the Folk New England Ephemera collection hosted by University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. Information about the items has been provided by the holding institution so that they may be included in Digital... more

Influenced by the arts and crafts movement, Frances and Mary Allen began taking photographs of their native Deerfield, Mass., in the mid-1880s. Displaying a finely honed pictorialist aesthetic, the sisters specialized in views of Deerfield and surrounding towns, posed genre scenes of life... more

A founder of the Western Massachusetts branch of the American Friends Service Committee and the Traprock Peace Center, Frances Crowe was a legendary peace activist. Born in Missouri in March 1919, Crowe became a committed pacifist in 1945 after learning of the devastation of the bombings in... more

Born in Wisconsin but raised and educated in Kansas, Frank Waugh got his first teaching job at Oklahoma State University. He went on to teach at the University of Vermont and finally settled down in Amherst, as a professor at Massachusetts Agricultural College. While at Mass Aggie, he... more

Frank “Nick” Newth was born in Lynn, Mass., on Oct. 9, 1895, the son of shoe cutter Charles H. Newth and his wife Mary Hobart Brackett. A talented baseball player in high school, Newth used his sport connections to become a manager, and eventually owner, of a billiard parlor. On October 5,... more

A radical political organizer, Frank "Parky" Grace was a founding member of the New Bedford chapter of the Black Panther Party. Radicalized by a tour of duty in Vietnam in 1967, Grace became involved in the antiwar movement upon his return and organized the local branch of the Black... more

An Italian poet, journalist, novelist, and dramatist, Gabriele D'Annunzio enjoyed a flamboyant career in international affairs after the First World War when he raised a small army and seized the port of Fiume (now Rijeka, Croatia). Failing in his attempts to annex his territory to... more

A Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and formerly the Associate Director of the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University (1998-2001), George Chigas is a noted political commentator on the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge during the... more

After graduating from Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1924, George Edward "Red" Emery taught high school briefly and held a handful of other jobs before deciding to fulfill a childhood dream. Born in Marlboro, Mass., in 1904, Emery turned his love for the circus into a life touring the... more

The activist George Markham was born in Wisconsin on Aug. 15, 1909. A graduate of the University of Wisconsin, he began working with the Associated Press in 1936 where he became an ardent member of the American Newspaper Guild. During the Second World War, he served with distinction on the... more

The son of a master mariner from Newburyport, Massachusetts, George Richards Coffin was born in Castine, Maine, on Feb. 12, 1832. Sent to Boston at the age of 19 to get his start in business as a clerk, Coffin became a wharfinger in 1854, just a year before he married Hannah Balch, the eldest... more

As a student at Mount Hermon School in the late 1920s, Gifford Hoag Towle met Marjorie Ripley Blossom, a young woman at the Northfield School for Girls. When Giff went on to the Massachusetts Agricultural College (BS 1932) and Marjorie to a midwestern Bible College for a year (before being... more

Gloria Xifaras Clark was working as an elementary school teacher in her home town of New Bedford in 1964 when she answered the call to enlist in the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. A recent graduate of Wheelock College, she was assigned to teach in the Benton County Freedom School... more

An organizer, consultant, and educator in the alternative agriculture movement, Grace Gershuny has been active in the field since the 1970s when she worked for the Northeast Organic Farming Association (NOFA), developing its first organic certification program. As a leader in the... more

Between 1929 and 1934, the Granville Airplane Company manufactured their distinctive Gee Bee aircraft at the airport in Springfield, Mass., using a hangar converted from a former dance hall as their plant. Originally from New Hampshire, the five brothers drew upon their self-taught mechanical... more

Amherst, Massachusetts chapter of the national Gray Panther organization that sponsored the weekly Amherst Vigil for Peace and Justice, tackled such issues as fair and affordable housing for people of all ages, nursing home reform, Social Security policy, universal healthcare,... more

Granted in 1737 and incorporated in 1754, Greenwich, Mass., was the first town in the Swift River Valley settled by Europeans. Sitting astride the East and Middle branches of the Swift River and forming the eastern boundary of Hampshire County, Greenwich was primarily an agricultural... more

The Hampshire Council of Governments is a voluntary association of cities and towns and the successor to the former government of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, that was abolished in 1999. A body politic and corporate, its charter ratified by Massachusetts General Law 34B, S20(b),... more

This collection consists of items from the Harold Ambellan Memoir collection hosted by University of Massachusetts Amherst Libraries Special Collections and University Archives. Information about the items has been provided by the holding institution so that they may be included in Digital... more