Manly Miles

A pioneer in scientific agriculture, Manly Miles was born in Homer, N.Y., in 1826. A naturalist by inclination with a strong practical streak, Miles took a degree in medicine at Rush Medical College (1850) and practiced as a physician for eight years. His interests in the natural sciences, however, soon left him to abandon medicine, and after accepting a position with the State Geological Survey in Michigan from 1858-1861, he turned to academia. An early member of the faculty at Michigan State College, and later Illinois State College, he was recruited to the agricultural faculty at Massachusetts Agricultural College by President Paul Chadbourne in 1882. Four years later, however, following Chadbourne’s untimely death, Miles returned to Lansing, Mich., where he remained until his death in 1898. During his career, he was noted for his interests in organic evolution and plant and animal breeding.

The Miles collection contains 8 notebooks containing notes on reading. In addition to a general notebook on scientific matters, the remaining seven are organized by subject: Breeds of animals, Farm buildings, Farm economy, Feeding and animals, Implements, Manures, and Stock breeding.

in 1944, William Nash graduated as valedictorian of Illinois Institute of Technology in civil and mechanical engineering and five years later he received his Ph.D. in mechanical engineering from the University of Michigan. Pursuing a career in naval engineering, Nash worked as a research engineer at the Naval Ship Research and Development Center in Washington, D.C. (1949-1954) and as a structural researcher at Bethesda Naval Institute (1953-1957), where he participated in the deepest recorded naval dive and reverse engineering of recovered Soviet submarines off the coast of Norway, the details of which remain classified. After nine years teaching mechanical engineering at the University of Florida, Nash joined the Department of Civil Engineering at UMass in 1967, where he remained until his retirement in 1992. During his career, Nash also served as a consultant for the U.S. Navy, U.S. Air Force, Lockheed International, General Electric and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The Nash Papers contain correspondence, publications, and research notes documenting William Nash’s varied academic work and teaching as an engineer, along with selected work of his students.

A scholar of Francophone literature in Asia and Director of the United Asia Learning Resource Center, Lucy Nguyen Hong Nhiem was born in Kontum, Vietnam, in 1939. A graduate of the University of Saigon and teacher of French, she fled Saigon in 1975 just three days before its fall. From a refugee camp in Arkansas, she traveled through Connecticut and then to Springfield, Mass., before arriving at UMass in 1976 to resume her studies. After completing her MA (1978) and PhD (1982), she held positions at Smith, Amherst, and Mount Holyoke Colleges before beginning her tenure at UMass in 1984. An Adjunct Professor of Asian Languages and Literatures, she also served as Academic Advisor to the Bilingual Collegiate Program and Vice-Chair of the Governor’s Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants.

Nguyen’s papers are a small but critical collection of materials on Southeast Asian Refugees. Included among the papers are materials relating to the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees, materials relating to the Governor’s Advisory Council on Refugees and Immigrants (1983), and a paper on the status of refugees in Massachusetts in 1987, along with unpublished writings, professional correspondence, and a handful of notes from a search committee.

Ranked amongst the great violinists of his generation, Julian Olevsky served as Professor of Violin at the University of Massachusetts Amherst from 1967-1985. The collection consists of annotated scores belonging to Julian Olevsky, the bulk of which contain parts for the violin and piano.

Botanic Museum interior

A prominent member of the Massachusetts Agricultural College Class of 1876, George A. Parker (1853-1926) began a career in landscape gardening and the development of parks shortly after graduation. Shortly after the turn of the century, he was appointed Superintendent of Parks in Hartford, Conn., helping to develop Colt Park and a number of smaller properties that turned the city into one of the models for New England. He resigned from his in January 1926 and died later that year from heart disease.

The Parker Album is a more extensive version of the standard class album for 1876, featuring not only albumen portraits mounted on thick stock of the faculty and students, but almost fifty views of campus. Among these are uncommon images of the major academic buildings, the chapel, and hash house, but also interior and exterior shots of buildings on campus, such as the Botanic Museum and the Durfee greenhouses, and images of the students in military drill. All photographs were taken John L. Lovell of Amherst.

Charles H. Patterson.
Photo by Frank A. Waugh, 1926

For many years, Charles H. Patterson served as head of the Department of Language and Literature at Massachusetts Agricultural College. Born in Smithsonville, Ont., in 1863, Patterson received both a BA (1887) and MA (1893) from Tufts University before launching his teaching career. He joined the faculty at MAC as an assistant professor of English, in 1916, after 13 years at West Virginia University. A former professional actor, he taught courses in modern literature, with a particular interest in drama, and served as department chair for nearly a decade before his sudden death in 1933.

The Patterson Papers contain a small selection of correspondence and notes on English composition and literature as taught at Massachusetts Agricultural College. Most noteworthy, perhaps, is a draft of Patterson’s unpublished book, The Amazing Boucicault.

A solid state physicist, Claude M. Penchina joined the faculty at UMass Amherst in 1965, one year after completing his doctorate at Syracuse and a postdoctoral fellowship at the University of Illinois. A productive researcher and prolific author, his research centered on opto-electronics, but over the years, he also contributed to fields as diverse as physics education, transportation research, and pediatrics.

The Penchina collection includes a range of correspondence, lecture notes, grant proposals, and manuscripts, reflecting every phase of Penchina’s career from graduate school through retirement. The collection includes valuable research notes and communications with other physical scientists, as well as a large quantity of material relating to Penchina’s interest in undergraduate education.

Charles A. Peters

Born in Worcester, Mass., in 1875, Charles A. Peters studied chemistry under Charles Goessmann at Massachusetts Agricultural College, graduating with the class of 1897. After receiving his doctorate at Yale in 1901, he joined the faculty at the University of Idaho for several years before completing his education with two years of post-doctoral work in Berlin (1908-1910). Offered the chance to return to his alma mater in 1912, Peters became a cornerstone of instruction in chemistry, teaching courses for many years in quantitative analysis, inorganic chemistry, and analytical chemistry, and serving as chair of the department. Although he retired when he reached the mandatory age in 1945, Peters remained in Amherst. In 1970, he was presented a gold cane by the Amherst selectmen as the town’s oldest man. He died on Oct. 4, 1973, at the age of 99.

A small, but diverse collection, the Peters Papers include an interesting assortment of materials from the early years of Charles Peters’ association with the Massachusetts Agricultural College. In addition to an assortment of correspondence, primarily from the turn of the 20th century, the collection includes a series of notes taken during undergraduate classes in economic botany, horticulture, chemistry, agriculture, and organic chemistry, some teaching materials, and personal photographs.

Classics professor Edward Phinney spent his formative years in Columbia, South America. Although technically a product of America’s Great Depression, Phinney hailed from a middle-class Texan family that placed a high value on education. After receiving his PhD from the University of California Berkeley (1963), he joined the Classics department at UMass in 1969, where he became an important advocate for educational technology and distance learning. At various times, he served as the faculty director of the Foreign Language Resource Center and as chair of the Department of Classics (1981-1992). A popular lecturer who was considered “extraordinarily generous with his time,” Phinney’s Greek mythology course typically drew 500-600 students. He remained devoted to the Classics – -even participating in skits in Pompeii — until his death in 1996.

The Phinney collection includes a copy of Phinney’s dissertation, “Apollonius Rhodius,” his diplomas and numerous awards, and selected notes for teaching and research, particularly for his very popular course on mythology. Also included are two books of poetry translated by Phinney as well as his translations of Modern Greek poetry written by family friend George Samuel.

Professor of history, University of Massachusetts (1950-1986), Haring Professor Emeritus (1986-); internationally-recognized scholar of Argentine military history and politics.

Includes correspondence, audiotapes and transcriptions of interviews, 1961-90, with Argentine military and political figures (interviews restricted until 2010); documents obtained from private Argentine sources relating to politics and the military, 1943-90; photocopies of U.S. State Department records, 1940s and 1962-73, regarding Argentina; selected materials from the papers of General Alejandro A. Lanusse, 1962-73; Argentine political ephemera, 1930-74; photocopies of Argentine official documents pertaining to various presidencies and regimes, as well as materials, including newsclippings, regarding petroleum, political parties, and trade unions; papers from externally funded projects and programs pertaining to Latin America in which the University participated.