UMarmot(SCUA)

Thresholds to Life is a training program for decision making, problem solving, and life planning taught by volunteers to prison inmates and offenders on probation in 30 locations in the United States. The records in this collection are those of the Thresholds program in Greenfield, Massachusetts, a United Way agency.

Largely self-educated, George Thurber (1821-1890) began a career as a pharmacist before signing on as botanist to the U.S. Boundary Commission from 1850-1854. After completing a masters degree at Brown University, he emerged as a important horticultural writer and editor of American Agriculturist from 1863 to 1885.

Letters, photographs, engravings, and clippings compiled primarily by George Thurber and bequeathed to George Clark Woolson (MAC class of 1871) who added to it and donated it as a memorial to his class, the first to graduate from the College. The collection includes 993 letters written by 336 correspondents, and 35 photographs and engravings, primarily botanists and other scientists, including Asa Gray, Louis Agassiz, John Torrey, Frederick Law Olmsted, John James Audubon, Henry Ward Beecher, Jefferson Davis, Edward Payson Roe, Donald G. Mitchell, and George Brown Goode.

Hannah Tilton was born to Job and Patience Sisson of New Bedford in 1829. In the early 1850s, she married George O. Tilton, at that time a mariner, of Chilmark (on Martha’s Vineyard) and moved to the island. The first 340 pages of this account book detail the daily transactions of a New Bedford general store from 1845 to 1847. It is not clear as to what Hannah’s relationship to the store or its unidentified owner was, or how she came into possession of the account book.

Oswald Tippo

A 1932 graduate of Massachusetts State College (later University of Massachusetts Amherst), Oswald Tippo earned his doctorate in botany from Harvard in 1937. A respected plant anatomist, Tippo’s career was divided relatively evenly between the laboratory and higher administrative offices. Joining the faculty at the University of Illinois in 1937, he was eventually tabbed to become Dean of the Graduate School. After moving to Yale as Eaton Professor of Botany (1955-1960), he served as Provost at the University of Colorado and Executive Dean of Arts and Sciences at New York University (1963), before returning to UMass Amherst in 1964. As Provost under President John W. Lederle, Tippo oversaw a period of rapid expansion at the University, and in 1970, he was appointed as the first Chancellor of the Amherst campus. One year later, he was named Commonwealth Professor of Botany, remaining in that position until his retirement in June 1982. After his retirement, Tippo was often seen “holding court” at his regular table at the University Club. He remained in Amherst with his wife Emmie until his death in 1999.

The Tippo Papers are a robust collection of professional and administrative correspondence, speeches, research notes, notes from Tippo’s student years, photographs, and several of his publications. The collection documents Tippo’s unique relationship with UMass as both Provost and Chancellor as well as his tenure as a Professor of Botany.

The papers (1944-97) of Sidney Topol (1924- ), a Massachusetts native and University of Massachusetts alumnus (1947), document the career of a pioneer in telecommunications who, as CEO of Scientific-Atlanta, helped forge the cable/satellite connection that triggered the growth of cable television in the United States. Among the 65 linear feet of professional correspondence, speeches, subject files, oral histories, newsclippings, photographs and audiovisual materials, as well as in the engineering notebooks, reports and product brochures for Topol’s Raytheon years and in the reports, plans, and board of directors records for Scientific-Atlanta, lie the record of Sidney Topol’s contributions at key junctures in the development of the telecommunications industry. At Raytheon, he was involved in developing microwave systems and the development and installation of 100 foot earth stations for Intelsat, which became the major gateway for traffic to satellites and allowed, for the first time, live television coverage in the United States from overseas. During his tenure at Scientific- Atlanta, the company grew from $16 million in sales to over $600 million, due to his efforts to strategically position the company as a global force in the satellite and cable TV industries, the marriage of which he fostered.

There is further documentation, in the records of his chairmanship of the Electronic Industries Association’s Advanced Television Committee and in the records of his co-chairmanship of a major conference on competitiveness in 1988 at the Carter Center, as well as in the subject files, of Topol’s wide recognition as a man of wisdom, experience and vision in the areas of international competitiveness, high definition television, and U.S. export policy. Finally, the papers document Mr. Topol’s active participation in the business, civic, educational, political and cultural arenas of Atlanta, Boston and, on occasion, Washington D.C.

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.

Professor of botany, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Correspondence, chiefly with former students and colleagues at other institutions; lecture notes and outlines; 27 pen and ink drawings; published writings and drawings; biographical material; class and laboratory notes taken by students; family and educational records (1832-1956); photographs, and other papers.

Established by the Greater Northampton Chamber of Commerce in 1968, the Total Community Development committee was founded to determine the needs and resources of the city. Their primary areas of interest included public schools, housing, industrial development, recreation and youth, and urban renewal. The collection consists of mintues and memos, notes, a mater plan for the city, and maps.

The bulk of the collection documents Totman’s education and his scholarly career as Professor of Japanese history at Yale. Dispersed throughout the collection is a treasure trove of information on Japan in general, and particularly on his specialties: early modern Japan and forestry and environmental management. An enormous, highly influential, and cherished, part of Totman’s life is his family, and the Totman clan is well represented in this collection. Reams of genealogical material document the rich heritage of the Totman family, including the transcribed love letters and diaries of his paternal grandmother and biographies of Totman ancestors, among many others.

The Ruth J. Totman Papers are composed mostly of personal materials. Documents pertaining to her residence in Amherst, correspondence, and Totman family materials, all highlight diverse aspects of her personal life. Of what little materials contained in this collection regarding her professional career, most reflect her legacy, such as those regarding her retirement in 1964 and those pertaining to the Ruth J. Totman Physical Education Building at the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Supplementing the documents is a sizable collection of photographs and 8mm films, recording many points in her life, and beyond.