UMarmot(SCUA)

Michael Metelica, ca.1973

In June 1968, a teenaged high school dropout Michael Metelica (1950-2003) returned from a disillusioning sojourn in San Francisco’s Haight Ashbury district and moved into a tree house in Leyden, Mass. Looking to create a new way of living, he and seven friends began living as a commune and rapidly began to attract fellow travelers.

In rural Leyden, this growing throng of “hippies” was met with suspicion and in some cases hostility, including the torching of the treehouse in the late summer 1968. Although the commune had originally planned to limit its size, it numbered 21 by the winter of 1968-69 and its numbers continued to rise through moves to Charlemont, Guilford (Vt.), and Heath, before settling in Warwick in the spring of 1970. In ensuing years the Brotherhood of the Spirit, as they called themselves, added to the original 25 acres in Warwick with the acquisition of a house in Northfield (signed over by Beth Bachman), 80 acres in Gill, and a number of commercial and residential buildings in Turners Falls. With almost 350 members at its peak, the Brotherhood was the largest commune in the eastern states.

The Brotherhood described themselves as an “unintentional community,” a group of individuals who gathered without hierarchy and without leadership. Metelica, however, was generally acknowledged to be the center. Early on, the members adopted a distinctive philosophy centered on four rules — no drugs, no alcohol, no violence, and no promiscuity — and they added an equally distinctive spiritual dimension in 1970 when Metelica was introduced to a local trance medium Elwood Babbitt (1922- ). As a channel for the higher spirits of Vishnu, Kishamet, and Christ (among many others), Babbitt became the group’s spiritual adviser, helping Metelica to explore his own psychic ability. In turn, late in the summer 1970, Metelica began to channel, claiming to be the reincarnation of St. Peter and Robert E. Lee. Several members of the Brotherhood credited him with helping initiate a “spiritual renaissance” and with revealing a “purpose in life.”

The Leyden Commune, 1968

But local opposition to the commune, a constant from the Leyden days, reached a crisis point in 1972, in part due to Metelica’s behavior. The revelation that many members had signed up for welfare checks raised local ire and the fact that Metelica had required members to sign over their assets while he could be seen driving expensive cars added fuel to the generic mistrust of their esoteric beliefs. Metelica’s increasingly erratic behavior and drug and alcohol abuse became points of further contention, both between the Brotherhood and the local community and within the Brotherhood.

Changing his last name to Rapunzel, Metelica responded to the fray by dissolving the Brotherhood and forming in its stead a for-profit corporation that he called Metelica’s Aquarian Concept, requiring members to apply for admission and insisting they take jobs and sign over their income. The commune’s rock band (Spirit in Flesh, founded in 1970) was later rechristened Rapunzel shortly thereafter, and the members of the commune embarked on a diverse series of commercial enterprises, including a highly successful greeting card company, a music store, bus service, vegetarian restaurant, and pizza shop.

The commune was reorganized again as the Renaissance Church in 1974, and following a turbulent decade in which supporters and opponents of Metelica repeatedly clashed and numbers dwindled, Metelica was disassociated from the community in 1988. The Renaissance Community continues today on the 80 acres of land they acquired in Gill, concentrating on self-reliant organic farming.

Beth Hapgood and Elwood Babbitt

Seemingly poised near the center of several movements for social change and spiritual growth, Beth Hapgood (1918- ) was the daughter of the diplomat and writer Norman Hapgood and his wife Elizabeth Reynolds. Educated at Wellesley College, she moved several times with her husband and growing family before settling at 88 Main Street in Northfield, Mass., in 1952. In 1966, Beth met Michael Metelica shortly before his journey to the west coast, and she was introduced to Elwood Babbitt later that year through her cousin, the writer Charles Hapgood. Beth remained close to both Metelica and Babbitt until their deaths.

The Hapgood Collection includes approximately 30 linear feet of materials relating to Beth Hapgood’s life and interests. In addition to a rich archive relating to the Brotherhood of the Spirit and Renaissance Church, the collection includes valuable information on Babbitt, Hapgood’s interests in the Arcane School, graphology, and some material on the Hapgood family.

• View images from the Daniel A. Brown Collection
• Read Daniel A. Brown’s History of the Brotherhood of the Spirit and Renaissance Community.

Settled in 1660 and incorporated in 1718, the town of Brookfield (Worcester County) straddles the Boston Post Road, one of the major arteries during the colonial period connecting Boston with the towns of the Connecticut River Valley and New York.

This assemblage of documents from the town of Brookfield consists primarily of warrants for town meetings, many with agendas, issued through the local constable. Concentrated in the 1770s, these warrants provide relatively detailed information on matters of local importance, including town finances, tax assessments, contributions to the poor house, roadways, and property disputes. During the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary years, however, issues of interest to the town were often wrapped up in regional or national political issues. Town freeholders, for example, were called to consider requests to “come into any Vote or Resolve Respecting the East India Company Tea,” the encouragement of manufacture of firearms, smallpox inoculation, and pay for the town’s Minute Men.

Robert L. Coffin (1889-1976) began a long association with the Massachusetts Agricultural College when he arrived on campus in 1912 to begin work as an assistant photographer for the East Experiment Station. His skill as a technical photographer and his artistic eye, however, soon made him a valuable commodity on campus and within a few years of his arrival, Coffin had branched out to work for a wide range of departments across campus and, in the late 1920s, for the US Department of Agriculture in Pennsylvania and New Jersey as well. An avid birder and naturalist, Coffin was particularly known for his nature photography, using a battery of different cameras to capture everything from scenic vistas to photomicrographs. Although he established a commercial photographic studio in Amherst in 1931, Coffin continued to accept a wide range of assignments at UMass, earning recognition as the unofficial campus photographer. He remained active almost to the time of his death in 1976 at the age of 86.

Containing the meticulously detailed records of an avid birder, the Coffin journal contains records of sightings and first and last occurrences of birds observed in the years 1912 and 1917-1922. The records in the journal reflect Coffin’s many birding trips in western Massachusetts, mostly in the Connecticut River Valley, however the journal also contains records from the Swift River Valley, the Harvard Forest, the Boston area, and the Connecticut coast. In a few cases, Coffin recorded the numbers of birds observed.

Tiyo Attallah Salah-El playing
the saxophone in high school

While serving a life sentence in a Pennsylvania prison, Tiyo Attallah Salah-El transformed himself into an activist, scholar, and advocate for the abolition of prisons. An accomplished jazz musician, Salah-El has distinguished himself for educational and scholarly work, his musical career, his close relationship with activists and educators, and for the non-profit organization he founded, The Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons (CAP).

The Papers of Tiyo Attallah Salah-El document his experience in the State Correctional Institution in Dallas, Pennsylvania from 1977 to the present, providing information on his education, teaching, and activism. The bulk of the collection consists of his extensive correspondence with educators, musicians, and activists. Other highlights include a manuscript copy of his autobiography and the founding documents of the The Coalition for the Abolition of Prisons.

Responsibility for academic affairs at Massachusetts Agricultural College initially fell to the college President, however in 1906, the Board of Trustees created the office of Dean of the College to oversee issues relating to student attendance, scholarship standing, the enforcement of faculty rules, and general student discipline. In 1953, the office of Provost was created to provide leadership in all areas of academic activity, and in 1970, the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost became the chief academic officer of the campus, responsible for advising the Chancellor on the whole of the University’s academic program.

The bulk of the record group consists of the files of individual Deans of the College, Provosts, and Vice Chancellors for Academic Affairs, as well as the University Year for Action (1971-1976). Also included are the records of the interim and special appointees that report to the Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs and Provost, and the special programs, committees, institutes, and centers that were initiated by or developed from those offices.

The academic departments at UMass Amherst are organized within ten schools and colleges. Among the more than 88 degree programs in 2009, 74 confer masters degrees, and 53 confer doctorates.

Containing the records of individual academic departments, programs, institutes, and centers, Record Group 25 documents the shifting history of disciplinarity and departmental affairs at UMass Amherst. The papers of individual faculty members are contained within the Faculty and Staff (FS) collections and are indexed separately in UMarmot.

Administrative Services at UMass Amherst coordinates a range of important functions, including finance and the budget, auxiliary services, environmental health and safety, human resources, housing administration, and facilities and campus services.

Record Group 35 includes summary information on institutional finances, along with general information on other administrative activities. Detailed financial records, personnel records, and related materials are maintained by units within Administrative Services.

This record group contains materials that document alumni and alumni activities throughout the history of the Amherst campus. Included are annual reports, constitutions and by-laws, board and committee minutes, cash books and financial statements, correspondence, alumni directories, class lists, obituaries, biographies, bibliographies of alumni writings, photographs, alumni periodicals, brochures from alumni events, newsclippings, handbooks and manuals, reunion and dinner programs, scrapbooks, memorabilia and artifacts.

Materials relating to UMass participation in regional and national consortia and other initiatives, including its associations with fellow land grant institutions, the New England Board of Higher Education, the University of El Salvador (its sister university), and cooperation through the Four and Five College Consortia. The record group also includes records of the Massachusetts Review (but see MS 555) and WFCR radio.

The Murray D. Lincoln Campus Center and Student Union is one of the hubs of undergraduate life at UMass Amherst, offering a range of facilities and services to the university community. In addition to the Campus Center Hotel and rooms for meetings, conferences, conventions, and special events, the Campus Center houses UMass Catering Services, retail food outlets, student cooperative businesses, administrative offices, and the University Store. The Student Union houses student organizations and other stores and food outlets.