UMarmot(SCUA)

Mass. Aggie student contemplating
her chicken, ca.1920s

With its roots as a land grant college, UMass has long worked to support agricultural education throughout the Commonwealth through its curriculum, research, and extension services.

The Agriculture in New England Digital Collection includes digitized versions of historical works in agriculture, particularly works that relate to agricultural production in New England, crops and farming practices endemic to the region, and that document the varied roles that UMass has played. Textual materials are made available without restriction, mostly in partnership with Open Content Alliance and the Internet Archive, and all text files are made available in pdf format.

Born in Middleton, Massachusetts, in 1824, Charles L. Flint worked his way through Harvard, graduating in 1849, taught for a short time, then returned to Harvard in 1850 to enter the Law School. In 1853, he left his law practice to become secretary of the newly formed Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, remaining in that position for 27 years. He had a part in the founding of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, was a member of the Boston School Committee, and as one of the founders of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, he served as secretary of the Board of Trustees for 22 years.

Selected during a budgetary crisis, Charles L. Flint agreed to serve as President of Massachusetts Agricultural College without a salary. For four years he gave lectures at the college on dairy farming. Upon the resignation of President William Smith Clark in 1879, Flint was elected President, though he served only until the spring of 1880.

The Flint collection contains an assortment of photographs; reports as Secretary of the Massachusetts Board of Agriculture, 1854-1881; and printed versions of published writings.

James C. Greenough was born in 1829 in Wendell, Massachusetts. After working as a schoolteacher in Heath, Massachusetts, from 1854 to 1856, Flint returned to the State Normal School at Westfield to become assistant principal, leaving there in 1871 to become principal of the Rhode Island Normal School. In 1883, Greenough came to the Massachusetts Agricultural College to become president, serving for three years. During his tenure, he was noted for raising academic standards, extending the course of study, and guiding a transition from a small vocational college to a more comprehensive institution supporting agriculture and extension services. Greenough saw the construction of the college chapel and the establishment of the Experiment Station before finishing his term in 1886.

The Greenough collection includes 3 letters (1885-1921); biographical materials; a published letter to alumni (1884); photocopy, and an Annual Report (1883).

Residents of Worcester, Mass., Madeline and Winthrop Goddard Hall were part of an extended community of young friends and family associated with the American Board of Commissioners of Foreign Missions, including Charlotte and Edwin St. John Ward, Margaret Hall, and Ruth Ward Beach. From 1907 to 1914, Edwin Ward was sent as a missionary to the Levant, working as a physician and teacher at Aintab College in present-day Turkey and Syrian Protestant College in Beirut. Margaret Hall and Ruth Beach were stationed in China, teaching in Tientsin, at the Ponasang Women’s College in Fuzhou, and at the Bridgeman School in Shanghai.

The Hall Papers include 67 lengthy letters from the Ottoman Empire and China, the majority from Charlotte and Edwin Ward. Intimate and often intense, the correspondence provides insight into the social and family life of missionaries and gives a strong sense of the extended community of missionaries.

Jean Paul Mather was the youngest president in his era to lead a land-grant university. He joined the University of Massachusetts in 1953 as Provost, and was appointed President in 1954, at the age of 39. During his tenure, he oversaw major academic restructuring and advocated fiscal autonomy for the University, struggling with state officials to raise salaries for the faculty. His work is credited with building a foundation for the academic strength of the University. Mather left UMass in 1960 to assume the Presidency of the American College Testing Program, and he later became President of the University City Science Center in Philadelphia from 1964 to 1969. In 1969, Mather returned to his alma mater, the Colorado School of Mines, to become head of the mineral economic department.

Correspondence, memos, speeches, reports, biographical material, clippings, memorabilia, photographs and other papers, relating chiefly to Mather’s work as President, University of Massachusetts. Includes material relating to the Freedom Bill (granting the university autonomy in personnel matters), establishment of an exchange program with Hokkaido University, Japan, and Mather’s inauguration (including minutes of the Committee on Inauguration).

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.

The agronomist Roscoe Thatcher served as the last president of Massachusetts Agricultural College and the first when the institution changed its name to Massachusetts State College in 1931. Before coming to Amherst, Thatcher had extensive experience in both agricultural research and administration, having served as director of the agricultural station for the state of Washington, as professor of plant chemistry at the University of Minnesota (1913-1917), and as dean of the School of Agriculture and director of the Minnesota Experiment Station (1917-1921), and as director of the New York Agricultural Experiment Station at Geneva. Selected as President of the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1927, he helped expand the two year program in practical agriculture to become the Stockbridge School of Agriculture and oversaw curricular reform, orienting vocational training toward citizenship education. The student health service also started during his tenure. Thatcher resigned due to ill health in 1933. Although he returned to research in agricultural chemistry at the College in April 1933, he died in his laboratory on December 6, 1933.

Official and administrative correspondence, memos, and other papers, relating to Thatcher’s service as president of Massachusetts State College together with writing and biographical material.

Ralph Van Meter, the first president of the University of Massachusetts after it changed its name from Massachusetts State College in 1947, spent nearly 40 years learning, teaching, and leading on the Amherst campus. A graduate of Ohio State University (B.S., 1917), he came to the Massachusetts Agricultural College as a specialist in Food Conservation in 1917, serving in the Pomology Department first as a professor, and then as the head from 1936 to 1948. The Board of Trustees appointed Van Meter as Acting President in 1947 and President in 1948. He was responsible for a number of innovations, including the creation of the position of Provost (first held by John Paul Mather) and the establishment of new schools of business administration and engineering.

Correspondence, memos, reports, clippings, and other papers, relating to matters at issue during Van Meter’s presidency of University of Massachusetts including the building program, World War II veterans, accreditation, and the university seal; together with published writings, biographical material, military records, and material from Van Meter’s inauguration as university president.