Edward H.R. and Catharine A. Lyman on their wedding day

Associated with intellectual circles in mid-19th century Boston, the Lyman family produced a remarkable succession of scientists, savants, businessmen, and travelers. Joseph Lyman (an engineer and geology, abolitionist, and railroad investor), his brother-in-law J. Peter Lesley (geologist), and nephew Benjamin Smith Lyman (mining engineer and student of Japan) all had significant careers in the sciences and significant involvement in the public affairs of the day.

Consisting primarily of letters received by Benjamin Smith Lyman, many from his uncle Joseph, along with dozens of photographs from three generations, the Lyman family collection offers valuable insight into the life of the Lyman lineage extending from Edward Hutchinson Robbins Lyman (b. 1819) through Frank Lyman Jr. (b. 1908). Particularly rich in the period 1860-1880, it includes a long series of letters written during a tour of Germany and France and family letters written from both Jamaica Plain and Northampton. Perhaps most significant is an important series of nearly 800 letters to Joseph Lyman while he served as Treasurer of the Kansas Land Trust, an affiliate of the New England Emigrant Aid Company, regarding the purchase of “surplus” Delaware Indian lands in Kansas for antislavery settlers in 1856-1857. Although the majority concern inquiries on investment in the lands and financial arrangements, many letters also make reference to the political struggle over slavery in the territory, the founding of Quindaro as an antislavery town, and related matters. Many of the letters, which were originally bound into a letterbook, are addressed to Amos A. Lawrence, founder of the NEEAC and one of John Brown’s “Secret Six.” Among the correspondents are Geritt Smith (who curtly declines), Charles Robinson, and Thomas Wentworth Higginson.

A prominent geologist and mining engineer, Benjamin Smith Lyman traveled to Japan in the 1870s at the request of the Meiji government, helping introduce modern surveying and mining techniques. Omnivorous in his intellectual pursuits, Lyman took an interest in the Japanese language and printing, collecting dozens of contemporary and antiquarian volumes during his travels.

Lyman’s book collection begins with his background in the natural sciences, but runs the gamut from language to literature, religion, the arts, and culture. With several hundred volumes, the collection includes a number of works dating to the eighteenth century and earlier, and while the majority were printed in Japan, a number, particularly of the older works, are in Chinese.

An authority in the field of low-temperature physics and superconductivity, Ernest A. Lynton was brought to UMass Amherst in 1973 to serve as the first Vice President for Academic Affairs and Commonwealth Professor of Physics. Lynton was charged with diversifying the student body and broadening the curriculum to emphasize social issues. Born in Berlin Germany in 1926, Lynton received a doctorate in physics from Yale in 1951. He served in his administrative post until 1980, when he took a position as Commonwealth Professor at UMass Boston.

Centered largely on Ernest Lynton’s teaching, the collection contains lecture notes and handouts for Physics courses (Physics 107, 171, Concepts in Physics, Thermodynamics, Statistical Physics), a copy of his dissertation Second Sound in He3-He 4 mixtures, and copies of his book on superconductivity in English, German, and French editions.

Jack Maki, ca.1983

Born to Japanese parents in Tacoma, Washington, in 1909, John Maki was adopted as an infant by a white couple and raised on their farm. After receiving both his bachelors (1932) and masters (1936) in English literature at the University of Washington, Maki was persuaded to switch fields to the study of Japan. Following a fellowship from the Japanese government to study in Tokyo in the late 1930s, the war interrupted his plans. After being ordered to internment, he served with the Foreign Broadcast Intelligence Service of the Federal Communications Commission and in psychological warfare planning with the Office of War Information, and after the war, he took a position with the occupation authority, assisting in the drafting of the Japanese Constitution. Returning stateside, he resumed his academic career, earning his doctorate in political science at Harvard in 1948. After eighteen years on the faculty at the University of Washington, Maki moved to UMass in 1966, where he served as chair of the Asian Studies Program and in administrative posts, including as vice dean of the College of Arts and Sciences. In recognition of his efforts to promote relations between the U.S. and Japan, he was awarded the Third Class Order of the Sacred Treasure by the emperor of Japan in 1983. Although he retired from the faculty in 1980, Maki remained active as a scholar until the time of his death in Amherst in December 2006.

The Maki Papers reflect a long career in the study of contemporary Japanese politics and culture. Beginning with his earliest academic work on Japan in the 1930s, the collection documents the range of Maki’s interests, from the origins of Japanese militarism and nationalism to the development of the post-war Constitution and his later studies of William Smith Clark and the long history of Japanese-American relations. The collection includes valuable documents from the early period of the Allied Occupation, including the extensive correspondence with his wife Mary (1946).

Tulip poplar leaves

A specialist in human genetics, Arthur P. Mange studied the population genetics of small villages, the genetics of fruit flies (Drosophila), worked on early computer applications of genetic models and statistics, wrote textbooks on genetics, taught in the Biology and Zoology departments at the University, and is a published photographer of gravestones and whimsical signs. Mange was born in St. Louis, Missouri in 1931 and earned a B.A. in physics from Cornell, and an M.S. and Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin. Mange joined the University faculty in 1964, teaching genetics until his retirement in 1995.

The Arthur Mange Papers are comprised of his extensive documentation of the inhabitants of villages in the northern United States and southern Canada, including information about certain genetic factors and their result on the population. His records cover the 1960s and in some cases the early 1970s. Mange was also a talented photographer, and his collection includes approximately 200 of his photographs, including abstract and nature photos and images of New England scenery and the UMass campus.

Geishas,
from Benjamin Smith Lyman Papers

The Department of Special Collections and University Archives collects and preserves textual, visual, and auditory materials of enduring historical value and makes them available to researchers at no charge.

Du Bois Central

The collections held by SCUA are rich and deeply interrelated, documenting four areas of historic and cultural interest: social change, New England, the University of Massachusetts, and innovation and entrepreneurship. Among other significant collections are the papers of:

• W.E.B. Du Bois and Horace Mann Bond (African American intellectuals and activists)
• Kenneth R. Feinberg (attorney and public figure)
• Congressman Silvio E. Conte and John Olver, and Sen. Stanley Rosenberg (politicians)
• Benjamin Smith Lyman, William Smith Clark, and William Penn Brooks (natural scientists)
• Mark H. McCormack and Sidney Topol (innovators)
• William Lederer, Charles Whipple, Leonard Lewin, and Harvey Swados (writers)
• Carl Oglesby, Mary Wentworth, Randy Kehler, the Liberation News Service, and the Alternative Energy Alliance (activists)

Information about all of our manuscript and photographic collections is included in UMarmot. Use the search box and menus to the right to navigate our collections and to locate collections of interest.

:: What SCUA collects
:: Research guides
:: Policies for use of the collections

Joseph S. Marcus

Joseph Sol Marcus arrived at UMass in 1948 as an Instructor in Civil Engineering and graduate student (MS 1954), remaining there for the rest of his career. Born in Oct. 29, 1921, he was educated at Worcester Polytech (BS 1944) and after war-time service with the Navy, he joined the rapidly growing engineering program at UMass. Although chemical engineer, he took responsibility for the fluid mechanics laboratory and taught in civil and mechanical engineering, and after gaining experience through courses from the Atomic Energy Commission and a year spent at Oak Ridge National Laboratories, he introduced nuclear engineering into the curriculum. As he rose through the academic ranks, Marcus became a key figure in university administration, serving as Associate Dean of Engineering, as preceptor for Emily Dickinson House on Orchard Hill, and Special Assistant to the Chancellor for long-range planning, while serving on committees for military affairs, Engineering hopnors, transfers and admissions, discipline, and Continuing Education. Marcus died of cancer on Nov. 1, 1985. Marcus Hall was named in his honor.

The Joseph Marcus Papers document Marcus’s extensive involvement in campus affairs at UMass Amherst, with an emphasis on the period 1965-1975. A small quantity of material relating to his profession activities and academic appointments is joined by well organized files relating to his participation in committees of Engineering honors, Military Affairs (1967-1968), the Orchard Hill residential college and Emily Dickinson House (1964-1969), ROTC and AFROTC curricula, transfers and admissions, the library, Upward Bound, Discipline (1964-1971), and Continuing Education (1970-1977).

MassEquality sticker

In the late 1990s, MassEquality was formed as a coalition of advocacy groups that sought to build legislative support for same-sex marriage and gay rights in Massachusetts. Formally incorporated as a 501(c)4 advocacy organization in late 2001, the coalition hired its first employee, Campaign Coordinator Marty Rouse, in late 1993, and achieved a landmark success that November when the Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled that the state may not “deny the protections, benefits and obligations conferred by civil marriage to two individuals of the same sex who wish to marry.” On May 17, 2004, Massachusetts became the first state in the nation to allow equal marital rights to same-sex couples. Since that time, MassEquality has continued to champion marriage equality nationally.

The MassEquality Records document the origins, operations, and activism of one of the leading organizations in New England advocating for marriage rights and civic equality for all, regardless of sexual orientation. The collection includes some material generated by the Freedom to Marry Coalition, a partner in the coalition, and a series of large banners and posters, some of which were displayed during the event celebrating the arrival of marriage equality in Massachusetts.

Robert J. McFall
Photo by Frank A. Waugh, 1927

A specialist in agricultural marketing, Robert J. McFall arrived at the Massachusetts Agricultural College in January 1920 to take up work with the Extension Service. A graduate of Geneva College and Phd from Columbia University (1915), McFall had worked with the Canadian Bureau of Statistics for two years before his arrival in Amherst.

The McFall collection includes a suite of published and unpublished works in agricultural economics, including an incomplete run of Economic Reports from MAC on business conditions (1921-1925), and papers on agricultural cooperation in Massachusetts, municipal abattoirs, business regulation in Canada, agriculture and population increase, and the New England dairy market. Of particular note is a monograph-length work co-authored by McFall and Alexander Cance, entitled “The Massachusetts Agricultural College in its Relations to the Food Supply Program of the Commonwealth.”

George and Lillian Millman

Born in Boston, Massachusetts in 1919, George Millman attended Massachusetts State College briefly, but was forced to drop out after his freshman year due to financial hardship. After attending a three-month intensive training course, Millman was employed by the War Department in 1941 as a civilian inspector in the munitions plant in New London, Connecticut. In the months that followed the attack on Pearl Harbor, he felt it was his patriotic duty to join the armed forces and enlisted on May 28, 1942. Called to active duty six months later, Millman was commissioned as a 2nd Lieutenant in the Army Air Corps on April 29, 1943. Already dating his soon-to-be-bride Lillian, the couple decided to marry immediately before he could be sent overseas. Assigned to a class on the theoretical aspects of radar at Harvard University, Millman was ordered to report to the Army Air Force Technical School in Boca Raton in late 1943. On June 24, 1944, he received secret travel orders assigning him to the 5th Air Force Service Command in Brisbane, Australia. There he began training fighter pilots on the use and operation of the newly developed airborne radar, AN/APS-4. Throughout his tour in the Pacific, which ended in early 1946, Millman traveled throughout the region, including time in Australia, the Netherlands East Indies, the Netherlands New Guinea, and the Philippines.

Containing almost 400 letters written to his wife Lillian during World War II, Millman’s papers detail nearly every aspect of life in the service during wartime. From chronicling extreme environmental conditions to his feelings of frustration while awaiting assignment, Millman’s letters offer a personal perspective of the impact of war on an individual and his loved ones. While his letters carefully avoid any details about his work that could have been censored, they capture in extraordinary detail the day-to-day life of a serviceman in the Pacific theater during WWII. Millman published his letters to his wife in 2011 in a book entitled Letters to Lillian.