Ebert in his studio, ca.1965

The graphic artist Siegfried Ebert had an important influence on the visual language of East German television and animated motion pictures. Born in Eibau on July 20, 1926, Ebert was drafted into the Luftwaffe in 1943, but shortly after going on active duty, he was severely wounded and taken prisoner by the English. After his release, Ebert shifted course in life, studying commercial art at the Kunstgewerbeschule Zittau and film at the Hochschule für bildende und angewandte Kunst in Wiessensee. He became one of the earliest artists to specialize in the new medium of television, working for Deutscher Fernsehfunk, doing graphic design and animation. A member of the Verband Bildender Künstler Deutschlands, he later worked on animated films for the DEFA studios. Suffering from ill health for the last several years of his life, Ebert suffered a heart attack in November 1985, and died at home shortly after his sixtieth birthday in 1986.

The Ebert Collection includes a small assortment of correspondence, awards, and biographical materials, along with examples of his graphic work for television and film. Among other unusual items in the collection are attractive handbills (small posters) for Progress and DEFA films, some original sketches, photographs and mockups of his artwork for television, and an assortment of personal and professional ephemera.

During a long career as Professor of English at Mount Holyoke College, James Ellis wrote on the Victorian stage and the work of Gilbert and Sullivan. A founding member of the Valley Light Opera Company, he was also an actor and director of theatricals in the Pioneer Valley.

The Ellis Collection contains approximately 8,000 published works on the Anglo-American stage, 1750-1915, including individual plays and anthologies of English and American playwrights; biographical works on performers; works on the theatre in London, the provinces, and America; periodicals, playbills, prints, broadsides, and ephemera; and works that provide cultural context for interpreting the stage. Although the collection includes some works from the 18th century, it is deepest for the English stage in the period 1850-1900.

A manufacturing firm specializing in the production of onion skin paper, the Esleeck Manufacturing Company was established in 1898 as the Monadnock Paper Co. The principal owners, Augustine W. Esleeck and Alfred T. Judd, had worked together with the Valley Paper Mills of Holyoke, Mass., but when striking out on their own, moved to Turners Falls, believing the town to be the ideal location for a mil. Changing their name to Esleeck Manufacturing Co. in 1901, the firm sought to be a good neighbor, using local labor and products from local firms in their manufacturing. After more than 100 years of continuous operation, the company was purchased by Southworth Co. in 2006.

The collection consists chiefly of financial records, but also includes three minute books from 1898-1961 that capture the the company’s early history, as well as a memorial history of the company written by a long-term employee in 1954.

Owner of a livery stable in Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Includes lists of stabler activities, customers (individuals and businesses), and employed ostlers. Also contains method of payment (cash and services), and one labor account for Fred Berry, a nineteen year old Afro-American who was one of three ostlers living in Faber’s household at the time.

Jonathan Butterfield, Chelmsford, 1750

A businessman from Worcester, Mass., Daniel Farber (1906-1998) was among the best known photographers of early American gravestone art. Over the course of twenty years beginning in about 1970, he and his wife Jessie Lie Farber (a faculty member at Mount Holyoke College) took thousands of photographs of gravestones throughout New England and the eastern United States, eventually extending their work internationally. Interested in both the artistic and cultural value of gravestones, the Farbers were founding members of the Association for Gravestone Studies in 1976 and influenced a generation of fellow researchers in gravestone studies.

Printed in 1973, the Farber Collection includes 326 black and white prints (5×7″),mounted on rag board, of of colonial and early national gravestones in Massachusetts. The towns represented, most by multiple images, include Auburn, Billerica, Boylston, Brookfield, Cambridge, Charlestown, Chelmsford, Concord. Holden, Leicester, Lexington, Marlboro, Northboro, North Brookfield, Oxford, Paxton, Rutland, Shrewsbury, Sudbury, Watertown, Wayland, and Westboro.

George Lewis Farley helped build the model for extension services before the Smith-Lever Act of 1914, which mandated federal funds to land-grant Universities for supporting local agriculture. Referred to as “Uncle” George, Farley lead the Massachusetts 4-H Club for 25 years beginning in 1918 and was the first to create a 4-H clubhouse on a University campus. Born in Lynn, Mass. in 1873, Farley worked as the superintendent of schools in Brockton, Mass. before joining the University extension service. Farley died in 1941.

The George L. Farley Papers document the 4-H and Massachusetts extension service’s appreciation of Farley’s leadership through two books presented to Farley in 1936 and 1937. The first book contains the signatures of the members of all the Massachusetts 4-H clubs, organized by county and town. The second book is a scrapbook of letters of appreciation from friends, colleagues, farmers, senators, among which is a letter from then-president Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Charles H. Fernald

During a long and productive career in natural history, Charles Fernald conducted important research in economic entomology and performed equally important work as a member of the faculty and administration at Massachusetts Agricultural College. Arriving at MAC in 1886 as a professor of zoology, Fernald served as acting President of the College (1891-1892) and as the first Director of the Graduate School (1908-1912), and perhaps most importantly, he helped for many years to nurture the Hatch Experiment Station.

Correspondence, published writings, publication notes, newspaper clippings, Massachusetts Board of Agriculture Reports, and biographical material including personal recollections of former student and colleague Charles A. Peters.

Henry T. Fernald

Henry T. Fernald received his doctorate in Zoology from Johns Hopkins University in 1890, and after nine years on faculty at the Pennsylvania State College, he joined his father on the faculty of the Massachusetts Agricultural College. Like his father, Henry Fernald was an industrious and avid entomologist, and together the two expanded both the undergraduate and graduate curriculum in entomology. In addition to serving as Head of the Department of Entomology, Fernald followed his father as Director of the Graduate School at Massachusetts Agricultural College (1927-1930). A specialist in economic entomology and the systematics of the Hemiptera and Hymenoptera, Fernald also served as President of the Association of Economic Entomologists (1914).

Correspondence with colleagues, College administrators, including President Lewis, and alumni; biographical materials, news clippings and published writings.

2013

First prize: Ken Lefebvre (2013)

“‘A Wise Conservator’: The Life and Times of Henry Hill Goodell.”

Honorable mention: Daniel Stein (2013)

“David versus the State: Refusal to Serve in the Israeli Defense Forces during the Lebanon War and the First Intifada: 1982-1993.”

2012

First prize: Justine DeCamillis (2012)

“Liminal Space and Identities: The Transitional and Juxtaposition of Opposites within the Prologue, Bisclavret and Lanval of Marie de France’s Lais.”

Honorable mention: Peter Arsenault (2012)

“Poetic Liminality in the Middle Ages: The Case of Thomas Hoccleve.”

2011

First prize: Christopher Russell (2010)

“A Tale of Two Cities: How the Government Caused and Maintained Racial Inequality in Oakland, ca. 1945-1970.”

Honorable mention: Marjorie Connolly (2011)

“Anarchy to Activism: Italian Immigrant Politics During Boston’s Great Molasses Flood.”

Honorable mention: Sarah Goldstein (2012)

“Cambodian Immigration and the Cambodian Crisis Committee”

2010

First prize: Paul Kinsman

“Platonic and Pythagorean Ratios in the Formal Analysis of 15th Century Music”

Honorable mention: Vanessa De Santis

“The Emergence of a Class of Informed, Working Italian Immigrant Women in the Early Twentieth Century“

Honorable mention: Austin Powell

“Woman-As-Witch
An Analysis of Gender in Pre to Early Modern Society

2009

First prize: Name removed upon request

Honorable mention: Amy Couto

“Treaty of Canandaigua: The political necessity of peace

Honorable mention: Phil Jensen

“We are history, we are legend: Perspectives of American volunteers in the Spanish Civil War

1929 cookbook

Assembled by Lynnette E. Foucher, this collection consists chiefly of cookbooks produced by food companies between the 1920s-1970s. These cookbooks reflect the changing role of women in the home as well as new food trends and innovative technology. Taken together, the collection offers a glimpse into the way meal preparation changed in the U.S. during the second half of the twentieth century and how this change transformed the way we eat today.