The horticulturist Tom S. Hamilton was a member of the faculty at UMass Amherst in the Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional Planning. A specialist in ornamental plants, Hamilton worked at UMass from prior to 1950 until his retirement in 1986.

The Hamilton Papers contain three works on ornamental plants published by the Dept. of Landscape Architecture, along with a mimeographed laboratory manual that Hamilton used in his courses on landscape operations in 1979.

A private, non-profit corporation founded in 1965 in Northampton, Massachusetts to finance community action programs for eliminating poverty and assisting low income people. Programs included day care centers, Neighborhood Youth Corps, Summer Head Start, a drug addiction clinic at the jail, Legal Services, and the Foster Grandparent Program.

Records comprise bylaws and organizational charts, annual reports, board of directors minutes; administrative directors’ records, including correspondence with the federal agencies and state agencies granting funds, grant applications and awards, program plans, financial and legal documents, personnel records and staff training directives; the agency newsletter County Voice, Noticero Latina; and newsclippings about welfare programs.

Nonprofit organization with representatives from sixteen Western Massachusetts towns that raised funds for and distributed funds to local and national social service organizations in their communities. Records include minutes of the Board of Directors, Executive Committee, financial and other standing committees; annual reports, correspondence, ledgers, budget worksheets, agency reports, campaign materials, including solicitation lists and letters, campaign studies and reports; brochures and surveys; and printed materials and photographs.

Title page, Volume 1 (1671)

The Hampshire Council of Governments is a voluntary association of cities and towns and the successor to the former government of Hampshire County, Massachusetts, that was abolished in 1999. A body politic and corporate, its charter ratified by Massachusetts General Law 34B, S20(b), the Council oversees roadways, the electricity supply, building inspection, tobacco control, cooperative purchasing, and other services for member communities.

The Hampshire Council collection contains a dense record of county-level governance in western Massachusetts from the colonial period through the mid-twentieth century with extensive documentation of the actions of the County Commissioners, and before them the Court of Common Pleas and Court of General Sessions. Rich in documenting the development of the transportation infrastructure of western Massachusetts, the collection offers detailed information associated with the planning and construction of highways, canals, ferries, and railroads, but the early records offer a broad perspective on the evolution of the legal and cultural environment, touching on issues from disorderly conduct (e.g., fornication, Sabbath breaking) to the settlement of estates, local governance, public works, and politics.

In February and March 1890, Smith College Professor J.H. Pillsbury organized several meetings for Northampton citizens interested in the work of the Young Men’s Christian Association. Within a month, prominent local men, including C.H. Lyman, A.L. Williston, George Washington Cable, and F.N. Kneeland, established an Executive Board and committees with representatives from all the Protestant churches to raise funds and secure a building to begin the Northampton YMCA. Incorporation shortly followed, in January 1892.

In its first decade, the YMCA established a Boy’s Department under the direction of Robert L. Williston, started a Women’s Auxiliary, and began a building fund that resulted in the purchase of property from A.L. Williston on King Street. Throughout its history, the YMCA responded to local needs during periods of crisis or transition. During World War I and II, it established recreation programs for factory workers and soldiers stationed in the area, and, from 1942-44, was heavily involved in U.S.O work. In the 1950s and 1960s the YMCA began special programs on civil rights and desegregation. Over the years, a number of prominent local figures played a role in Hampshire Regional YMCA’s history including Robert L. Williston, Oliver L. Bradley, and Errol V. Ridgewell, Executive Director from 1943 through 1969.

Records of the Hampshire Regional YMCA document the Association from its first meetings in 1891 through 1978. The collection contains minutes, constitution and by-laws, reports, board correspondence, ledgers, publications, scrapbooks, and youth, recreation, and wartime program files. Also includes material relating to building campaigns and properties. Additionally documents the long career of Errol V. Ridgwell.

Lewis Hanke

Lewis Hanke, the Clarence and Helen Haring Professor of History from 1969 to 1975, was a scholar of Latin American history, served as the president of the American Historical Association, worked extensively as an editor, and was best known for his research on Bartolome de Las Casas. Hanke was born in 1905 in Oregon City, Oregon, and received his B.S. and M.A. in history from Northwestern University. After earning his Ph.D from Harvard in 1936, the great depression barred his way to professorial appointment, allowing Hanke to work outside of academia as the director of the Hispanic Foundation until 1951. After teaching at the University of Texas and Columbia University, Hanke eventually became a professor at the University of Massachusetts in 1969 until his retirement in 1975. During his tenure at the University, Hanke edited the Guide to the Study of US History Outside the US, 1945-1980, and the year before his retirement, he served as the president of the American Historical Association, where he oversaw the re-writing of the AHA’s charter. Hanke died in March, 1993.

Lewis Hanke’s papers document his historical research and his prolific scholarly output. The largest portion of the collection are notes, correspondence and administrative records relating to his editorship of the Guide to the Study of US History Outside the US, 1945-1980, as well as a collection of his published and unpublished papers from 1939. The collection also includes notes, correspondence, and image reproductions for Hanke’s book Spanish Viceroys. The remainder of the collection is professional correspondence, documents from Hanke’s tenure as AHA president, and materials from his many research projects.

Beth Hapgood and members of the Brotherhood, ca.1969

Daughter of a writer and diplomat, and graduate of Wellesley College, Beth Hapgood has been a spiritual seeker for much of her life. Her interests have led her to become an expert in graphology, a student in the Arcane School, an instructor at Greenfield Community College, and a lecturer on a variety of topics in spiritual growth. Beginning in the mid-1960s, Hapgood befriended Michael Metelica, the central figure in the Brotherhood of the Spirit (the largest commune in the eastern states during the early 1970s) as well as Elwood Babbitt, a trance medium, and remained close to both until their deaths.

The Hapgood Papers contain a wealth of material relating to the Brotherhood of the Spirit and the Renaissance Community, Metelica, Babbitt, and other of Hapgood’s varied interests, as well as 4.25 linear feet of material relating to the Hapgood family.

Charles Hutchins Hapgood (1904-1982) was working toward a doctorate in French history at Harvard when the Great Depression derailed his plans. After a succession of jobs and wartime service, however, Hapgood returned to the academy, teaching history at Springfield College and Keene State for over three decades. He is best remembered as an advocate of several scientifically heterodox ideas, arguing that the earth’s outer crust shifts on geological time scales, displacing continents, and that the earth’s rotational axis has shifted numerous times in geological history. A long time friend and supporter of the medium Elwood Babbitt, he was author of several books, including The Earth’s Shifting Crust (1958), Maps of the Ancient Sea Kings (1966), The Path of the Pole (1970), and Voices of Spirit : Through the Psychic Experience of Elwood Babbitt (1975). Hapgood died in Fitchburg, Mass., on Dec. 21, 1982, after being struck by an automobile.

The Hapgood Papers contain a small grouping of correspondence and writings that offer a glimpse into some of Charles Hapgood’s late-career interests. Although the correspondence is relatively slight, relating primarily to publications in the last two or three years of his life, the collection is a rich resource for the lectures and writings of Elwood Babbitt.

Copies of letters written by Harding to Carrie Phillips between 1909 and 1920, as well as copies of the correspondence of Nan Britton, who allegedly had a child with the President, including letters between her and the collector, Dean Albertson, that discuss the book she authored about her relationship with Harding, The President’s Daughter.

Correspondence of Carrie Phillips with Harding is restricted until 2014 (by order of an Ohio court).

A slencil

An inventor, entrepreneur, and corporate executive, Carl C. Harris was the third of four generations of his family to help manage the Rodney Hunt Company, a major manufacturer of waterwheels, turbines, and textile machinery based in Orange, Mass. While still in high school in 1898, Harris already displayed a sharp business and technical eye, establishing the first telephone company in Orange, and he began his career after graduation from Worcester Polytechnical Institute, working as a draftsman for GE and then as a superintendent at Rodney Hunt. After a brief stint at the Simplex Time Recorder Company in Gardner, Harris returned to Rodney Hunt for good in 1912. After acquiring a controlling interest in 1917, he remained with the company in several capacities through the Depression and Second World War, serving as general manager, vice president, and treasurer, and from 1938-1947, as president. Throughout his career, Harris remained active in developing or improving a variety of new products and processes, registering a total of 99 patents, and he regularly used his offices at Rodney Hunt to launch other, smaller enterprises, including the Slencil Company,which manufactured mechanical pencils; Riveto, which produced toys and a paper fastening device; and Speed-Mo, a manufacturer of a moistening pad system. Harris retired in 1956 and died four years later in Orange at the age of 79.

The Harris Papers are centered closely on the entrepreneurial activity of Carl C. Harris, and include a particularly thick set of business records for the Slencil Company (ca.1935-1960) and the Riveto Company (1930s-1940s), and the slender record book of the Home Telephone Company. In addition to these, the collection includes many dozen slencils, including prototypes, speciality models, presentation sets, store displays, and marketing designs; examples of Riveto toys, Simplex inventions, flotation devices, and other oddities invented by Harris, along with the associated patents.