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P : 49 collections

Port of Dennis (Mass.)

Port of Dennis Enrollment Bonds Collection, 1889-1894
1 vol. (0.25 linear feet).

Bonds entered in application for a Certificate of Enrollment for commerce vessels at the port of Dennis in Barnstable, Massachusetts. Volume contains 200 bonds (80 of which are completed), that provide names of the managing owner(s), the name and weight of the vessel, the sum of the bond, and the master of the vessel, and document the commercial activities of some residents in the towns of Dennis, Yarmouth, and Harwich.

Subjects
  • Barnstable County (Mass.)--Commerce--History--19th century
  • Barnstable County (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th century
  • Dennis (Mass. : Town)--Economic conditions--19th century
  • Dennis (Mass.)--Commerce--History--19th century
  • Enrollments
  • Harwich (Mass.)--Commerce--History--19th century
  • Harwich (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th century
  • Ship registers--Massachusetts--Barnstable County--History
  • Shipping--Massachusetts--Barnstable County--History--19th century
  • Yarmouth (Mass.)--Commerce--History--19th century
  • Yarmouth (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th century
Call no.: MS 290 bd
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Porter, William and Eleanor

William and Eleanor Porter Papers, 1800-1809
1 folder (0.1 linear feet).

The collection includes demands and receipts 1804-1809 for taxes (parish, highway, town, county, and state) on various tracts of land in Greenwich, Massachusetts owned by Dr. William and Eleanor Porter. It also includes three documents dating from 1800-1808 regarding the settling of accounts with local individuals: Ichabod [Trandell], James Mills, and Isaac Hunter, and an agreement ca. 1807 to sell pasture land to Captain West of Greenwich.

Subjects
  • Greenwich (Mass.)--History--19th century
  • Quabbin Reservoir Region (Mass.)--History
Contributors
  • Porter, Eleanor
  • Porter, William
Call no.: MS 091
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Portland Granite Company

Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

Portland Granite Company Records, 1836
1 vol. (0.1 linear feet).

Three months after it was incorporated by the state of Maine in March 1836, the Portland Granite Company acquired 17 acres of land from Seth Clark in Westbrook, Me., and began its quarrying operation. With 160 shares of common stock, the company’s members elected a board of three directors (Henry Iseley, M.P. Sawyer, and George Clark), with Henry R. Stickney serving as Treasurer and Secretary.

Recorded in a bound ledger, the records of the Portland Granite Company provide slender, but critical documentation of the organization of a significant quarrying operation. Included are the formal act of incorporation for the company, a record of approval by the corporation to accept their charter; a list of company by-laws; approval for the distribution of stock to members of the company (160 shares); and an agreement with Seth Clark to purchase 17 acres in Westbrook for the operation. The records were apparently kept by Stickney.

Subjects
  • Granite industry and trade--Maine
  • Sepulchral monuments--Maine
Contributors
  • Stickney, Henry Rolfe, 1799-1887
Types of material
  • Ledgers (Account books)
Call no.: MS 648 bd

Post-War World Council

Post War World Council Collection, 1942-1961
1 box (0.25 linear feet).

In early 1938, the Keep America Out of War Committee was formed in New York to preserve and strengthen the anti-war movement. After undergoing a name change in May 1938, the committee dissolved and re-organized as the Provisional Committee Toward a Democratic Peace in December 1941. By February 1942, however, the committee evolved once more, this time into the Post War World Council.

This collection consists of pamphlets from the Post War World Council that document a range of opinions concerning the war and the world, including titles such as “Saboteurs of Victory,” “The Case Against Compulsory Peacetime Military Training,” “The Future of the Far East,” and “Disarmament in the Post War World.”

Subjects
  • Peace movements
Contributors
  • Post-War World Council
Call no.: MS 307

Potash, Robert A., 1921-

Robert A. Potash Papers, 1930-1991

Professor of history, University of Massachusetts (1950-1986), Haring Professor Emeritus (1986-); internationally-recognized scholar of Argentine military history and politics.

Includes correspondence, audiotapes and transcriptions of interviews, 1961-90, with Argentine military and political figures (interviews restricted until 2010); documents obtained from private Argentine sources relating to politics and the military, 1943-90; photocopies of U.S. State Department records, 1940s and 1962-73, regarding Argentina; selected materials from the papers of General Alejandro A. Lanusse, 1962-73; Argentine political ephemera, 1930-74; photocopies of Argentine official documents pertaining to various presidencies and regimes, as well as materials, including newsclippings, regarding petroleum, political parties, and trade unions; papers from externally funded projects and programs pertaining to Latin America in which the University participated.

Subjects
  • Argentina--History
  • University of Massachusetts Amherst--Faculty
  • University of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of History
Contributors
  • Potash, Robert A., 1921-
Call no.: FS 020

Powell, James R.

James R. Powell Collection, 1958-2010
27 boxes (16.5 linear feet).

A devoted reader of newspaper cartoon strips, Jim Powell began collecting Peanuts cartoon books in the mid-1970s, prompted by obtaining two pure-bred beagles for his son.

The Powell cartoon book collection consists of 419 mass market paperback copies of popular cartoon books, representing the work of well-known cartoonists such as Charles M. Schultz, Johnny Hart, Gary Larson, Garry Trudeau, Jim Davis, and Berke Breathed. The collection has particularly rich runs of Peanuts, Garfield, and Doonesbury.

Subjects
  • Comic books, strips, etc.
Contributors
  • Davis, Jim, 1945 July 28-
  • Schulz, Charles M. (Charles Monroe), 1922-2000
  • Trudeau, G. B., 1948-
  • Watterson, Bill
Types of material
  • Cartoons
Call no.: MS 701
View the finding aid: [ html | xml | pdf ]

Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Washington, D.C.)

PATCO Records, 1972-1981
12 boxes (17 linear feet).

Established in 1968, PATCO was certified as the exclusive representative for all FAA air traffic controllers. A little more than a decade later, union members went on strike demanding better working conditions despite the fact that doing so was in violation of a law banning strikes by government unions. In response to the strike, the Reagan administration fired the strikers, more than 11,000, and decertified the union. Over time the union was eventually reformed, first in 1996 as an affiliate with the Federation of Physicians and Dentists union, and later as an independent, national union in 2004.

Correspondence, financial records, notes and memos documenting the activities of the Boston area branch of PATCO. Letters, announcements, and planning documents leading up to the 1981 strike shed light on the union’s position.

Subjects
  • Air traffic controlers--Labor unions
  • Collective bargaining--Aeronautics--United States
  • Labor unions--Massachusetts
Contributors
  • Professional Air Traffic Controllers Organization (Washington, D.C.)
Call no.: MS 479

Putnam, William

William Putnam Papers, 1840-1886
1 box (0.5 linear feet).

For several decades in the mid-nineteenth century, William Putnam (1792-1877) and his family operated a general store in Wendell Depot, Massachusetts, situated strategically between the canal and the highway leading to Warwick. Serving an area that remains rural to the present day, Putnam dealt in a range of essential merchandise, trading in lumber and shingles, palm leaf, molasses and sugar, tea, tobacco, quills, dishes, cloth and ribbon, dried fish, crackers, and candy. At various times, he was authorized by the town Selectmen to sell “intoxicating liquors” (brandy, whiskey, and rum) for “Medicinal, chemical and mechanical purposes only,” and for a period, he served as postmaster for Wendell Depot.

The daybooks and correspondence of William Putnam record the daily transactions of an antebellum storekeeper in rural Wendell, Massachusetts. Offering a dense record of transactions from 1840-1847, the daybooks provide a chronological accounting of all sales and credits in the store, including barter with local residents of the community and with contractors for the new Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad. The last in the series of daybooks lists a surprisingly high percentage of Wendell’s residents (by name, in alphabetical order) who owed him money as of October 1846. The correspondence associated with the collection continues into the 1880s and provides relatively slender documentation of Putnam’s litigiousness, his financial difficulties after the Civil War, and the efforts of his son John William to continue the business.

Subjects
  • Barter--Massachusetts--Wendell
  • Consumer goods--Massachusetts--Wendell
  • Consumers--Massachusetts--Wendell
  • General stores--Massachusetts--Wendell
  • Liquor stores--Massachusetts--Wendell
  • Panama hat industry--Massachusetts--Wendell
  • Schools--Massachusetts--Wendell
  • Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad
  • Wendell (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th century
  • Wendell (Mass.)--History--19th century
Contributors
  • Putnam, William
Types of material
  • Daybooks
Call no.: MS 014
View the finding aid: [ html | xml | pdf ]

Pyle, Christopher H.

Christopher Pyle Papers, ca.1970-1985
20 boxes (30 linear feet).

As an army captain teaching constitutional law at the U.S. Army Intelligence School in Fort Holabird, Maryland during the late 1960s, Christopher Pyle learned about the army’s domestic spying operation that targeted antiwar and civil rights protesters. Disclosing his knowledge about that surveillance in 1970 in two award-winning articles, Pyle led the fight to end the military’s domestic spying program by testifying before three Congressional committees. Currently a professor of politics at Mount Holyoke College, Pyle continues to write about civil liberties and rights to privacy focusing his attention now on the Patriot Act and the detention of aliens and citizens without trial.

Documenting Pyle’s investigation into the military domestic spying operation, the collection consists of court transcripts, telephone logs, surveillance binders, correspondence, research notes, and news clippings.

Subjects
  • Civil rights--United States
  • Military intelligence
  • Military surveillance--United States
Call no.: MS 545

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