Greetings section members! The Society of American Archivists’ annual meeting on August 10 through 15 is rapidly approaching, and the Manuscript Repositories Section will be offering an exciting program as part of our section’s business meeting. I encourage all of you to attend and take advantage of the opportunities the SAA meeting has to offer for both new archivists and seasoned professionals. The meeting is being held in Washington, D.C., this year and is a joint meeting of the Council of State Archivists, the National Association of Government Archives and Records Administrators, and the SAA.
Although the preliminary SAA conference program is not available yet, the schedule and registration forms will be online sometime in April. Our section endorsed two proposals for the annual meeting, one of which was accepted: “That Was Easy: Making Digital Archives a Pleasure to Use,” proposed by Sara Snyder of the Smithsonian Archives of American Art.
This year's section meeting will be held on Thursday afternoon, August 12, from 1:45 to 3:45 p.m. We will be offering a lively program on the manuscripts marketplace, focusing on issues involved in purchasing manuscripts. Presentations from the perspectives of the dealer and the archivist will be offered by experts in the field. Breakout discussions, along with a brief business meeting and reporting of election results, will follow the presentations.
As you will see, Mat Darby and the nominating committee are beginning to compile a slate of candidates for section leadership. This is a great opportunity to become more involved with the section and with the SAA. I especially encourage those who are new to the profession to participate. If you'd like to volunteer, please contact Mat Darby at
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Please also consider contributing articles, news items, and announcements to the section newsletter. It’s a great way to share the exciting new initiatives and other work that you are doing with your colleagues. In addition, if you have any suggestions for activities that the steering committee should undertake, please don't hesitate to e-mail me or another member of the section leadership.
Mat Darby, Chair, Nominations and Election Committee
The Nominations and Election Committee is seeking candidates for the following positions:
Vice Chair/Chair Elect:
Serves as Vice Chair from the conclusion of the 2010 meeting through the 2011 meeting; serves as newsletter editor; works with the Chair and Steering Committee in establishing an agenda for the year; works to ensure that sessions of interest to Section members appear on the SAA program for the following year; prepares for term of service as Chair in 2011-2012; takes minutes during the annual Section meeting. The Vice Chair/Chair Elect must attend the SAA annual meeting.
Steering Committee (3 members):
Serve for two years from the end of the 2010 meeting through the 2012 meeting; serve on the Nominations and Election Committee for 2011; assist in planning for the 2012 annual meeting; participate in Steering Committee meetings at SAA; help set the agenda for the year; and contribute to the newsletter or other activities. Steering Committee members are expected to attend the SAA annual meeting.
Candidates must be members of SAA and the Manuscript Repositories Section. Elections will be held by electronic ballot four weeks before SAA's annual conference in Washington, D.C., August 10-15, 2010, and winners will be announced at the Section meeting in Washington.
Please send suggestions for candidates to any member of the Nominations and Election Committee:
Mat Darby
Chris Burns
Deborah Dandridge
Donna McCrea
The deadline for nominations is May 1, 2010. Thank you for participating!
Labadie Collection Acquires the Papers of Four Pioneering Women
Julie Herrada, University of Michigan
The Labadie Collection at the University of Michigan has recently added three separate archives of women involved in radical causes, and one from a journalist.
When journalist Margherita Hamm covered the murder trial of Frank Steunenberg in Boise for Wilshire's Magazine during the summer of 1907, she recorded her notes in a 173-page handwritten manuscript. William “Big Bill” Haywood, Charles H. Moyer, and George Pettibone, all officers of the Western Federation of Miners, were accused of the assassination of retired Idaho governor Steunenberg. Defended by the famous Clarence Darrow, all three were acquitted after a three-month trial. Hamm was among the earliest American female journalists, and perhaps the first one to report on war from the frontlines during the Spanish-American War. She was also an active suffragette. She died at the age of forty, shortly after the murder trial concluded. A complete transcription accompanies the manuscript.
Ella Reeve Bloor, also known as “Mother Bloor” (1862–1951), was a suffragist, socialist, and free speech advocate. In 1897 she was part of the Founding Convention of the Socialist Labor Party of Daniel DeLeon, along with Eugene Debs and Victor Berger, and then moved continually to the left to the Socialist Party of America (from which she was expelled), and finally to the Communist Party USA, where she later served as a member of the central committee. Bloor was also a union organizer who helped Upton Sinclair gather material for his book, The Jungle, by going undercover in Chicago’s meatpacking industry.
Bloor’s campaign on behalf of the radicals who had run afoul of the Sedition Laws of 1914–1920 is documented in this collection of hundreds of detailed, revealing, and personal letters to her children and to other radicals. They were written as she traveled the country speaking and raising funds while working with the Socialist Party.
Stephanie Mills (born 1948) is a bioregionalist and author of several books, including Whatever Happened to Ecology (1989); In Praise of Nature (1990); In Service of the Wild (1995); Turning Away From Technology (1997); Epicurean Simplicity (2002); and Tough Little Beauties (2007). She has advocated for ecology through her writings and lectures. Mills lives in a fire-heated cabin in the woods of Northern Michigan. She is a Fellow at the Post Carbon Institute, and received an honorary degree from her alma mater, Mills College, in 2009. Her speech at commencement at Mills College in 1969 drew national attention when she vowed not to bear children as a stand against overpopulation.
The Stephanie Mills Papers consist of 23.5 linear feet of correspondence, manuscripts, book and article drafts, artwork, and audio tapes of interviews and lectures.
Chellis Glendinning (born 1947) is a political activist and psychotherapist who specializes in the ecological and human costs of technological progress. She is the author of Waking Up in the Nuclear Age (1987); When Technology Wounds (1990), which was nominated for a Pulitzer prize; and My Name is Chellis and I’m in Recovery from Western Civilization (1994). Her latest two books, Off the Map: An Expedition Deep into Empire and the Global Economy (1999) and Chiva: A Village Takes on the Global Heroin Trade (2005), won awards from the National Federation of Press Women and others. Glendinning lives in rural New Mexico where she works for environmental justice and cultural preservation. The Glendinning Papers consist of twelve linear feet of correspondence, manuscripts, journals, photographs, books, and periodicals. The collection can be found online
Next MARAC Conference Offers Programs of Interest to Section Members
Fernanda Perrone, Rutgers University Rebecca Johnson Melvin, University of Delaware
For those of you in the Mid-Atlantic region, several programs being offered at the Mid-Atlantic Regional Archives Conference (MARAC) spring meeting may be of interest.
Workshop 1: Seventeenth Century Handwriting; instructor, Heather Wolfe, Folger Shakespeare Library. This full-day workshop introduces participants to English secretary hand and its descendant, the mixed or round hand, in use from approximately 1600 to 1750. After an introduction to the secretary alphabet, attendees will practice reading and transcribing early modern wills, letters, receipt books, and depositions. The second half of the day will focus on abbreviations, numbers, and dates.
Session 4: $$$ That Other Kind of Appraisal. Speakers in this session will describe traditional practices and current rules in valuing tangible personal property. Panelists include an established appraiser and a practicing consultant who works with donors and receiving repositories. Among the questions they plan to address: Whether for gift or sale, when must the value of property be established by a qualified appraiser with a report? What are the desired credentials of an appraiser? What are the rules for engaging an appraiser? What can one expect from an appraisal report? What’s the difference between the market value of a collectible autograph and a “historically significant” document valued for its local context and content?
Session 5: Literary Scholarship and Documentary Evidence. This session will examine how scholars make use of literary collections to construct new interpretations as well as to interrogate existing scholarship, making use of both textual and physical evidence. Panelists in this session, a literature professor and a manuscripts curator, will share their discoveries, both anticipated and serendipitous, in authors’ papers. The commentator is head of a special collections department with renowned literary collections.
Session 14: Yaddo: Shimmering Light Across American Library Exhibitions. This session explores a significant collaboration between Yaddo, the artists’ colony in Saratoga Springs, New York, and The New York Public Library, which acquired the Yaddo records in 1999. The partnership of these two cultural institutions resulted in “Yaddo: Making American Culture,” a major exhibition mounted at The New York Public Library in 2008-2009 and a monograph with the same title. In addition, during 2009, a series of related exhibits and public programs at fifteen libraries and archives across the United States celebrated Yaddo and its rich cultural history. Panelists will discuss the genesis and execution of The New York Public Library’s exhibit and public programming as well as those at other institutions. The session will also address the collaboration among these cultural institutions both for the 2008-2009 celebration and ongoing relationships engendered by it.
This year’s conference will be held in Wilmington, Delaware from April 29 to May 1, 2010. For more information or to register, see http://www.marac.info/.
New Acquisitions at the Sally Bingham Center
Kelly Wooten, Duke University
The Sallie Bingham Center for Women’s History and Culture is a broad-based women’s history archive and research center at the Rare Book, Manuscript, and Special Collections Library at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina. We recently acquired the records of the following local and national organizations.
National Coalition of Abortion Providers (NCAP): NCAP was founded in 1990 to represent the political interests of over 200 independent abortion providers throughout the United States. The collection includes NCAP newsletters and administrative files as well as pro-life organization files and partial birth abortion legislation and debate information.
Southerners on New Ground (SONG): SONG, co-founded by activist Mandy Carter (whose papers are also held at the Bingham Center), currently works to build, connect, and sustain those in the South who believe in liberation across all lines of race, class, culture, gender, and sexuality. The collection includes organizational files as well as materials from retreats, training, workshops, and community events sponsored or promoted by SONG.
SONG Members During a Workshop.
Third Side Press: The complete records of this small lesbian feminist press best known for its 1995 publication, The Woman-Centered Economy: Ideals, Reality, and the Space in Between, edited by Loraine Edwalds and press founder Midge Stocker.
Women Work!: Founded in 1978 as the Displaced Homemaker Network, this organization became Women Work! The National Network for Women's Employment in 1993, recognizing the range of economic transitions women face throughout their lives. In 2009, Women Work! closed its doors. These records document their nationwide efforts with lawmakers, business leaders, nonprofit organizations, and labor unions to improve policies for working women.
Housing the Chart Record Supporting the Big Bang Model
Annlinn Kruger, Paper Conservator, Preventive Conservation Section, Library of Congress
In 1964 Arno A. Penzias and Robert W. Wilson recorded clear evidence of cosmic microwave background radiation that provided persuasive support for the Big Bang model of the universe. In 1978 they received the Nobel Prize in Physics for their discovery. The 1964 chart record is part of the Arno A. Penzias Papers collection in the Manuscript Division of the Library of Congress. Initially it was stored in standard preservation housing. Given the cultural, historical, and scientific significance of this object, the curator requested conservation housing and the Library’s Conservation Division provided a customized clamshell box.
Elements of standard and customized housing.
The paper chart record is several yards long and was rolled on a five centimeter inner diameter, heavy paperboard tube. It was decided that a lighter weight tube with a larger diameter would be an improvement. During use, the lighter weight tube exerts less pressure on the rolled paper. The larger, nine centimeter inner diameter tube allows for greater ease of opening and less rolling. To further reduce vulnerability to damage, a secondary tube (stored inside the primary tube) is provided to roll the chart record onto during use.
Primary and secondary tubes in use.
The tubes are constructed of acid free cardstock adhered with PVA (polyvinyl acetate adhesive.) Korean paper is wrapped over the top and bottom edges of the tubes and used to line them because it is flexible and does not distort with the introduction of the water based PVA. The tubes are wrapped in a medium weight acid free Western paper because it has a strong surface which will wear well. To avoid moisture distortion of this wrapper, a minimal amount of PVA was used; it was allowed to dry and then adhered using a heat spatula. The ends of the tubes are wrapped in airplane linen to provide a strong material in an area of stress and a guide when rolling the chart record.
Conservation housing.
The rolled chart record is housed in a customized clamshell conservation box constructed of acid free board and covered with linen blend book cloth. The tubes are supported on platforms and secured with linen tape ties. Padding at the bottom of the box gently supports the rolled chart record and prevents sagging of the primary tube over time. Photographs demonstrating use of the secondary tube are included in the housing.
When it was first produced the importance of this chart record could not be predicted but fortunately it was kept intact. Later, it was exhibited in an atrium at Bell Laboratories (where it was produced.) On Dr. Penzias’s request, because of preservation concerns, the chart record was removed from display and a hand drawn copy was made for exhibition. As part of the Penzias Papers collection it will be preserved and made available for study at the Library of Congress.
The mission of the Library of Congress is to provide preservation of and access to its collections. Conservation contributes to this mission by providing preventive interventions and customized treatment to special collections. Conservation housing is both intervention and treatment in that it creates a stabilizing micro environment and attends the specific needs of a unique object. The chart record donated to the nation by Dr. Penzias, as a way of thanking the United States for providing him a safe haven and a home, contains data which has proven immeasurably important to our understanding of the universe and which might prove important for future research. Preservation of this chart record will provide uninterrupted access to this object, both as an icon of past scientific research and source for future scientific discoveries.
Acknowledgements
The author would like to thank: Dr. Arno A. Penzias for providing additional information concerning the chart record; Leonard Bruno, Curator, Manuscripts Division, for suggesting this project and providing background information; Diane Vogt-O’Connor, Chief, Conservation Division, for her support; and Heather Wanser, Paper Conservator, for her excellent photographs.
Women & Spirit Exhibition Makes Stop in Iowa Deanna Marie Carr, Mount Carmel Archives
An exhibition focusing on the history of Catholic sisters in the United States will make a stop at the National Mississippi River Museum & Aquarium in Dubuque, Iowa between February and April 2011.
At the Dubuque stop, the exhibition will include a special local segment on the arrival of women religious in the Upper Mississippi River Valley. The exhibition is sponsored by the Leadership Conference of Women Religious.
Women & Spirit: Catholic Sisters in America is currently at the Smithsonian Museum in Washington, D.C. Over 50,000 have braved winter storms to have a look at women pioneering in schools and hospitals, on battlefields, and in social crises. The exhibition draws upon firsthand narratives to tell the story of an innovative group of women who helped shape the nation’s social and cultural landscape.
Dolores Bundy (pictured) listens intently at a 1970s religious vocation conference, showing support for Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.’s nonviolent movement for change. (Photo courtesy of the Oblate Sisters of
Providence.) For more information, see http://www.womenandspirit.org/index.html
Northwest Digital Archives Completes IMLS Collaborative Planning Grant, Advances Digital Program Agenda
Jodi Allison-Bunnell, Northwest Digital Archives
Northwest Digital Archives (NWDA), a program of the Orbis Cascade Alliance that provides enhanced access to archival collections and facilitates collaboration among archives, libraries, and museums in Washington, Oregon, Idaho, Montana, and Alaska, has completed its IMLS Collaborative Planning Grant to investigate key problems for digital services at the Alliance.
NWDA received $38,844 from IMLS to determine solutions to specific problems that are currently impeding the development of sustainable digital programs in the region. Under that grant, the group consulted with experts in key areas and developed a prototype of a system that searches across and presents digital content and metadata currently housed in the NWDA EAD database, CONTENTdm and dspace. At the conclusion of the grant, the group advanced a proposal to the Alliance’s governing council detailing next steps for digital program development. Proposed services include hosting for preservation, hosting for access, continued development of the cross-search and presentation system, and scanning and reformatting.
As part of these efforts, the NWDA program manager completed a Research Needs Study with Elizabeth Yakel of the University of Michigan’s School of Information and Janet Hauck of Whitworth University. That study looked at the needs of key researcher groups for the selection and presentation of content online. The resulting report is available here.
NWDA member institutions are the Eastern Washington State Historical Society/Northwest Museum of Arts & Culture, Gonzaga University, Idaho State Historical Society, Museum of History & Industry, Whitman College, Montana Historical Society, University of Montana, Oregon Historical Society, Oregon State University, University of Oregon, Western Washington University, Pacific Lutheran University, University of Washington, Washington State University, Lane Community College, University of Alaska–Fairbanks, the Alaska State Library’s Historical Collections, Whitworth University, Lewis & Clark College, the University of Idaho, the Seattle Municipal Archives, Central Washington University, Eastern Washington University, Willamette University, Western Oregon University, Oregon Health & Sciences University, Central Oregon Community College, and Oregon Institute of Technology.
Founded with NEH and NHPRC funding in 2002, NWDA became part of the Orbis Cascade Alliance in 2007. Members pay annual fees based on institution type that cover the costs of technical, administrative, and fiscal support services.
For more information, contact Jodi Allison-Bunnell, NWDA Program Manager, Orbis Cascade Alliance by phone at (406) 829-6528 or email at
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Newly Processed Collections Document Louisiana’s Medical, Sports, and Political History
Eira Tansey, Tulane University
With the assistance of two interns, the staff at Tulane University’s Louisiana Research Collection (LaRC) has processed several new collections documenting the medical, sports, and political history and culture of greater New Orleans and Louisiana.
Cancer Crusaders 10th Anniversary Charity Ball program, 1986. Cancer Crusaders Records, Manuscripts Collection 965, Louisiana Research Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118.
The Cancer Crusaders Records (Manuscripts Collection 965) span the period 1978 to 1998. Cancer Crusaders, a New Orleans-based volunteer group, is a significant fundraiser for local cancer awareness and research. The records of the Louisiana Urological Society (Manuscripts Collection 1061) date from 1950 to 2006, and document the history of this society, which originally included Texas, Louisiana, and Arkansas in its membership. Acquired in 2009, the papers of New Orleans-area businessman Maurice Stern (Manuscripts Collection 999) were also processed this fall. Stern was the owner of the American Basketball Association team, the New Orleans Buccaneers.
New Orleans Buccaneers team photo (taken sometime between 1967 and 1971). Maurice Stern Papers, Manuscripts Collection 999, Louisiana Research Collection, Howard-Tilton Memorial Library, Tulane University, New Orleans, LA 70118.
The processing of the papers of John Wyeth "Jock" Scott II also began this autumn (Manuscripts Collection 998). Jock Scott was a member of the Louisiana House of Representatives (District 26, Rapides Parish) from 1976 to 1988. He also ran for Congress twice, in 1985 and in 2004. Scott, who received his B.A. from Tulane University, was also active in helping LSU-Alexandria become a four-year degree-granting school. The processing of Scott’s papers is expected to be completed by the end of spring 2010. The papers span the 1960s through the 2000s, and include personal papers and material related to Scott’s political career. The already processed portions of the collection (from his first three terms as State Representative) are available to the public.
University Receives the Records of the Kentucky Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Inc. Kathie Johnson, University of Louisville
The University of Louisville Archives and Records Center is excited to announce the acquisition of an important new collection--the records of the Kentucky Religious Coalition for Reproductive Choice, Inc. We have also recently received an eight-linear-foot addition to the records of the Kentucky Civil Liberties Union. Another collection for which we have negotiated the future donation is the records of the Fairness Campaign of Louisville. When arranged and described, these three major collections will be valuable resources for students and scholars alike.
Reprocessing Suggests Reinterpretation
Virginia Corvid, Wisconsin Historical Society
During the 1990s, the Wisconsin Historical Society developed a project to document reproductive rights controversies in America as part of the Society's social action manuscripts collection. Among the collected manuscripts are papers created by three members of the Coalition for Abortion Rights and Against Sterilization Abuse (CARASA): Rayna Rapp, Sharon Lieberman and Rosalind Petchesky. Reprocessing the Rayna Rapp papers revealed an aspect of this collection previously under-described, the attention to race and class in CARASA's reproductive rights activism. Although reproductive rights controversies are often presented in a pro-choice vs. pro-life dichotomy, historically reproductive rights activists have taken a diversity of stances.
In the Rayna Rapp CARASA-related papers, materials produced in connection with a series of National Endowment for the Humanities grant-funded workshops highlight this complexity. The project developed and presented a series of six workshops about gender and reproductive issues to women's trade unions. The workshops featured humanities scholars as speakers. The papers evidence not only careful efforts to tailor the workshop presentations to issues relevant to each union's demographics, but also the organization's investment in attention to race and class in their activist practice. Enhanced description will make these aspects of the collection apparent to potential users and will also support continuity in feminist activist practice.
The Wisconsin Historical Society was founded in 1846, two years before Wisconsin became the thirtieth state, and it ranks as one of the largest, most active, and most diversified state historical societies in the nation. The Society helps people connect to the past by collecting, preserving and sharing stories. As both a state agency and a private membership organization, it receives about 60 percent of its funding from the state of Wisconsin. The other 40 percent comes from membership fees, admission fees, gifts, trust funds, and grants. A thirty-six member Board of Curators governs the Society.
Earhart Exhibition at Purdue University
Sammie Morris, Purdue University
Currently on display at Purdue Libraries' Division of Archives and Special Collections are selections from the world's largest collection of papers, memorabilia, and artifacts related to pioneering aviator Amelia Earhart.
Amelia Earhart: The Aviator, the Advocate, and the Icon will be shown through May 28 in the Virginia Kelly Karnes Archives and Special Collections Research Center.
The exhibition features documents, photographs and other items, and explores Earhart's legacy. It chronicles her aviation accomplishments, her work as a role model and career counselor at Purdue, and her advocacy of women's rights. The materials come primarily from Purdue's George Palmer Putnam Collection of Amelia Earhart Papers, which is the world's largest compilation of artifacts on the late aviator and was given to Purdue in 2002 by Sally Putnam Chapman. George Palmer Putnam was Earhart's husband. The archives have been used by filmmakers and researchers, most recently by the creators of the feature film Amelia, released in fall 2009.
Earhart worked at Purdue from 1935 to 1937 as a career counselor for women students and an adviser to the Department of Aeronautics. While at the university, she lived on campus in what is now known as Duhme Hall in the Windsor Court complex. She met formally and informally with students, seldom speaking about her achievements in aviation, but instead focusing on vocational aptitudes, goals, and careers for women. At a time when opportunities for women were limited and most studied home economics at Purdue, Earhart said all people—men and women—could be whatever they wanted to be.
The Office of the Provost, Purdue Women's Resource Office, Susan Bulkeley Butler Center for Leadership Excellence and Women for Purdue are sponsoring the exhibition. Items from the collection were digitized in 2004 and are available online at http://www.lib.purdue.edu/spcol/aearhart
Thomas Jefferson Letter Discovered by Graduate Students
Rebecca Johnson Melvin, University of Delaware
University of Delaware graduate students Amanda Daddona and Matthew Davis have discovered an 1808 Thomas Jefferson letter in the newly acquired Rockwood Archives.
During the summer of 2009, the University of Delaware Library received the archives of the Rockwood Museum as a gift from New Castle County. Spanning the seventeenth century until the late 1970s, the Rockwood Archives document generations of the Shipley, Bringhurst, Hargraves, and Sellers families. While much of the material housed in the collection pertains to the generations of these families that resided in the Rockwood mansion between 1851 and 1854, a portion of the archive also documents the lives of ancestors dating from well before the house was built. One such ancestor was Dr. Joseph Bringhurst, Jr., patriarch of the prominent Wilmington Bringhurst family, owners of one of the region's first drug stores (circa 1793), which remained open into the twentieth century.
Graduate students Amanda Daddona and Matt Davis are processing the Rockwood archive, which is huge and diverse, with thousands of documents, maps, letters, photographs, albums, diaries, deeds, business records, ephemera, and other items dating from the seventeenth century until the late 1970s.
Amanda Daddona and Matt Davis, graduate students at the University of Delaware.
In early November, the students discovered a letter, dated February 24, 1808, sent by Thomas Jefferson to Joseph Bringhurst. This letter was posted from Washington and addressed to Dr. Joseph Bringhurst, who had informed Jefferson, in a letter of February 16, 1808, about the recent death, in Wilmington, of John Dickinson on February 14. Jefferson's letter is an eloquent tribute and expression of condolence on the loss of Dickinson: “a more estimable man, or truer patriot, could not have left us.”
Daddona, a graduate student in the Department of History from East Hartford, Connecticut, said she was astonished when she discovered the Jefferson letter. “Just two weeks ago, I was very excited to find a group of letters from a freedman in Liberia writing to Joseph and Deborah Bringhurst in the 1830s. It has been quite an adventure going through these documents. Deborah Bringhurst bundled some letters together and wrote little notes that explained their significance, almost like she knew we'd be doing this one day. The whole reason I am interested in history is because of my earlier studies of Thomas Jefferson, so I couldn't believe it when I found this letter.”
The Thomas Jefferson letter, from 1808.
“Finding this letter was an unexpected surprise, as the bulk of the collection focuses on the more recent history of the Bringhurst family, particularly as it relates to their ownership of the Rockwood estate,” said Davis, who is a graduate assistant from the Department of Political Science and International Relations from Wilmington and who holds the John Sweeney Fellowship at the University of Delaware Library, sponsored by the Friends of Rockwood. “Although I was aware that the Bringhursts were a well-established Quaker family, finding these letters brought home the interconnectedness of the early Republic, and the fact that at that time it really was a small world. These early Bringhurst papers offer important insights into the cultural and social history of the period, Quaker religious history, local and national politics, and even the anti-slavery movement. The Jefferson and Dickinson papers are showcase pieces, but in many ways they're just the tip of the iceberg of the historical sources in this archive.”
Norton Strange Townshend Family Papers Now Open for Research
Shannon Waits, William L. Clements Library, University of Michigan
The William L. Clements Library at the University of Michigan is pleased to announce that the recently-processed Norton Strange Townshend Family Papers are now open for research. This important collection documents the political, educational, agricultural, and social activities of Norton Strange Townshend (1815–1895), his wife (educator Margaret Bailey Townshend), and several generations of related families in northern Ohio and elsewhere. Townshend had a long and multi-faceted career, which included antislavery activism, political involvement at the local level and in the U.S. House of Representatives, work on the Underground Railroad, a role as a Medical Inspector in the Civil War, and advocacy of scientific training for farmers. The latter earned him the nickname, “the father of agricultural education in the United States,” and allowed him to shape Ohio State University as a founder and the institution’s first Professor of Agriculture.
In addition to a wealth of primary sources such as correspondence, diaries, published and unpublished writings, ephemera, and photographs, the collection contains thirty-four letters from Townshend’s friend and mentor, Salmon P. Chase, and a number of daguerreotypes by Townshend’s brother-in-law, Thomas M. Easterly. In conjunction with the opening of the papers, an online exhibition entitled "Honest Independence": The Life of Norton Strange Townshend has been created in order to showcase some of the collection’s treasures and provide historical context and biographical information. The exhibition is located at: http://www.clements.umich.edu/Exhibits/townshend/
Junior League of Mobile, Alabama Partners with University to Preserve Its History
Carol Ellis, University of South Alabama
Last summer, the historian of the Mobile Junior League contacted the University of South Alabama Archives about donating its records. Naturally, we expressed interest, and in July one of our staff members traveled to the league office to view the collection of material housed there. What he found was more than eighty years' worth of correspondence, photographs, meeting minutes, publications, and other documents.
Attendees at a 1973 conference held at the Chandler House in Mobile, Alabama. Photo by J. P. Schaffner, Mobile Press Register Collection, University of South Alabama Archives.
The Junior League began its life in 1925 as the Mobile Charity League. It was established by Mary Tilney and became affiliated with the Association of Junior Leagues of America in 1931. The league’s mission is education and charity. It promotes volunteerism and leadership training. It opened a thrift shop in 1935 and has sponsored numerous charitable drives and programs over the years.
From that initial conversation last summer and over the next three months, the archives' staff worked with the Junior League’s grant writer to compose a grant application that the league submitted to a local foundation. The funds from the grant were to be used to purchase supplies to arrange the collection. That grant was awarded in late 2009.
On May 20, 1975, the Junior League of Mobile opened a second consignment shop. Photo by Roy C. McAuley, Mobile Press Register Collection, University of South Alabama Archives.
On February 11, the archives’ staff began transferring the records from the Junior League offices. We estimate that they will eventually comprise approximately fifty feet of material. The collection will complement the many other collections related to the life of Mobile’s women, including those of the Wistaria Study Club, the Forum Club, and the Azalea City Quilters Guide. Because the records are in excellent condition and already well-organized, we anticipate them being open for research by fall 2010.
SAA Women's Collections Roundtable Introduces Blog
Kelly Wooten, Duke University
For section members interested in women's collections, the Women's Collections Roundtable (WCRT) now has a blog to share news about women's history collections, including new acquisitions, exhibitions, digital projects, relevant conferences, and more. Please submit news from your institution to
. Visit the Women’s Collections Roundtable at: http://wcrt-saa.blogspot.com
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Created | 24 March 2010
Last Updated | 25 March 2010
