Special Collections
- Special CollectionsHarry David Dufresne, Jr. was born on April 23, 1919 in Dover, New Hampshire. He married Anna F. Laderbush in Portsmouth, New Hampshire in 1938. He died in September 1965. The Harry Dufresne papers are mostly made up of correspondence…
- Special CollectionsJack (Jean-Louis Lebris de) Kerouac (1922-1969), American novelist and memoirist, was born and grew up in Lowell, Massachusetts. He was a leading writer of the Beat Generation, and his second novel "On the Road" (1957) was the defacto manifesto of the movement. The…
- Special Collections
- Special CollectionsRalph Page’s career as a dance caller began in 1930. Ralph continued to call for the next 54 years, becoming one of the leading callers of his time and an important figure in the history of traditional dance in America. The Ralph Page Manuscript…
- Special CollectionsRoland Douglas Sawyer, a Protestant minister and Massachusetts state legislator, was born in Kensington, New Hampshire on January 8, 1874. Sawyer graduated from Revere Lay College in 1898 and worked as pastor. During his ministerial career, Sawyer was…
- Special CollectionsLevi Chapman Tuttle was born on August 3, 1835 in Nottingham, New Hampshire and died in 1914. He enlisted in the 13th Regiment New Hampshire Volunteers Infantry, Company F on August 26, 1862. He saw fighting at Fredericksburg and fifteen other battles…
- Special CollectionsThe Royal Scottish Country Dance Society, Boston Branch was formed in 1950 and was both the first branch of the Royal Scottish Country Dance Society established outside the United Kingdom and the first branch in North America. The collection, which…
- Special CollectionsFrederick Solomon was born in Berlin, Germany in 1899, fled the Nazis to England, and emigrated to the United States in 1955. He died in 1980. He was a German Expressionist artist and a rabbi. The collection consists of correspondence, essays,…
- Special CollectionsPinewoods Camp in Plymouth, MA has been in operation since 1919 as a dance camp; before that it was a Girl Scout camp. The camp is owned by the Country Dance and Song Society, and has worked to promote Anglo-American traditional dance and music since…
- Special CollectionsThomas Wilson Thorndike (1797-1888) was born in Concord, N.H. and married Ruth Dow in 1823. He was a carriage maker, first of Concord, then, as of 1839, a manufacturer of Weare, N.H. He died in Weare in 1888. A 18 pp. manuscript in two parts (14pp. and 4pp.), mostly written in 1884, outlines his…
- Special CollectionsEliphalet Smith (1759-1836) was born in Newmarket, N.H., married Ann Bryant, and later became a successful merchant in Portland, Maine. A 20pp. manuscript containing satirical poems, copies of letters and articles written for local newspapers, and a copy of an erudite letter on the human character.
- Special CollectionsGeorge Austin Wason inherited the family estate of four hundred and seventy-five acres and devoted his life to the pursuit of agriculture. He specialized in raising thoroughbred Devon cattle. He lived on the family farm until 1885, when he moved to Nashua, where he died June 21, 1906, aged 71, but…
- Special CollectionsThe provenance of this collection is unknown. 87 mid-20th century postcards from across New Hampshire.
- Special CollectionsThe Northam Colonists, named for the original town of Dover, was the historical society of Dover, New Hampshire from 1900 until the organization disbanded in 2008. The mission of the Society was to collect, preserve and exhibit artifacts, information…
- Special CollectionsRobert Otis Clement (1917-1993) was born in Nashua, New Hampshire. He graduated from the University of New Hampshire in 1938. He joined the infantry of the United States Army in 1942. He served in the intelligence section of the 3rd Battalion, 133rd Infantry, 34th Division, and received a Purple…
- Special CollectionsThe Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail was incorporated in 1995 as a non-profit organization. The Trail researched and created a self-guided walking tour and resource book emphasizing black heritage in Portsmouth and the New Hampshire seacoast area. The organization…
- Special CollectionsCharles Theodore Russell (1881-1961) was the son of Joseph Ballister Russell, a merchant of Boston. He lived in Falmouth and Boston, Massachusetts. In 1906 he married Louise Rust and they had four children, Charles T. (b. 1907), Henry D. (b. 1910),…
- Special CollectionsCarlton and Margaret (1928-2011) Bradford owned and operated the Kearsarge Bookshelf and Bradford Hallmark in New London, NH for 27 years. They began corresponding with Donald Hall when hosting a poetry reading for him in their store. Margaret died in…
- Special CollectionsL. James (Jim) Bashline, son of J. Stanley and Mildred S. Bashline, was born in Tioga, PA on November 18, 1931. He was educated at Pennsylvania State University and Albright Art School, after which he entered the field of journalism. The James and…
- Special CollectionsErnie Spence (1925-2011) was a contra and square dancer and dance organizer in western New Hampshire, starting ca. 1950. He was responsible for first bringing to dances many young people who would later become important leaders of the dance scene in their own right. Ernie and his wife Jean…
- Special CollectionsMaurice E. Bowes (b. 1923) was born in Greenfield, N.H. He enlisted in January 1943 and served with distinction in World War II as a first engineer and top turret gunner on a B24 bomber, being awarded a Purple Heart, two oak leaf clusters and an air…
- Special CollectionsLarry Jennings was a dancer, caller, dance organizer, author, and dance philosopher who had a nationwide influence through his writings, series of discussion sessions attended by callers and organizers, and individualized critiques of dance callers…
- Special CollectionsThe Drake-Aldrich Family Papers are from Frank James Drake (Pittsfield NH 1842-1891) and family, as well as Frank’s brother, Nathaniel Seavey Drake (1851-1936) and his family. Charles Spaulding Adrich married Frank's daughter Helen ca. 1898, and their…
- Special CollectionsDaniel Hopkinson was born in Bradford, Essex County, MA on January 22, 1783, the son of Daniel and Hannah Hopkinson. He married Sarah Poore (1793-1867) in 1816. They had one daughter, Abigail. Hopkinson spent his entire life in Essex County, near the…
- Special CollectionsGeorge Fogg (1928-2022) of Boston, MA, was the recipient of Country Dance and Song Society Lifetime Contribution Award for 2012. He was a teacher of country dance beginning in 1968, and was an expert at getting beginners out onto the dance floor. The…
- Special CollectionsWilliam Loeb III (1905-1981) was born on December 26, 1905. He purchased controlling interest in the Manchester Union Leader (New Hampshire) in 1949. Professionally Loeb was known as a provocative, conservative newspaper editor. New Hampshire’s…
- Special CollectionsThe First Congregational Society was located in the Great Falls, NH (Somersworth/Rollinsford) area. This folio lists the income and expenses of the First Congregational Society from 1835-1844, including the names of its various donors and subscribers…
- Special CollectionsThe Hanson Family Association was organized in Dover, N.H. on Sept. 7, 1911 at a meeting in Central Park, Dover at which the by-laws of the association were adopted and officers elected from the thirty-two descendants of Thomas Hanson present. Thomas…
- Special CollectionsElizabeth Yates was a prolific American author. In 1938, her first book, High Holiday, was published by London publishing company A & C Black. She is perhaps best known for her 1951 Newbery Medal winning novel Amos Fortune, Free Man. She also received the Newbery Honor in 1944 for Mountain Born…
- Special CollectionsThe High School Underground Newspaper Collection includes the first ten issues of what was initially called The Concord Union Leader (from January-December 1969, issues 1-6), and then The Bane (issues 7-10, February-May 1970) produced by students at Concord High School, St. Paul’s, and Bishop Brady…
- Special CollectionsThe Textile Workers Union of America (TWUA) was an industrial union of textile workers established through the Congress of Industrial Organizations in 1939. It waged a decades-long campaign to organize J.P. Stevens and other Southern textile…
- Special CollectionsThe Green Harbor Fishermen's Association was founded in 1896 as a "temporary organization" and "compact body that shall advocate the interests of the villages contiguous to Green [H]arbor and the adjacent coast, and urge on the efforts for the…
- Special CollectionsFranklin Buss (1792-1812) was the son of Samuel and Lydia Buss (nee Lincoln) of Jaffrey, NH. He was the youngest of eight children. Buss began an apprenticeship in the J. Parker and Co. Keene, NH store in June of 1809 at the age of seventeen. The…
- Special CollectionsThe Jones family resided for generations in Milton, N.H. Levi Jones, a farmer, businessman, innkeeper, and prominent mason and the senior figure in the collection, was born in 1771 and died in 1847. The Jones Farm now forms part of the New…
- Special CollectionsThe Monadnock Folklore Society was founded in 1980 and incorporated as a non-profit organization in 1982. The original purpose was to increase the visibility of folk dance and music events in southern New Hampshire, provide new venues for performers,…
- Special CollectionsRice Rowell Whittier (1817–1897) was a deeply religious Free Baptist Elder, subscription agent, and missionary from Deerfield Centre, New Hampshire. During the years covered in the diaries Whittier lived in Greenwood, Illinois, 1862–1870, New Orleans…
- Special CollectionsDuring the elections of 1812 and 1814 feelings ran high in Federalist New England on the subject of President James Madison’s imposition of an embargo on American shipping and Congress’s declaration of war against Great Britain. The governors of…
- Special CollectionsGeorge Harrington Carter (1873-1910) was born in Montreal, Canada in 1873. After his mother died in 1880 he was sent to Waltham, Massachusetts to live with relatives. He returned to Canada to work selling paper and he later joined the Nashua Card and…
- Special CollectionsAuthor from Northwood, NH. He is best known for his book The Death of the Detective, which was nominated for the National Book Award in 1974. This collection contains 24 letters written mostly to his editors at Little, Brown and Company, about his…
- Special CollectionsEstablished on June 3, 1812, the New Hampshire Bible Society was created with the purpose of extensive distribution of the Bible. It was one of the earliest Bible Societies incorporated in the United States; its founding preceded the establishment of…
- Special CollectionsThe Dowst family lived in Allenstown, near Manchester, New Hampshire. They included various generations of men named Henry Dowst (beginning in 1784) and Frank Dowst (-1905). Contents of this collection were kept by the men of the family. The…
- Special CollectionsDerby Department Store of Peterborough, New Hampshire, was one of the many businesses across the nation affected by the regulations of the Office of Price Administration. The collection is largely made up of business records and invoices.
- Special CollectionsThe Starkeys were farmers and school teachers in West Swanzey, New Hampshire, in the middle of the nineteenth century. After the firing on Fort Sumter, the family sent two of its men to join the Union cause in the Civil War. Isaac and his nephew Elmer…
- Special CollectionsThomas Bailey Aldrich was a New Hampshire-born author, poet and editor. Hist most noteable works are The Story of a Bad Boy and An Old Town By The Sea. Two letters written by Thomas Bailey Aldrich. One letter describes some of his works in progress; the other, written from the office of the…
- Special CollectionsThomas Bailey Aldrich (1836-1907) was a New Hampshire-born author, poet and editor. His most noteable works are The Story of a Bad Boy and An Old Town By The Sea. Letter written by Thomas Bailey Aldrich in 1904 to Reverend John M. Milson that promises him a copy of the poem “Two Moods.” Included is…
- Special CollectionsThe Robert Frost Youth Poet Program was begun in 1997 to provide New Hampshire fourth grade students in public and private schools the opportunity to express their feelings about New Hampshire in a poem in the hope that it will increase appreciation…
- Special CollectionsThe Hardy family of Nelson, New Hampshire, was a well-to-do group of farmers, schoolteachers, and ministers in nineteenth-century New England. The Hardy Family papers are almost entirely composed of the family's internal correspondence, dated 1862-…
- Special CollectionsNicholas Durso (b. 1950) graduated from Notre Dame in 1977 and taught English at Hebron Academy near South Paris and Norway, Maine in the late 1970s and early 1980s, directing a number of play productions there. Tidewater is a play about Sarah Orne Jewett and was originally performed in Norway,…
- Special CollectionsRobert Sage Wilber (b. March 15, 1928), clarinetist, saxophonist, composer, arranger, and educator, was born in New York City. He started playing jazz in high school. In 1968, Wilber joined the World's Greatest Jazz Band (WGJB) for six years. In 1975…
- Special CollectionsW. Albert Rill (1910-1996)served in the United States Navy as a communications officer during the Second World War. He saw action at Iwo Jima and Okinawa in the course of his military career. The W. Albert Rill World War II papers is mostly comprised…
