The following entries highlight the archival collections used in the class session held in the Gates Classroom, Sterling Memorial Library, on Wednesday, February 12th, 2025.
While you're exploring the collection box in front of you and preparing to tell your fellow students something about the materials it contains and the person whose life it documents, it may be useful to consider some of the following questions:
Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Maxine Kumin was born Maxine Winokur in 1925 in Philadelphia. Educated at Radcliffe College (1946, 1948) she is the author of numerous children’s books, poetry collections, essay and short story collections, and novels. Her many awards include the Pulitzer Prize (1973) for Up Country. Her husband, Victor Kumin, was born in 1921 in Worcester, MA. They met in Cambridge where Victor studied chemistry. In September 1944, while he was serving in the Army, Victor was dispatched to Los Alamos to work on the Manhattan Project. The collection includes 3 boxes of the couple’s correspondence from 1945 to 1946.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Substantive correspondence with family members and fellow missionaries documents the Hildreth's struggle to reach the mission field, their initial impressions of China, family life in China, daily educational and evangelistic work, and the political unrest rampant in South China during their tenure. The intense anti-Christian movement in the mid 1920s is well documented. Ellison Hildreth served as a Baptist home missionary from 1910 until 1913. From 1913-1927, the Hildreths were American Baptist missionaries in South China. During a furlough from 1918-1919, Ellison Hildreth served with the YMCA in Siberia. From 1928-1949, he served as pastor of Federated Churches in Vermont and Connecticut.
Collection materials used in class session
Much of this collection has been digitized and is available through links in the Archives at Yale finding aid.
Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Materials related to Katharine Ketcham (1915-1999), Yale School of Nursing class of 1939. Items include a manuscript diary dated July 1942-September 1944 written by Ketcham about her World War II experiences: training at Camp Edwards, travelling across the United States and awaiting assignment; voyage to New Zealand and experiences while serving as an RN, captain rank, attached to the United States Army 39th General Hospital, Yale Unit.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Correspondence, personal papers, and other papers created by or relating to Bessie Emanuel (1902-1984). Emanuel, later Bessie Emanuel Smith, was a teacher and activist. She was raised in White Plains, New York, by her father Christopher H. Emanuel, a Baptist minister, and her mother Lucy Kittrell Emanuel. She attended an integrated high school, and then received an elementary education degree from Hampton Institute (now Hampton University) in 1925. Emanuel later received a master’s degree in education at Columbia University. She had a long career in elementary education teaching at schools such as the New York City School for the Blind. She returned to White Plains in 1945 where she was the first Black teacher in the town’s history.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Nine diaries written by Harold Thomas Fuller Husted (1883-1956) while a Yale College student, 1904-1908, and as a graduate student, 1908-1909. Diaries are numbered 10 through 18. Also included are diplomas for his BA degree, 1908, and his master's degree, 1909. The diaries document Husted’s college years in New Haven and summers at home in Westfield, NY with weekly entries. Husted consistently notes lectures; games; Yale sports, including baseball; undergraduate student life; epistolary relationships with women; the behavior of the family cat “Chimmie Fadden”; train travel; and the news
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Charles and Joy Sheffey were American Methodist medical missionaries who served in Wembo Nyama, Belgian Congo (now Democratic Republic of the Congo) between 1922 and 1944. Letters, journals, and writings of the Sheffeys document their medical work and record their reactions to the culture and environment they encountered in Africa.
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Link to the finding aid for this collection in Archives at Yale
Overview: Correspondence, journal, speeches and miscellanea of William F. Shunk and his family. Shunk exchanged letters with family members in Pennsylvania while sailing around the world, circa 1846-1849. The sloop, Preble, stopped in many ports, including Cape Verdes, Rio de Janiero, Hawaii, Hong Kong, and Canton, China. Speeches of his father, Francis Rawn Shunk, governor of Pennsylvania, are also included.
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Overview: The two-volume diary primarily documents Brinsmade’s junior and senior years at Yale College (he was a member of the Class of 1845) and richly describes campus life. Subjects include prayer meetings, excursions, baseball (the first known reference to baseball at Yale), football, wicket, and an incident of violence toward a local man. The regular entries end on August 31, 1845 but continue sporadically until February 3, 1853.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Correspondence, family papers, diaries, photographs, and other materials documenting the personal lives and professional careers of Alfred Rider Page (1859-1931) and Elizabeth Merwin Roe Page (1861-1943), and their two daughters, Elizabeth Merwin Page Harris (1889-1969) and Marjorie Page Schauffler (1897-1983). The Page family papers document Elizabeth Roe Page’s work as field secretary for the Women’s Board of Domestic Missions of the Reformed Church in America and has correspondence on such subjects as relations between parents and children, courtship, and aging. The papers also contain material on the life and career of elder daughter Elizabeth, who graduated from Vassar College in 1912, received an M.A. from Columbia University in 1914, and was a teacher, Y.M.C.A. volunteer in World War I, employee of the International Grenfell Association, and author [see also the Elizabeth Page Harris Papers (MS 771)].
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Correspondence, writings, photographs and printed materials of John Hall Paxton, American foreign service officer. The papers reflect primarily Paxton’s service in China from 1925 to 1949, broken only by a year in Tehran in 1943. He made a dramatic escape from China (1949) and returned to the United States. He broadcast for the Voice of America, and returned as Consul to Isfahan, Iran in 1951, where he died in 1953. Papers include reports on Chinese economic and political conditions, memoranda on Nanking and the Nationalist takeover in 1927; an account of the U.S.S. Panay incident in 1937, to which he was an eyewitness; a record of his internment in Nanking by the Japanese in 1942, and articles and letters on his escape from China in 1949. An unpublished manuscript, "Consul to Sinkiang," is among the papers, as are extensive collections of photographs of China and Iran.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Correspondence with related transcription, accounts and inventories, photographs, and printed material related to Ruth Wetmore Newcomb's life (1890-1984) including her 1914 tour of Europe, the Mediterranean, and North Africa before the outbreak of World War I. Newcomb was born and spent her life in New London, Connecticut.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Correspondence, photographs, diaries, writings, and genealogical material pertaining to the Woodruff and allied families. The Woodruff family was one of the founding families of Litchfield, Connecticut. The principals represented in the papers include: George Caitlin Woodruff (1805-1885), George Morris Woodruff (1836-1890), Charles Hornblower Woodruff (1836-1915), and Lewis Bartholomew Woodruff (1868-1925), all of whom attended Yale University, and their spouses from the Bowne and Parsons families of Flushing, New York.
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Link to the online catalog description for this collection
Overview: The diaries describe an 1849 expedition by way of St. Joseph, Fort Kearney, Fort Laramie, South Pass, Sublette's Cut-off, Bear River, Cantonment Loring, Raft River, the Humboldt, Lassen's Route to Deer Creek, and Bruff's camp. They contain maps and sketches from the journey and notes on life in California. The journals were written from the diaries. The notebooks contain more sketches from the trip and of equipment. There are memoranda of supplies and equipment, routes, and remedies.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Letters written by Mary Kingsley (1862-1900) to English merchant John Holt and his wife. Among the topics discussed are British government policy in West Africa, treatment of Africans, the behavior of missionaries, the interests of the trading community, and public opinion in England. The letters were written during the period between Kingsley's return from her West African travels and before going to South Africa during the Boer War.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Biographical sketches, diaries, photographs, correspondence, and clippings that pertain to the missionary efforts of Episcopal minister Aaron Baker Clark and his wife, Sarah Booth Clark, relating to the Lakota (Lakȟóta/Lakhóta) people of the Rosebud Reservation in South Dakota. Also present are printed dictionaries and hymns in the Lakota dialect, 1889-1901, and other printed books on topics such as religion, history, geography and poetry.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Letters by Kristaps J. Keggi, (Yale College 1955, School of Medicine 1959) while serving in the Army Medical Corps in Vietnam from September 1965 to June 1966, to his wife, Julia Q. Keggi, who was raising their three young daughters in El Paso, Texas; letters from Julia Keggi to Kristaps Keggi; letters to Kristaps Keggi from his patients in Vietnam and patients' families; patient records from Vietnam (restricted); photographs of Keggi and family members; slides and digitized photographs from Vietnam and Bangkok, Thailand; photographs by Keggi of gunshot war wounds to the extremities and drawings by medical illustrator Leon Schlossberg, under Keggi's supervision, of these wounds and Keggi's methods of debridement and management; and news clippings and articles mentioning Keggi and the 3rd MASH.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Journals, letterbook, medical notes, and essays of Benajah Ticknor, doctor and surgeon with the U.S. Navy. Of primary importance are the journals which describe journeys made by Ticknor with the Navy to South America, the Far East, and Europe. Ticknor was born in Salisbury, Connecticut, in 1788, graduated from the Berkshire Medical Institute around 1810, received an honorary M. D. from Yale in 1836, and died in Ann Arbor, Michigan, in 1858.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Correspondence, writings, notebooks, articles, essays, reviews, and talks, printed material, interviews, and exhibition catalogues, and other materials related to Rackstraw Downes (born 1939) life and work.as a realist painter and writer. Downes moved to the U.S. from England to attend the Hotchkiss School (1957-1958) and Yale University (B.F.A. 1963, M.F.A. 1964).
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Correspondence, photographs, and personal papers of Edward Vinton Knight, Yale 1931. Of note is Knight’s correspondence to his family dating from 1931-1933 when he worked in Changsha, China teaching English with the Yale-in-China Association (now the Yale-China Association). Correspondence also includes communications about Japan’s hostile activities during the invasion of Manchuria in the early 1930s and later during the Second Sino-Japanese War. There is a significant amount of correspondence dating from 1937-1945 from Knight to his fiancée and later wife, Lois Hathaway Upton. Photographic materials include black and white prints of Knight and his Yale-in-China colleagues and students as well as images of the landscape, architecture, and people in China. Personal papers include Knight’s miscellaneous print and manuscript materials.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: The papers provide an intimate look at African American life in the South during the later years of the Great Depression into the beginning of World War II. The collection is primarily comprised of correspondence to Joe Louis Ferrell (1915-1986) from his wife Hazel E. Pinkard (1913-1994), family members, and friends. The collection also contains materials related to Ferrell's employement as a driver including vehicle operator licenses, employment identification cards, and receipts for vehicle-related expenses. Ferrell's earning statements, layoff notices, and gasoline ration applications detail the economic reality of the 1930s and 1940s. Various papers relating to Ferrell's military service are also included. Hazel Pinkard Ferrell's letters primarily illustrate her academic and social life while attending Tilloson College, a historic Black college located in Austin, Texas.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Correspondence, writings, and collected materials document Picken's work and the work of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) in India beginning in 1928. Lillian Picken was an American missionary in India, serving under the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, American Marathi Mission, later known as the United Church Board for World Ministries. She took part in educational, industrial, social, and evangelistic work in the Satara area of western India.
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Link to the Archives at Yale finding aid for this collection
Overview: Personal and travel diaries, academic writings, short story drafts, research and lecture notes, and correspondence of Gaddis Smith (1932-2022). Topics covered in the collection are Smith’s early life, living in New Haven, marriage and family, aging, hobbies, running and fitness, archival and general research, attending Yale and Duke University, work at Yale University as a professor, chair of the Department of History, and directorship of the Yale University MacMillan Center for International and Area Studies (formerly known as Yale Center for International and Area Studies), international travel and politics, Iraq War, 9/11, Vietnam War protesting and arrest records, maritime history of US Great Lakes region and Atlantic Ocean, and Yale Alumni associations.
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