Established in 1955, the Age Center of New England is a research project which aims to help people prepare for retirement through interviews and questionnaires with those who have retired. The papers of the Archives Committee consist of reminiscences and notes on various aspects of the childhood and youth (through the 1890s) of some 35 individuals who have retired, told in their own words.

The Cambridge Homes for Aged People was incorporated on June 10, 1887, in Cambridge, Massachusetts, to provide housing and other assistance to "respectable aged and indigent men and women." The vast majority of residents have been women. In 1985, Cambridge Homes began taking residents who were able to pay regular monthly fees in addition to those requiring financial assistance. This collection includes by-laws, histories, and brochures; Board of Directors files; resident applications; volumes listing resident wills, financial information, wishes about death and burial; and transcripts and audiotapes from an oral history project with residents.

In her manuscript autobiography, Dorothy Kneeland Clark discusses at length the years of caring for her father, Charles Wilder Clark, during the last part of his life.

Photographer, writer, and activist Marjory Collins attended Brearley School, Sweet Briar College, the University of Munich, and Antioch College West. In 1935, Collins moved to Greenwich Village in New York City and studied photography with Ralph Steiner until 1940. During World War II, she worked for the Office of War Information as part of Roy Stryker's documentary photography team. In the 1960s and 1970s, Collins became a political activist for civil rights, peace activism, and feminism. During the late 1960s, Collins' interests became increasingly focused on older women's issues, and she was particularly concerned with ageism and its effects on women. She also founded the magazine Prime Time, Inc. "for the liberation of women in the prime of life," and was an active member of Older Women's Liberation (OWL).

The goal of this study was to describe the coping styles used by a sample of well-educated, achieving, aging African-American women and a comparison group of white women to investigate the degree to which they exhibited successful psychological adaptation to aging. The sources of data for the project were oral history transcripts included in the collection, as well as oral history transcripts collected for the Black Women's Oral History Project conducted by the Schlesinger Library.

Ida Fisher Davidoff and attended Simmons College (A.B. 1924) and Radcliffe College (A.M. 1925). When her children were grown, she studied family therapy at Yale, University of Pennsylvania, and Columbia (Ed.D. 1961), focusing on the lives and mental health of older women. Through her studies and work as a counselor, Ida Davidoff became an advocate for aging women. The memoir in this collection describes Davidoff's childhood and Jewish community life in Boston through her study and teaching about women's life choices and old age.

Graveline grew up in Illinois and worked as a psychiatric aide at the Kankakee State Hospital from the 1950s to the early 1970s. Following the deaths of her husband and two of her children in 1995, Graveline moved to California to be with her remaining daughter. Among her many interests were wildflowers, Spanish, poetry and crafts. This collection includes diaries detailing her daily life, gardening, love of cats, meals, recipes, and craft projects (1989-1998), and a typed memoir (1994). Also included is a videotaped interview of Graveline (1997).

Writer and counselor Judith Palache Gregory was a graduate of Radcliffe College (A.B. 1955) and the University of Virginia (M.Ed. 1962). She was active in the Lesbian Alumnae of Radcliffe College (LARC) and involved with eco-feminism. Gregory later moved to Jaffrey, New Hampshire, where she set up a pottery business and a permaculture center. She cared for her parents until their deaths. This collection includes diaries, personal correspondence, and writings about caring for her parents.

A counselor and librarian, Jane Dewey Heald graduated from Oberlin College in 1952. She cared for her mother-in-law (who was diagnosed with dementia) for a year before moving her to a retirement home. In 1981 she co-founded, with Carol Spargo Pierskalla, the National Support Center for Families of the Aging; the two also wrote Help for Families of the Aging. Heald led workshops and spoke regularly on topics relating to aging. The collection includes diaries, files relating to the National Support Center for Families of the Aging, speeches, and writings.

The Home for Aged Women, originally the Association for the Relief of Aged and Indigent Females, was founded in Boston in 1849. It provided a home for women who could no longer live on their own, gave "outside aid" to women who continued to live on their own, and helped resident and non-resident retired nurses. In 1949, after the establishment of federal assistance programs such as Social Security, women were allowed to enter the Home as boarding members. The Home received much support from wealthy citizens of Boston. This collection includes operating records of the Home as well as records about the residents.

Lucile Schuck Longview was very active within the Massachusetts Bay District of the Unitarian Universalist Association (UUA). The collection reflects her focus on the spiritual sphere of feminism, which to her meant inclusiveness and working to bring equality to "women in religion" as well as "women and religion." Longview also dedicated her life to the eradication of age discrimination and, in particular, felt that it was the cultural conceptualization of aging that denied elders a positive view of themselves. Her correspondence is full of discussions with other feminists regarding women and religion, ageism, family life, and travel. Her diaries, which cover most of her life, reflect on all aspects of her life including her marriage, her children, activism, and later aging and end of life care.

Elizabeth Wellington Lord graduated from Emerson College and had a career as a singer before working for South End House, a Boston settlement house, where among other activities, she oversaw a vacation house in the country for working girls. The collection includes her autobiography, entitled Events in a Life of Eighty-Six Years (1959), and a radio script entitled Contentment Comes at Sixty (1938).

OWL was formed by Laurie Shields and Tish Sommers in October 1980 as the Older Women's League following the first White House Mini-Conference on Older Women in Des Moines, Iowa. The only national grassroots membership organization to focus solely on issues unique to women as they age, OWL consists of a network of over sixty chapters and undertakes public education and advocacy campaigns to address issues such as health care, economic security, and quality of life.

In 1992, Adele and Leonard Rosenfeld moved to Foulkeways, a Quaker retirement community in Gwynedd, Pennsylvania. Adele became a prolific poet, writing poems that revealed her struggles with stresses associated with aging, such as lack of mobility, grief from loss, and marital stress. In 2000 she wrote Leonard, "Our youthful love ages with us. I still love you. You still love me. You are changed, and we understand the change. But love is always there." This collection includes materials relating to their time at Foulkeways.

Jetta Schauer Roth was married to Milton Roth and was active in the local and state chapters of the National Organization for Women as well as working on a number of political campaigns. In 1987 she earned a bachelor's degree in English literature from Western Connecticut State University. Following Milton’s stroke in 1988, the couple divided their time between Florida and Danbury, Connecticut, where Jetta remained active teaching English to foreigners and participating in exercise classes and book groups. After the death of her husband, Jetta returned to West Hartford, Connecticut, where she was living in 2017, at the age of 102. The collection consists of a biographical sketch of Roth by her daughter Jane (2017) and diaries (1971-2009). The diaries include reflections on aging, health, family relationships, and social events.

Charlotte Y. Salisbury was the author of a number of books detailing her life while living abroad. This collection includes papers relating to Salisbury's life after the death of her third husband. It contains Charlotte Salisbury's handwritten autobiography and personal diaries which describe her life between the ages of 79 and 92. Diaries also detail accounts of her everyday activities and interests including family, travel, movies, Italian language lessons, shopping, gardening, and politics. Of particular note are the entries documenting the unexpected death of her third husband in 1993, and each day following his passing.

A clinical social worker, writer, and lecturer, Rachel Josefowitz Siegel was born in Berlin, Germany, to Lithuanian Jewish parents. Raised in Switzerland, she emigrated to the United States in 1939 and was awarded a B.S. from Simmons College in 1944. In 1973 she returned to school, earning a M.S.W. from Syracuse University School of Social Work. She was in private practice for many years and conducted seminars and workshops on a variety of women's issues, especially aging, Jewish women, and sexuality. This collection includes audiotapes and transcripts of interviews with women in their sixties, conducted by Siegel in the early 1990s for a book that was never completed.

This collection contains correspondence that reflects Antoinette Spruyt's struggle with her mother's declining health, detailing her care, estate planning, and mental deterioration.

Medical anthropologist Hazel Marie Hitson Weidman joined the war effort in 1943 by signing up with the WAVES (Women Accepted for Volunteer Emergency Service). After taking aptitude tests during boot camp, Weidman was sent to the Atlanta Naval Air Station to learn to instruct pilots in celestial navigation. With funding from the G.I. Bill, Weidman studied social anthropology at Northwestern University (B.S. 1951) and Radcliffe College (M.A. 1957, Ph.D. 1959). This collection includes correspondence with Weidman’s friends from her Maine retirement communities, Piper Shores in Scarborough and The Highlands in Topsham.

A native of Austria, Margarita Willfort immigrated to the United States. The collection consists of her diary and her memoir, written in old age.

The Winchester Home for Aged and Indigent Women was established in Charlestown, Massachusetts, in 1865 through a bequest of Lucy Winchester. It continued in Charlestown until 1932 when a trustee of its trust fund was charged with a large theft; the Home's remaining assets were transferred to the Boston Home for Aged Women in Jamaica Plain, and its residents moved there. The records consist of annual reports and minutes of the Board of Managers; applications, admission certificates, doctors' reports, and other records of the residents; and financial records.