Effie A. Trimble McGrew was born in 1868. She married Alfred N. McGrew (1863-1951) in 1891 in Sullivan, Indiana. They had five children: Gladys (1892-1932), Hellen (1894-1982), Nathan Trimble (1896-1986), Ogel David (1898-1982), and Margaret (1904-2004). By 1910 the McGrew family were living in Lewis Township in Clay County, Indiana, where Alfred was manager of the telephone office and Effie, Gladys, and Hellen worked as operators. In 1917, Nathan and Ogel McGrew enlisted in the United States Navy. The rest of the family continued to live in Lewis Township, where they ran a small family farm as well as held other jobs. Effie and Gladys worked as telephone operators, store clerks, and supported the daily needs of farm animals, vegetables, and crops. Alfred was also working as a wallpaper salesman and paperhanger. By 1920 Alfred was working as a coal miner, but later reverted to primarily taking care of the farm. Effie McGrew died in 1832. Collection contains Effie McGrew's diary from May to August 1917, written on the reverse pages of one of her husband's wallpaper sample books. Pasted on the first page is a letter from her son Ogel, at the United States Naval Training Station in Great Lakes, Illinois. Throughout the diary she tracks letters from her sons, as well as records their needs and visits home. McGrew also writes about daily life, parenting, running a farm, and working other jobs. Other topics include caring for chickens, sometimes in her kitchen, planting crops and vegetables, tending to cows, and harvesting. She frequently comments on her health and suffering from headaches and neuralgia. McGrew also records her dreams, the weather, exploits of townspeople, and her family's health concerns. Many entries detail accidents at local mines and injuries to miners. The collection also contains a transcript and index to the diary.

Lucy Florilla Clapp was born in Franklin Township, Ohio, in 1845 to Mary (Brown) and Selah Sheldon Clapp. The Clapps lived on a small farm where they raised cows for milk. Lucy and her older sister Mary Adelia worked with their parents on the farm and never married. Lucy Clapp died in 1934. Collection contains Lucy Florilla Clapp's leather-bound daily diary from 1872. Clapp, at the time age 27, records her daily activities working on the family farm and details of an active social life. Her work includes washing dishes, churning butter, milking, baking and canning, sewing and mending clothes. Clapp also describes frequent visits with friends and neighbors, singing, church socials and services. She also records comments on the weather and her bedtime. A cash accounting for 1872 is at the back of the diary, as are two later notes, one about a broken engagement. Collection also contains a transcript of and index to the diary.

Ambassador and breast cancer advocate Nancy Goodman Brinker was born December 6, 1946 in Peoria, Illinois, to Marvin and Eleanor (Newman) Goodman. She attended Peoria High School and the University of Illinois (B.A., 1968), where she was a member of the Alpha Epsilon Phi sorority. After college, Brinker moved to Dallas, Texas, where she worked at Nieman Marcus and married Nieman Marcus executive Robert Leitstein; they had a son, Eric, in 1975 and divorced in 1978. In 1981 she married businessman Norman Brinker; they divorced in 2000. Brinker's older sister Susan Goodman Komen died of breast cancer at age 36 in 1980. In 1982, Brinker established the Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, a nonprofit organization to raise money for breast cancer research. Susan G. Komen is the largest breast cancer-focused nonprofit in the United States, Brinker served as CEO of Komen from 2009 to 2013. Brinker herself survived breast cancer in the early 1980s. Her memoir, Promise Me: How a Sister's Love Launched the Global Movement to End Breast Cancer, was published in 2010. In 2018, Brinker founded the Promise Fund of Florida with Julie Fisher Cummings and Laurie Silvers, to raise money for breast cancer prevention and diagnosis specifically in South Florida. Nancy Brinker was an early donor to the Presidential campaign of fellow Texan George W. Bush. President Bush nominated Brinker to be the United States Ambassador to Hungary; she served in that capacity from 2001 to 2003. Brinker also served as Chief of Protocol of the United States from 2007 to January 2009. She was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom in 2009. Since 2009, Brinker has been the World Health Organization's Goodwill Ambassador for Cancer Control. Collection includes correspondence, speeches, clippings, and photographs. The collection documents Brinker's family relationships that led to the founding of Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation; Brinker's work to raise awareness and funds for breast cancer research, and her role as United States Ambassador to Hungary and Chief of Protocol.

In 1990, at age 21, Denise Solla was convicted in New York State Court of murder in the second degree and sentenced to 17 years to life. She served time in Bedford Hills Correctional Facility for Women, a maximum security prison, and after 2007 at the medium security Albion Correctional Facility. While incarcerated, Solla earned an Associates Degree from Marymount Manhattan College and completed several work certificate programs. Solla was paroled in 2019 after 30 years of incarceration. Kathleen Kanet, a sister of the Religious of the Sacred Heart of Mary, was on staff at the Intercommunity Center for Justice and Peace in New York City from 1976 to 1989. From 1990 to 1993, Kanet was a caseworker at the Incarcerated Mothers Program (IMP) in East Harlem. Kanet worked with families when the mother was incarcerated and the family needed support to keep the children out of foster care. She met Solla through that program in 1990. Collection contains letters Solla and Kanet exchanged while Solla was incarcerated at Bedford Hills and Albion prisons in New York State. Solla and Kanet discuss Solla's experiences in prison, books they are reading, spiritual ideas, Solla's family members and other mutual friends, and Solla's attempts to get paroled.

Hildegard Elizabeth Peplau (1909-1999), educator and psychiatric nurse, was born in Reading, Pennsylvania, the daughter of Polish and Russian immigrants Gustav and Ottylie Peplau. Educated at local schools, she received a diploma in nursing from Pottstown Hospital Training School in Pennsylvania, in 1931; an A.B. from Bennington College (1943); an A.M. (1947) and Ed.D (1953) both from Teachers College, Columbia University; and a certificate in Psychoanalysis Applied for Teachers from William Alanson White Institute (1954). Peplau served in the United States Army Nurse Corps (1943-1945), and was a faculty member at the College of Nursing at Rutgers University (1954-1974), becoming chair of the Department of Psychiatric Nursing and director of the graduate program in 1955, and Professor in Nursing in 1960. An advocate of professionalization and graduate training for nurses, Peplau was active in the leadership of many nursing and health associations. Collection consists of letters Hildegard Peplau wrote to Mary Beth Mathews, Director of Continuing Education at Ohio State University College of Nursing. Mathews organized an alumni international study tour to Greece and Israel, to coincide with the 1985 meeting of the International Council of Nurses in Israel. Peplau lectured on nursing history, international nursing trends and the relationship of nursing and mothering. Letters detail the logistics of the trip and ideas for Peplau's lecture topics. Mathews and Peplau continued to correspond after the trip about family matters, nursing, etc. Also included are two letters about Peplau's poor health and death from her daughter Anne.

Serena Yuan Volpp received a BA in women's studies and biology from Harvard University/Radcliffe College in 1992, an MD from the University of California, San Francisco, and an MPH from the University of California, Berkeley. A clinical associate professor in the department of psychiatry at New York University Grossman School of Medicine, Volpp previously worked at Bellevue Hospital, the New York City Department of Health and Mental Hygiene in the Assisted Outpatient Treatment Program. The Harvard and Radcliffe College women's event posters collected by Serena Yuan Volpp contains five posters: "Montreal Massacre Rememory Day," December 6, 1990?, "Radcliffe Union of Students Presents Women's Expo 89," 1989, "Take Back the Night," 1991?, "Take Back the Night," 1992, and "Women in the Arts Women's Expo '90," 1990.

Marjorie Millace Whiteman (1898-1986) was an international law expert, advisor to ten United States Secretaries of State, and author of the 15-volume Whiteman Digest of International Law (1969). Whiteman advised and worked with Eleanor Roosevelt during Roosevelt's time (1945-1952) as a United Nations delegate. These papers of Marjorie Whiteman primarily relate to her work and relationship with Eleanor Roosevelt, and include correspondence, notes, clippings, and printed material. The collection consists mainly of letters Whiteman exchanged with Eleanor Roosevelt, as well as typed copies of Roosevelt's public remarks and clippings about Roosevelt. Also included are other letters and invitations received by Whiteman. Several letters between Whiteman and Roosevelt reveal their close working relationship, and Roosevelt's reliance on Whiteman's expertise on matters relating to international human rights matters and international law in general. Whiteman's letters to her family members about Roosevelt and an article she published about Roosevelt and human rights show her profound admiration for Roosevelt's public work and private persona.

Photographer Jacquelyn Ching Black was born in Baton Rouge, Louisiana, and grew up in Texas, Arkansas, and Florida. She graduated from the School of the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston in 1994. In 2003 Black published Last Meal, a book of photographs of the last meals eaten by Texas prisoners on death row before they were executed. Collection contains 11 black and white 16 x 19" silver gelatin photographs from Black's early career. Seven from "The Codes of Boxing" series highlight female boxers, taken at Gleason's Gym in Brooklyn. Photographs from the "Sandra & Janice" series are close-up views of women in Boston embracing and kissing.

Mary Alice Withycombe MacKay was born in Cambridge, Massachusetts on June 30, 1898, to Canadian immigrants William R. and Mary Allen Withycombe. After high school, Mary Alice Withycombe entered the Chester Hospital Training School for Nurses, on Massachusetts Avenue in Cambridge. She trained there from January 1917 to 1919. She married high school teacher Leslie W. MacKay (1892-1961) in 1920; they had two daughters, Elizabeth and Nancy. The MacKays moved to Sanford, Maine shortly after their marriage; Mary Alice MacKay died in 1989 at the age of 90. Collection includes a scrapbook MacKay kept during her time at Chester Hospital Training School for Nurses. The scrapbook contains photographs of other nurses in training, lists of graduates and patients, daily diary entries, poems, and drawings. MacKay's certificates of completion, a syringe kit she carried, and Chester Hospital Alumni Association material are also included.

Cora Wade Ward lived in Edmond, Oklahoma, where she took a course on domestic science. Collection consists of Ward's sewing notebook, including examples of darning, button holes, hemming, and other sewing techniques. The notebook includes some comments and criticisms by the course's instructor.

Helen Diane Perlin was a high school student in Viriginia in the 1960s. When she was a senior in high school, she completed a homework assignment titled "My Career as a Buyer," detailing the duties of a department store buyer. She received the grade of B+ on the assignment. Collection consists of Helen Diane Perlin's handwritten "My Career as a Buyer" report. The report is arranged in sections explaining "the use of this occupation to the world," duties and working conditions, payment to be expected, special training required, etc. Perlin notes that a department store buyer's responsibilities include "supervision of the operations of her department store in every respect," and that the buyer's duties change "from season to season because she buys different types of clothing at different seasons of the year.

Ida Bowles was born in Liberty, Maine, in 1866, the daughter of George and Martha Gardner Bowles. She studied at a seminary in Bucksport, Maine, and taught school in neighboring towns. She greatly disliked teaching, noting in her diary that she looked back on it as a "hideous dream," and preferred her work in a dressmaker's shop in Bangor, Maine. In 1889, she began studying nursing at Massachusetts General Hospital and found some satisfaction in this work. Collection consists of Bowles's diary. In it, she reveals her frustrations with school, her wavering religious faith, and her sometimes fraught friendships with female friends. She notes that one close friend is "weak" and writes of her last visit to this friend, "Was it right? Was it wrong? The question has haunted me all day." She also notes her unhappiness with herself, writing, "Nobody that IS anybody is like me. I am so stiff and particular about little things, that I get to be friends with few" and resolving to be "sunny-tempered and obliging." She also records her resolution to conve

Author and activist, Barbara Deming began her career writing theater and film reviews, poetry, short stories, a book of film analysis, and a novel. In 1959, inspired by Gandhi's writings, Deming became politically active, advocating nonviolence in all spheres of life. Periodicals such as The Nation and Liberation (for which she was an editor) published many of her political essays. She demonstrated for peace and civil rights, and was jailed several times for acts of civil disobedience. In the early 1970s, she became a feminist and worked on women's and lesbian issues until her death in 1984. Daniel Balderston received a B.A. in English from the University of California at Berkeley in 1974, having studied at Haverford College from 1969 to 1970. Since 2008, he has been the Mellon Professor of Hispanic Literatures at the University of Pittsburgh. Collection consists of letters Barbara Deming wrote to Daniel Balderston in the early 1970s, some written while Balderston was in the state penitentiary in Puerto Rico. Balderston's side of the correspondence is included in Deming's papers at the Schesinger Library.Topics include Deming's thoughts on writing projects (both her own and Balderston's), the Vietnam War, and the draft. Also included are poems Deming sent Balderston and a photocopied letter sent by Jane Gapen Watrous Verlaine to "Friends of B. Deming" regarding Deming's recovery from an operation on her leg.

Isabel Hannah Dunham Perry was born in Cleveland, Ohio, in 1879, the daughter of Truman and Helen Florence Sutliff Dunham. She graduated from Vassar College and studied cooking in Germany. She married Ray Potter Perry in 1904; they had four children: Virginia, Lucia, Celia, and Ray. Ray Potter Perry graduated from Harvard College in 1900 and was vice president of the Barret Company of New York. He died in 1927 and at about the same time Isabel was committed to an institution in Atlantic City. She was institutionalized for the remainder of her life, dying in 1952. Collection consists of a handwritten cookbook with recipes in several different hands. The cookbook includes recipes for a variety of foods, including soup, fish, lamb, bread, cake, puddings, and other desserts. A few recipes are in German. Some recipes clipped from newspapers are pasted in towards the end of the cookbook. Biographical information is also included in the collection.

oyce Adams (later known as Joyce Fortune) was a student at Stanford University in the late 1980s. While volunteering at the Stanford Lesbian and Gay Archives Project, Adams learned the importance of documenting current LGBTQ history. She spent her junior year studying in Spain and kept a diary in which she declared her intention to note down "what I have found and will find in Spain in 1987-88 that is gay or bisexual and to put down my personal thoughts and experiences here." Collection consists of Joyce Fortune's diary in which she recorded her observations of gay, lesbian, and bisexual life in Spain and other parts of Europe. The diary begins with a note that the "book" is intended for activist and historian Gerard Koskovich. She describes visits to nightclubs, a "communist gay group," and personal encounters, including sexual encounters. She also describes a conversation with two teenage boys who told her they "didn't understand how anyone could be a lesbian," though they did not seem particularly bothered by the idea. Another entry describes seeing a "transvestite" on the Madrid subway, noting "From behind he was fine, but from the front he was pretty bad." She also writes of spotting a double woman symbol spraypainted on a wall and grinning for half an hour afterwards.

Sally E. Sullivan was born in Boston on May 27, 1935, to Esther M. (Treadwell) and Joseph R. Sullivan. She grew up in Hyde Park, Boston, and in Arlington, Massachusetts, where she graduated from Arlington High School in 1953 and was an active member in the Order of the Rainbow for Girls, a Masonic youth service organization. Sally Sullivan married Francis M. Benson, Jr., in 1957, and carried a Rainbow Bible at her wedding. Sally and Francis Benson had six daughters. They settled in Newton, Massachusetts in 1971. Sally Benson worked at Harvard University's Hilles Library for 27 years. She died in 2015. Collection includes several keepsakes from Benson's time in the Order of the Rainbow for Girls, a Masonic youth service organization. A mustering out card is included; this was required when participants reached 20 years of age. Memorabilia includes an iron-on patch and a leather name tag. Photographs in the collection show girls in Assembly #36, and document how Benson wore the name tag on her wrist. Benson's wedding announcement mentions that she carried the Rainbow Bible at the ceremony.

The Beacon Hill Reading Group was established by Radcliffe College graduate Connaught O'Connell Mahony and University of Michigan graduate Barbara Moore in 1957. Their goal was to start a reading group modeled on college seminars they had attended and enjoyed. More than fifty women have participated in the group, which remains active as of 2020 and holds a formal anniversary dinner every five years. Most of the group's members live in the Boston, Massachusetts, Beacon Hill neighborhood. Each month, members read an agreed-upon book, with one member assigned the role of discussion leader and another member acting as host. The leader prepares questions about the book and sends them to members about a week before they meet to discuss the work. She also prepares a paper which she presents to the group. The first year, the group read books on Harvard University's list of great books, including Benjamin Franklin's autobiography and Kenneth Murdock's The Puritan Tradition. They continued to study American literature for the next three years, later studying the literature of other countries including England, France, Germany, Spain, Cuba, and Uruguay. In addition to their readings, the group visits museums and views films to augment their understanding of the country and culture being studied. Collection includes by-laws; anniversary books; membership and reading lists; a history of the group; correspondence; discussion leaders' papers and related questions; photographs; and printed material.

A resident of Shawnee, Oklahoma, Dorothy C. Black was an active member of a women's bowling team from the late 1950s to the early 1980s. The team participated regularly in Women's International Bowling Congress (WIBC) and Oklahoma Women's Bowling Association (OWBA) tournaments in the Southern and Midwestern United States. Collection consists of an album documenting Dorothy C. Black's twenty-plus years of involvement in competitive women's bowling. The album includes photographs of Black and members of her bowling team at tournaments and at other venues, with many of the individuals identified; annotated scoring charts; and articles about bowling news. Also included are bowling patches and pins, including a WIBC League Champion badge, and a "Brunswick Bowler" ID.

Mary Brackett Hoyt Ransom was born in Newington, New Hampshire, the daughter of Jackson and Mary Pickering Hoyt. She attended Portsmouth High School, graduating in 1903 and then competed the school's one-year teacher training program. After completing this, she taught school first in Derry, New Hampshire, and then in Newington. She enjoyed teaching but due to a law prohibiting married women from teaching, could not continue in this profession after her marriage in 1907 to Everett S. Ransom. The Ransoms' marriage had a difficult beginning: Everett had promised Mary a home of her own in Mattapoisett, Massachusetts, but after the wedding asked her to live with his mother and siblings temporarily. Mary would not agree to this and returned to Newington, remaining there until Everett provided the promised house. The couple had three daughters. Ransom was active in Democratic politics and founded the Mattapoisett chapter of the League of Women Voters. In 1934, she was appointed post mistress of Mattapoisett, becoming the first woman to hold this position and serving until 1942. She died in 1971. Collection includes a biographical sketch of Ransom by her grandson, David Anderson; Ransom's correspondence with Everett S. Ransom during their engagement and during their estrangement after their marriage; correspondence with her children and grandchildren; letters from her friend Huybertie Hamlin and from a number of political figures; material re: Ransom's teaching and post office work and her political activities; poems, recipes, and sheet music for a song by Ransom; annual reports for the town of Mattapoisett; and family photographs, including of the Ransoms' wedding. Some material related to her parents is also included.