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Showing 11 - 20 of +10000 Records

Letters Home From Congress
    • Creator: Austin, Warren Robinson, 1877-1962, Collamer, Jacob, 1791-1865, Crafts, Samuel Chandler, 1768-1853
    • Date Created: 1818-1941
    • Description: This collection features letters home from Warren R. Austin (Senator, 1931-1946), Jacob Collamer (Representative, 1843-1848; Senator, 1855-1865), and Samuel C. Crafts (Representative, 1817-1824; Senator, 1842-1843). The letters document travel to and from Washington by horse, boat, train, and airplane; lodging in boarding houses, hotels, and homes; social life in Washington; significant local and national events; and legislative issues under consideration in Congress. Austin's letters detail his frustrations serving as a Senator in the minority party during the era of Roosevelt and the New Deal; his activities on the Judiciary Committee; and foreign affairs topics such as the Neutrality Act. The letters of Crafts and Collamer both extensively cover the question of slavery, discussing Missouri statehood, John Brown, the annexation of Texas, and the Civil War. All three Congressmen frequently discuss questions regarding appropriations and the Federal budget. Biographical information is available from the Biographical Directory of the United States Congress, at: https://bioguide.congress.gov/


    Photographs of Vergennes (Vt.)
      • Description: This collection contains 794 images comprising 122 years of history in Vergennes, Vermont’s oldest city. Featuring a wide range of topics, which date from the 1866 Civil War parade to the 1988 Bicentennial, the collection provides a comprehensive and unusual look at small town life in northern Vermont. These photographs document the full visual spectrum of history in Vergennes, from businesses, industries, and transportation to natural scenery, paintings, and portraits of people who once walked the city’s streets. These images were scanned from 35mm slides located in the Bixby Memorial Free Library archives in Vergennes. The slides were made around 1987 from color photographs taken of the original images. The originals, mainly of the Vergennes area but including several from Ferrisburgh and Lake Champlain, had accumulated over the years in the library’s historical materials repository. Many of these photographs, along with the slides and accompanying inventory notebook, can be viewed with permission at the library. The authors of these photographs remain undocumented and anonymous, except for a selection of photographs by local artist Harvey Custer Ingham (1863-1931), a personal friend of local businessman and library founder William Gove Bixby (1829-1907). Mr. Bixby left funds from his estate for the founding of a public library in the city of Vergennes, including the construction of the imposing Greek revival library building on Main Street. The library opened on November 4, 1912, and in 2012 celebrates a century of continued service to Vergennes and the surrounding towns of Addison, Panton, Waltham, and Ferrisburgh.


      Porter C. Thayer Photographs
        • Description: This archive contains 1300 photographs made by Porter C. Thayer,scanned from silver gelatin prints, held in the collection of the Brooks Memorial Library. The prints were made in 1980 from the 5x7 glass plates negatives created by Porter Thayer. These images are also available on microfilm at the Brattleboro library. Porter Thayer was born Porter Charlie Thayer on January 6, 1882 on Main Street in Williamsville, Vermont. He grew up in the red house called the Tillotson Place in the Parish section of Newfane, Vermont. He photographed Windham County, Vermont, beginning in 1906 through around 1920. Like most Vermont men of his generation he was a farmer, specifically an apple orchardist, managing his 50 acre apple orchard on Baker Brook Farm in Newfane. He turned to his apple business after ending his photographic career. The postcard craze that most likely reached Vermont by about 1905, was perhaps the impetus for Porter Thayer starting up a photographic business. His diaries tell that he sold 1,197 postal cards during a six-month period at the height of his career. The cards were for sale as souvenirs to summer tourists at small general stores, local inns, boarding houses and hotels. Local folks purchased his photographs as well, especially around the Christmas season, to send to distant relatives. A Brattleboro, Vermont directory of 1909 lists Porter as advertising that he would come to anyone’s home and make images for a reasonable fee. Around 1911 he recorded that he had 720 customers. Eventually he photographed in all the towns within a 25 mile radius of his home in Newfane. Porter Thayer perfectly fits the archetype of the town photographer. He traveled the narrow dirt roads in his buggy, behind his faithful mare Lady, who accompanied him daily. He could apparently take extended naps while Lady brought him safely home, as she always knew the way. He used two cameras: a 5 x 7 and a 6.5 x 8.5 view camera and made glass dry-plate negatives. He traveled with stacks of postcards to be delivered at stores along the way to his days work. Working continually through seasons and years, Porter Thayer left an archive that is a cultural treasure for southeastern Vermont. The quality of his work shows that he was able to combine business needs with aesthetic ones. During the time period Porter worked, Vermont was extremely poor and rural, yet held a close-knit population that shared the labors of life. Farmers helped one another to survive in a subsistence and barter economy. For women, men, and children, life meant constant work. Thayer’s images describe the work and the tools involved. His landscape images reveal this working landscape, which today is mostly hidden by trees. The fruits of his labor as a photographer have grown in importance, as both the landscape and culture of Vermont has shifted into modern spheres of living. Written by Jessica Weitz and Forrest Holzapfel, 2010.


        Congressional Speeches
          • Date Created: 1812-1988
          • Description: This collection features speeches made on the floor of the United States House of Representatives and Senate by Vermont Congressmen. Topics covered include the environment, education, agriculture, World War II and selective service, the Mexican War, the tariff and international trade, slavery, the Civil War and Reconstruction. The speeches date from 1812 to the present and a wide variety of Congressmen are represented.


          Prospect Archive of Children's Work
            • Creator: Prospect School and Center for Education and Research
            • Description: The Prospect Center for Education and Research, located in North Bennington, VT, started in 1965 as a school for elementary, and later, middle school children. The School closed in 1991 and the Center in 2010. Featured here are substantial, digitized selections of the work of nine students of the several hundred who attended the School. The School’s daily schedule included large blocks of time for its students to work with a broad range of materials individually and together, in self-directed ways. Visual and written work left behind was gathered and saved and eventually became the Prospect Archive of Children's Work, which now also contains teacher records and some subsequently donated work. The Archive is a unique resource, offering a longitudinal perspective on children’s thinking and growth. It has been used for many years by teachers and other educators—employing methods for collaborative study developed at the Prospect Center—to further understanding of individual children, of children in school, of what in the educational setting supports their learning, and ultimately, of larger questions about human work, thought, and capacity. It is Prospect’s hope that the children’s work and supporting material on this site and in the Special Collections Library at UVM will be used by educators to continue their study in service to the idea that each child offers something new to the world, a fresh perspective, a renewed meaning, and that it is the work of education to enable that emergence. This collection includes the work of nine individual children and The Introduction to the Reference Edition of the Prospect Archive (1985), which offers background and descriptions of the Prospect School, the Archive of Children’s Work, and the Reference Edition itself, from which all the children’s work and related material on this site have been drawn. The Reference Edition of the Prospect Archive is a slide, microfiche and manuscript compilation of the complete works of thirty-six children. Note: The convention of parentheses around the children’s names indicates a pseudonym. The Prospect Center for Education and Research, located in North Bennington, VT, started in 1965 as a school for elementary, and later, middle school children. Out of its own efforts to learn more about children and how best to provide for and encourage their learning, the Prospect School grew to encompass a variety of teacher education programs, research projects, and an archive of children’s work and transformed itself into the Prospect Center in 1979. The School closed in 1991. The Center continued some of its adult education and research activities, and undertook an ambitious publication program, until its closing in 2010.


            Long Trail Photographs
              • Creator: Congdon, Herbert Wheaton, 1876-1965, Dean, Theron S.
              • Date Created: 2010-03-09
              • Description: The Long Trail Collection includes over 900 images of the oldest long-distance hiking trail in the United States: Vermont’s Long Trail. The collection is mainly comprised of black-and-white and hand-colored lantern slides derived from photographs taken between 1912 and 1937. It documents the Green Mountain Club’s building of original trails and shelters and illustrates the enthusiasm for the Long Trail project (and hiking in general) at the turn of the century. These images chronicle the views and landscapes seen by early hikers of the Long Trail and provide an historical record of people associated with the Green Mountain Club’s formative years. The images in this collection were captured by Green Mountain Club members Theron S. Dean and Herbert Wheaton Congdon, both of whom were early contributors to the trail’s development. Congdon surveyed and mapped a large portion of the early trail including a fifty mile stretch from Middlebury Gap to Bolton. Congdon, along with Leroy Little and Clarence Cowles, is also credited with the first winter ascent of Mount Mansfield on February 21, 1920. Dean is perhaps the most prolific documenter of the Long Trail’s development. Dean traveled throughout Vermont presenting slideshows and giving talks about the Long Trail, often to hundreds of people. A number of the original lantern slides in this collection were used by Congdon and Dean in their Long Trail presentations. Dean in particular meticulously cultivated his lantern slide collection and displayed these slides during his many talks. The original slides can be viewed in the Dean and Congdon collections at the University of Vermont Silver Special Collections Library. More information about the Long Trail can be obtained from the Green Mountain Club. The slides were scanned by the University's Landscape Change Program with the generous support of the National Science Foundation. The digitized photographs also appear in the Landscape Change image database at: http://www.uvm.edu/landscape/


              Absurdities and Realities of Special Education
                • Creator: Giangreco, Michael F., 1956-
                • Date Created: 1998-2020
                • Description: Absurdities and Realities of Special Education: The University of Vermont Center for Digital Initiatives Collection is a complete set of all of the cartoons created by Michael Giangreco with the assistance of the artist Kevin Ruelle. This includes a total of 335 cartoons from four previously published books and searchable CD that went "out of print" in 2019 and a few newer cartoons. Michael Giangreco created the original ideas, text, and sketches for each cartoon and Kevin Ruelle redrew the sketches. The cartoons in the first three books all were originally in black and white. That was a conscious decision, both for aesthetic and practical reasons. The cartoons were designed to be easily copied on to overhead transparencies for display in classes, workshops, and other learning environments. A group called Alliance for Inclusive Education (ALLFIE) requested permission to use one of the cartoons on the cover of their magazine and subsequently colorized it. Prompted by Giangreco’s colleagues associated with ALLFIE, Giangreco and Ruelle began to colorize the rest of the images. In this complete digital collection, we have included a total of 335 different digital images; including the 315 different cartoons from the four earlier books, 12 cartoons that were on the CD only, and eight that were not included in any of the previously published books or CD. Cartoons from the early books have found their way on to the pages of many newsletters disseminated by schools, parent groups, disability advocacy organizations, and professional associations. They have appeared in books, manuals, and journals; a few were even published in a law journal. The cartoons have been used extensively as projected slides or within learning activities in college classes, at conferences, in workshops, and at other meetings. Parents have framed cartoons that closely reflected their own experiences and hung them in their homes or offices. Other parents have used them in meetings with professionals to help get their points across. They have been given as gifts to people who "get it" and handed out as door prizes. The Vermont Coalition for Disability Rights used them as part of "Disability Awareness Day" at the Vermont legislature. The cartoons can be used in innumerable creative ways.


                Vermonters in the Civil War
                  • Description: Vermont soldiers in the Civil War wrote an enormous quantity of letters and diaries, of which many thousands have survived in libraries, historical societies, and in private hands. This collection represents a selection of letters and diaries from the University of Vermont and the Vermont Historical Society. The collection includes materials dating from 1861-1865. Materials were selected for digitization to provide a variety of perspectives on events and issues. The voices represented in the collection include private soldiers and officers, as well as a few civilians. All of the extant Civil War-era letters or diaries of each of the selected individuals (at least, all that are to be found in the participating institutions’ collections) are included; each adds a certain experience and point of view to the whole. Officers in the photo above are (from left to right): Lieutenant Colonel Charles B. Stoughton, Colonel Edwin H. Stoughton, Major Harry N. Worthen. All are from the Fourth Vermont Infantry Regiment.


                  Vermont Woman
                    • Date Created: 1985-1990, 2003-2019
                    • Description: Vermont Woman was a woman’s advocacy publication that was first issued monthly from 1985 to 1990. The publication restarted in 2003 with five issues per year and then four until it ceased in 2019. Woman-owned and staffed, Vermont Woman provided women’s perspectives on a wide range of topics. Articles written by women documented women’s achievements and confronted a multitude of challenging concerns. The publisher and the editors took stands on issues relevant to women, including work, education, finance, health, politics sexuality, relationships and family. They actively supported politicians and leaders who were committed to ending inequities and improving women’s lives. During its years of publication, Vermont Woman helped connect women throughout the state, achieving circulation to thousands of readers through free distribution and paid subscriptions.


                    Diaries
                      • Date Created: 1766-1956
                      • Description: The Diaries collection provides access to more than thirty fully transcribed and searchable diaries from the eighteenth, nineteenth and twentieth century. The collection includes diaries documenting student life at UVM in different eras, the 1918-1919 flu epidemic, the civil war, life in Italy in the early 1860’s, courtship and marriage, social life, religious life, employment opportunities for women, travel, life at a summer cottage, and more.