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J. Louis von der Mehden, Jr. was born 20 July 1873 in San Francisco, California. Von der Mehden held several positions in San Francisco before moving east to New York City after the 1906 earthquake. He was steadily employed as a cellist or conductor with theatrical or commercial bands. Von der Mehden worked for a year as the musical director of Herald Square Theater before becoming involved full time in the recording industry, working at different times for five different phonograph studios: U.S. Phonograph, Pathé Frère, Columbia, Lyraphone and the Victor Talking Machine Company. On some recordings he played cello in the orchestra; more regularly he would conduct performances, often arranging the music the night before the recording sessions. In 1926, the von der Mehden's moved to Old Saybrook, Connecticut, full-time, having purchased a house in 1911. J. Louis von der Mehden, Jr. died 27 August 1954 in Middlesex Memorial Hospital and was buried in Cypress Cemetery at Saybrook Point.

The collection contains Schumacher's research on philosophy and art history, and materials relating to his years at Westover School. Consisting of books, correspondence, clippings, and manuscripts, the collection includes sources in both German and English.

Born in Yonkers in 1930, Joel Oppenheimer was a student of Charles Olson's at Black Mountain College from 1950-1953. He published over a dozen books of poetry, a play, a book on baseball, and was a columnist for the Village Voice from 1968 to 1984. Oppenheimer was the first director of the St. Mark's Poetry Project in Greenwich Village (from 1966 to 1968) and was an active teacher of poetry throughout his life. He died of complications from cancer in 1988. The collection contains only a small amount of Oppenheimer's writing and correspondence prior to his time at Black Mountain College. The Black Mountain period itself is also represented somewhat poorly, although there are a few items of ephemera. The content of the collection becomes more comprehensive in the late 1950s and into the 1960s, with a substantial number of poetry manuscripts and a wider range of correspondence. While most of Oppenheimer's published poems are represented in the collection, it is often difficult to discern between first drafts and later copies.

John D. Alsop was elected to the Connecticut state legislature in 1946. He served as co-chairperson of one of the three committees that wrote the present Connecticut State Constitution at the Constitutional Convention of 1965.

Former Hollywood actor who worked with Marlene Dietrich (Scarlet Empress) and Shirley Temple, John Davis Lodge was Republican Governor of Connecticut from 1951-1955. Brother of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge and grandson of Senator Henry Cabot Lodge, Sr.

John Francis (Jack) O'Brien was born in Putnam, Connecticut, on March 21, 1896, and was a cable foreman for the Southern New England Telephone Company, beginning in February 1914. He died in Waterford, Connecticut, on September 19, 1983. The papers consist of photographs, correspondence and certificates, most involving Mr. O'Brien's service as a SNET employee.

Papers of John J. Driscoll, labor leader in the Connecticut state AFL-CIO. Materials include photographs, framed certificates of appreciation, day books, published material (newspaper and magazine articles, labor literature), and scrapbooks. Also includes some legal papers created by Bridgeport, Connecticut, judge Margaret Connors Driscoll, John's wife.

Terres was born in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania on 17 December 1905. He attended the State Teachers College (Indiana, PA), Cornell University and New York University. A field biologist for the Soil Conservation Service from 1936 until 1942, Terres authored, co-authored and edited more than fifty books pertaining to natural history.

The collection contains correspondence, photographs, speeches, publications and administrative records created and collected by John M. Bailey, Connecticut lawyer and chairman of the Democratic National Committee from 1961-1968.

The collection contains publications used by Mr. Bongiorno for his paper "The administration of the passenger operation services of the New Haven Railroad."