The collection includes the materials used to create several of Ms. DePalma's works, such as My Chair, The Strange Egg, Many Millions of Leaves, A Grand Old Tree, The Perfect Gift, and The Nutcracker Doll.
Mary Wood Forman was born on 17 November 1918 in Mussoorie, India, where her parents served as Presbyterian missionaries. Her family moved in 1923 to Columbus, Ohio. Forman graduated from Ohio State University in 1940 and received a Masters degree in Social Work from Western Reserve University in 1944. After several years abroad and in New York City, Forman moved to Hartford, CT in 1956. It was here that she developed her interest in photography. She traveled to Europe and the American West, recording what she saw in the photographs she took. She also took two trips to India, resulting in a major show of her work in Hartford. She preferred to develop and print her images herself, in order to bring out her individual perspective. Forman lived in the Hartford area and worked in the Hartford schools until her death on 22 August 1989.
The Maurice Sendak Collection of James Marshall contains books, drawings, paintings, and dummies created by James Marshall and owned by Sendak. The collection also contains a small wooden box that contains Marshall's watercolor brushes, eyeglasses, a pen, and a note in Sendak's hand.
The Mechanical Bank Research Collection consists of copies from scrapbooks compiled about the Mechanical Bank Collectors of America and mechanical banks, copies of patents and advertising, publications created and compiled for the MBCA annual conventions, newsletters, an issue of "Mechanical Music: Journal of the Music Box Society International," and a DVD comprised mostly of lectures done at the MBCA meetings. The collection also includes an index created by Mr. William Jones of accounting ledgers of the mechanical toy company J. & E. Stevens Company of Cromwell, Connecticut, that he holds in his personal collection.
The Meriden & Cromwell Railroad ran between these two cities in Connecticut from 1885 to 1888 when its name changed to the Meriden, Waterbury & Connecticut River Railroad, and was extended to Waterbury, Connecticut, until 1892, when the line was taken over by the New York & New England Railroad. The Album, compiled by James M.S. Ullman of Meriden, Connecticut, has 185 photographs of locomotives, stations, and other scenes associated with these railroad lines.
Merle Nacht's illustrations have appeared in The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal, The Washington Post, The Hartford Courant, and many other publications. She is a frequent contributor to The New Yorker, where her illustrations have graced the prestigious magazine's cover and pages. The collection contains correspondence, books, covers of The New Yorker,, a large original cover illustration and other manuscripts.
Merlin D. Bishop was born 5 October 1907, in Alhambra, Illinois. Bishop worked at the Ford Motor Company between 1925 and 1931. He then attended Wayne University (Detroit, MI) and in 1935-1936, was a member of the Extension Staff of Brookwood Labor College. He was later involved with the United Auto Workers of America, the Amalgamated Clothing Workers of America and the Connecticut Governor's Fact-Finding Commission on Education.
The collection primarily consists of correspondence from poet Michael Rumaker to Merrill Gillespie. The bulk of the correspondence dates from 1953 to 1956 when Michael Rumaker was a student at Black Mountain College and Merrill Gillespie was a music compostion student.
The Michael Rumaker Papers consist of manuscripts, letters, notebooks, audio recordings, and other personal papers from 1950 to 2010, including personal journals and and family photographs from 1925 through 2010. Literary manuscripts comprise multiple formats including short stories, plays, poems, essays, reviews, and fiction.