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In 1838, six Cheney brothers established the Mount Nebo Silk Company in Manchester, CT. The company adopted the family name in 1843. Aided by booming national markets, a protective tariff, and innovative production methods, the company grew into the nation's largest and most profitable silk mill by the late 1880s. The company pioneered the wastesilk spinning method and the Grant's reel. The company reached its peak in 1923, after which it quickly declined due to industry wide overproduction and competition from new synthetic fibers such as rayon. Although it revived slightly during World War II, the family sold the company to J. P. Stevens and Company in 1955. J. P. Stevens quickly liquidated the equipment and the remainder was sold to Gerli Incorporated of New York. In 1978, the mills and surrounding neighborhood were declared a National Historical Landmark District. The mill was permanently closed in 1984. Most of the mill buildings were sold to developers who converted them into luxury apartments and offices.

Diane Di Prima, best known for her work as a Beat poet and writer, was born 6 August 1934 in Brooklyn, New York. She attended Swarthmore College (1951-1953). Di Prima has received National Endowment for the Arts grants in 1966 for Poets Press and in 1973. She writes nonfiction, autobiographies, journals, essays, poetry and plays.

Collection materials reflect Sanders' literary and publishing work, affinities with writers from both the Beat and New York Schools of poetry, and political organizing activities and interests, including his pacifism, opposition to the Vietnam War and nuclear weapons, and advocacy for sexual freedom, legalization of marijuana, and freedom of expression. The collection includes manuscripts of poems, books, articles, and lyrics; correspondence; manuscript submissions and page proofs; promotional materials and interviews; and printed ephemera. Major correspondents include Robert Creeley, Lawrence Ferlinghetti, Jackson MacLow, Gerard Malanga, Duncan McNaughton, Charles Olson, and Ron Padgett. The bulk of the collection dates from 1960 to 1976.

Frank Willard Ballard was born on 7 December 1929 in Alton, Illinois. He received his B.A. (1952) from Shurtleff College and his M.A. (1953) from the University of Illinois. Ballard was a professor of dramatic arts at the University of Connecticut, retiring in 1989. In 1966, he established the first bachelor of fine arts degree program in puppetry at any American university. A decade later he founded the National Puppetry Institute at the University of Connecticut.

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.

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.

Theodore Sedgwick Gold was born in Madison, New York. T.S. Gold graduated from Yale College in 1838 and then spent four years studying and teaching at academies in Goshen and Waterbury. He moved to Cornwall in 1842 to pursue a career in farming. Mr. Gold was a trustee of the Storrs Agricultural School from 1881 to 1901 and took an active role in promoting the school's growth and development throughout his lifetime.

The papers include the correspondence, short stories, journalistic articles, correspondence, poems, novels, and plays of journalist, essayist, novelist and pulp fiction writer, Walter Snow.