New Collections Available!

Thanks to the hard work of two of our new volunteers, Meghan Bailey and Diane Lafond, we have two new collections available to researchers. The first is the Elizabeth Drwila Massachusetts Women's Defense Corps Collection, 1941-1992. Diane worked for over a month on the collection. Indeed, she went through the different parts and arranged them so that they can be easily accessed, and then wrote a finding aid for us to put up on the website. You can view the wonderful and comprehensive finding aid she created here. The collection contains scrapbooks, newsletters, medals, and patches relating to the Massachusetts Women's Defense Corps, especially the Lawrence Unit. Although the collection consist of only four hollinger boxes (you can see one of them on the right), the information you can glean from this collection is quite extensive. If you are interested in women's history, United States history, or World War II you should definitely take a look at this collection.

Volunteer Meghan Bailey worked on the The Bruce Family Papers, 1865-1955 (seen on the left). Although this is a relatively small collection, it was still a challenge, as there was no order to it. Meghan did a fantastic job putting the collection into a logical order and writing a finding aid that would make it accessible to people throughout the world. You can view the finding aid here. This collection contains correspondence, photographs, agreements, and books related to the Bruce family, of which Alexander B. Bruce was a member. Some of the more fascinating materials include letters sent from Alexander Bruce to his parents during World War I. They detail his activities during this time. If you are interested in World War I or the history of Lawrence and its prominent residents, you should definitely take a look at this collection.

Thank you so much Meghan and Diane for your hard work! We encourage people to come and take a look at these new treasures and learn more about the history of the country, the city of Lawrence, and the people who live there.