Archives and Special Collections
Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives
Featured Collection: The Charlton Family Papers, MC 31
Earle Perry Charlton was born in Connecticut in 1863. He left home as a teenager to travel around New England working for a merchant based in Boston. After several years, he formed a partnership with Seymour Knox to form a chain of 5 and 10-cent stores, Knox and Charlton 5 and 10. Charlton’s flagship store was in Fall River, MA, where he would settle with his wife Ida to raise their family. Eventually the partnership dissolved, and Charlton began spreading his chain of E.P. Charlton & Co. stores into Canada and the western United States. In 1912, Charlton merged with four other 5 and 10-cent storeowners, including his former partner, to form the Woolworth Company.
Earle P. Charlton II, the grandson of the store founder, donated generously to the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth starting in December of 1996 with a $3 million pledge gift to endow the Charlton College of Business.
Earle Perry Charlton, senior’s collection of papers have been digitized and are available in our Digital Archives. See the collection finding aid.
Collections
About the Archives
The Claire T. Carney Library Archives and Special Collections is located on the Mezzanine floor of the library, with a separate entrance facing campus. It shares space with its Ferreira-Mendes Portuguese-American Archives. Collections include the university records, which cover records created by university offices from UMass Dartmouth’s foundation in 1895 to the current day. University records include yearbooks, graduate theses, office memoranda and correspondence, planning and reporting documents, minutes of trustee meetings, catalogs and brochures, commencement records, photographs, and audio and video recordings of campus events. Other major collecting areas are local women’s clubs and organizations, veterans’ groups, clubs and religious institutions from the Jewish community, documentation of the French-Canadian, Polish and Italian communities in the region. We are also home to the Howard T. Glasser Archives of Folk Music and Letter Arts, the Robert F. Kennedy Assassination Archives and the Schooner Ernestina-Morrissey Archives.
Special Collections includes artist’s books and zines, rare books, faculty publications, books on local historical topics, and a large collection of textile manufacturing monographs. All of our books are catalogued in Primo, the library’s online catalog, but they do not circulate.
For more information, see our mission statement and collection development policy.
Appointments are suggested for research consultations and access to collections. Please email jfarrar@umassd.edu to set up an appointment. Our gallery and reading room are open to the public without an appointment Monday-Friday, 9.30am-5pm.
