 Bertha Capen Reynolds Papers
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> Scope and Contents of the Collection | Scope and Contents of the Collection The Bertha C. Reynolds Papers consist of correspondence, writings, printed materials, memorabilia, and miscellaneous papers. They are concentrated in the period following Reynolds's appointment as associate director of the Smith College School for Social Work in 1925 and are strongest for her final decades in Stoughton. The most outstanding segment of the papers is Reynolds's correspondence with her friends and former students. The letters addressed to her are mainly from the 1960s and 1970s, but her own letters include sequences from the 1930s and 1940s (saved by those who received them). This correspondence is distinguished by its long and thoughtful discussions of professional, political, and religious topics as well as by reports on personal activities. The political and religious interests also appear in printed material gathered over the years and in unpublished writings. Direct documentation of Reynolds's social work teaching and writing is excellent for some kinds of activities and significant for all others. Her work as associate director of the Smith College School for Social Work is represented by correspondence with Director Everett Kimball spanning the entire period and by notes for an alumnae seminar. Many of her lectures and her contributions to institutes, conferences, and seminars are documented by unpublished texts as well as by correspondence and printed materials. The items related to her published writings consist mainly of correspondence and copies of the publications, but there are also a few manuscripts and typescripts. Her work at the National Maritime Union is represented by staff minutes and position papers, printed material, and correspondence following the termination of the program; this section provides the best documentation of her approach to clinical practice. Her independent consultations are documented in such materials as speeches, correspondence, and brochures, but there are no immediate records of this professional work. Many of these activities are also treated in letters to friends and in autobiographical writings. Other papers document Reynolds's earlier and later years. Her youth is represented by a diary she compiled retrospectively from family letters, by an unpublished autobiography, and by a few of her undergraduate papers. Aside from her retrospective writings, there is nothing for the period between her graduation from Smith in 1908 and her return in 1918. Her final years in Stoughton are well documented in correspondence, writings, and printed materials about her work on behalf of the Stoughton Fair Housing and Human Rights Association, the Stoughton Historical Society, and the Methodist Church; in correspondence and printed material concerning the honors that she received in the 1960s and 1970s; and also in the aforementioned correspondence with friends. |