Women's History Sources: A Guide to Manuscripts: S - T

Family, centered in Philadelphia, that included Eva Sacks (1903-1983; married William Lebby in 1945), a nurse who served in North Africa and Italy during World War II, her sister and brother-in-law, Lena (Sacks) and Herman Lediger, and the Ledigers' three daughters: Marcia, who lived with her parents in Philadelphia while her husband Sander A. Sacks (also her second cousin?) served in the military during World War II, Henrietta, who was married to Myron Gordon (and lived in New York City), and Cecelia (1914-1996), who served as a nurse in the Pacific during World War II.

Family correspondence of over 600 items consisting chiefly of letters (including V-mail) sent and received by members of the Sacks and Lediger families during World War II, especially letters written and received by Eva Sacks and Cecelia Lediger while in the Army Nurse Corps. Also included are a few letters from the postwar period (as late as 1951) and a small quantity of biographical material, ephemera and personal miscellany.

The letters sent by Eva Sacks, a nurse with the Philadelphia school system both before and after her wartime service, trace her military career. In 1942 she was initially stationed at Camp Croft in Spartanburg, South Carolina, but by the end of the year was in North Africa serving with the 48th Surgical Hospital (which was located in Tunisia at least part of the time). The next year Sacks was transferred to the 12th General Hospital with which she served in Italy. In 1945 she was transferred stateside. (Before her discharge, she served at a hospital in Atlantic City, N.J., but this period is represented in her correspondence only by one letter received.) Sacks' letters include information about her units and their members and locations, the relative merits of general hospitals and evacuation hospitals, her on and off-duty uniforms, visits made, sight-seeing (in Italy in 1944) and discussions about romance and wartime relationships (in letters to her niece).

Cecelia Reba Lediger's letters detail the experiences of an Army nurse who served in a different theater of World War II. After entering the service in 1942, she was assigned to Fort Devens, Massachusetts. In mid-1943, after a six-month gap in her letters, she was located at Camp Stoneman, California, with the 9th General Hospital and was subsequently sent to Australia with that unit. Later, in 1944, she moved with her unit to New Guinea and, while there, was transferred to the 18th Station Hospital, also located in New Guinea, which specialized in neuropsychiatry. After a further transfer to the 125th Station Hospital, she moved with it to the Philippines. For her trip back to the U.S., she was assigned duty as a medical attendant accompanying wounded soldiers. (During her remaining military service, through the end of 1945, she served at hospitals in Atlantic City and New York City, but this period is not represented in her correspondence.) Except for some written to her aunt, Lediger's letters provide little information about her nursing activities, but they do provide good accounts of her units' various moves and locales, describe various aspects of camp life and discuss her relationship with a man (serving elsewhere in the armed forces) whom she had once thought she would marry after the war. Among the letters which Lediger received from other people are several from nurses in other units, including Anna Marie Noll, with whom she had served in the 9th General Hospital.

Daughter of La Fayette Schanck, of Holmdel, N.J.; attended Miss Bucknall's Seminary in New Brunswick, N.J., 1871-1876. Also known as "Jennie."

Correspondence, including letters, 1871-1876, sent by Schanck to her mother and father and letters, 1872-1878 and undated, which she received from her parents and others. Also letters, 1880-1881, received by Schanck's family following her death.

Resident of New Brunswick, N.J.

Miscellaneous papers relating to Schenck's volunteer work during World War I, chiefly with the American National Red Cross, the War Camp Community Service and Liberty Loan campaigns.

Resident of Free Acres, N.J., a single-tax, utopian community.

Papers relating to Free Acres, N.J.: minutes of monthly meetings, financial memoranda and other records of the forestry committee (headed by Schulze), newsletters, clippings and other documents.

Spouse of the Rev. John Schureman (1778-1818), a minister of the Reformed Dutch Church who served pastorates in N.J. and New York City and who also served as a professor at Queens College (now Rutgers University).

Diary, June 22, 1828-September 21, 1829, which Schureman kept while living in Middletown, N.J.; five letters received, 1800-1812, in part from her husband (including two from before their marriage); and one item of undated verse.

Resident of Vineland, N.J.; was graduated from Vineland High School in 1915 and from Smith College in 1921; was appointed to the state Democratic Committee in 1922 to fill a vacancy and subsequently served on the Committee for many years as an elected member; served as a delegate-at-large from N.J. to the Democratic National Convention in 1924 and at subsequent conventions through 1976; was nominated for U.S. Senator in 1930 (to fill the unexpired term of Walter E. Edge), but lost to Republican Dwight Morrow; served on the N.J. State Board of Tax Appeals, 1932-1945; married a judge (later a N.J. legislator), W. Howard Sharp, in 1941; was elected national Democratic committeewoman from N.J. (succeeding her mentor, Mary T. Norton) in 1954; served as a member of the state Civil Service Commission, 1954-1970, including several years as Commission president.

Papers, consisting of a biographical file, 1930-1959; letters received, 1911-1964 and undated; press clippings, ca. 1924-1970; political and campaign documents, 1924-1965; photographs; and personal miscellany, including a record of wedding presents received. Accompanying Sharp's papers are travel journals, 1908-1913 (with gaps), 1927 and 1931, and estate papers, 1958-1959, of her spouse W. Howard Sharp (1891-1958); a diary, January 29-October 21, 1892 (with gaps), kept at Vineland by Sharp's mother Ina Parkinson (d. 1929), and letters, 1899-1928, which Parkinson received from Sharp and others; letters, 1927-1942, sent to Sharp's sister Margarita Campbell (from the latter's spouse Harry Campbell and her mother Ina Parkinson); and miscellaneous other family papers.

Sharp's correspondence includes letters, 1916-1920, received from her mother while attending Smith College and letters which she received from classmates in early 1919 while living at home and caring for her ill mother. Letters from 1930 and 1932 pertain respectively to Sharp's U.S. Senate nomination and her appointment to the N.J. State Board of Tax Appeals. Among the later letters is one written in 1950 by U.S. Representative Mary T. Norton.

Included among Sharp's political and campaign documents are press releases, schedules, invitations, lists of delegates and Sharp's 1932 speech nominating Mary T. Norton for U.S. Vice-President. The photographs include images of several elected officials, including Norton.

Resident of Trenton, N.J.; born in Kingwood, New York; graduated from Stewart Business College; taught school at Stewart Business College and in Hunterdon County, N.J.; moved to Trenton in 1929, then or subsequently moving in with her sister, Mildred Shaw Johnson, with whom she lived for the rest of her life; attended St. Paul's Methodist Church in Trenton; belonged to Trenton's Hillcrest Woman's Christian Temperance Union for a number of years, including service as its president.

Diary, January 1, 1940-January 2, 1941, January 1, 1943-January 3, 1946 and January 1, 1949-January 1951, containing brief, regular entries which usually record the weather and Shaw's daily activities, often with notations of national or world events. Shaw's church and temperance activities are chronicled, as are frequent social calls which she made and received. Many persons are named in the diary, including visitors, correspondents, relatives and friends; deaths and funerals are also noted.

Founded in 1864 as The Sheltering Arms by the Rev. Thomas McClure Peters to provide a home for older children not eligible for admission to existing institutions; merged in 1944 with the New York Child's Foster Home Service to form Sheltering Arms Children's Service and thereafter served to provide foster home care for children. Note: The name actually used by the agency is Sheltering Arms Childrens [sic] Service.

Annual reports, 1865-1961; minutes, 1864-1944; financial records, 1880-1953; case histories, registers and other information on the backgrounds of admitted children, 1864-1955; foster homes files, 1917-1966; minutes, 1912-1930, and accounts, 1912-1938, of the Ladies Association; publications; and other records. Also includes records of the New York Child's Foster Home Service, 1852-1956; the Howard Mission and Home for Little Wanderers, 1861-1946; the Children's Fold, 1870-1905; the Shepherd's Fold, 1894-1904; and the Katy Ferguson Home (which served African Americans exclusively), 1925-1953.

Academic journal published by the University of Chicago Press which is devoted to interdisciplinary scholarship about women from both the United States and other countries; established to focus on "the new thinking about women, sexuality, sex roles, the social institutions in which the sexes have participated, [and] the culture men and woman have inherited, inhabited, and created"; edited at different colleges and universities in the United States on a rotating basis (initially at Barnard College and then at Stanford University) with a change in editors and editorial offices every five years.

Editorial board agendas and minutes, 1974-1984; editorial correspondence, 1974-1983; questionnaires and newsletters, 1974-1978; log books and manuscripts submitted, 1974-1981; rejected manuscripts, 1974-1983; book reviews and review essays, 1974-1984; issue files, 1975-1983; special issues and conferences files, 1976-1983; promotion and subscriptions files, 1974-1982; financial documents, 1977-1985; staff employment files, 1975-1983; and Chicago office general files, 1980-1984.

Among the persons represented in the records is the journal's founding editor, Catharine R. Stimpson.

Organized formally in 1987 "to combat discrimination against women in the mystery field, educate publishers and the general public as to inequities in the treatment of female authors, raise awareness of their contribution to the field, and promote the professional advancement of women who write mysteries"; incorporated in 1990; includes as members authors, booksellers, editors, agents, librarians, critics, teachers and readers; organized in part into local chapters whose members are also members of the national organization; meets twice a year in the spring and fall; among its activities, has conducted surveys of book reviews in its field (to document gender inequity), has published a newsletter (since 1988), has created how-to and promotional publications for its members (including a Sisters in Crime Books-In-Print catalog), has exhibited at conventions of booksellers and librarians, has organized a speakers bureau, has sponsored special interest groups within its membership, has organized special events (such as retreats for writers), has sponsored group ads in Publisher's Weekly and has created a website.

By-laws, 1989-1997; minutes, 1991-1997; annual financial reports, 1991-1996; publications, 1988-1998; photographs, 1989-1998; videotape recordings, 1995-1997; memorabilia, 1991-1998; and records of successive presidents, 1979(1989)-(1997)1998, which sometimes also include records from terms of service in other Sisters in Crime offices.