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Brown University Library Collections

Religion Collections

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Baptist
Holdings in the area of religious history that reflect the University's Baptist origins. Included are the papers of many clergymen, among them Roger Williams, Isaac Backus, Samuel Jones, Thomas Ustick, Jones Very, missionaries (Adoniram Judson and Josiah Nelson Cushing) and several presidents of Brown. The records for the following churches are also available: First Baptist Church in Swansea, MA*; the Baptist Church in Warren, RI*; Shawomet Baptist Church in Warwick, RI; Meshanticut Baptist Church in Cranston, RI; Roger Williams Baptist Church in Providence, RI; Niantic Baptist Church in Westerly, RI, and the Arkwright and Fiskeville Baptist Church in Scituate, RI. There is also a sizeable collection of Baptist periodicals.

*PLEASE NOTE: Records of the First Baptist Church of Swansea and the First Baptist Church of Warren are deposit collections, and each church retains ownership and control over its own records. Accordingly, permission is required from the appropriate church before either collection can be made available for research. Please email manuscripts@brown.edu or hay@brown.edu for further details and contact information. ...more information
Barrett (Ellen M.)
Ellen M. Barrett, a scholar specializing in medieval monastic history, was the first openly gay person, and one of the earliest women, to be ordained priest in the Episcopal Church. Beginning in 1975, when she was ordained deacon, through 1977 when she was ordained priest, the collection documents her path to ordination and the far reaching international reaction to her ordination. The collection covers her subsequent, nearly thirty-year career as priest in the Episcopal Church and her eventual postulancy in an Anglican women's monastic community. ...more information
Canfield (Eli Hawley)
This collection consists of over 1100 sermons, letters, and other personal manuscripts of the Rev. Eli Hawley Canfield. The letters are mainly to his son, James Hulme Canfield, the educator, and are largely personal in nature, but the papers also include 500 of his sermons which amply illustrate many of the religious and social beliefs and issues of the forty year period following 1845. As would be expected, the sermons are essentially religious in nature, but although Canfield exhibited a stronger interest in the spiritual aspects of life than the political and moral, he does comment frequently upon life. His comments upon the Civil War, the administration of Andrew Johnson and his various Sermons to the children are of particular interest. ...more information
Chace (Elizabeth Buffum)
This collection includes correspondence, Elizabeth Buffum Chace’s commonplace book and diary, family albums, scrapbooks, photographs, an album of familial hair locks, needlework (cross stitch samplers), newspaper clippings, and other material relating to the Buffums, the Chaces, the Cheneys, and the Tolmans. The papers also contain letters in response to Chace’s book "Anti-Slavery Reminiscences." Elizabeth Buffum Chace was an activist for prison reform, the rights of orphans, peace, and temperance. ...more information
Davis (Sonia H. and Nathaniel A.)
Sonia H. Davis (1883-1972), of Jewish and Ukrainian heritage, was a business woman, milliner, writer, editor, amateur journalist and publisher. She was married briefly (1924-1926) to Howard Phillips Lovecraft with whom she collaborated on several literary projects. In 1936, she married Nathaniel A. Davis (1866-1945) of Jewish and Portuguese heritage who was a writer, editor, educator, social activist, entrepreneur, world traveler, publisher, journalist and founder of Planetaryan, a humanitarian organization devoted to world peace. They were married in California and lived there for the remainder of their lives. This collection dates from 1879 to 1972 (bulk from 1930 to the early 1940s) and documents the lives and literary works of Sonia and Nathaniel. It is a good source of documentation for anyone interested in U.S. social, political and religious history, especially around the period of World War II. It is also a good source for those who are interested in American literature, especially in religious poetry and didactic literature. This collection does not include any primary source materials originating from H.P. Lovecraft, nor does it contain much by way of direct documentation about him except for a published memoir of him written by Mrs. Davis (Books at Brown, vol. XI, nos. 1-2), a copy of which is included in this collection. ...more information
Denison (Frederic) Baptist Biograpies
The Denison Collection consist of letters, manuscripts, and printed matter that contain biographical information about individual Baptists in Connecticut, Rhode Island and Massachusetts. ...more information
Hall-Hoag

Contains documents representing a broad spectrum of militant political, social and religious dissent in the United States, from the post-World War II period to the present. The Collection currently exceeding 168,000 items emanating from over 5,000 organizations, constitutes the country's largest research collection of right and left wing U.S. extremist groups, from 1950 to 1999.

The collection began when Gordon Hall, a young veteran of the Pacific Theatre during the war, first encountered the printed propaganda issued by domestic hate-your-neighbor organizations/groups in the late 1940's. He supported his investigations and research of these organizations by giving public lectures about them. Materials from all corners of the country were collected, enabling him to document statements made in lectures as well as in a growing number of expository articles written for newspapers and magazines.

Grace Hoag, an alumna of Smith College, began collaboration with Hall during the 1960's, assisting the research and investigation and expanding the collection beyond its initial emphasis.

Includes publications of Anti-Abortion organizations; Anti-Integrationist organizations; Anti-Semitic and Racist political parties; Christian Identity organizations; Communist organizations; Communist political parties; Communist publishers; Congressional investigating committees; Cults and Alternative religions; Extreme Left-Wing publishers; Ku Klux Klan organizations; LaRouche organizations; Marxist-Leninist organizations; Militant Anti-Communist organizations; Militant Populist organizations; Neo-Nazi organizations; Pacifist organizations; Pro-choice abortion organizations; Racial and Ethnic Consciousness organizations; Right-Wing Christian religious organizations; Right-Wing publishers; Socialist organizations; and Women's movement left and right organizations

Please Note: The Library has temporarily suspended digitization requests for materials from the Gordon Hall and Grace Hoag Collection of Dissenting and Extremist Printed Propaganda, Parts I and II, 1926-2000.The Library is in the process of digitizing large portions of the collection over the next 3 years (2022-2025). In order to complete this significant digitization project the Library must close large portions of the collection for periods of time.

Hall-Hoag materials that are not actively being digitized are available for in-person research. Please complete the Ask Us form if you are interested in looking at particular organizations or need information about scheduling a reading room visit.
...more information
Hamilton (Henry D.)
These papers date from 1836-1968 with the bulk between 1837-1942. Henry D. Hamilton was a lawyer and politician who also served as the Adjutant General of New York and Rhode Island. His papers include, but are not limited to, correspondence, business papers, subject files, diaries, certificates, photographs, scrapbooks, and artifacts. Most of the material dated before 1894 belonged to Henry Hamilton's father, B.B. Hamilton, a Baptist minister. The collection also includes genealogical information about the Hamilton family, writings and correspondence by Henry's elder brother John B. Hamilton, a medical doctor, and material related to the military careers of B.B. Hamilton, Henry D. Hamilton and Henry's son Warren Hamilton. This collection is useful for the study of the participation of Illinois in the U.S. Civil War, Baptist ministers, the Antislavery movement in Illinois, and the work of lawyers and politicians during the 19th and 20th centuries. ...more information
Japanese Literature and Zen Buddhist Philosophy
This collection includes significant books on Zen Buddhism, early 20th century Japanese literature, world literature in Japanese translation, and philosophy. One of the highlights is Shaka go-ishidaiki zue ??? ???????i, a complete set of the first edition published in 1845. The six volumes show a highly stylized rendition of the life of the Buddha with illustrations by Hokusai ?? (1760-1849). ...more information
Lovell family
The Lovell family papers were compiled by Malcolm R. Lovell, Jr. They range in date from 1790 to 1911, with the primary focus being the period between 1800 and 1860. The range of subjects covered is equally broad, including religion and spirituality, slavery, family life, and student life at Brown University. Religion is at the core of this collection. The story depicted in the collection of nearly 850 letters, journals, clippings, sermons and other materials is that of a family struggling with its convictions about religion. These convictions are apparent in nearly all portions of the collection, from the sermons of Shubael Lovell to the letters and journals of his children. ...more information
Man (Mary)
The Mary Man Literary Manuscripts consist of twenty items that fall within the years 1765 and 1812. They contain copy-books, notebooks, and other manuscripts of Mary Man, with original and copied verse on mostly religious themes, as well as biblical and sermon extracts. Also included are manuscripts by Thomas Man, Mary Howe, Olive Fisk, Sukey Fisk, and unidentified authors. ...more information
Manning (James)
The James Manning Papers consist primarily of correspondence dating from 1765-1791 with prominent British and American Baptist ministers. Much of the correspondence involves the early history of Brown University or various issues regarding the Baptist religion and the growing tide of religion in Providence, Rhode Island. ...more information
McLoughlin (William Gerald)
Professor William Gerald McLoughlin taught history at Brown University from 1954-1992 and was an active and vocal participant professionally and personally in all of the issues and events during those years: freedom of speech, civil rights, racial equality, gender equality (Louis Lamphere sex discrimination case), nuclear energy, improving the Providence education system, the Vietnam War, divestment from South Africa, and US intervention in Nicaragua during the 1980s. His papers are particularly useful for studying the changes in America and their effect s at Brown University during his tenure. His major areas of scholarship were religion in America (particularly Baptists and Evangelicals), the Cherokee Indian Nation, antislavery movement, African Americans, and Rhode Island history. This collection contains research notes and subject files for his many research topics, drafts for some of his published books, correspondence with colleagues and friends, minutes for meetings of the various committees at Brown and in the community on which he served, and newspaper clippings for topics of importance to him. ...more information
Newcomb (Charles King)
Manuscript letters, journals, commonplace books and other papers relating to Providence Transcendentalist Charles King Newcomb and his family.

Newcomb was born in Providence, Rhode Island in 1820 and was graduated from Brown University in 1837. Introduced by his mother, Rhoda Mardenbrough Newcomb, to the teacher and writer Margaret Fuller, Newcomb became part of her literary circle in Providence in the late 1830s and was in turn introduced by her to Ralph Waldo Emerson. Through Emerson, Newcomb met other writers identified with Transcendentalism such as Nathaniel Hawthorne and Henry David Thoreau. Although Emerson encouraged Newcomb as a writer and solicited material from him for publication in The Dial, Newcomb submitted only the first part of his tale entitled "The Two Dolons" to that publication. He nevertheless remained friends with Emerson until the latter's death, even though Emerson was disappointed that he did not publish more. Newcomb resided for a time at Brook Farm but eventually returned to Providence. He served briefly with the Tenth Rhode Island Volunteers during the Civil War, and following the death of his mother, lived in Philadelphia from 1865 to 1871, where he wrote a series of more than one thousand erotic poems titled "Songs, Epigrams, and Sonnets of Love." Newcomb lived in Europe from 1871 onward and is believed to have died in Paris in 1894.

The collection includes many letters and a commonplace book of his mother, as well as the signed autograph poem entitled "The Crucifixion" by Newcomb, dated 10 April 1860.

Source: Alfred G. Litton, from The American Renaissance in New England, Second Series (Gale Group, 2000) in Gale Literature Dictionary of Literary Biography. ...more information
Niantic Baptist Church
The records of the Niantic Baptist Church include annual reports, treasurer's reports and expense records, membership lists, minutes, contracts for the pastors and miscellaneous documents. These records document that last years of the church from 1987 to 2012. This is part of the Rhode Island Baptist Heritage Center collection. ...more information
Rhode Island Baptist Heritage Center
The Rhode Island Baptist Heritage Center, an affiliate of the American Baptist Churches of Rhode Island [ABCORI], was established in 2004 to create an official Baptist presence in Providence, Rhode Island. It provides substantive information regarding early English and American Baptists and documents traditional forms of worship and doctrine in the Baptist Church. The collection includes a wide array of church materials documenting organizational and administrative operations, religious practices and beliefs, and the history of the Baptist Church in Rhode Island. It includes registers, reports, correspondence, photographs and church publications dating from as early as 1867 to the late 1980s. The churches and organizations included are: Arlington Baptist Church, Bethany Baptist Church, Cranston Street Baptist Church, Eighth Baptist Church, First Free Baptist Church, Fourth Baptist Church, Jefferson Baptist Church, Olneyville Church, Park Street Baptist Church, Phenix Baptist Church, Rhode Island Free Baptist Association, Roger Williams Free Baptist Church, Trinity Baptist Church, United Baptist Church, United Community Church, United Presbyterian Church. ...more information
Roger Williams Baptist Church
The administrative records, committee minutes, publications, photographs and historical information documenting the history and activities of this Baptist church in Providence, RI. This is part of the Rhode Island Baptist Heritage Center collection. ...more information
Sharp (Martha and Waitstill)
Brown alumna Martha Dickie Sharp (Pembroke 1926) and her husband Rev. Waitstill Sharp were co-founders of the Unitarian Service Committee during World War II. The collection documents their strenuous efforts throughout the course of the war to provide relief and assistance to thousands of refugees in Czechoslovakia and France, under the most dangerous and difficult of circumstances. ...more information
Shawomet Baptist Church
The Shawomet Baptist Church was officially organized in 1842 as the Old Warwick Baptist Church. The original congregation of "Six Principle" Baptists combined resources with Regular (Calvinist) Baptists, whose numbers were growing as a result of the Second Great Awakening, to occupy a small meetinghouse on the Warwick Neck peninsula in Rhode Island. In 1851 their name was officially changed to Shawomet Baptist Church. The word Shawomet is the Narragansett Indian name for Warwick Neck. The church closed in 2011. The records include founding documents, publications, meeting minutes, correspondence, financial records, membership lists, club and activity records and photographic materials documenting the 170-year history of the congregation. The bulk of the material covers the period from 1945 through 1999. This is part of the Rhode Island Baptist Heritage Center collection. ...more information
Smith Magic
The H. Adrian Smith Collection of Conjuring and Magicana, long considered one of the finest private libraries on conjuring and magic, includes 16th century titles on natural magic, alchemy, astrology, religious rites, and witchcraft. Later holdings include sections on conjuring, card tricks and games, magicians as performers, magic periodicals and other works intended for practicing magicians, posters, ephemera, and realia. The Collection is the gift and bequest of the collector, class of 1930, who as an undergraduate put himself through Brown by giving magic performances. ...more information
Sorrentino (Mary Ann)
The Mary Ann Sorrentino papers about her excommunication from the Catholic Church consist of correspondence, clippings, and other materials. These papers relate to the practice of abortion, the authority of the Catholic Church over its members, and general discussion of religion and morality with respect to abortion. The correspondence with Sorrentino (who was Executive Director of Planned Parenthood of Rhode Island from 1977 to 1987) includes responses from proponents of both the pro-choice and pro-life movements, Catholics, non-Catholics, public officials, and others. The collection also includes an oral history interview of Sorrentino recorded in 2012 and a Master of Arts in History thesis written by Rhonda J. Chadwick about Sorrentino's experiences. ...more information
Ungerleider Haggadot
The Dr. Steven Ungerleider Collection of Haggadot, the text recited on the first two nights of the Jewish Passover, is remarkable for its geographic, linguistic, and temporal diversity. The collection comprises haggadot from Asia, Africa, Europe, North America and the Near East. It incorporates a wide range of Jewish vernacular languages, from Yiddish and Ladino to Judeo-Italian and Judeo-Arabic in representative exemplars from Jewish communities across the globe, many long since dispersed. The collection covers more than four hundred years of Jewish culture, from the Ottoman Empire in 1505 to the State of Israel in the 1950s. ...more information
West Exeter Baptist Church
Administrative and financial records, photographs, weekly bulletins for each Sunday service, and attendance records for a small Baptist congregation in Exeter, RI. This is part of the Rhode Island Baptist Heritage Center collection. ...more information
Yatman Family
The Yatman Family papers include correspondence, diaries (including travel diaries), Republican campaign and other material, church subscription books, photographs, etc. The collection primarily consists of the papers of Thomas Laurie, reflecting his work as a missionary and minister; Martha Ellen Laurie Yatman, especially documenting her daily life and trips abroad; and Marion Fay Yatman, providing a cursory view of her work for the Republican Party in the 1940s and 1950s. The papers provide some information about other family members and document a variety of familial and spousal relationships as well as life in the Boston and Providence areas ...more information

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