Ethel Berner Babbitt Collection

Collection — Multiple Containers

Identifier: MSS 044

Staff Only

Scope and Contents

The Ethel Berner Babbitt Collection consists of materials related to the life of Emerson College alumna Ethel Berner Babbitt, including schoolbooks, photograph albums, scrapbooks, manuscripts, and written personal correspondence.

Dates

1916 - 1952

Creator

Babbitt, Ethel Berner (Person)

Language of Materials

English; German

Conditions Governing Access

The collection is open to researchers. No materials may be taken out of or borrowed from the Emerson College Archives & Special Collections.

Conditions Governing Use

The status of copyright in this collection is governed by the Copyright Law of the United States (Title 17, U.S.C). This collection is for research purposes only. No portions of the materials may be performed or reproduced as written. Researchers are required to seek permission from the copyright holder to reproduce and/or publish materials under copyright. These are non-circulating materials.

Biographical / Historical

Ethel Berner Babbitt (1898-1974) grew up in Hazleton, Pennsylvania, and attended Emerson College for oratory studies, where she served as a sophomore class officer and worked on the yearbook editing team of the Emersonian before graduating in 1920. After graduation, Berner married Charles Babbitt of Nashua, New Hampshire, an ophthalmologist who owned a business fitting and grinding lenses for eyeglasses. In Nashua, Ethel Babbitt organized an amateur theatre group called the Nashua Players, which performed throughout the mid-1930s and into the 1940s. The Babbitts had two daughters, Ethel Jean and Carol "Cay" Babbitt. They kept a summer farm called Elmcroft, overlooking the Starr King range of the White Mountains from Jefferson, New Hampshire, in exchange for Ethel's care of the home's elderly resident.

Extent

2 boxes, 1.45 linear feet

Additional Description

Arrangement

Materials of this collection have been arranged into three series, ordered to roughly reflect the chronology of Babbitt's life beginning with her time at Emerson College in the late 1910s up through the early 1940s.

Series 01 contains five annotated plays by William Shakespeare, which Babbitt used during her theatre studies.

Series 02 consists of a World War I scrapbook of news clippings constructed while she was a student at Emerson, as well as a photograph album created for her sorority reunion in 1952.

Series 03 contains letters and objects Babbitt saved from her personal correspondence from acquaintances "Helen H." and former Emerson classmate Ethel May Duncan. While the majority of the documents were handwritten letters encased in the original postmarked envelopes, additional non-textual materials sometimes accompanied the letters, and have been divided into their own subseries.

Physical Location

Custodial History

Materials were donated by the creator's granddaughter.

Appraisal

No further materials are expected.

Accruals

Contains materials from three separate accessions: 2014-003, 1985-024, 2017-003.

General

Accession number 1985-065 also contains Babbitt materials, but is missing as of December 2017. If found, please update this finding aid and add the materials to the physical collection.