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The Rose Thomason papers document her work as a church leader, educator and writer. Here the researcher will find evidence of her efforts on women’s issues as well as her personal struggles with career, illness, and relationships which can be found in her writings.

In the COSROW series there are a number of areas covered in a variety of genres which include: Equal Rights Movement, women’s liberation, inclusive language, women being fairly represented in the church, minutes, correspondence, legislation for General Conference, regional training events, etc. One item of provenance note is an oversized working notebook of COSROW related documents which are broken up into multiple file folders while the original order is maintained. The contents reveal and encapsulate the breath and scope of Rose’s work which include topics such as national issues, correspondence, supporting documents for publications, petitions to General Conference, dialogue with the Council of Bishops, regional work in the form of events notes, caucuses, as well as annual conference activism in the Florida Annual Conference on the themes of advocacy, language, monitoring agencies, etc.

The UMWC series one will find similar issues as those in the COSROW series in the forms of minutes, correspondence, the Caucus’ newsletter entitled “The Flyer” which deals with the issues such as ordination of homosexuals, Equal Rights Amendment, sex roles in the denomination to name just a few items. The documents reveal how the Caucus partnered with Women’s Division of the General Board of Global Ministry, General Commission on the Status and Role of Women and Pew Women brought great change in the way women were treated and perceived as persons and leaders. The caucus and Pew Women were the grass roots, boots on the ground part of the above-mentioned quadrilateral. Officers of the caucus, like Rose, also became leaders in the two general agencies.

The Study Commissions series have a number of standard record types that include news releases, minutes, reports and manuscript papers. If one area stands above all others in this series, it would be documents related to the Itineracy Study. These files are loaded with resources that range from articles to resource papers by various authors. This section is worth researching if you are looking for historical materials related to the questions of handling clergy couples, spouses with careers outside the church, hardships caused by the itineracy on families, etc.

In the Writing Series you will find a large collection of Thomason’s poems, speeches, manuscripts in both published formats or personal unpublished manuscripts. It should be noted that there are unfinished works as well. The fan letters’ folder contains a number of correspondences between Rose and her close friends, people inspired by her writings - especially "Shoring Up My Soul, A Year with Cancer", as she only has days and hours left to live. Robert, her husband, sent emails to a number of her friends and fans on a daily basis giving updates to Rose’s condition during her last moments. He also sent emails out announcing her death. The letters are testimonials to those who were personally touched by her life and work. The manuscripts of poems and stories illustrate her struggles with health, social issues and relationships. These documents show who Rose is and why she did the work deemed important to her on all levels of her life. A number of the poems and stories reflect filial relationships.

The Education series contains elements of Thomason’s life as a student along with her teaching career as a Reading Comprehension and English teacher on both a secondary and college. There is an oral history done by Mary Elizabeth Moore for the Program for Women in Theology and Ministry at Candler School of Theology, Emory University, which features both Rose Thomason and Nancy Grissom Self in dialogue about their shared experience and continued friendship on women’s fight against institutional sexism and racism during the last half of the twentieth century. Many of the essays in the Student and Professional Papers date from Thomason’s higher education.

The Family series primarily contains documents created by Thomason, her husband Robert and their children, Mark and Bryan.

The Bishop Gilbert Haven papers currently consist of correspondence, various writings in the genres of addresses, essays, notes, poems, sermons, speeches along with printed matter and ephemera. There are approximately one thousand and five hundred plus letters between colleagues, friends, abolitionists, ministers, bishops, editors, business persons, strangers, etc. Haven's elevated status in the Methodist Episcopal Church and in New England abolitionist circles is evident from the considerable number of letters from major figures in both the denomination, American politics and intellectual movements during the mid-19th century. The correspondence includes letters from philosopher Ralph Waldo Emerson, abolitionist and editor William Lloyd Garrison, suffragists and abolitionists’ Lucy Stone and Frances Willard and Frederick Douglass, Bishop Matthew Simpson, Bishop Edward Raymond Ames, Bishop Willard Francis Mallalieu, Massachusetts Senator Charles Sumner, New York Senator Roscoe Conkling, Massachusetts governors’ John Albion Andrew and William Claflin, Speaker of the U.S. House of Representatives and U.S. Vice President Schuyler Colfax, and Civil War general and President of the United States Ulysses Simpson Grant to name a few. Topics include slavery and the abolitionist movement, denominational issues regarding church polity, viewpoints on race, mission work, the church’s role during reconstruction in the southern states and the treatment of free and ex-slaves as equals in post Civil War America.

There are a few persons or topics Haven collected in correspondence form which needs to be highlighted. The Reverend John N. Mars was a freed slave who worked with a couple of protestant denominations who eventually became a clergy member of the New England Annual Conference. His letters reflect not only the state of race and the need for status change during the Civil War but also his subsequent work as a missionary to the fledgling African American Washington Annual Conference. John Brown makes a short appearance in the correspondence though he personally is not writing Haven but there is one glowing letter Haven wrote Brown just before his execution. There is another letter to a former follower of Brown. Correspondence with national figures such as Grant, Colfax and Emerson are few in number with the originals closed to the public. Letters to and from former classmates of Wilbraham Academy and Wesleyan University are not only worth noting because of their intellectual content of that period which, in turn, produced many abolitionists. Yet the correspondence also illustrates how the two schools produced many leaders in both the Methodist Episcopal Church and influential figures in the New England area and later beyond as these men spread across the United States.

Haven’s family correspondence is insightful for a number of reasons. One of the first observations the researcher will find is the close relationship Haven had with family members both biologically and by marriage, especially the women. He maintains a robust correspondence with his cousin, Bishop Erastus Haven. Mary Ingraham Haven’s correspondence is primarily incoming correspondence from family that Haven maintained close contact with after her premature death. The letters to William Ingraham, his son, one of two children that survived childbirth, reveals a doting father whose pathos and love are apparent in good times and bad. These same letters speak to Haven’s compassionate character which defined his ministry and political views. All the letters to his mother and sisters reveal a “journal” of his career as well as giving support and advice which became bilateral in direction.

The Writing series is composed of different genres that include a variety of mediums by which one can discover the orthodox Protestant viewpoint the Haven maintained despite his liberalism in the areas of racial equality and abolitionism. The largest genre would be the sermons but there are exceptions to this specific genre such as his student commencement speech at Wesleyan. It is often difficult to distinguish between sermons, speeches and addresses by length or Scriptural notation in the titles. The topics are diverse as witnessed in the container list. The documents illustrate a snapshot of higher education’s intellectual training and praxis in the mid-nineteenth century. Haven had a gift for writing poetry, especially the few examples which resonate the sadness over Mary’s death. The essays and musings are a light-hearted romp into Haven’s soul.

The Printed Matter contains published articles related to Haven’s 1862-1863 trip overseas and Mexico in the early 1870s when Haven helped William Butler establish mission work for Northern Methodism. There are also articles on pertinent topics related to the church such as camp meetings, discord over the hymnal, race and Methodist Itinerancy. Almost all of these clippings were published in the denominational newspaper, the Christian Advocate.

The Ephemera series contains photocopied documents with a few exceptions dealing with the history of Haven family’s finances, church activity, truncated genealogy, etc. These primarily deal with the Haven’s life in the Malden area starting in the late eighteenth century. The originals were donated to the Malden Historical Society.

Finally the Diaries series contains six folders ranging in date from 1841 to 1879. These items are not comprised of daily entries. One diary has copies of letter Haven wrote to various individuals. The 1861 diary records Haven's ninety day enlistment in the Union Army as chaplain to the 8th Massachusetts Militia Volunteers.

The researcher will notice photocopies of original documents in folders except the Ephemera series for the reason stated above. The originals either are too large to fit in the standard folder or closed to the public because of security issues. The oversize documents can be viewed by requesting permission from the attending archivist.