The Mellony Turner papers primarily documents her life as a missionary in Bulgaria. There is a number of records on the American School for Girls in Lovetch, consisting of photographs, textbooks, yearbooks, and financial records. Turner's notebooks and lecture notes are included in the collection. It should be noted that there is a single folder containing information on closing the school. Turner kept diaries during her tenure in Bulgaria as well extensive correspondence. There are general images in both photograph and slide format ranging from the royal family of Bulgaria to her own family in the United States. Turner has a copy of a sermon by Bishop Burt; the bishop who had established the Bulgarian mission at the beginning of the twentieth century. Clippings and other types of publications reflect Bulgarian life and politics. There are eight lectures and a sermon written by Turner. Artifacts are personal in nature, reflecting the clothing and accessories of mid-twentieth century Bulgarian dress. There is a pot in the artifact series as well.

The other series within the collection reflects Turner's immediate family. The few records relating to her parents deal with their will and a folder of letters. Mellony's brother, Ewart Turner's three folders are related to his spying for the United States War Department during the World War II. Though he was ministering to a church in the United States during the war, Ewart was familiar with German communities in Europe and South America. The War Department had Turner collect information on Germans, in the U.S., who were thought to be a threat to national security during the war. This information is elucidated in a correspondence folder.

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.

The Sherertz Family Papers cover the time period from about 1870 to 1970. These documents were created by several generations of missionaries assigned to China and Africa.

The focus of the collection is divided between China and Africa. China constitutes the earlier period from about 1855 to 1945. The Sherertz' activity in Southern Rhodesia begins in 1953 and ends in their retirement in 1958. Of particular interest is the first Methodist deaconess from Southern Rhodesia, Mai Mhlanga (1007-2-7:04).

Because of D. L. Sherertz's propensity for documentation, the bulk of the collection directly reflects his life and career. Two highlights include his role in the national government of the Republic of China and his internment in Pootung by the Japanese. He also preserved family genealogies and memoirs.

The Park family is represented by William Hector Park's memoirs, several photographs, and a few letters by his wife, Nora Lambuth Park, which were written during the years after her husband's death.

The Lambuths' papers include one letter from Mary McClellan Lambuth in Chinese and English as well as a number of photographs from this early period.

Upon reviewing the entire collection, it becomes apparent that Margarita Park Sherertz played the central role in the family's development. Her papers are not as voluminous as those belonging to her husband, but it is clear that she was a charismatic and intelligent individual. Margarita's strength reveals itself when her husband was interned by the Japanese in China after Pearl Harbor. Her letters written during this period and those she wrote shortly before she left China illustrate her cognizance of political and social events which occurred locally and internationally.

Margarita's mother, Nora Lambuth Park, similarly remarks in a few of her letters about local political developments as they relate to the welfare and fate of the missionary community. Nora's experience as a seasoned missionary in China during several periods of social upheaval is demonstrated in her comments about the events in Soochow leading up to Pearl Harbor. Her work was indispensable to her husband's career as wife, mother, caretaker, nurse, teacher, cook and social secretary. She was equally revered by the Chinese community.

Nora's mother, Mary McClellan Lambuth was an extremely intelligent individual who mastered written and spoken Chinese during her tenure as a missionary (see 1005-6-1:18). She also provided the means for her children's education and was an active and vital force in the Chinese community according to her daughter and granddaughter.

Nora Lambuth Park and Mary McClellan Lambuth are two figures who deserve further illumination because of their pivotal role in family development and stabilization, community work and religious dedication.

Diaries and journals belonging to Mary Isabella McClellan Lambuth and Walter R. Lambuth can be found at the J.B. Cain Archives, Millsaps-Wilson Library, Millsaps College, Jackson, Mississippi.

The lives of William Hector Park and Dwight Lamar Sherertz illustrate the more public and well known series of events among missionaries in China. Their letters, memoirs, diaries and public statements give a broad view of events in China before and during World War II. As a whole, this collection provides a valuable glimpse of their private family life as well. Specifically, the lives of Margarita Park Sherertz, Nora Lambuth Park and Mary McClellan Lambuth come into focus as "the thread which binds" generation to generation.

This collection consists of three scrapbooks filled primarily with clippings from The Religious Telescope, a church newspaper of the United Brethren Church, and from assorted newspapers. These were compiled by C. I. B. Brane while he was active as the Washington correspondent for the magazine and the popular pastor of the Washington, D.C. United Brethren Church. The clippings are a rich resource for both religious and secular history in the latter years of the 19th century and the early part of the 20th century. In addition there are several letters and an address on the pioneers' history of the United Brethren Church written by Brane.

Record types include journals, sermons, correspondence, bank drafts, ministerial licenses, circuit plans, and a legal document. There is also a typed manuscript of the journal. The journal is the handwritten original manuscript recording the events of York's daily life, as well as his physical and spiritual health, from 1869 to 1871. The typed manuscript is a transcription of this same journal by the donor, though the sequence of entries is not the same as in the original document. The original order of the journal entries is unclear, as the document arrived with the pages out of sequence, and much re- arranging was necessary. An exact match between the chronology of the manuscript journal and the transcription was not possible. The sermons consist of two handwritten sermon fragments on texts from Exodus and Galatians. There is also a short handwritten poem. The correspondence is two letters to York, one of which is from William Mugoleton and the other, from George Ripley. Both are handwritten originals. The bank drafts are receipts for money loaned. The ministerial licenses consist of four local preacher licenses issued to York by Quarterly Meetings from 1841 to 1856. The circuit local preacher's plans are from Market Darborough Circuit (Wesleyan Methodist Church, England, 1841) and New York and New York East Districts (Methodist Episcopal Church, 1852). Both show the locations in which local preachers are scheduled to take services during one quarter. The legal document is a court summons pertaining to the execution of York's will in 1884.

The collection contains materials relating Lind's personal activities as a missionary. There are seventeenth diaries in this collection. They range in date from 1924 to1979. The years 1926 to 1928 and 1939 are missing. Entries in these diaries are only a few lines and discuss daily events, school activities, Bible meetings, and weather conditions. Many of the diaries reflect China's social unrest because of Western intervention. One diary makes note of mid to late twentieth century China and is a good resource for a student of Chinese culture as impacted by Protestant mission work. Another diary describes the military occupation in Kimkiang and communist regime in Nanchung. There is one more diary which describes historical sites of Egypt, the Middleast and Europe.

Correspondence is dated from 1935 to1962 and relates to family and friends, including "Memories of China" in 1951.

There are two memory scrapbook, dated 1960 and 1964 respectively, which were created by Lind's Bible Class Students. A third scrapbook is a 1959 graduation commemorative yearbook from Aoyama Woman's Junior College in Tokyo, Japan. The final part of this collection contains various clippings, programs, pamphlets, and photographs related to Lind's work and family.

This collection contains items related to the Karl E. Anderson family. The bulk of this collection are Karl Anderson's diaries which are dated 1897-1905, 1914-1915, 1924, 1926-1927, and 1929-1934. The diaries contain information about his daily experiences and religious observations. Other records include sermons and writings which are in outline format (undated), notes from which Anderson preached (undated), and a poem (undated). There are also several biographical materials (1931-1970) in this collection. Dorothea Anderson's materials of creative writings (undated) are located in a single folder. These items are mostly plays and articles on Indian mission subjects.

There is also a folder of letters and articles (1933- 1945) by or about Bishop William F. Oldham. This includes correspondence from Oldham and a copy of his funeral service bulletin. Oldham was the subject of a 3,000 word biography written by Emma Anderson. Helen Rieger Emmerson has a manuscript (1970) on the history of the Lisbon, Iowa, United Methodist Church. This piece covers the time period when Anderson pastored the church. In addition there are two photographs: one of the General Committee of the Foreign Mission Board from November 1913, and a second picture of the General Executive Committee of the Women's Foreign Missionary Society in October 1923. The two artifacts in this collection include a Bidar metal vase (undated) with a copy of a legend and a woven straw tray (undated).

The largest amount of material consists of sermons. The sermons range in date from 1933 until 1993, with revisions of previous sermons as late as 1996. Sermons were arranged either alphabetically or topically. The topics generally deal with special events such as the deaths of Martin Luther King, Jr. and Gandhi, VE Day, VJ Day and funerals. There are also notes and reference material which he used to write the sermons. Also included are his orders of worship, or bulletins, and copies of the prayers he used in worship or collected. There is also correspondence, poetry and biographical information on Christman in these papers. The biographical material deals with his childhood, his seminary days and his ministry and family. There is also reference material used in his sermons and in his historical writings for the Northeast Jurisdictional newsletter.