© University of Massachusetts Amherst. All rights reserved.
© 2010 University of Massachusetts Amherst. All rights reserved.
Miriam Chrisman (passport photo), 1964
A noted scholar of the social impact of the German Reformation, Miriam Usher Chrisman was born in Ithaca, New York, on May 20, 1920. With degrees from Smith College, American University, and Yale, she served for over thirty years on the faculty of the Department of History at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, becoming a well-loved professor and treasured mentor to a generation of students.
From birth, Chrisman seemed destined for a career in academia. Chrisman's roots in the intellectual elite of Massachusetts ran deep -- an ancestor Hezekiah Usher, imported the press and type with which John Eliot's Indian Bible was printed -- and her father, Abbott Payson Usher, was a distinguished economic historian at Cornell and later Harvard. Graduating magna cum laude with an A.B. from Smith College (1941) shortly before the onset of the Second World War, Chrisman's plans for an academic career were delayed. After marrying Don Chrisman, a medical student at Harvard, on November 29, 1943, Miriam took a series of jobs with the federal government in Washington, D.C., while Don served on active duty with the Navy aboard the Gleaves-class destroyer, U.S.S.
At the end of the war, the Chrismans returned home to Massachusetts and settled in Northampton, where Donald began a practice in orthopedics at Cooley Dickinson Hospital while Miriam resumed her studies. After earning graduate degrees in education (Smith College, 1948) and economics (American University), she studied history at Yale (MA,1959, and PhD, 1962), completing her dissertation, "Church and city in Strasbourg, 1480-1548: A study of the stages of the Reformation," in 1962, just prior to joining the History Department at UMass Amherst.
During her long career, Chrisman became a leading authority on the social history of the German Reformation, the city of Strasbourg forming the intellectual locus of much of her work. The first of her seven books,
Widely recognized for her scholarship, Chrisman was awarded the Prix d'honneur by the Societe des Amis de Vieux Strasbourg, the Wilbur Cross Medal from Yale University, and received an honorary doctor of humane letters from Valparaiso University. She was twice awarded the UMass Chancellor's Medal, first as a Distinguished Faculty Lecturer in 1985 and again in 2000 for her support of the Du Bois Library. In her honor, the Society for Reformation Research established the Miriam U. Chrisman Travel Fellowship, which provides grants of $1500 every other year to support advanced graduate students in conducting research abroad. Chrisman formally retired in 1985, but continued to teach for almost a decade more.
Donald Chrisman died in 2002, with Miriam following on November 17, 2008. They are survived by two sons, Nicholas Ramsey Chrisman and David Abbott Chrisman.
The Chrisman collection details the life of an affluent, well-educated, New England woman, Miriam Usher Chrisman. Beginning in the late 1930s while Chrisman was in her late teens, the collection contains extensive personal and (to a lesser degree) professional correspondence throughout her life. Of particular note are a dense series of courtship letters written during the Second World War mixing a budding romance with information from the front lines in Europe. A series of meticulous continuous account books, beginning in 1944 and stretching through the 1990s, outline the daily aspects of wartime life, along with the complexities facing a new bride in arranging the domestic sphere of her new life.
Chrisman was unusually well-traveled, as illustrated in a copious series of notes, itineraries, and receipts from both professional and personal trips. The three major research trips to Strasbourg are particularly well documented, augmented by extensive personal correspondence during that trip with her two sons. In its most recent years, the collection focuses on Chrisman's personal life, with ample correspondence demonstrating a rich, cherished relationship with her grandchildren. Overall, Chrisman comes across as a highly organized, detail-oriented person who spent significant time planning and organizing her life.
The collection is open for research.
Acquired from Chrisman, 1999.
Processed by Rusty Annis, Yolanda Clarke, and Catherine Sebastian, December 2010.
Chrisman's major published works (all housed in the Du Bois Library) include:
In addition to the papers of several of Chrisman's colleagues in the History Department at UMass Amherst, SCUA holds the papers of
Series 1 contains extensive correspondence between Chrisman and the people she held close throughout her lifetime. Beginning with a letter from Donald Chrisman's mother in 1878, this series spans Miriam Chrisman's entire life, beginning during Chrisman's college years at Smith (roughly 1937 to 1941) and ending with several letters from a niece in 2008. The earliest letters detail Chrisman's daily experiences in college and her involvement with the American Friends Service Committee in Northampton.
Of particular note are the courtship, engagement, and newlywed letters between Miriam and her husband, Donald Chrisman. Not only do these letters reveal the couple's feelings for one another, they offer a glimpse into the conventions of courtship and marriage in World War Two-era America, even to the details of how they planned to arrange the furniture in their new home. Their letters after the wedding are equally interesting, written while Donald was deployed on the destroyer, U.S.S.
After the war, the focus of Chrisman's correspondence returns to her educational pursuits, from discussing her fears at writing her first thesis to letters to her publisher for her second book. There is extensive correspondence with her two sons, Abbott and Nick, from their childhood days at boarding school and camp to their collegiate years and early adulthood. Also of note is Chrisman's correspondence home during three research trips to Strasbourg: rather remarkably, each trip resulted in a new book on the German Reformation. Finally, this series contains some correspondence between Don and his parents in his earlier years, including his acceptance into Harvard Medical School.
A rambling record of Chrisman's world travels, series two begins with detailed notes of museum trips around the Mediterranean in 1952, and continues for almost five decades, including a round-the-world trip in 1972, an early visit to the newly opened Peoples Republic of China in 1982, travel to Russia in 1985, and the Spice Route in 1985. The series also contains a wonderfully detailed diary of a summer-long trip to France.
The series is arranged chronologically.
Series three is a somewhat scattered collection of family memorabilia from the Chrismans' lives. Several folders of postcards and Christmas cards, mostly undated, join a small number of professional and community honors, such as an award for volunteer service from the University of Massachusetts Library and newspaper clippings of Don Chrisman's achievements. The series includes an autobiography written by Don in 1935 as well as an
Series four consists of a continuous set of household account books from 1944 through 1985 kept by Miriam Chrisman and her husband, Don. Beginning in 1944, these accounts detail annual household budgets, rent or mortgage payments, taxes including some years' W2 forms, food, clothing, entertainment, travel, and education expenses among others. In addition to tracking daily costs, Ms. Chrisman detailed the items needed to set up a household after their marriage in extensive, meticulous lists within many of the earlier account books. She also kept detailed size, item, and cost information for both her and her husband's clothing for many years. There is limited information as well on the costs associated with operating her husband's medical practice.
As with nearly every aspect of this collection, Chrisman proves herself once again to be a highly organized, meticulous individual through the consistency and detail of these account books. As their professional lives advance, their movement into the upper middle class can be tracked by extensive line item details regarding luxury expenditures, charitable giving, and professional development costs.
Read a