The Thomas de Valcourt and Michael Lerner collection contains materials concerning 19th century New England poets and authors, most prominently Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, but also Henry David Thoreau, Washington Irving, Oliver Wendell Holmes, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Nathaniel Hawthorne, Walt Whitman, and minor figures. Much of the materials - which predominantly consists of prints, photographs, clippings, photocopies, newspapers, periodicals, postcards, reprints, poetry, and other formats - concerns their famous New England homes and their families' homes, and other literary landmarks in the vicinity. Most of the materials date from the late 19th and early 20th century.
Also included are a scrapbook of clippings of poetry, a 1962 plaster cast bust of Henry David Thoreau by Melvina Hoffman, an 1864 ceramic bust of Henry Wadsworth Longfellow by M. Milmore, two paperweights with depictions of the Longfellow house, a brick noted as "being used by Thoreau when adding to the family house on Virginia Road in Concord," and one copper ashtray.
The Carmen Puig papers document Carmen Puig's family ties to Jennings Cox, Puig's step-grandfather and the American credited with inventing the daiquiri cocktail. Cox was an engineer with Bethlehem Iron Works in charge of mines in Daiquirí, a town in Cuba's southeast region. Cox reportedly invented the famous daiquiri cocktail in 1898 by mixing together white Bacardi rum, mineral water, sugar, lemon juice, and crushed ice.
The Carmen Puig Papers include an original recipe for the daiquiri, while the bulk of the materials consist of family photographs. The papers also include some correspondence, clippings, and memorabilia; and materials related to Puig's career with the Bacardi company from 1965 to 1986.
The Irving A. Leonard collection contains materials related to Kirk Munroe (1850-1930), a writer of children's stories and a journalist who lived for approximately forty years in Coconut Grove. Much of the collection consists of typed copies or photocopies of letters, diary entries, bibliographies, essays, and newspaper articles, but some unique photographs and correspondence with family members of Munroe is included as well.
The collection consists of 17 manuscript documents relating to Cuba, in particular to Captains N.G. and William Hichborn and their ship from Maine in the Cuban ports of Matanzas, Havana and Cardenas. The documents include handwritten correspondence, receipts and records relating to trade.
The Elizabeth Wright collection predominantly contains materials relating to Richard Wagner and family members. The materials cover a wide range, including memorabilia, such as a Wagner-themed card game and a ceramic plaque of Richard Wagner, an original note by Siegfried Wagner and facsimiles of letters by Wagner, original photographs of Wagner family members as well as facsimiles and prints of Richard Wagner and others, original advertisements and programs of Wagner's operas, a radio transcript and a typescript about Wagner's composition and staging, and a series of prints depicting scenes from Wagner's operas.
There are also several items not related to Wagner. These are a letter from W. Somerset Maugham, an autographed print of mezzo-soprano Mariana Paunova, and prints of other composers such as Beethoven, Mozart, Liszt, and Richter.
The W. H. H. Hutton Collection contains two letters written by W. H. H. Hutton. In one, dated march 14, 1869, Hutton writes to a "Doctor" about his or her experiences in traveling to Fort Jefferson, Florida. In the other, dated October 6, 1869, Hutton writes to a "Doctor" about maladies at the Fort.
The Ramiro A. Fernández collection contains photographic prints, albums and postcards collected by Ramiro A. Fernández that document life in Cuba from the 1890s through the 1950s. Included are pictures of a variety of buildings, such as homes, schools, churches, resorts, military installations, and public buildings, as well as landscapes, street scenes, and pictures of agriculture, transportation, families, children, and people at work and leisure.
The abolition of enslavement in Cuba took place gradually over the course of several years. In 1880, the Spanish colonial government instituted a system called patronato, loosely translated as "apprenticeship." Most of the workings of the enslavement system were preserved, but patrocinados, as former enslaved people came to be known, received a minimal set of legal rights and were to be paid a token wage. The transition to the patronato system was overseen by a provincial network of government agencies called Juntas de Patronato. The Junta Provincial de Patronato de Matanzas was created in 1880 when the Law of Patronato was passed. As a central body, it processed claims and cases from a series of local juntas throughout the province of Matanzas. The records in this collection contain official documents, correspondence between local juntas and the main junta, and tables reporting names or numbers of patrocinados. The collection also documents the cases of individual patrocinados who were trying to obtain their freedom through the provisions of the new law.
All of the materials in this collection have been digitized and are available through the University of Miami Digital Collections.
The papers document activities of J. M. Portuondo in capacity of a professor of Internal Medicine at the University of Havana, a writer and a faculty member of the University of Miami School of Medicine. The materials include books, pamphlets, periodicals, clippings, circular letters, typescripts of anti-communist writings by Portuondo, reports, a poem by Portuondo, speeches by him, copies of his medical diplomas, a historical map of Havana, and photostats of a photograph and of a letter from José Martí to José Portuondo.
Charles E. Feinberg was an editor Emeritus of the Walt Whitman Quarterly Review. The collection consists of Walt Whitman related materials; predominantly framed and unframed prints, but also leaves from periodicals and leaves advertising Whitman reissues, a Whitman poetry broadside, a Romanian Institute of Cultural Relations with Foreign Countries catalog for a Walt Whitman Exhibit, and other Whitman memorabilia.
The Gerardo Machado y Morales Papers consist primarily of the correspondence, business and legal documents, and photographs of Machado and his family in their years of exile after 1933. The bulk of the materials in this collection make up Series I: Correspondence, 1923-1940 and Series IV: Financial Records, 1913-1939. Most of the correspondence in Series I is between Machado and his son-in-law Baldomero Grau, who was married to Machado’s daughter Laudelina (Nena), and deals with Machado’s business concerns in Cuba as well as matters pertaining to his family’s life in exile.
Of note is Series VIII: Photographs, n.d., ca. 1895-1994, which include several photographs of Machado throughout his life, photographs of his family in Cuba and in exile, as well as photographs of the Machado sugar estate, the Central Carmita. Also included in this collection is a manuscript of Machado’s autobiographical work, Ocho Años de Lucha, in Series II: Works, n.d., 1933 as well as research materials related to Gerardo Machado gathered from the US National Archives and Records Administration by the collection donor, Francisco X. Santeiro (Series V: Extradition and Amnesty, 1925-1938 and Series IX: Funeral, n.d., 1939-1952).
Series X contains materials pertaining to Machado’s son-in-law José Emilio Obregón, who was married to Angela Elvira Machado.
The Alan Crockwell Collection contains a variety of materials from different sources that document the history of Miami, Coconut Grove, Coral Gables, and greater Miami-Dade County. Much of the content is related to Ralph Middleton Munroe and his family. Topically, the papers also address criminal history in Miami-Dade County, historic buildings in Coconut Grove including the Barnacle and the Coconut Grove Library, the history of the University of Miami, and the early settling of Miami-Dade County. The dates of items range from 1873 into the 1970s.
This collection contains the records of the Charles Ives Centennial Festival that took place in Miami in 1974, celebrating the composer's 100th birthday. The collection includes correspondence that documents the planning process, programs for events celebrating Ives in Miami and elsewhere, articles and reviews, photographs, and official documentation.
The Latin American and Caribbean photograph collection brings together various photographic materials owned by the University of Miami that depict these two regions. Currently, the collection holds a 1929 photograph album of the Bahamas made by Dr. and Adelande Dolley; a 1913 photograph album of Costa Rica, Panama, and Jamaica; a two-volume photograph album set of the Roxana Petroleum Corporation's activities in Mexico, dated 1920-1923; a set of 88 photographs of various parts of the Dominican Republic; and a collection of 739 photographs (most of which are in two photograph albums) from 1925 to the 1940s documenting the family and social life of Mr. & Mrs. E. W. Monroe and their three children while living in suburban Buenos Aires, Argentina, 1925 to 1929, and subsequently back at the family homestead in Monticello, Indiana.
Dr. Robert M. Levine (1941-2003) was the Gabelli Senior Scholar in the Arts and Sciences, Director of Latin American Studies, and professor of history at the University of Miami. Throughout his career, Dr. Levine exhibited a strong interest in Brazilian cultural and political history, Jewish Diasporas in Latin America, Cuban history, and Latin American history in general. His papers, donated to the University of Miami, reflect all of these interests in the form of video cassettes, periodicals, clippings, photographs, photocopies, notebooks, microfilm, microfiche, articles, and other materials.
Included in the collection are photocopies of a collection of records from the Jewish community of Curaçao in the 18th century; production materials and photographs pertaining to Dr. Levine's "Hotel Cuba" documentary on the Jewish Diaspora in Cuba; a dozen reels of microfilms of Brazilian newspapers from the 1930s; notes, photographs, and documentation from Dr. Levine's research on the Vargas period in Brazil; and two large, hand-drawn maps indicating Jewish establishments in the major commercial district of Old Havana during the pre-1959 period.
The collection documents Georgina Shelton's involvement in Lyceum and Lawn Tennis Club, Havana, Cuba are the most important ones in this collection. Materials also include articles about and by Hilda Perera, postcards of Mexico from 1920, programs from John J. Koubek Memorial Center, clippings, correspondence and newspaper from 1876.
The Cordovés & Bolaños Families Collection contains letters, clippings, documents, and photographs from Cuba's Wars of Independence and the Bay of Pigs Invasion.
The collection contains materials from the Cuban Wars of Independence, including signed letters from famous Cuban statesmen of the period. A separate series contains articles and photographs relating to the Bay of Pigs invasion, as well as photos of Fidel Castro in a meeting with Pedro Tinoco, then-president of the Central Bank of Venezuela. The third series contains genealogical materials, namely photographs, family trees, and investigative research for the Bolaños, Cordovés and Mestre families.
This collection contains records from the Bascom Palmer Eye Institute Department of Ophthalmology, administrative documents, development documents, materials from the Eye bank, Allied papers, Edward W. D. Norton's papers, general files, architectural designs and planning documents, papers from other notable faculty and administrators, newsletters, promotional materials, photographs, awards, plaques, ephemera, and audio-visual materials.
