Miriam M. Maxwell Family Oral History Collection

The Miriam M. Maxwell Family Oral History Collection is a collection of sound recordings with copies of a manuscript songbook and a transcript of an oral history interview. The collection has six 10-inch tapes compiled during the 1960s, mostly in California.

Sound recordings dated 1964-1969 include youth groups singing civil rights songs in California; the singing group Up With People performing in Enid, Oklahoma; a radio broadcast of a sermon on civil rights by Rev. C. A. McClain, Burbank, California; stories of Peace Corps workers recorded near Accra, Ghana; an oral history of Ghana by Prince Modupe; and local music in Ghana.

In addition, the Miriam M. Maxwell Family Oral History Collection features interviews, sound recordings, sermons and oral histories. Regarding the interview, Maxwell interviewed her family members Gertrude Johnson; age 86, about her emigration from England and homesteading in Penticton, British Columbia. She interviewed Mary K. Anderson and Lloyd Lewis Anderson, Estherville, Iowa; and Ruby Nobel Gardner, Estherville, Iowa, on homesteading in Kansas, South Dakota, and Iowa (with partial transcript). She made tape recordings of family songs, some perfomed by her father, Stanley Dale Gardner. Collection includes a photocopy of a songbook (ca. 1900?) kept by her grandfather Omen R. Gardner.

The collection is housed at the Library of Congress.