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Fredericka Martin Papers

Call Number

ALBA.001

Date

1923-2019, inclusive

Creator

Martin, Fredericka I.

Extent

43.25 Linear Feet
in 39 record cartons, 4 manuscript boxes, 3 half manuscript boxes, and 1 oversize flat box

Language of Materials

Materials are in English and Spanish.

Abstract

Fredericka (Freddie) Imogene Martin (1905-1992) was writer, photographer, historian, and chief nurse and administrator of the American medical volunteers who served during the Spanish Civil War. Following the war, Martin worked on the Pribilof Islands in the Bering Sea, becoming spokesperson and advocate for the indigenous Aleut sealing community. She produced a series of articles and books on Aleut culture and history and edited an Aleut language dictionary. In 1950, Martin moved to Cuernavaca, Mexico, a cultural outpost for Spanish exiles and American expatriates. During the 1960s, she initiated research for a projected book on the participation of the American medical units in the Spanish Civil War. Her papers reveal her dedication to amassing the most comprehensive record on the role of medical volunteers in Spain. In addition to the diaries, journals, clippings, leaflets and other ephemera donated to Martin, the collection includes extensive correspondence between Martin and hundreds of medical and combat veterans from around the world. Materials in this collection also document her writing career, anthropological interests, and life in Mexico.

Biographical Note

Fredericka (Freddie) Imogene Martin (1905-1992) was a writer, historian, and nurse who served as a chief nurse and medical administrator during the Spanish Civil War. Martin was born in Cooperstown, New York on June 2, 1905. Her father died in an accident before her birth and when she was five her mother remarried. They moved to Oneonta, New York where Martin -- a spirited child by her own account -- grew up in a warm and indulgent family. Following high school, she lived and worked with the St. Margaret Episcopalian Order of Nuns in Jersey City, New Jersey, and in 1925 attended the affiliated nursing school of Christ Hospital. She graduated with honors and as a young woman practiced professionally in hospitals throughout New York City. As supervisor and head nurse she served on the staffs of Bellevue, Fordham, Lying-In Hospital, and Crotona Park Hospital. In 1929, Martin married English-born Alexander Cohen. During the early 1930s Martin became an active member in the nurses union, attended political sciences classes at the Labor Temple in New York City, and began developing her aptitude for foreign languages, learning Russian and Yiddish. In 1935, while visiting her in-laws in England she traveled to Germany and Russia. Her time abroad awakened her to the growing threat of Fascism. When she returned, a nurses' union colleague encouraged Martin to become active in the then nascent Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy. Initially organized by a group of doctors and concerned citizens to provide medical supplies, food and clothing to the beleaguered Spanish Republic, by late 1936 the Medical Bureau was recruiting personnel to send to Spain as well.

On January 16, 1937 Martin embarked on the S.S. Parisas part of the first American medical unit to Spain. Under the leadership of surgeon Dr. Edward Barsky, Martin served as chief nurse and administrator of the American Hospital division. The first unit traveled with four ambulances, 12 tons of medical supplies and all the necessary equipment to outfit a 50-bed hospital. During her period of service, Martin supervised the work of fifty-four nurses, aided in the organization of six American hospitals on four fronts, and helped set up a mobile operating unit. She also organized literacy classes and trained Spanish women to assume some of the nursing and hospital administration duties. Her commanding bearing (at nearly 5'9" she was a full head taller than most of her staff), authoritative mien, and maternal attention to both the patients in the ward and the nurses under her management, earned her the affectionate appellation of "Ma."

In February 1938 Martin returned to the United States to conduct a yearlong national speaking tour, recruiting personnel and raising funds to keep the medical volunteers in Spain supplied. During the West Coast stretch of her tour Martin shared the stage with a representative of the Catalan government, and writer Dorothy Parker. Following her tour, Martin enrolled in the Public Administration program at New York University. Her studies were cut short when, in April 1939, she was invited to establish and serve as superintendent of a hospital in Greenbelt, Maryland -- a federally funded housing initiative created under the Resettlement Administration.

Martin's union with Cohen ended in an amicable divorce in the late 1930s and she married her second husband, Dr. Samuel Berenberg in 1940. In 1941 Berenberg took a medical assignment on the Pribilof Islands 300 miles off the coast of Alaska in the Bering Sea. With Martin's assistance, Berenberg managed the Fish and Wildlife Hospital on St. Paul Island. Martin's work brought her into contact with the indigenous Aleut sealing community, non-citizen wards of the U.S. Department of the Interior. Stirred by their struggle for self-determination and freedom from decades of discrimination and exploitation (first under the Russians and later the American government), Martin spent the next ten years of her life advocating on behalf of the community. She came to be regarded as an expert on the Aleut, producing a series of articles and books including The Hunting of the Silver Fleece, and Sea Bears: the Story of the Fur Seal, editing an Aleut language dictionary, and translating numerous manuscripts and articles.

With the bombing of Pearl Harbor, Martin and Berenberg returned to Greenbelt with their newborn daughter Tobyanne (named for Toby Jensky and Anne Taft, two nursing colleagues who had served with Martin in Spain). They settled in New York City where Berenberg became the chief of the Department of Health's Child Health Services and Martin embarked on her career as a writer. Following the dissolution of their marriage, Martin moved with the 9-year-old Tobyanne in 1950 to Cuernavaca, Mexico. A cultural outpost for Spanish exiles and American expatriates, Cuernavaca proved to be a congenial home for Martin. For the next 40 years she supported herself as translator, a travel book writer, and an instructor at a Spanish language institute, working with her former Medical Bureau colleague and fellow expatiate Lini (Fuhr) de Vries.

When Spanish Civil War combat veteran Arthur Landis published The Abraham Lincoln Brigadein 1967, Martin protested the lack of coverage given to the medical units and resolved to write a separate history on the Medical Bureau volunteers. In a letter to the Rabinowitz Foundation (08/20/1968) requesting funding for this project, Martin wrote:

"To tell the story of [American Medical Bureau] Field Units, their history must begin with the account of the organization and activities of the Medical Bureau in the US, the story of the Field Units at work in Spain, and their relationships and work with different nationalities and Spanish military and civilian organizations, and finally a summary of the contributions of AMB saving the lives of civilians and combatants."

When Spanish Civil War combat veteran Arthur Landis published The Abraham Lincoln Brigadein 1967, Martin protested the lack of coverage given to the medical units and resolved to write a separate history on the Medical Bureau volunteers. In a letter to the Rabinowitz Foundation (08/20/1968) requesting funding for this project, Martin wrote: To tell the story of [American Medical Bureau] Field Units, their history must begin with the account of the organization and activities of the Medical Bureau in the US, the story of the Field Units at work in Spain, and their relationships and work with different nationalities and Spanish military and civilian organizations, and finally a summary of the contributions of AMB saving the lives of civilians and combatants.This ambitious task would occupy her for the remainder of her life. Working chiefly from her home in Cuernavaca, Martin set out to amass the most comprehensive record on the role of the medical units in Spain. She enlisted the aid of former veterans, friends, librarians and archivists to obtain books and articles, locate missing volunteers, conduct research, and contribute primary materials and financial aid. She corresponded with hundreds of medical and combat veterans from around the world, sending questionnaires and accruing personal data. In the early 1970s she traveled through Europe, Israel and the United States meeting with former Medical Bureau colleagues, conducting interviews, visiting research repositories, and collecting memorabilia and materials for her history. She traveled to Spain in 1972 to conduct research and revisited Villa Paz, the lavish estate that during the war had served as a front-line hospital.

Although Martin produced abundant notes and drafted several chapters, struggles with money, poor clerical assistance, and failing health hampered her in her efforts to complete her Medical Bureau history. By 1982 her attention turned from her writing project to finding a suitable repository to administer the materials she had so assiduously collected and maintained in her cramped Cuernavaca cottage. In 1986, in recognition for her contributions to the Aleut, Martin was made honorary lifetime citizen of St. Paul Island, and was awarded an honorary doctorate by the University of Alaska. On October 4, 1992 Martin died in Cuernavaca. She was 87 years old.

Arrangement

This collection is arranged into ten series.

Series I is arranged alphabetically by country and within each country by personal name. Series II, III, and V are arranged alphabetically. Series IV is arranged alphabetically by correspondent, with unidentified incoming and outgoing correspondence arranged at the end of the series. See Scope and Content Note regarding the arrangement of Series VII. Series VIII-X have not been arranged by an archivist.

  1. Series I. Medical Personnel: Biographical Files and Correspondence, 1936-1988
  2. Series II. Medical Subject Files, 1937-1987
  3. Series III. Combat Volunteers: Biographical Files and Correspondence, 1937-1987
  4. Series IV. General Correspondence, 1937-1985
  5. Series V. General Subject Files, 1937-1990
  6. Series VI. Artifacts: Textiles and Pin, 1937
  7. Series VII. Duplicates, 1936-1984
  8. Series VIII: Unprocessed Materials
  9. Series IX. 2015 Accretion
  10. Series X. 2020 Accretion
  11. Series XI. 2021 Accretion
  12. Series XII. 2024 Accretion

Scope and Contents

The Fredericka Martin Papers (dated 1926-2019) contains materials created and collected by Martin both during and after her medical aid services in Spain during the Spanish Civil War. Materials include correspondence, questionnaires, diaries, journals, personal essays, newspaper clippings, artifacts, published materials, and leaflets and other ephemera documenting Martin's personal research; the experiences of combat volunteers, especially their lives as veterans; and the work of various medical units from the International Brigade, including the Medical Bureau to Aid Spanish Democracy. This collection also contains personal correspondence with researchers, political figures, and other friends. In addition to materials concerning her experiences in the Spanish Civil War, this collection also documents Martin's personal life, her immigration to Mexico, and her career as a writer through correspondence, ephemera, newspaper clippings, and manuscripts in various stages.

Subjects

Conditions Governing Access

Materials are open without restrictions.

Conditions Governing Use

Any rights (including copyright and related rights to publicity and privacy) held by the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives (ALBA), were transferred to New York University in November 2000 by the ALBA Board of Governors. Permission to publish or reproduce materials in this collection must be secured from the Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives. For more information, special.collections@nyu.edu, 212-998-2596.

Preferred Citation

Identification of item, date; Fredericka Martin Papers; ALBA 001; box number; folder number; Tamiment Library/Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives, New York University.

Immediate Source of Acquisition

Donated by TobyAnne Berenberg in 1991, with further accretions in 2011-2023.

Custodial History

The Fredericka Martin Collection was donated to the Abraham Lincoln Brigade Archives in 1991 by Martin's daughter Tobyanne Berenberg, and initially deposited at Brandeis University. This collection came to New York University in January 2001 as part of the original acquisition of ALBA collections, formerly housed at Brandeis University.

Berenberg donated additional materials to this collection in 2011, 2012, January 2015, January 2020, and December 2023; the accession numbers associated with these gifts are 2011.115, 2012. 041, 2012.058, 2012.080, 2015.030, 2020.002, and 2024.010, respectively. In December 2021, additional folders were donated by Jessica Kraus; the accession number associated with this gift is 2021.090.

Separated Materials

Photographs were separated from Fredericka Martin's manuscript materials in the course of processing and established as a separate collection, the Fredericka Martin Photographs (ALBA PHOTO 001).

Related Materials

Fredericka Martin Photograph Collection (ALBA PHOTO 001)

Fredericka Martin. University of Alaska Fairbanks, Rasmuson Library, Oral History Collection (H86-118; H90-10-11)

Fredericka Martin Papers. Nettie Lee Benson Latin American Collection. The University of Texas at Austin

Toby Jensky and Philip Schachter Papers (ALBA 055)

Edward K. Barsky Papers (ALBA 125)

Frances Patai Papers (ALBA 131)

Collection processed by

Jessica Weglein and Jennifer Waxman, December 2004; Michael D'Ambrosio and Gail Malmgreen, 2011-2012

About this Guide

This finding aid was produced using ArchivesSpace on 2024-01-29 14:50:33 -0500.
Language: Finding aid written in English

Processing Information

Information about the original arrangement and description decisions, as well as the physical interventions taken on this collection in the course of processing have not yet been recorded. In 2016, an accretion to the collection was added to Series VIII. Unprocessed Materials; these materials were described by an archivist based on the donor's existing notations and were not arranged. In 2020 and 2024, additional accretions were rehoused in archival boxes and folders, and incorporated into the collection as Series X. 2020 Accretion and Series XII. 2024 Accretion, respectively. At this time, materials from the 2015 accretion were transferred from Series VIII to Series IX.

Revisions to this Guide

January 2020: Record updated by Rachel Searcy to reflect 2020 accretion
December 2021: Record updated by Rachel Searcy to reflect 2021 accretion
January 2024: Record updated by Rachel Searcy to reflect 2024 accretion

Edition of this Guide

This version was derived from ALBA #1 Martin.doc

Repository

Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Tamiment Library and Robert F. Wagner Labor Archives
Elmer Holmes Bobst Library
70 Washington Square South
2nd Floor
New York, NY 10012