Eleanor Ernst Timberg papers
Scope and Contents
The Eleanor Ernst Timberg Papers consist of diaries that span the years from 1930-94 (early diaries include material from her Smith College days) and Touch Toy company's semi-annual newsletters from the years 1977-97.
Dates of Materials
- 1905 - 2004
Creator
- Timberg, Eleanor Ernst (Person)
Language of Materials
English
Conditions Governing Access
This collection is open for research use without restriction beyond the standard terms and conditions of Smith College Special Collections.
Conditions Governing Use
The Sophia Smith Collection owns copyright to the unpublished works by the creator of this collection. Copyright to materials created by others may be owned by those individuals or their heirs or assigns. Permission must be obtained to publish reproductions or quotations beyond "fair use." It is the responsibility of the researcher to identify and satisfy the holders of all copyrights.
Biographical / Historical
Eleanor Ernst was born in New York City in 1913. She graduated from Horace Mann School, received a B.A. from Smith College in 1934, and a certificate in political science from the London School of Economics in 1935. She worked as secretary to the editor of Encyclopedia Britannica from 1935-38; for Louis Finkelstein, chancellor of the Jewish Theological Seminary from 1938-40; and conducted weekly radio programs on Jewish holidays for WNYX. In 1940 she married Sigmund Timberg, a lawyer who worked in the Franklin D. Roosevelt administration. She knew Alger Hiss and her diaries were subpoenaed by Joseph McCarthy to support his contention that certain social events she attended were actually meetings for Communist-front organizations. She co-founded Touch Toys, a business that makes surgical dolls for children and toys for people with developmental disabilities, in 1972.
Extent
8.688 linear feet (10 containers)
Abstract
Editor; Special education activist; Secretary; Volunteer. The papers consist of diaries that span the years from 1930-94 (early diaries include material from her Smith College days) and Touch Toy company's semi-annual newsletters from the years 1977-97.
Arrangement
This collection has been added to over time in multiple "accessions." An accession is a group of materials received from the same source at approximately the same time.
Immediate Source of Acquisition
The papers were donated to the Sophia Smith Collection by Eleanor Ernst Timberg in 1997, Bernard Timberg from 2002 to 2008, and Roz Timberg in 2009.
Processing Information
Processed in 1997.
Processing Information
Between September 2022 and February 2023, Smith College Special Collections renumbered many boxes to eliminate duplicate numbers within collections in order to improve researcher experience. A full crosswalk of old to new numbers is available.
- Title
- Finding Aid to the Eleanor Ernst Timberg papers
- Date
- 2008
- Description rules
- Describing Archives: A Content Standard
- Language of description
- English
- Script of description
- Latin
Revision Statements
- 07/26/2017: This resource was modified by the ArchivesSpace Preprocessor developed by the Harvard Library (https://github.com/harvard-library/archivesspace-preprocessor)
- 2017-07-26T17:48:19-04:00: This record was migrated from InMagic DB Textworks to ArchivesSpace.
- 2019-11-01: Added .5 page paper box inventory
Repository Details
Part of the Sophia Smith Collection of Women's History Repository
