This collection of tourism brochures, pamphlets, maps and newspaper clippings documents the islands of the West Indies. The collection encompasses the Greater and Lesser Antilles, as well as the islands and nations of South America, and includes Cuba, Jamaica, Trinidad and Tobago and Surinam.
The Bryant West Indies Slides Collection, Ccirca 1940-1981, contains 35mm slides of various islands in the Caribbean as well as Florida and Venezuela. The slides were taken on collecting trips sponsored by the William L. Bryant Foundation, where books, music and art indigenous to the regions were gathered. They are organized by geographical location. The content of the slides vary and include landscapes, religion, houses, people and everyday life.
The West Indies photograph album, circa 1920, contains forty-two photographs taken on a cruise to the West Indies aboard the S.S. Megantic. The album features scenes from Havana, Cuba; Venezuela; Jamaica; San Juan, Puerto Rico; Port of Spain, Trinidad; St. Thomas; Saint-Pierre, Martinique; Cristóbal; Panama; and Chimborazo, Barbados. There are photographs of the S.S. Megantic, El Templete in Havana, Cuba; Castillo del Morro in Santiago de Cuba, Cuba; and the Gatún Locks, Pedro Miguel Locks, Miraflores Locks; and the Culebra Cut taken while traveling through the Panama Canal. The S.S. Megantic launched in 1908. The ship provided service between Liverpool and Quebec City, Canada from 1909 until 1914, when it was briefly put on the Liverpool-New York City service. The Megantic served as a troop ship from 1917 until the end of World War I. Throughout the 1920s and early 1930s, the Megantic was used in the winter for cruising from New York to the Caribbean. The Megantic was taken out of service in 1931 and sold to shipbreakers in Osaka, Japan to be scrapped in 1933.
The William J. Bryant Archaeological Artifacts collection consists of ceramic fragments (sherds), bones, stone tools, and shells excavated by William J. Bryant or his associates from sites in Florida, the Virgin Islands and the West Indies. This collection is useful to anthropological and historical research on Caribbean and Floridian artifacts. William Junior Bryant, or June, was born May 4, 1904 in Springfield Vermont. He graduated from Dartmouth College in 1925 and started working for Bryant Chucking Grinding Co., a machine tool company founded by his father, William Leroy Bryant in 1928, eventually becoming president of the company in 1946. Bryant started the William L. Bryant Foundation in 1950, named for his father, which funded excavations in Florida, Spain and the West Indies. The foundation collected these items from sites in Florida, the Virgin Islands, and the West Indies. William J. Bryant died in 1998 and the foundation dissolved in 2005.
