Archives West Finding Aid

The Ruth Mountaingrove collection offers researchers a rich resource into the motivations, struggles and daily life in feminist and lesbian intentional communities in Oregon. This collection documents the creative determinations of these women through multiple avenues including writing, publishing, music and photography.

Series I: Correspondence includes incoming and outgoing letters, both personal and business related from 1946 – 1998. Incoming and outgoing correspondence is arranged alphabetically by last name (or first name if no last name is found). Some correspondents have their own folders when the volume of correspondence warrants it, while letter folders (eg. "D") contain many correspondents with first or last names beginning with that letter. The third subseries contains correspondents other than Ruth Mountaingrove and unknown or unintelligible correspondents. See also the Series IX: New Woman Press, X: Blatent Image, and XI: Ovular Workshops for content specific correspondence.

Series II: Diaries, Journals and Appointment Books contains diaries, journals and appointment books by Ruth Mountaingrove. There are a total of 40 diaries arranged by date (1958 – 1999) within 15 boxes. The strength of this series lies in Ruth's almost weekly entries during the years 1980 – 1999. The entries are of a personal and a professional nature. The journals and appointment books are mostly very small little notepads full of notes, appointments and some writings – including personal reflections and poetry. The entire date range of this series is 1958 – 1999.

Series III: Literary Manuscripts: The first four subseries (A-D) consist of manuscripts written by Ruth Mountaingrove and include published and unpublished full length and fragments of poetry, short stories, essays, notes and ideas, and dream narratives. They are arranged alphabetically by title. The remaining subseries E contains of various types of manuscripts written by other authors.

Series IV: Personal and Financial Information contains personal records, tax and banking information and other financial records of Ruth Mountaingrove, Jean Mountaingrove, and Ruth's former husband Bernard Ikeler. This series does not contain financial records of any of the intentional communities where Ruth lived. Highlights of this series are Ruth Mountaingrove's personal timeline covering the years 1970 – 1985 and lease and other agreements between Ruth and Jean Mountaingrove covering photographs and property. Please see also Series IX: New Woman Press, Series X: The Blatent Image, and Series XI: Ovular Workshops for more financial records that are specific to those subjects.

Series V: Music is comprised of music, songbooks, music festival and recording information. The first two subseries are separated into two categories: music written by Ruth Moutaingrove and music written by others. Subseries C-D includes drafts, submissions and final copies of the Turned on Woman Songbook and the Womenspirit Songbook. Subseries E includes information about music festivals and Subseries F contains other music publications. Subseries G contains various recording related documents.

Series VI: Art and Photography collects together Ruth's photography catalogues, notes and receipts, and lists of her donated photographs, contact sheets and negatives. Also included are flyers and speech drafts for Ruth's photography exhibits, other photographic information and some drawings. There are no actual photographs in this series. See Series XVI: Photographs for the actual prints and negatives.

Series VII: Publications is a collection of mostly lesbian, feminist and women's publications, and is organized alphabetically by title. Some of Ruth's published letters, articles, photographs and poetry can be found in these publications.

Series VIII: Ephemera is a very important series for research into communications among women, women's groups, lesbian individuals and groups, and intentional communities. The material consists of flyers, brochures, newsletters and invitations and they are organized alphabetically.

Series IX: New Woman Press is comprised of the working materials generated by New Woman Press, a publishing company started by Ruth and her co-publishers at Rootworks. Material includes correspondence, financial and business information.

Series X: The Blatent Image is a publication begun by Ruth with the help of Tee Corinne and others that published images and stories that partly came out of the Women's Ovular Photography Workshops. Subseries A contains correspondence from participants of the Ovular Workshops and submissions to the publication. Subseries B includes the financial and business part of the series. Subseries C includes drafts and final versions of the publication.

Series XI: Ovular Workshops contains the correspondence, business information, working papers, newspaper clippings and contact listings from the women's photograph workshops which Ruth Mountaingrove and others ran for six years at Rootworks. Some photographs from those workshops can be found in various publications in Series VII: Publications, and Series X: The Blatent Image. Many of the original contact sheets, negatives, slides and photographs from these workshops are listed under Series XVI: Photographs.

Series XII: New Hope Workshop was a group Ruth worked with in New Hope, Pennsylvania. Material consists of notes, press releases, newsletters and draft material.

Series XIII: Newspaper Clippings/Articles contains articles that mention Ruth and/or Jean Mountiangrove, the Ovular Workshops, intentional communities, Ruth's photography and other related subjects. Material is arranged by date.

Series XIV: Yearbooks and Scrapbooks consists of yearbooks from Ruth's college education and scrapbooks put together by Ruth.

Series XV: Oversize contains oversize drawings, songbook covers, publications and posters.

Series XVI: Photographs contains photographs, contact sheets, negatives and slides. Subseries are organized by type (eg. negative, slide, contact sheet) and then within type by size (eg. 8x10, 5x7). Color photographs are separated from black and white photographs. The photographer is also named whenever possible. The bulk of the photographs depict daily and ceremonial life on lesbian lands, and the photographers and subjects taking part in the Women's Photography Ovulars.

Subseries A contains binders of photographs, negatives and contact sheets; Ruth's original arrangement and numbering scheme was preserved.

Subseries B includes negatives and slides. Boxes 26 – 29 are 4x5 slides kept in Ruth's original alphabetical/subject order.

Subseries C-D are contact sheets that are separated into black and white and color categories.

Subseries E-J contains photographs that are separated by size (8x10, 5x7, and small) and color.

Subseries K consists of two different photo notebooks.

Subseries L contains Ruth Mountaingrove's exhibit prints.

Series XVII: Audio and Video contains compact disk recordings of Ruth reciting her poetry, singing songs, and one disk contains jpeg pictures of a photograph exhibit.