The Marion C. Neprud Papers include correspondence, reports, speeches, writings, clippings, minutes and agenda, newsletters, membership lists, job bulletins and descriptions, notes, press releases, pamphlets, publications, and other miscellaneous material. The bulk of the collection relates to her professional career, particularly her activities regarding housing, management, and community services. It is organized into six series. Four of these correspond to employers--the Community Chautauquas Inc., the Ohio League of Women Voters, the International Institute of Milwaukee, and the Farm Security Administration. There is also a correspondence and a general subject series. Notably absent from the collection are materials on her job as a student pastor, her residence in China, and her activities as a WAVE.
The general correspondence, 1914-1966 (primarily 1923-1966), contains information about Neprud's personal and professional life. It includes routine personal correspondence with family and friends and business correspondence which relates to the activities she performed during her various jobs. Much of the nusiness correspondence focuses on her work in the housing field, and one segment of it traces the formation and early development of the National Association of Community Managers, an organization for which Neprud was secretary-treasurer. The specific correspondence is composed of travel letters documenting the overseas trips of two of her friends: Monsignor L.G. Ligutti, a priest interested in the problems of low income families, who recorded his impressions of social and economic conditions observed abroad particularly in South America and Italy; and Charl Ormond Williams, former president of the National Education Association, who detailed her trips to England, Denmark, Greenland, and Russia during which she met with Eleanor Roosevelt, Adlai Stevenson, and Madame Nikolai Aleksandrovich Bulganin. This entire series is arranged chronologically.
The Community Chautauquas Inc. series give a brief account of her activities for that organization, and includes correspondence and reports of advance advertisers with lists of those who signed contracts.
The Ohio League of Women Voters' files include study programs, fact sheets, press releases, correspondence, and miscellaneous other materials. They contain information on their various study programs on political, educational and social topics and their techniques and efforts to communicate these to the general public; on their internal organizational assignments and duties; and on their general activities.
The International Institute of Milwaukee files contain membership lists, minutes, reports, writings, and other miscellaneous material. They document activities such as nationality months and plays and also reveal the Institute's interest in adult education. There is also a large amount of membership lists for the various nationality clubs, councils, and women's groups which were involved with the Institute.
The Farm Security Administration series is incomplete and does not document all of Neprud's activities in that organization. Rather, it focuses on two specific, though related, programs: the training school for community managers and the FSA-sponsored homestead projects. Included is a reference manual for community managers containing general information on organizing, developing, and managing a community. The bulk of this series pertains to various homestead projects, which were housing settlements managed as non-profit corporations under FSA guidance until such time as settlers could manage and purchase their own property. Reports, memoranda, newsletters, and other miscellaneous materials document their operation and administration. Several of the monthly reports include lists containing a demographic breakdown of those persons living on the projects.
The bulk of the remainder of the collection pertains to Neprud's work in the housing field and includes information on the maintenance, management, and community services provided for federal government housing projects. Rather than attempt to follow the several government reorganizations and file similar materials under each agency, all this material has been combined in one general subject file. It includes agenda and minutes, clippings, newsletters, notes, pamphlets and publications, press releases, reports, speeches, writings, and some miscellaneous material and is arranged alphabetically by subject. Also included is a folder of biographical information.
