Finding Aid for the Mildred Berryman papers 1937-1999 LSC.2170
Finding aid prepared by Stacy Wood, 2013; Sabrina Ponce, 2017; machine-readable finding aid created by Caroline Cubé.
UCLA Library Special Collections
Online finding aid last updated 03 January 2018.
Room A1713, Charles E. Young Research Library
Box 951575
Los Angeles, CA, 90095-1575
(310) 825-4988
spec-coll@library.ucla.edu
Title: Mildred Berryman papers
Identifier/Call Number: LSC.2170
Contributing Institution:
UCLA Library Special Collections
Language of Material:
English
Physical Description:
0.2 linear feet
(1 half box)
Date (inclusive): 1937-1999
Abstract: Mildred J. Berryman was a researcher, writer, photographer, and stenographer based in Salt Lake City, Utah. As a lesbian member
of the Church of Latter-day Saints, she did research concerning lesbian and gay communities in Salt Lake City, Utah. This
collection contains her unpublished thesis "The Psychological Phenomena of the Homosexual," research, and relevant materials.
Physical Location: Stored off-site at SRLF. All requests to access special collections material must be made in advance using the request button
located on this page.
Creator:
Berryman, Mildred, 1901-1972
COLLECTION STORED OFF-SITE AT SRLF: Open for research. All requests to access special collections material must be made in
advance using the request button located on this page.
Conditions Governing Reproduction and Use
Property rights to the physical object belong to the UCLA Library Special Collections. Literary rights, including copyright,
are retained by the creators and their heirs. It is the responsibility of the researcher to determine who holds the copyright
and pursue the copyright owner or his or her heir for permission to publish where The UC Regents do not hold the copyright.
[Identification of item], Mildred Berryman papers (Collection 2170). UCLA Library Special Collections, Charles E. Young Research
Library, University of California, Los Angeles.
Gift of LeVern and Bonnie Bullough, circa 1990. Small amount of additional material donated at later unknown date. Transferred
from the Mazer Archives to UCLA in 2013.
This collection is part of an outreach and collection-building partnership between the
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives , the
UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW) , and the
UCLA Library .
Processed by Stacy Wood, 2013. Description enhanced and further physical processing completed by Sabrina Ponce in 2017.
The
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archive at UCLA is an outreach and collection-building partnership between the
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives , the
UCLA Center for the Study of Women (CSW) , and the
UCLA Library . These collections expand the pool of primary source materials available to researchers and to the community at large. This
partnership was initiated by CSW and is funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities (NEH) to inventory, organize,
preserve, and digitize more than eighty Mazer collections pertaining to lesbian and feminist activism and writings.
UCLA Catalog Record ID:
7346245
Mildred J. Berryman was born September 22, 1901 in Salt Lake City, Utah. She was the third and last child of Richard Gordon
and Mildred Stokes Berryman. Until 1910, the Berrymans moved residences almost yearly, but after Mildred's mother passed away
that year, the family settled and Richard worked tending bar at Hanak and Rumph which later became the Opera Bar. Mildred
Berryman graduated from public secondary schooling and entered Westminster College in Salt Lake City on October 11, 1916.
It was here that she met and befriended Theodora Anderson, who would later become her sister-in-law. Mildred expressed her
desire to embark on a study of lesbianism, which the school refused to allow. Mildred temporarily ceased her relationship
with Westminster until she married, "to try and escape her homosexuality." She soon left her husband.
In 1920, Mildred got a job as a stenographer for McLaren, Goode and Company and had her first lesbian relationship with a
music teacher named Mae Anderson. Their relationship lasted a year. Mae Anderson would eventually become a faculty member
of the Latter-day Saints School of Music, teaching alongside Willard Weihe. Weihe was the President of the Bohemian Club,
a social group for homosexuals in Salt Lake City founded in 1886 and which Mildred Berryman would eventually join in the 1920s.
Berryman joined the LDS Church around 1920. She received a Patriarchal Blessing from Mormon patriarch Richard G. Lambert in
1921. After another failed heterosexual marriage attempt, Berryman met Edith Mary Chapman in 1924. They lived together for
four years in Edith's home, which she later turned into a boarding house for lesbians.
It was around this time that Berryman began working as a photographer, processing and taking photographs for the Superior
Photo Company. She moved back home with her family in 1929 and Berryman resumed work on her thesis on homosexuality that she
had started years earlier. Mildred gathered data for her case studies over the next several years, with people she had met
primarily through the Bohemian Club of Salt Lake City. In her study, she included data on 24 lesbians (including herself)
and nine gay men. By 1936, Berryman was doing so well as a photographer that she was able to open up her own studio in her
family residence. That same year, Mildred met her next companion, known only as Z in case study 24. Mildred and Z were together
for twelve years.
Mildred stopped working on her thesis in 1939, titled the Psychological Phenomena of the Homosexual, which she had hoped to
turn in to Temple Bar College in Seattle, Washington in order to obtain a PhD. Temple Bar College, now defunct, is thought
to have been a college operating through correspondence courses. Mildred continued her work as a photographer until 1941,
but in 1940 her and her father opened the Berryman Menage at their residence, where they had a mineral showroom and lapidary
shop which sold mineralogical specimens collected in Utah and Arizona. The first ad for the Berryman Menage appeared in the
October 1940 issue of the Mineralogist. Berryman had published an article on a field trip of the Utah Mineralogical Society
to the Wilcat Mountains a year earlier in the same publication. She published a second article in the magazine in July 1943
entitled "A Utah Locality."
During World Ward II, Berryman worked at a small arms defense plant at Hill Air Force Base, where she met 34 year old Ruth
Uckerman Dempsey, a Mormon housewife who was working at the same plant. In 1943, when Mildred and her ailing father moved
up to Woods Cross, a rural area just north of Salt Lake City, Ruth decided to move in with them. At the end of the second
world war, Ruth and Mildred (who had adopted the nickname Barrie), opened their own manufacturing company called Berryman
Novelty Manufacturing. Ruth and Barrie stayed together for thirty three years. Mildred J. Berryman died on November 7, 1972
at the age of 71. Her obituary states that she was a member of the Bountiful Community Church, past president of the Business
and Professional Women Organization and past president of the American Legion Auxiliary. Ruth sent Mildred's research to her
daughter, and parts of the study were published in Signs: Journal of Women in Culture and Society in 1978. After Mildred's
death, Ruth moved back to Idaho to live with her son Clyde, She was buried in same cemetery as Mildred in 1979.
This biography draws heavily from "Mildred Jessie Barrie Berryman" by Connell O'Donovan, accessible at: http://www.connellodonovan.com/berryman.pdf
This collection contains Mildred J. Berryman's research and drafts of her unpublished thesis entitled "The Psychological Phenomena
of the Homosexual." Also included are correspondence and other notes about Berryman's work.
Materials arranged by type.
Subjects and Indexing Terms
Berryman, Mildred, 1901-1972 -- Archives.
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archive at UCLA.
June L. Mazer Lesbian Archives.
Lesbians--Utah--Salt Lake City--Archives.
Box 1, Folder 1
Box 1, Folders 2-3
Box 1, Folder 4
Box 1, Folder 6