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During the 1870s, William A. Adams maintained a blacksmithing shop close to the intersection of Walnut and Hickory Streets in Springfield, Mass. His trade ran from farriery to repairing iron work, wheels, and wagons, and situated as he was near the southern end of Watershops Pond, one of the industrial centers of the city, his customers ranged from local residents to manufacturing firms, the city, and the Armory.

The Adams account book contains approximately 150 pages containing brief records of blacksmithing work for a range of customers located in the immediate area. Among the more names mentioned are the grocers Perkins and Nye, W. and E.W. Pease Co., J. Kimberley and Co., and Common Councilman William H. Pinney and J. W. Lull, all of whom can be located within a few blocks of Adams’ shop.

The Hampshire-Franklin Central Labor Council is a democratically-elected body drawn from among AFL-CIO-affiliated unions in Hampshire and Franklin Counties, Mass. The Labor Council advocates for workers’ interests at the state and local level and works with its members and communities on social and economic justice issues.

This slender collection consists of the minutes of monthly meetings of HFCLC for three decades beginning in 1977, with some brief gaps in the latter years.

A poet and translator of Kashmiri descent, Agha Shahid was raised in a household where poetry was recited in Persian, Urdu, Hindi, and English. Born in New Delhi on February 4, 1949, he was educated at the University of Kashmir, Srinagar, and University of Delhi, earning earned a doctorate in English from Pennsylvania State University in 1984 and an MFA from the University of Arizona in 1985. The author of nine volumes of poetry, and widely anthologized, Ali was on faculty in the MFA Program at University of Massachusetts Amherst, when he died of brain cancer in December, 2001.

This small collection contains copies of Ali’s first two books, Bone-Sculpture (1972) and In Memory of Begum Akhtar (1979), a self-produced chapbook, and a rough manuscript of poems. All are inscribed to his colleague and friend Zabelle Stodola.

A tanner, currier, and shoemaker, Benjamin Akin was born into a prominent Bristol County family in Dartmouth, Massachusetts, on May 18, 1715. With a prolific and well-connected family and successful in his own business endeavors, Akin attained some stature in Dartmouth. First appointed town clerk in 1745, he filled that office from 1754-1770 and again from 1776-1780, adding the title “Esq.” to his name by the 1760s. During the Revolutionary years, he served on the town’s public safety committee. He died on April 10, 1802.

The Akin ledger offers insight into the fortunes of an 18th-century artisan during the most productive years of his life, as well as into the structure of a local community in southeastern Massachusetts. The ledger includes accounts of with customers for tanning and currying of calf and sheepskin, day-book entries, and accounts with the Town of Dartmouth for services performed at Town Clerk.

A merchant, town clerk, part-owner of many ships, and involved citizen, Ebenezer Akin lived nearly all of his 87 years in the town of Fairhaven, Mass.

This miscellaneous personal ledger includes documentation of Ebenezer Akin’s work as town clerk and includes accounts for ships he may have owned, entries made as an estate executor, accounts of expenditures for clothing and incidentals, and accounts of lot purchases and loans. The volume also contains genealogical information about the Blossom family of Bridgewater and the family of Benjamin and Eunice Akin, Ebenezer’s great-grandfather.

A long-time faculty member at UMass Amherst, Dean Albertson was a twentieth century U.S. historian with a specialty in oral history. A veteran of the Second World War, Albertson received his BA from University of California Berkeley (1942) and doctorate from Columbia (1955), joining the Department of History at UMass in 1965 after several years at Brooklyn College. Interested throughout his career in new methods in research and teaching history, he was author of books on Dwight Eisenhower, Claude Wickard (Franklin Roosevelt’s Secretary of Agriculture), and the student movements of the 1960s. Albertson died at his home in Longmeadow, Mass., on March 31, 1989, at the age of 68.

The Albertson Papers consist of the records of three summer institutes in history at UMass run during the summer 1966-1968, and funded by the National Defence Education Act (NDEA). Aimed at high school teachers of social sciences and history in western Massachusetts, the institutes were designed to provide in-service training and to expose teachers to newer material and techniques in teaching U.S. history. See also Dean Albertson’s collection of oral histories.

Born in Reading, Mass., on Sept 13, 1948, Jeff Albertson was still a student at Boston University, working on the staff of the BU News, when he was hired as a photographer by the Boston Globe. Reflecting the youth culture of the late 1960s and early 1970s, his photographs earned him positions with several prominent Boston alternative media outlets. Covering news, music, and the political interests of his generation, he served as photo editor for the Boston Phoenix and associate publisher for the Real Paper, and his work appeared regularly in mainstream publications such as Rolling Stone, People, and Boston Magazine. After becoming photo editor for the Medical Tribune News Group and moving to New York City in the 1980s, he met and married Charlene Laino. In later years, he became involved in early efforts to create websites devoted to issues surrounding health. Albertson died in 2008.

As a photographer, Albertson covered a wide range of subjects, with particular focus on music and social change. The many thousands of prints, slides, and negatives in the collection include stunning shots of Bruce Springsteen, Bonnie Raitt, Neil Young, Elvis Presley, Frank Sinatra, and John Lee Hooker, activists such as Abbie Hoffman, politicians, and public personalities. The collection also includes several photographic essays centered on poverty, old age, fire fighting in Boston, and prisoners in Massachusetts (among other issues) along with a wide array of landscapes and street scenes.

Mark Bartlett Aldrich was employed for many years at the Montague Rod and Reel Co. in Montague City. His grandfather, Eugene Bartlett, was the founder of the firm, which made split-bamboo fishing rods. He owned and operated Aldrich’s New England store from 1948 until selling it in 1962. Aldrich then sold cars for Spenser Brothers Ford in Northfield until he and his wife Edith moved to Florida in 1964.

The collection consists primarily of family records relating to the wedding, anniversaries, and funerals of Edith and Mark Aldrich. The Aldrich Family Papers are organized into three series: Wedding and Anniversaries, Funeral and Legal, and Personal.

Charles Paul Alexander, a professor and head of the Entomology Department from 1922 until 1959, was the international expert on the crane fly (Tipulidae). Alexander was born in Gloversville, New York in 1889, earned his B.S. (1913) and Ph.D. (1918) from Cornell University and joined the Massachusetts Agricultural College faculty in 1922. Alexander became the head of the Entomology Dept. and the Zoology Dept. in 1937 and then the dean of the the School of Science in 1945 and while at the University, classified nearly 13,000 species of crane fly. His personal collection of crane flies is held by the Smithsonian Institute. Alexander died in 1981.

The Charles Paul Alexander Papers contains mainly Alexander’s published reports on the crane fly as well as some of his lecture notes.

Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the small town of Alford in far southwestern Massachusetts was the site of significant marble quarrying operations. Highly profitable for several decades, the quarries began to decline in profitability by mid-century when new sites became accessible by rail. By the early 1870s, the Alford Marble Works stood as one of the last quarries in the region to remain active.

The Alford Marble Works ledger includes pay and work records for quarrymen during its last years of operation. Although the Marble Works is sometimes recorded as suspending activity in 1872, it is clear from these records that their work continued through the end of 1873.