Archive

After witnessing the woolen mill he had built in West Stockbridge go up in flames, Peregrine Green Comstock (1808-1892) rebuilt his operation on the Williams River as a paper mill. For decades thereafter, he prospered as a paper manufacturer, raising a large family with his wife Elizabeth. Comstock died of gastroenteritis on Aug. 6, 1892 at the age of 84.

Comstock’s account book, 197pp., includes records of transactions of a Berkshire County paper manufacturer in the third quarter of the nineteenth century. Among Comstocks’s clients are Monument Mills, M.S. Hovey and Co., Smith Paper Co., Berkshire Woolen Co., Owen Paper Co., and Kniffin and Bro., and the book includes records of labor, rents, cash, board, and the exchange of goods, along with entries for calendar rolls, paper, wrap, weaving yards, sacks, dyestuffs, and lumber.

Although a Friends’ meeting met in Concord, N.H., from 1805 to 1840, the current Monthly Meeting dates to 1953, when it was accorded status as a preparative meeting under Weare Monthly. It has been part of Dover Quarter since it was set off on its own in 1967.

The records of the Concord Friends Meeting contain a relatively complete set of minutes from 1967 through 2024, and newsletter starting in about 1992.

An historian and archivist from northern Virginia, Brian A. Conley spent years studying the cemeteries of his native Fairfax County.

The collection contains final and draft copies of Conley’s Guide to the Cemeteries of Fairfax County, Virginia (1994), along with a small number of printed works on Virginia cemeteries or other resources used in his research.

The US Department of Agriculture was already actively engaged in water control and management issues prior to the enactment of the Flood Control Acts of 1936 and 1944. Pursuant to the 1936 Act, and the extensive flooding of 1936 and 1938, the USDA conducted an extensive survey of the Connecticut River Watershed.

Issued by the U.S. Department of Agriculture in 1950 in compliance with the Flood Control Act of 1936, these flood reports present the results of a survey and the outline of a program of land use and management developed to alleviate flood and sediment problems in Connecticut River Watershed. The collection includes both a preliminary draft (in typescript) and completed report and appendix of the survey, with the final reports marked “Confidential. For Departmental review only.”

Established in Northampton, Mass., in May 1908, the Connecticut Valley Breeders Association was part of the burgeoning Progressive-era movement to apply scientific principles to improve agriculture. In its charter, the CVBA announced the ambitious goal of promoting “the live stock development of the Connecticut Valley and as far as possible the entire New England states in every way as affecting its educational, economic, legislative, health or other influences.” Led by Oren C. Burt of Easthampton, and George E. Taylor of Shelburne (its first President), it sponsored lectures and other information sessions that attracted as many as 500 attendees at its peak of popularity. Although the organization appears to have waned in the period of the First World War, it was revived in 1925 and four years later, the new Hampshire Herd Improvement Association assumed many of its functions.

This slender ledger records the minutes of the Connecticut Valley Breeders Association from its founding in 1908 through about 1930. In addition to the constitution and by-laws of both the CVBA and HHIA, the ledger includes minutes of the organizations’ meetings from 1908-1930, with a gap from 1916-1925. The collection is accompanied by a U.S. Department of Agriculture pamphlet, Cow Testers Handbook (1924).

Connecticut Valley Quarterly Meeting is one of eight quarterlies currently comprising the New England Yearly Meeting of the Society of Friends. In 1935, the Connecticut Valley Association of Friends was formed as “a temporary organization to promote fellowship among… meetings in and adjacent to the Connecticut Valley, but which was otherwise unaffiliated.” At the time of the general unification of Wilburite and Gurneyite meetings in New England in 1944, this Association was accepted into New England Yearly Meeting as a quarterly.

The record of Connecticut Valley Quarterly Meeting are an important resource for documenting the post-World War II growth of the Society of Friends in western Massachusetts and Connecticut. The bulk of the collection consists of minutes of the Quarterly from its formative year to the present, however the minutes often extend beyond simply the recorded transactions of the meeting. In many cases, the minutes include quite an array of supporting material, correspondence, calendars, state of the society reports from constituent monthlies, ministry and counsel reports, minutes of concern on social issues, planning documents, and budgetary information.

Little is known about Connie Jean, a gender non-conforming woman assigned male at birth, other than that she was living in Lansdowne, in the western suburbs of Philadelphia, in the late 1970s and 1980s. For at least a decade, she was involved with, and lived with, another transgender woman, “Dick,” who had a wife and children before the two met. In her late 30s or early 40s in 1976, Connie Jean began venturing into public dressed as a woman, and after being stopped by police in April 1976, wrote “now they have my name and all the information on me knowing that I am a TV and cannot stop from doing it because I love it.” She later wrote that she wished Dick “was all female and not part woman when he has on all the clothes” adding that “it would be nice if he had all the equipment that a real woman has.” Both she and Dick apparently considered gender reassignment surgery in the early 1980s.

The two diaries (Feb.-July 1976 and July 1979 through Aug. 1983) and photographs in this small collection offer insight into the lives of a gender non-conforming woman and her partner in the late 1970s and early 1980s. The earliest entries consist of cryptic indications of whether she was staying at home on a given day or venturing into numbered “areas” marked on a map (not present), but by April 1976, the entries become much richer. The diaries make frequent reference to Connie Jean’s desire for dressing as a woman, her struggle to appear in public, and her support for Dick’s transition.

Little is known about V. Conor, other than he traveled on unspecified business up and down the Connecticut River Valley during the last quarter of the nineteenth century.

From the sketchy details surrounding this book of personal accounts, it appears that the author, identified tentatively by a name written on the front fly leaf, was based in Hartford, Conn., and traveled throughout western New England, often to Greenfield and Millers Falls, Mass. Dated between August 1887 and May 1891, the accounts are surprisingly detailed, recording the record keeper’s fondness for doughnuts, seasonal fruits, and the Opera House and Allyn Hall, and they record the range of foods and incidentals, daily trips, subscription to the , piano rental, and visits to the Knights of Pythias and Red Men (presumably the Independent Order of Red Men or similar organization).

A conference hosted by the University of Massachusetts Amherst on November 7-9, 1986, that examined the impact of the Constitution on politics and government, foreign policy, race relations, and the economy, and also discussed the impact on the constitution of popular struggles and the emergence of “rights consciousness.” Includes papers presented at the conference that were to be subsequently published in a special bicentennial issue of the Journal of American History.

In May 1985, a group of activists in Western Massachusetts opposed to the interventionist U.S. foreign policy of the Reagan era formed a construction brigade to assist with basic human needs and express solidarity with the people of Central America. Modeled on the Venceremos Brigade, Construyamos Juntos, Building Peace of Nicaragua, raised over $20,000 for construction supplies in addition to funds for individual travel. Between January and March 1986, the 17 activists joined a smaller brigade from West Virginia in constructing the Carlos Armin Gonzales elementary school in San Pedro de Lovago. During their first month in Nicaragua, they witnessed a Contra assault on the town that left one assailant dead and two residents of the town wounded.

This exhibit includes 55 mounted images and 99 35mm slides taken during the brigade’s time in Nicaragua, documenting the brigade’s construction work and providing a valuable visual record of life in Nicaragua during the Contra war. Used in public talks about Contruyamos Juntos, the collection includes exhibit labels that explain the purpose and activity of the brigade, the history of Nicaragua, and the Contra attack in January 1986.