Collecting area: Farming & rural life

The family of Roxana Kingsbury Gould (nee Weed) farmed the rocky soils of western New England during the late nineteenth century. Roxana’s first husband Ambrose died of dysentery shortly after the Civil War, leaving her to care for their two infant sons, and after marrying her second husband, Lyman Gould, she relocated from southwestern Vermont to Cooleyville and then (ten years later) to Shelburne, Massachusetts. The Goulds added a third son to their family in 1869.

A rich collection of letters and photographs recording the history of the Kingsbury-Gould families of Shelburne, Massachusetts. The bulk of the letters are addressed to Roxana Kingsbury Gould, the strong-willed matriarch at the center of the family, and to her granddaughter, May Kingsbury Phillips, the family’s first historian. In addition to documenting the complicated dynamics of a close-knit family, this collection is a rich source for the study of local history, rural New England, and the social and cultural practices at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

Marion Ingraham was born January 6, 1911, the youngest of four children of George Hunt Ingraham and Ruth Forster Ingraham. She grew up on a farm in Millis, Mass., and was active in the Junior Extension Service programs run by Massachusetts Agricultural College, including Camp Gilbert. At least two of her siblings graduated from MAC (Edward in 1925 and Mary in 1927), as did her daughter. Marion Ingraham married Otto Kohler and lived in South Hadley. She died in 2000.

This small collection focuses on young Marion’s activities with the Junior Extension Service and includes ephemera, copies of the Camp Gilbert News newsletter, photographs, and pages from a scrapbook.

Marshall O. Lanphear spent forty-five years at Massachusetts Agricultural College, earning his B.A in 1918 and a Master’s in 1926, after which he taught agronomy and served as college registrar. After service as an infantryman at the end of the first World War, Lanphear worked briefly as an instructor at the Mount Hermon School before returning to MAC for graduate study. Known to his colleagues as “Whitey,” he taught courses on farm management, dairying, and pomology and on his retirement, Lanphear was awarded an honorary doctorate of humane letters. He died on April 24, 1993 at the age of 98.

The Marshall O. Lanphear Papers include a number of his published articles, correspondence regarding his honorary degree, speeches, lecture notes and personal items including illustrated Christmas cards from 1915, his 1917 driver’s license, and correspondence related to his retirement. There is also a folder of business records from the college farm.

Born on July 31, 1818, the fifth of eight children of Squire and Patience (Root) Loomis, Lyman Loomis spent his life as a farmer and agricultural worker in Westfield, Mass. Loomis married Elmina Hayes in March 1846, and died in May 1902.

A slender and rough hewn volume kept by a farm laborer, the Loomis account book contains sketchy records detailing work performed and crops tended, with occasional notes on commodities purchased.

The farmer Nathaniel Maynard was born in Marlborough (Worcester County), Mass., on Feb. 27, 1780, the eldest of four children of Joseph Maynard and Lovina Barnes. By 1804, when he married Rachel (Hill) of North Brookfield, Nathaniel was already a resident of Leverett, where he had apparently moved with his brother William. Nathaniel and Rachel had four children: Ira B. Maynard (1810-1896), Alvin (1813-1818), Emeline Dudley (1815-1901), and Joseph Bartlett Maynard (1817-1881).

This small volume is a hybrid production. Roughly the first half of the volume consists of relatively standard exercises for learning arithmetic and business activities, including calculating weights, measures, currencies, finances, and interest rates. The remainder consists of accounts, recording a variety of work performed by Maynard, ranging from farm labor (sale of potatoes, plowing and planting, working with oxen, slaughtering, and chopping wood) to weaving (“sheeting”) and especially mending or making shoes.

A pioneer in scientific agriculture, Manly Miles was born in Homer, N.Y., in 1826. A naturalist by inclination with a strong practical streak, Miles took a degree in medicine at Rush Medical College (1850) and practiced as a physician for eight years. His interests in the natural sciences, however, soon left him to abandon medicine, and after accepting a position with the State Geological Survey in Michigan from 1858-1861, he turned to academia. An early member of the faculty at Michigan State College, and later Illinois State College, he was recruited to the agricultural faculty at Massachusetts Agricultural College by President Paul Chadbourne in 1882. Four years later, however, following Chadbourne’s untimely death, Miles returned to Lansing, Mich., where he remained until his death in 1898. During his career, he was noted for his interests in organic evolution and plant and animal breeding.

The Miles collection contains 8 notebooks containing notes on reading. In addition to a general notebook on scientific matters, the remaining seven are organized by subject: Breeds of animals, Farm buildings, Farm economy, Feeding and animals, Implements, Manures, and Stock breeding.

This miscellaneous periodicals collections contains single issues or short runs of a variety of journals, such as: Farm and Home, Farm Journal, Red Men’s Official Journal, Home and Health, and The Ladies World.

A lifelong diarist, Granby farmer Holland Montague wrote chiefly about life on the farm where he made a comfortable living supplying produce to surrounding towns. While most of his entries are bland accounts of the weather and agricultural duties, Montague occasionally offers a glimpse into his personal life, especially on the diary’s endpapers, where he records medicinal remedies for humans and livestock, purchases made and payments received, as well as a valuation of his property in 1872. Very few references are made to political events of the day, including the Civil War, although he does note on April 16, 1865 that President Lincoln is dead.

Laid into the volume is a manuscript copy of the 1826 document listing depositions to be taken from individuals in the petition of the town of Granby against the town of South Hadley relating to a dispute over the boundary line between the two towns.

The New England Homestead, a magazine published in Springfield, Massachusetts from 1842 to 1969, conducted a contest in 1884 to which farmers submitted notebooks recording their farm accounts for the one year period, April 1, 1883 to March 31, 1884.

The collection includes bound and unbound farm accounts submitted as entries to the contest contest. The Library holds The New England Homestead, 1842-1850 on microfilm, and 1894-1968 in bound volumes.

Founded as a non-governmental, volunteer organization in 1911, the New York Farm Bureau offers resources to support and enrich rural life and encourages farmers to work collaboratively for better marketing and production.

This small collection of photographs documents inspection tours conducted by the New York Farm Bureau of farms, apparently in the Mohawk River Valley, in 1915-1916. The intent, as the caption of one photograph suggests, was to bring “science into the field.”