Collecting area: Business & industry

A native of Swanzey, N.H., David W. Hill became a brass finisher in the years following his military service during the Civil War, working as a machinist for several concerns in Cambridgeport, Mass., New York City, NY, Newport, R.I., and Haydenville, Mass., through the mid-1880s.

The 13 pocket diaries in the Hill collection contain regular entries describing the weather, Hill’s work as a brass finisher, his travels, the state of his health, and miscellaneous mundane observations on his daily life.

Brothers Charles W. and Joseph F. Hodges moved from Norton, Mass., to Foxboro, and established a successful retail grocery business just prior to the Civil War that became the basis for other mercantile enterprises.

These two account books appear to be customer ledgers of the grocery firm Hodges and Messinger, which was to become the Union Store of Charles W. and Joseph F. Hodges.

Farmer from New Salem, Massachusetts, whose secondary occupation was that of a shoe repairman. Daybook documents a component of small-scale, handwork shoe production in a local economy prior to the arrival of centralized, mechanized manufacturing; lists Holden’s shoemending skills and the method and form in which he was paid by customers, including cash, customers’ labor, and services or wares such as butchering pigs or cows, chopping or gathering wood, traveling by buggy to a different town, using a neighbor’s oxen, and a variety of food and tools.

Holyoke Co-operative Bank was the third bank organized in Holyoke during the boom years of the 1870s and1880s. It was organized on July 24, 1880 and was the third bank organized there by E. L. Munn. The bank was located at 243 High Street in 1919 and 319 Appleton St. in 1951. In 1971, the bank merged with Community Savings Bank, which was a combination of Chicopee-Falls, Mechanics, and Springfield Five Cent Savings Banks. In 1988, Community merged with Heritage Bank to become the largest bank in Western Massachusetts. Heritage failed in 1992 and was taken over by Fleet Bank.

The collection here, which was acquired from the Holyoke History Room and Archives at the Holyoke Public Library in 2020, consists mostly of cash journals from the late 1920s to the late 1960s. There is also one box of Board of Investment minutes and shareholder lists. The collection originally resided at the Springfield History Library & Archives, who most likely acquired it after the bank had merged with Community Savings Bank in 1971, since the material in the collection ends in 1970.

For more information on the merger see:
Piccin, N. (1992, December 6). Heritage failure brings to close 158 years of WMass banking. Sunday Republican (Springfield, MA), A26.

Inventory

Starting out as a blacksmith in Royalston, Mass., in 1828, Horace Pierce established a successful pail manufacturory. Taking his son Milo as a partner, he employed a work force of eight by 1870, selling over $6,000 of pail annually with capital of nearly $3,500. Horace Pierce died in Royalston in 1883 at the age of 78.

This ledger includes records of work performed as a blacksmith (shoeing horses, fixing irons, mending sleighs, shovels, or chains, sharpening tools), records of manufacturing pails, forms of payment received (cash, labor, agricultural produce, wood, shoes, coal, and old iron), lists of customers, accounts of employees (monthly wages, charges for boarding, and days lost to work), and accounts of supplies purchased.

Personal, business, and legal papers of the Howe family of Enfield and Dana, Massachusetts, including correspondence between family members, genealogies, account books and printed materials. Account books record transactions of various family members whose occupations included general storekeeper, minister, printer, postmaster, telephone exchange and gas-station owner, and document the transactions of community businesses and individuals, some of whom were women involved in the beginnings of the local palm leaf hat and mat industry.

Partners who manufactured harnesses, saddles, and trunks in Springfield, Massachusetts. Includes the prices paid for harnesses, whips, trunks, valises, and a variety of repair jobs such as splicing, coupling, and repairing of the hoses of the Springfield Fire Department. Also contains method and form of payment (principally cash, but also wood, leather, and leather thread in exchange) and twenty pages of clippings with the names of Lyman’s daughters, Mary and Frances, written on them.

The proprietor of a general store and postmaster in Wendell Depot, Mass., W. W. Hunt carried on a thriving business for a small Franklin County town during the 1880s and 1890s. Selling a range of dry goods, foodstuffs, and other goods, Hunt catered to residents in Wendell and neighboring communities up and down the Miller River.

An extensive ledger, marked No. 5, the W.W. Hunt account book contains records of sales of a surprising range of dry goods and foodstuffs, snaths and scythes, stamps and envelopes, and other goods useful to a rural community. Although most of Hunt’s customers were individuals seemingly purchasing for personal consumption, he also sold goods to the Farley and Goddard Wood Paper Companies, the Ladies Aid Society, and the town of Wendell, with some accounts marked “Town Farm.”

Father and son wood turners, manufacturers of ladders, and general wood workers from the Loudville section of Westhampton, Massachusetts. Includes names of customers and businesses (bulk of the accounts are with local lumber and furniture dealers S.M. Smith Co., E.H. Lyman, Medad Pomeroy, and Charles Loud & Co.), items sold (such as bureaus, tables, and lumber), furniture that they repaired, and supply items which they acquired (such as varnish, stain, glass, tacks). Also contains documentation of employee payment, flour, tow, sugar, and coffee purchases, and employee lost work days.

Raised on Long Island, Ed Judice embarked on a path in photography at the age of 13 when he took a job sweeping floors in a local photo studio. After picking up work photographing locally and a stint in the army, he moved to New York city, Judice began doing commercial work for ad agencies and magazines and eventually with Polaroid. Through Polaroid, he began developing contacts in western Massachusetts, eventually moving to Wendell in the early 1970s. He maintains an active studio in Northampton.

The Judice collection consists of a series of 59 digital images relating to a photo documentation project at the Rodney Hunt factory in Orange, Mass., in 1973 and 1974; a series of photographs documenting the bicentennial of Wendell in 1981; and two video documentaries of the Three County Fair, Northampton, Mass., 2007, and “Benny and Joe: A friendship,” 2010.