Collecting area: World War I

A member of the American Expeditionary Force during the First World War, Charles Edward Jackson was the son of Irish immigrants and a native of Northampton, Massachusetts. Drafted into the 76th (Liberty Bell) Division and assigned to the 301st Ammunition Train of the 151st Field Artillery Brigade, he served in France for a full year beginning in June 1918, seeing front line duty only in the last few days of the war. After the Armistice, he was reassigned to a classification camp in central France where he helped process American soldiers heading home. After making his back in June 1919, he worked as a clerk in a hardware store in Northampton until his death in 1930.

Written entirely while in the military service, Charles Jackson’s letters describe his exploits during the First World War. An optimist, strong Catholic, and good soldier, Jackson describes his year overseas, from mustering at Camp Devens through life in an ammunition train and the long post-war months spent on duty in a classification camp in central France. Although nearly devoid of actual battle content due to the role his unit played and the reach of censorship, Jackson’s letters are descriptive and entertaining, describing day to day life, the late offensives of the war, the influenza epidemic and Armistice, and his growing sense of impatience while awaiting demobilization.

The Keystone View Company was founded in Meadville, Penn., by Pennsylvania native B. L. Singley (1864-1938), who had been a salesman for the stereographic producer and distributor Underwood & Underwood. The first prints sold under the Keystone name were Singley’s own photographs of the 1892 French Creek flood. Incorporated in 1905, Keystone opened its Educational Department, creating products designed for classroom use, with an emphasis on social studies, geography, and the sciences. As the company grew, with branch offices in several major cities and staff photographers all over the world, it acquired the stereographic inventories of several of its competitors, including Underwood & Underwood, becoming the largest company of its kind in the world. In 1932, Keystone launched its Stereophthalmic Department, which included stereoscopic vision tests and products for correcting vision problems. Singley retired as Keystone’s president in 1936 or 1937, and Keystone was bought by Mast Development Company in 1963.

This 1923 boxed set, World War Through the Stereoscope, part of the “Stereographic Library” and housed in a box imitating the look of a two-volume set of books, contains 100 images of World War I and just after, taken ca. 1917-1921. The stereographic prints are pasted onto Keystone’s distinctive grey curved mounts, with extensive descriptive information on the reverse of each mount. Prints are numbered with identifiers—those beginning with “V” were originally Underwood photographs—as well as numbers indicating the order in which they are to be viewed. The stereographs are accompanied by a viewer, also manufactured by Keystone.

A professor of Biology at UMass Amherst with and interest in the mangrove ecosystems of the Caribbean and the deep water environments of the Connecticut River, Ed Klekowski has become well known as a videographer and writer. He has produced documentary for PBS station WGBY on the Quabbin reservoir and the great flood on the Connecticut River in 1936, and on the Yankee Division during the First World War. He and his wife Libby have co-written two books on the First World War, Eyewitness to the Great War (McFarland Press, 2012) and Americans in Occupied Belgium (McFarland Press, 2014).

This small collection of postcards consists primarily of images of American military involvement during the First World War. The scenes depicted range from the first contingent of American soldiers to arrive in 1917 to gas attacks, tanks, and American soldiers and Marines in the trenches and combat during the summer and fall 1918. Among the more unusual form postcards are two cartoon images intended for use by soldiers on their return home, one each from the Knights of Columbus and the Jewish Welfare Board. The postcards were collected by the Klekowskis during preparations for their documentary on the Yankee Division.

As a journalist with the Boston Globe, a news commentator on WGBH television, and Curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, Louis M. Lyons was an important public figure in the New England media for over fifty years. A 1918 graduate of Massachusetts Agricultural College and later trustee of UMass Amherst, Lyons was an vocal advocate for freedom of the press and a highly regarded commentator on the evolving role of media in American society.

The Lyons Papers contain a selection of correspondence, lectures, and transcripts of broadcasts relating primarily to Lyons’ career in television and radio. From the McCarthy era through the end of American involvement in Vietnam, Lyons addressed topics ranging from local news to international events, and the collection offers insight into transformations in American media following the onset of television and reaction both in the media and the public to events such as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the war in Vietnam, and the social and political turmoil of the 1960s.

Long-time residents of Hadley, Massachusetts, the Nash and Scott families were united in 1881 when John Nash, a farmer, married Lizzie Scott. Of their seven children, Herman B. Nash, graduated from the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1917, and immediately enlisted in the army, serving in France at the close of World War I. His youngest sister, Helen, kept the family connected during these years by writing and distributing a family newsletter, the Plainville News.

The Nash-Scott Family Papers contain a number of photographs, including an album capturing a trip to the west coast in 1915 and a canoe trip to Labrador in 1920. Herman B. Nash’s scrapbook documents not only his time as a student at M.A.C., but also his service in France, featuring candid photographs taken by Nash during and after the war as well as identification cards, company rosters, and a German propaganda leaflet picked up near the front. Pamphlets, genealogical notes and postcards complete the collection.

Frank “Nick” Newth was born in Lynn, Mass., on Oct. 9, 1895, the son of shoe cutter Charles H. Newth and his wife Mary Hobart Brackett. A talented baseball player in high school, Newth used his sport connections to become a manager, and eventually owner, of a billiard parlor. On October 5, 1917, however, he was drafted for service in the First World War an deployed to France with the Quartermaster Corps in January 1918. Unusually, for most of his service, Newth was posted in northwestern France (Abbeville, Amiens, Rouen) as a disbursement officer for American troops serving with the British Expeditionary Force an then disbursing to the wounded in base hospitals. He was promoted to Corporal in May 1918, and ended his overseas service in May 1919 as a Sergeant working with the Quartermaster’s financial unit. After returning home, Newth married his longtime sweetheart Letitia “Letty” Crane, with whom he raised a family of four. He worked as proprietor of the New Buick Billiard Hall until 1928, when he opened a successful business selling rubber tires in southern New England. Newth died on May 29, 1979, and is buried in the Forest Chapel Cemetery in Barrington, R.I.

The Newth collection consists of many dozens of letters written between Frank Newth and his fiancee Letty and other members of his family back home in Lynn, Mass., while his served with the Quartermaster Corps in the First World War. Although his letters are subject to the censorship typical of that war, Newth was an excellent and observant writer and because often served near the front, but in a support role, he had time and energy to write. His affection for Letty (and hers for him) come through in every letter, but Newth also discusses his duties in the service, recreation and travel, and the sights and people of France. The collection also includes a fine letter describing the relief after the Armistice went into effect; a brief, but outstanding typed diary kept during the early months of his overseas service; and a small handful of pamphlets, keepsakes, and official papers.

A 21-year-old carpenter, Phillip N. Pike left his home in North Adams, Massachusetts, in August of 1917 to enlist in the Signal Corps. Ordered first to Fort Sam Houston in San Antonio, Texas for training, and then to France in December of 1917, Pike was assigned to the 78th Aero Squadron of the American Expeditionary Forces, doing construction work on bases where the squadron was stationed. In recognition of his skills, he earned promotion to corporal and then sergeant before the war’s end. The squadron served primarily in Romorantin (Loir-et-Cher) and was redesignated the 490th Aero Squadron before demobilizing in late 1918.

The Pike letters are a relatively voluminous and interesting set of soldier’s letters from the First World War, written from the perspective of a worker on an air base. Although he was not an aviator, Pike’s letters contain many details about life on active duty with the AEF, from the time of his entry into the service in August 1917 through the last days of the war.

Russell Stacy (2nd from L, front row) and Squadron, ca. 1942

When drafted into the Army Air Corps in late December 1942, Russell Stacy (1922-2009) was as apprentice at the General Electric plant in Pittsfield, Mass., and was pursuing an engineering degree at Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute. Training for active duty aboard the new B-29 Superfortress, it was not until April 1944 that planes were ready for operations, at which point Staff Sgt. Stacy became the central fire control gunner on the plane “Totin’ to Tokyo.” As part of the 793d Squadron, 468th Bomb Group, 20th Bomber Command, he was based in Kharagpur, India, with a forward base on Chengdu, China, and took part in bombing raids throughout southeast Asia, including the first mission to bomb Japan from China in July 1944. The logistical challenges of operating from China led the Air Corps to abandon the base in Jan. 1945, at which time Stacy returned to the United States for additional training. After the war’s end, he continued as a draftsman at GE, later working as an engineer in New England and Virginia for nearly forty years. Russell’s father, William H. Stacey served in France during World War I, as did his mother, Mary Ellen Barns, a Red Cross nurse.

Writing home consistently throughout the war at least once a week, Stacy left a remarkably dense and thorough record of his service. Beginning at the point of his induction, the letters provide discussions of training to become a B-29 gunner; his time in India and China; bombing raids over Japan and Sumatra, and China; and his return to the States for additional training. Well written, though somewhat lacking in detail due to censorship, the collection provides a valuable perspective on a crew members’ experience in the China-Burma-India theater. Other parts of the collection detail the Stacy and Barnes family, and their war service dating back to the era of the American colonies, particularly William Stacy’s service as an ambulance driver and Mary Ellen Barnes’s service as a Red Cross nurse, both in World War I.

A Quaker and philanthropist from Worcester, Mass., Sarah J. Swift was a noted supporter of Friends’ missions in Palestine and Jamaica for over half a century. The wife of D. Wheeler Swift, an innovator in the manufacture of envelopes, Swift began to support the Friends’ foreign missions by the 1890s, becoming a major benefactor of the Eli and Sibyl Jones Mission and girls’ school in Ramallah and of the small Quaker mission at Buff Bay, Jamaica.

The Swift papers contain a thick series of letters from the Society of Friends’ Eli and Sybil Jones Mission in Ramallah, Palestine, documenting their activity between 1890 and 1942, with a much smaller series of letters relating to the mission at Buff Bay, Jamaica. The missionaries’ letters — including circular letters to supporters and others addressed to Swift personally — discuss school operations and local affairs in Palestine and Jamaica. Of particular note are letters discussing the work at Ramallah around the turn of the twentieth century and several letters discussing the hardships of wartime and recovery from war.

A member of a distinguished family of New England educators and clergymen, Brainerd Taylor played an key role assisting the U.S. Army in taking its first steps into modern mechanized warfare. Born in Newtonville, Massachusetts, in 1877, Taylor entered Harvard with the class of 1899, but during the rush of enthusiasm accompanying the start of the Spanish American War, he left before completing his degree to join the military. Serving with the Coast Artillery for several years, he became the Chief Motor Transport Officer for the Advance Section of the Service of Supply for the American Expeditionary Force during the First World War, earning promotion to Colonel, a Distinguished Service Medal, and the Legion of Honor from France for his efforts. Taylor married twice, first to Vesta Richardson, who died in 1919, and then to Helen Cady. Taylor died in 1955.

The Taylor family collection contains more than 1,000 letters documenting the military career and personal life of Brainerd Taylor, with particularly thick coverage of the period of the First World War when he was stationed in France, building the Motor Transport Corps virtually from scratch. These letters are exceptionally well written and rich in description, both about his duties and his travels in France and Germany. The collection also includes Taylor’s extensive correspondence to his father, James Brainerd Taylor (1845-1929), and correspondence relating to Taylor’s wives, children, and grandchildren.