Collecting area: Massachusetts (East)

In the late 1970s and early 1980s Martha Coons was a political and labor activist in the Boston area. She was a shop steward in the District 65 Clerical Workers Union, which was a subdivision of the United Automobile Workers Union, at Boston University for two years. Prior to and proceeding through that time, from 1979-1983, she was an activist within the Boston chapter of the New America Movement (NAM). The New America Movement was a socialist political advocacy organization with a focus on feminism, racial equality, and environmental rights. This ended with their merger with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, another somewhat less radical socialist organization.

The Martha Coons Collection provides insight into the two major factors of her activism. The District 65 part of the collection showcases the inner workings of the labor union in the 1980s, as well as provides examples of grievances that were filed during a string of layoffs at Boston University. The New America Movement documents not only provide information about the meetings and ideals of the organization as well as its workings, but also of the history of the time around the NAM’s merger with the Democratic Socialist Organizing Committee, and the Boston chapter’s large role in the opposition of said merger.

Located at 14 and 16 Main Street in Haverhill, Mass., W.A. Currier dealt in kitchen goods, home furnishings, and stoves around the time of the Civil War. His trade seems to have been diverse and dynamic: in the Haverhill city directory for 1865, he is recorded variously as a furniture seller, junk dealer, and carriage maker, while two years later, he is listed at the same address under stoves and tinware.

Covering the immediate post-Civil War years, Currier’s daybooks document customers, items purchased, prices paid, and transactions relating to the trade in home goods, stoves, and rags.

Farmer from Cohasset, a shipbuilding and fishing town in eastern Massachusetts. Includes customer accounts, the services he performed (such as plowing up and hauling field stones to the wharf, and carting wood, merchandise, and iron), products he sold (potatoes and calves), and documentation of a hired Irish-born laborer.

A carpenter by trade and a farmer, Timothy Cushing lived in Cohasset, Massachusetts, throughout most of his adult life. Born on Feb 2, 1738, the eighth child of Samuel Cushing, a selectman and Justice of the Peace from the second district in Hingham (now Cohasset), Cushing married Desire Jenkins (b. 1745) on June 4, 1765, and raised a considerable family of eleven children. During the Revolutionary War, he served for a brief period in companies raised in Cohasset, but otherwise remained at home, at work, until his death on December 26, 1806.

Cushing’s accounts offer a fine record of the activities of a workaday carpenter during the first decades of the early American republic, reflecting both his remarkable industry and the flexibility with which he approached earning a living. The work undertaken by Cushing centers on two areas of activity — carpentry and farm work — but within those areas, the range of activities is quite broad. As a carpenter, Cushing set glass in windows, hung shutters, made coffins, hog troughs, and window seats; he worked on horse carts and sleds, barn doors, pulled down houses and framed them, made “a Little chair” and a table, painted sashes, hewed timber, made shingles, and worked on a dam. As a farm worker, he was regularly called upon to butcher calves and bullocks, to garden, mow hay, plow, make cider, and perform many other tasks, including making goose quill pens. The crops he records reflect the near-coastal setting: primarily flax, carrots, turnips, corn, and potatoes, with references throughout to cattle and sheep. During some periods, Cushing records selling fresh fish, including haddock and eels.

Chiefly correspondence from various Dall family members in Boston, Massachusetts, particularly father William Dall, Revolutionary War veteran, merchant, businessman and former Yale College writing master, to sons William and James Dall in Baltimore, Maryland. Letters of son James Dall, then a student at Harvard University, provide accounts of Boston political and cultural activities of the time.

The correspondence documents the daily changes in the life of a merchant’s family in the early 19th century, reflecting anxiety over trade restrictions, embargoes, and other economic disruptions resulting from the War of 1812. The elder Dall (William 3rd) and much of his family lived in Boston, but two sons lived in Baltimore. The bulk of the correspondence consists of letters to the younger son, William 4th, who was then apprenticed to a Baltimore merchant. The letters of son James Dall, then a student at Harvard University, provide accounts of Boston political and cultural activities.

Located in South Dartmouth, Mass., the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting is one of the oldest Friends meetings in the United States, having been founded by Quakers seeking a haven from religious persecution in nearby Massachusetts Bay and Plymouth Colonies. Private worship may have begun in area homes as early as the 1660s, with the Dartmouth Monthly Meeting formally established in 1699. Today, the Meeting has two distinct meetings: the pastoral Smith Neck Meetinghouse and the Apponegansett Meetinghouse.

The records of Dartmouth Monthly Meeting are divided into two centers of gravity. First, the collection contains nineteenth century copies of the meeting’s early minutes (1698-1792) and vital records covering most of that period. Secondly, the collection contains to the meeting since the late 1960s, including minutes (1968-1989) and newsletter (1999-2005). The remaining records of the meeting — the bulk of them — are maintained by the Old Dartmouth Historical Society and available online.

Edwin S. Dethlefsen and his colleague James Deetz did pioneering work in the historical archaeology and material culture of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century gravestones in New England. Through a series of articles in the mid-1960s, based on intensive study of well documented sites in Massachusetts, Deetz and Dethlefsen developed a basic framework for understanding the stylistic evolution of gravestones. Their work was foundational for later studies in material culture and folk art, but also the broader study of death and bereavement and colonial culture.

The Dethlefsen Collection consists of nearly 2,900 negatives (black and white, 35m and 2×2″) of gravestones, primarily from eastern Massachusetts and Newport, R.I. Among the towns documented are Boston, Cambridge, Charlestown, Concord, Dorchester, Harvard, Lexington, Marblehead, Marshfield, Plymouth, Quincy, and Scituate.

Deeply involved in the Polish community in Boston, Elaine (Proborszcz) Dobrowski (1923-2009) was the wife of attorney Francis R. Dobrowksi and mother of two children. She was a resident of Dorchester and Milton, Mass., and a long-time member of Our Lady of Czestochowa Church in South Boston.

Compiled by Elaine Dobrowski, this collection of photographs, printed materials, and news clippings documents the Polish community in Boston from the 1930s through the 1990s. The collection includes photographs of the Kosciusko Monument in the Boston Public Gardens, a children’s dance festival, and a Polish Women’s circle outing at Blinstrub’s Village as well as images of parades, receptions, and conventions.

For most of his adult life, Capt. Friend Drake (1799-1882) farmed his property in Sharon, Mass., and raised a large family. Drake appears to have married twice, having three children with his first wife Sarah, and 10 with his second wife Sally. His son Melzar relocated to Texas in 1858 and served in the Confederate 24th Texas Cavalry during the Civil War.

Primarily a record of small purchases and labor, this daybook was kept by Friend Drake and his son Melzar — apparently interchangeably — during the years just prior to the Civil War. Interspersed throughout the text, however, are family references and interesting vignettes, including a mention of the great “Cold storm” of January 1857, which Drake called “the toughest storm I ever faced;” an agreement with a neighbor, allowing passage rights through a meadow in exchange for permission to take a valuable large white oak “root and branch;” and Melzar’s note from Oct. 25 1858 that his 121 year old grandfather Joseph Drake had died, just as Melzar was leaving for Texas.

The Bristol County, Massachusetts, towns of Easton and Norton had only a small number of trained physicians in the antebellum period tending to a growing population. During the 1830s, that number was probably less and ten, including those with allopathic medical degrees, alternative practitioners, and those who had irregular educations.

The unidentified physician who kept this daybook appears to have practiced in either Easton or Norton, Massachusetts, during the early 1830s. The daybook includes brief records of patient names and dates of visits, medical care dispensed, and minimal records of medical procedures.