Collecting area: Massachusetts (West)

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.”

Actress, producer/director, theater company founder, teacher, activist, avid gardener, and devoted family-member, colleague and friend, Catharine Sargent Huntington was born in Ashfield, Massachusetts on December 29, 1887. She attended Radcliffe College, graduating in 1911, and taught English and Theater at The Westover School in Middlebury, Connecticut from 1911 to approximately 1917. By the end of 1918 she had begun her theater career in earnest, working as a dramatic coach in the Boston area. In January 1919, she became the Radcliffe College representative to the Wellesley unit of the Y.M.C.A., working in France on war reconstruction before returning to Massachusetts to continue her work with the theater, particularly experimental theater, which was to endure for the next 60-plus years through her patronage, and her many performances, productions, and theater companies.

Spanning as it does almost a century from the late 1800s to the late 1900s, this collection captures Catharine Sargent Huntington’s many interests, professional and personal activities and connections, and close family relationships, through more than 2,300 pieces of personal and business correspondence; photographs; photographic negatives; theater programs; scripts; original manuscripts of her poems, speeches, stage notes, and theater production scenarios; newspapers and newspaper clippings; estate and will information; organizational documents of the many organizations she helped direct; personal financial documents; and other printed material and items of ephemera.

Born on December 13, 1887, Gladys Theodora Parrish to wealthy birthright Quaker Alfred Parrish and Katharine Broadwood Jennings. Gladys married Constant Davis Huntington on October 17, 1916, who had been chairman of the London office of G. P. Putnam’s publishing company since 1905. The couple first resided in Hyde Park Gardens in London and then at Amberley House in Sussex. They had one daughter on January 11, 1922, Georgiana Mary Alfreda (Urquhart). Gladys Huntington wrote many plays and novels, including the bestselling book Madame Solario, published anonymously in 1956. Other published titles include; Carfrae’s Comedy (1915, novel), Barton’s Folly (1924, play), and Turgeniev (c. 1930, play). She died at St. George’s Hospital (Westminster) on May 31, 1959, at the age of 71.

The Gladys Parrish Huntington Papers is primarily composed of the correspondence of Gladys Huntington with her mother, Katharine “Kate” Parrish, husband Constant, daughter Alfreda, various friends, relatives, and professional contacts. Additionally, the collection contains a sizable amount of Gladys’ correspondence and traded manuscripts, short stories, poetry, and drafts with fellow authors such as Leo Myers, Nicolo Tucci, Helen Granville-Barker, Viola Mynell, Eric Clough Taylor, Cynthia Asquith, Clifford Bax, and others. Many of her own manuscripts and typed drafts of novels and plays (Madame Solario, Turgeniev, her unfinished final work, The Ladies’ Mile), along with childhood writings, photo albums, datebooks, and diaries spanning her lifetime are contained within the collection.

Local 2 of the Independent Condenser Workers Union represented employees of the Sprague Electric Company in North Adams, Massachusetts. Beginning in the 1930s, Sprague was one of the largest employers in the Berkshires. Employing 4,000 workers, Sprague provided one-third of the area’s jobs, many of them held by women. By the 1960s, however, Sprague began increasing layoffs, and in 1985 the company moved its world headquarters out of North Adams, closing all but two small facilities.

Records of Local 2 include by-laws, constitutions, correspondence, company publications, and minutes of meetings between management and union representatives.

First organized as Eagle Lodge in Holyoke, Massachusetts, the United Brotherhood of Paper Makers was granted a charter by the AFL in May 1883. Almost as soon as the union was established, however, it faced a serious struggle for power from within. Hoping to maintain their higher economic and social status, the machine tenders ultimately organized their own union, and the two remained separate for a number of years until they finally merged in 1902 as the International Brotherhood of Paper Makers.

The surviving records of the Eagle Lodge, Local 1 of the International Brotherhood of Paper Makers, include by-laws, minutes, correspondence, some contracts, a ledger, and three histories of the local and the early days of the union.

The International Brotherhood of Teamsters, organized in 1903 when two leading team driver associations merged, is one of the largest unions in the U.S. Local 170, representing central Massachusetts, and Local 404, representing western Massachusetts, were both granted their charters with the Teamsters in 1933, and continue to thrive today. The records of these locals consist entirely of agreements between the union and local businesses.

Restricted arbitration and grievance files for individual employees organized under Local 213 of the IUE in Springfield, Massachusetts.

Union that represented workers at the American Bosch plant in Springfield, Massachusetts, affiliated with the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers after 1949.

Records include by-laws, minutes of the Executive Board, General Council, and Membership meetings, correspondence, membership reports, grievance and arbitration records, contract negotiation proposals and counter-proposals, strike materials, and publications documenting the administration, activities, and membership of Local 206. Effects of changing national economy and international trade on workers and union affairs, through time, are evident.

Local chapter of the International Union of Electrical, Radio and Machine Workers that represented workers at the Chapman Valve Manufacturing Company of Indian Orchard, Massachusetts. Records include detailed minute books of general and executive board meetings as well as several ledgers that reflect the activities of the credit union and the Chapman Valve Athletic Association.

Obscure in origin, the Ireland Lyceum appears to have been a fairly typical antebellum debating society, organized as an intellectually stimulating social activity for the benefit of its members. Meeting regularly, probably in the city of Holyoke, members formally debated a pre-assigned topic such as “Has America arrived at the zenith of her glory” (decided in the negative) or “are life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness inalienable rights,” after which the members might hear an address.

A mangled, fragmentary echo of its former self, the Constitution, by-laws, and regular proceedings of the Ireland Lyceum contains the slender records of a typical antebellum men’s debating society. The volume was later used as a scrapbook with newspaper clippings covering the pages, however the clippings have been removed from the first several pages by a conservator, revealing some of the original content.