Collecting area: Massachusetts (West)

A notable figure in Amherst, Mass., prior to the founding of Amherst College, Rufus Kellogg was born on July 16, 1794, the child of Jerusha and Joseph Kellogg. Married to Nancy Stetson in June 1820, Kellogg made a successful, if highly varied living, serving as town postmaster (1809-1824), keeping an inn and tavern at the “City” beginning in 1818, and farming, and he became a stalwart of the local Masonic lodge. His son Rufus Bela Kellogg rose even higher on the social ladder, graduating from Amherst College in 1858 and became a prominent banker.

A diverse and fairly complicated book of records, the Kellogg ledger is part waste book, day book, memorandum book, and account book, marking records of lending a horse and sleigh are interspersed with accounts for the sale of grain and hay, boarding locals, repairing pumps, and other miscellaneous transactions. Although it is unclear precisely which member or members of the Kellogg family kept any individual record, it appears that Rufus must have initiated the book, although later entries were clearly made by one or more of his children.

The collection primarily consists of photographs taken by Elaine Kenseth-Abel of Cambodians refugees in Thailand who later relocated to Amherst, Massachusetts during the 1970s-1980s. The collection also includes color prints of drawings by E. Seng Huot depicting Cambodian genocide.

Fred “Lil” Kerslake was proprietor of one of the premier performing animal acts of the turn of the twentieth century, featuring a porcine troupe that did “everything but talk.” From about 1891 through the 1930s, Kerslake’s Pigs rolled barrels and jumped ropes, climbed ladders, played see saw, and drew carriages to the delight of audiences across the United States and Europe. With his wife Mary and, after 1913, his son Fred by his side, Kerslake’s Pigs toured with Carl Hagenbeck, Walter L. Main, and Ringling Brothers. Fred and Mary retired to Gill, Mass., in 1930 where they ran a dog kennel. Fred Kerslake died at home in Sept. 1949, with Mary following in 1954.

Assembled by Fred and Mary Kerslakes, the four scrapbooks in this remarkable collection are packed with photographs and ephemera documenting their far flung travels between the 1890s and 1920s, along with promotional and candid shots of their beloved pigs, donkeys, and horses. Interspersed in the volumes are photographs of clowns and other circus performers, brochures, fliers, and posters advertising Kerslake’s Pigs and the circuses that employed them.

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.

After emigrating from Dzieciekowo, Poland, Michael Kislo found work in a Northampton basket shop and later as a machinist at International Silver Company. He was a resident of Florence, Mass.

The Kislo collection contains nine volumes of Kislo’s writing (mostly in Polish and thematically religious, patriotic, personal, and autobiographical) and artwork (drawings and paintings with religious allusions, Polish costumes, weapons, imaginary animals and fanciful landscapes).

Since 1987, Michael and Carrie Kline have written, documented, and championed the stories of everyday people. Using the written word, documentary film, oral history, audio recordings, and podcasts, the Klines have documented immigration, Appalachian culture, war tax resistance, the Underground Railroad, gender, and more in various locales throughout the United States.

Michael Kline and Carrie Nobel first met in western Massachusetts at a human rights rally to support Randy and Betsy Kehler, who had recently lost their home to the IRS after refusing to pay war taxes. The two soon discovered a shared love of social activism, folklife documentation and old-time singing. At the time, Michael, who had earned his Ph.D. in Public Folklore from Boston University, was staff folklorist for the Pioneer Valley Folklore Society (PVFS) conducting field research documenting changes to the Connecticut River Valley. Carrie, who received her Master’s Degree in American Studies from SUNY/Buffalo, was an organizer and events planner for the Institute for Community Economics helping to create affordable housing through community land trusts and had recently completed a degree in the politics and cultures of the U.S. at the University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Throughout their 40 year career, Michael and Carrie have worked with communities in Maine, Pennsylvania, Maryland, Massachusetts, North Caroline, and West Virginia. These projects have been produced under the Talking Across the Lines umbrella, which began as a 22-part radio series of fifteen-minute programs about the people, neighborhoods, and industries of Wheeling, West Virginia, and is now an ongoing podcast. They have received grants to document the stories of people and places for folklife societies, museums, municipalities, and educational institutions. They also offer workshops in “Listening for a Change,” which describe alternative approaches to conducting meaningful field research.

The Carrie and Michael Kline Collection contains several dozen analog and digital recordings on a variety of topics and people related to Western Massachusetts history including this histories of Deerfield and Northfield, the Quabbin towns, Kelly School in Holyoke, Wally and Juanita Nelson, and outsider art. There are also interviews with people from Orange, Shelburne, Sandisfield, Puerto Rico, Erving, and other places on a variety of topics including: family, culture, singing traditions, music, poetry, and activism. The collection also includes notes, release forms, grant applications, production notes, and recording logs. The Klines also have a collection of material at Berea College in Kentucky. A portion of that collection related to western Massachusetts was deaccessioned by Berea in 2024 and added to this collection.

The Mill River flood of 1874 was one of the great man-made disasters of late nineteenth century western Massachusetts. Following the collapse of an earthenwork dam on May 16 of that year, 600,000,000 gallons of water coursed through Williamsburgh, Skinnerville, and Leeds, destroying factories and homes, bridges and roads, and leaving 139 deaths in its wake.

The nineteen images in the Mill River Flood collection are a small sampling of a series of 110 stereographs taken by the Knowlton Brothers of Northampton to document the devastation caused by the flood of May 1874. The collection also includes one view taken by F. J. Moore of Westfield, who issued his own series of 21 stereographs, and one by an unidentified photographer.

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.

"J.P. Konsevich, Truck driver," ca. 1934

J.P. Konsevich, almost certainly Joseph Peter Konsevich (born Oct 22, 1921 in Millers Falls, Mass.; death May 9, 1988 in Westfield, Mass.), was one of the over 99,500 men to join the Civilian Conservation Corps (CCC) in Massachusetts. The Emergency Conservation Work (March 31, 1933 – Jan. 1, 1942; renamed, Civilian Conservation Corps in 1937) was just one of the many relief programs established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt to aid in the effort to curb rising unemployment and to lift the “spiritual” morale of the country. In Massachusetts the main work accomplished was in tree planting, firefighting, and tree and plant disease and insect control, although several recreational facilities were also built in the forests and parks. Konsevich served on one of the latter projects, as a member of the 116^th Company, stationed at Camp S-62 in Wendell State Forest.

This combination of two homemade photograph albums thoroughly documents the CCC 116th Company, and their camp in Wendell State Forest. Of the over 800 photographs, 518 are identified, with the majority being portraits of the men at camp facilities. The local landscape of concern to the company is also featured, including the Connecticut River, Erving, Greenfield, Northampton, Northfield, Turners Falls, and especially documentation of the aftermath of the flood of March and April, 1936. A small set of photographs additionally document Konsevich’s presence at the Chicago World’s Fair (Century of Progress Exposition of 1933).

Founded in August 1968 by Marshall Bloom and a group of colleagues from the Liberation News Service. From the outset, the Montague Farm Commune was a center of political and cultural (and countercultural) creatvity. In its first year, it was the headquarters for the Montague branch of the Liberation News Service and Farmers were involved in a range of other causes. Most famously, in 1974, Farmers lit the fuse of the antinuclear movement. Rallying against a proposed nuclear power plant in Montague and Farmer Sam Lovejoy’s act of civil disobedience that felled a weather monitoring tower set up in preparation, the Farmers carried waged a campaign of non-violent direct action that became the hallmark of antinuclear groups across the country. Their actions against the Yankee Rowe and Seabrook (N.H.) power plants were instrumental in dampening further development of nuclear power in the United States. In 2003, the Farm community agreed to sell the Farm property to Zen Peacemakers.

The photographs in this collection were taken by three members of the Montague Farm Commune: early members Anna Gyorgy and Tony Mathews, and Tony’s wife Susan Kramer. The photos depict daily life on the Farm and its residents, primarily in he period between 1978 and 1981, including farm work, sugaring, domestic chores, family and children, holidays, and celebrations, such as May Day. A handful of images, mostly by Mathews, go back to the earliest days of the Farm, and there are later images from the 20th and 25th reunions. Of special notes are over 100 images taken by Kramer during the occupation of the Seabroon Nuclear Power Plant in May 1977, at which 1,414 occupiers were arrested.