Collecting area: Massachusetts (West)

The Pines in South Hadley, Mass., was a popular meeting place for men to socialize in the 1920s and 1930s. Employees of Bosch Magneto, the West End Sporting Club, and other groups who enjoyed hunting and fishing held special suppers where they consumed their prey with quantities of alcohol, Prohibition or not.

Using a standard hotel register, The Pines recorded a series of meetings of men’s groups in South Hadley, mostly centered around the activities of hunting and fishing. The Bosch Club (apparently employees of Bosch Magneto in Springfield), the Pines Gang, and the West End Sporting Club — with overlapping membership — held an array of events annually, including Coon Suppers, Deer Dinners, and Game Suppers, as well as occasional Chicken Fries, Piano Suppers, Pig Roasts, Dog Roasts, and special events such as member’s weddings. Summaries at the end of the year in 1926 and 1927, replete with bad verse, provide a sense of their socializing.

A Polish immigrant who arrived in the United States in 1912, Jacob Plata worked in factories in Chicago until the mid-1920s when he relocated to Massachusetts. Plata and his wife Mary operated a dry goods store on Main Street in Indian Orchard until his death in 1947, after which Mary continued in business until her death in 1963.

Jakob Plata’s autobiographical account, Pamietnik emigranta w Stanach Zjednoczonych (Memoirs of an emigrant to the United States), includes a literate and interesting account his emigration from Poland and transition into American life. This photocopy (114p.) was retained by the Plata family from a manuscript originally written for the Institute for Social Management in Warsaw in 1936.

Lynne Pledger became active in waste management issues when Casella Waste Systems, a New England-based landfill company, applied to expand operations in Hardwick, Mass., potentially threatening the public water supply. Organizing a grassroots campaign, Pledger succeeded in getting Casella to drop plans to rezone the landfill in 2007, after the company failed to garner the necessary support in town meeting. Pledger has remained active in zero waste and waste reduction efforts, serving on the Zero Waste Committee for the Sierra Club, on the Clean Water Action Campaign, on the Massachusetts Department of Environmental Protection Solid Waste Advisory Committee, and co-founding Don’t Waste Massachusetts, an alliance of 25 environmental organizations supporting waste reduction measures.

This small collection contains documentation of grassroots opposition to the expansion of the landfill at Hardwick, Mass. Collected by Pledger, the material includes environmental and site reports, some filings, background information on the site and landfills, and some correspondence relating to the controversy.

Judy Polan, ca. 1984

Judy Polan was a folk musician who performed primarily throughout Western Mass and New England in the 1980s and 1990s. Born in 1948 in Albany, New York, she graduated from Barnard College in 1970 with a degree in Russian. She worked as a translator in Cambridge, Massachusetts and taught guitar lessons part-time before eventually moving to teaching and performing full time. She married Michael Schonbach in 1975 and moved to Western Mass two years later, living first in Northampton and then Chesterfield. During this period, her music career blossomed. She quickly became a favorite at local coffeehouses and other venues such as the Iron Horse Music Hall in Northampton the Sounding Board Coffeehouse in West Hartford, and Passim in Cambridge, playing both original songs and covers from a wide variety of genres. She was a four-time recipient of the “favorite musician” award in the Valley Advocate Reader’s Poll in 1985, 1993, 1994, and 1995. She was frequently played on radio stations throughout New England and Upstate New York. Polan also performed at weddings and children’s events. Her husband, Michael Schonbach often accompanied her on violin.

She released her first album, Judy, Judy, Judy in 1984 on her own record label, Ruby Slippers Records. The name was an homage to her love of the Wizard of Oz, songs from which would often feature in her shows. She was known by her fans as the “Folk Glitter Queen of New England”, due to her eclectic style of both music and costume, which often featured glittery red high heels fashioned after Dorothy’s ruby slippers from the Wizard of Oz. Over the course of her career she released two more full-length albums and one EP, Look to the Starsin 1986, Dream Dances in 1992 and Daffodils in 1996. Also in 1996, she released a musical interpretation of the poem “I Wandered Lonely as a Cloud” by William Wordsworth, which was used in a tourism campaign for the Lake District in Northwest England. During the early 2000s, Polan’s career shifted to writing, and she worked as an editor and writer for magazines such as Style 1900, Modernism and Jewish Ledger. She mainly wrote about design and travel and maintained a website and blog, Mad for Mod, throughout the 2010s. She also wrote humorous audio memoir essays that were featured on the Albany, NY NPR affiliate, WAMC. She also published a book of poetry, Glasgow Colours at a Decorative Arts Programme at the University of Glasgow. Her husband Michael passed away on June 16, 2022.

The Judy Polan Papers contain material from throughout Polan’s career as a working musician. This includes promotional materials such as concert flyers, profiles in local publications, business and personal correspondence, sheet music, and lyrics. It also contains several dozen recordings contained on different formats such as reels, cassette tapes, records and CDs. These consist of commercial releases, live shows, radio appearances, demo recordings, and master tapes. Polan’s ruby slippers, that she wore during performances, are also part of the collection.

Includes booklets containing parish and community histories, photographs, and local advertisements celebrating Jubilee, other anniversaries, and events in over twenty Massachusetts Polish American parishes; booklets furnishing histories and names associated with Polish American groups (such as the Brotherly Aid Society and Polish American Veterans); an historical paper on the Chicopee Polish Community; a pamphlet including songs and recipes; photographs; a booklet; and two books.

Polish-American women’s club located near Palmer, Massachusetts, that aims to encourage Polish women to become United States citizens and provide them with classes in the English language; to take an active part in local, state and federal politics; to support local Polish-owned businesses; to preserve and integrate Polish culture with those of other ethnicities present in the United States; to encourage higher education in the Polish-American community.

Includes meeting minutes (primarily in Polish), histories, anniversary programs, town and state citations, and government publications, documenting the activities, membership, and national recognition of the club over a period of seventy years.

Blacksmith who was prominent in the town affairs of Great Barrington, Massachusetts. Includes debit and credit entries, the method and form of customer payment (cash, services, labor, and goods such as corn, potatoes, wheat, cider brandy, hog, veal, sheep, lambs, and an ox), and an entry noting the building of the Great Barrington and Alford Turnpike in 1812. Also includes documentation of seamstress activity and of African American customers.

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Family Papers document the history of one extended family
over 270 years (or eight complete generations) and the family’s connection to its ancestral
home, “Forty Acres,” in Hadley, Massachusetts. Forty Acres was a working farm, its name not a
true description of the land under cultivation, which consisted of six hundred acres acquired
by its first owner, Moses Porter, and a significant growth in acreage under his son-in-law,
Charles Phelps. Subsequent generations produced a number of clergy, lawyers, a sea captain,
merchants, factory owners, army officers and doctors. There were artists, writers, publishers,
an actress, and numerous housewives, of necessity, multi-skilled.

The personal papers from these family members contribute valuable insights into our understanding of the evolution
of American society during the last 250 years. Letters and diaries reveal the significant
impact of major events in American history, beginning with the French and Indian War up
through the twentieth century. These writings provide scholars a glimpse into personal
perspectives on wars, political and economic upheavals, religious revivals, social
developments, family relationships, divisions of labor between men and women, as well as the
day-by-day domestic life of the family, their servants and enslaved people.

Related family collections include:

• Catharine Sargent Huntington Papers
• Gladys Parrish Huntington Papers
• Charles (Moses) Porter Phelps Farm Records

Rural and sparsely populated, Prescott, Massachusetts, was founded in 1822 along the ridge separating the West and Middle branches of the Swift River. Its three villages (North Prescott, Atkinson Hollow, and Prescott Hill) never amounted to more than a few houses each, and the town’s total population never exceeded 500. Prescott became the first of four towns to vacate after the Swift River Valley was ordered cleared and dammed to create the Quabbin Reservoir, ceding its administration to the state in 1928 before formally disincorporating in 1938.

The records of Prescott, Mass., document the history of the smallest of the four towns inundated to create the Quabbin Reservoir. Held by the Swift River Valley Historical Society, the materials in this collection consist of records of town meetings and of the activities of the town Selectmen, 1822-1938, as well as sparser records of the School Committee, the Treasurer, and Overseers of the Poor.

For several decades in the mid-nineteenth century, William Putnam (1792-1877) and his family operated a general store in Wendell Depot, Massachusetts, situated strategically between the canal and the highway leading to Warwick. Serving an area that remains rural to the present day, Putnam dealt in a range of essential merchandise, trading in lumber and shingles, palm leaf, molasses and sugar, tea, tobacco, quills, dishes, cloth and ribbon, dried fish, crackers, and candy. At various times, he was authorized by the town Selectmen to sell “intoxicating liquors” (brandy, whiskey, and rum) for “Medicinal, chemical and mechanical purposes only,” and for a period, he served as postmaster for Wendell Depot.

The daybooks and correspondence of William Putnam record the daily transactions of an antebellum storekeeper in rural Wendell, Massachusetts. Offering a dense record of transactions from 1840-1847, the daybooks provide a chronological accounting of all sales and credits in the store, including barter with local residents of the community and with contractors for the new Vermont and Massachusetts Railroad. The last in the series of daybooks lists a surprisingly high percentage of Wendell’s residents (by name, in alphabetical order) who owed him money as of October 1846. The correspondence associated with the collection continues into the 1880s and provides relatively slender documentation of Putnam’s litigiousness, his financial difficulties after the Civil War, and the efforts of his son John William to continue the business.