Collecting area: Massachusetts (Central)

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.

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.

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.

A graduate of Dartmouth College and Harvard Medical School, R. Newton Lambert set up in private practice in Upton, Mass., in 1829. His medical career, however, would be brief. In October 1836, just 37 years old, Lambert died in Lyme, N.H.

Lambert’s double column account book includes records of services performed (such as the extraction of teeth, vaccination, and childbirth) and medicines prescribed, as well as accounts for his patients’ (primarily women and families) and notations on work for the town’s poor.

Owner of a general store in Enfield, Massachusetts. Includes notations for the sale of a wide variety of goods (notably Know Nothing hats), names of customers (both individuals, particularly Irish, and businesses), and types of payment (cash, barter, and services).

A member of the Polish community in Southbridge, Mass., John Libera (1919-2007) was a long-time employee of American Optical Company, but was best known as a promoter of polka music and dancing. A performer, song writer, and host of a radio show for over thirty years, Libera was inducted into the Polka Music Hall of Fame in 1982 and invited to perform at the American Folklife Festival in 1988.

The Libera collection consists of four photographs of the Polish community in Southbridge during the 1930s along with fourteen photos, a videotape, and some correspondence and ephemera relating to the American Folklife Festival.

Studies were conducted by departments of the Massachusetts Agricultural College, Massachusetts State College, and the University of Massachusetts Amherst campus in conjunction with various other college departments and agencies of the state and federal governments. The surveys encompass a number of agricultural study areas such as land use, business and farm management, dairy farm and cost of milk production, tobacco and onion production, and poultry and livestock disease surveys. Supplemental statistical information and aerial photographs are also included.

The Massachusetts Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial commemorates the 1,536 men and one woman from the state who died during the Vietnam War and the 235,000 veterans who survived. Situated on a four-acre site at Green Hill Park in Worcester, the Memorial was formally dedicated in June 2002.

This small collection contains an assortment of material kept by supporters of the Massachusetts Vietnam Veterans’ Memorial during the long struggle to bring their vision to reality. In addition to a handful of letters and news clippings, the collection includes information on the design competition, contract documents, conceptual and construction plans for the memorial, ephemera from the dedication, and a roughly 3′ square scale model of the site prepared by the architects.

To meet the growing needs for potable water in the Boston metropolitan region, the Massachusetts state legislature ordered the evacuation of the relatively sparsely populated towns of Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott, as well as portions of other adjoining towns such as New Salem, to make way for the construction of a massive reservoir. Over the course of almost two decades, the population of the towns was systematically relocated, the houses moved or razed, and bed of the future reservoir was stripped of trees and brush. The last remaining residents of the region were removed in 1938 and the four primary towns were officially disincorporated as the dam was completed and the waters began to rise.

The numbered blueprint sheets and index that make up this collection offer a detailed depiction of the Swift River Valley towns at the time the state government was seizing land for the Quabbin Reservoir. Apparently surveyed between 1932 and 1938, the maps were prepared by the Metropolitan District Commission of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts for a Quabbin Reservoir Real Estate Survey in 1959 and then revised in 1972.

On the eve of the Seven Years War in the Province of Massachusetts, town constables shouldered an array of public responsibilities, including announcing town meetings, serving writs for the town clerk, and collecting local taxes. Although they received a commission for the taxes collected, constables were also held personally responsible for any taxes unpaid, authorized by writ of the Provincial Treasurer and enforced by County Sheriffs.

The warrants in this collection, nearly all printed forms completed in manuscript, were issued by the Treasurer and Receiver General of Massachusetts Bay Province, William Foye or his successor Harrison Gray, authorizing the Hampshire County Sheriff, Oliver Partridge, or Deputy Sheriffs Moses Miller or Ephraim Williams, to attach the goods of local constables in arrears: Brimfield, Greenwich, Sheffield, and Westfield, Mass., along with Somers and Suffield, now part of Connecticut. In instances where the taxes were not delivered, the Sheriff was empowered to “levy by Distress and Sale of the Estate real and personal” of the constable to make up the unpaid difference.