Collecting area: Massachusetts

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.

An award-winning photojournalist, Janet Knott was one of the first woman to become a staff photographer at the Boston Globe. Over a 31-year career, she covered a broad range of topics, from local assignments to longer-form photo essays and international coverage, producing iconic images of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, the late 1980s famine in the Sudan, and the violence accompanying the Haitian elections of 1987. She was only the third woman recognized with the Robert Capa Gold Medal and, among many other awards, won first place for spot news from the World Press Photography Foundation. After leaving the Globe in 2007, she became Chief of Staff for Boston City Councilor Salvatore La Mattina, representing East Boston and the first district.

The Knott Collection contains an array of letters, ephemera, and photographs documenting both her photographic and political careers. There is an extensive body of work from her years working as a photojournalist at the Boston Globe comprised of slides, negatives, prints, and contacts sheets.

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).

An active member of a number of women’s Polish American clubs in Massachusetts, including the Massachusetts Federation of Polish Women’s Clubs, Sophie Kopiecki was a schoolteacher and mother in the eastern part of the state. Documenting her contributions to the various clubs of which she was a member as well as her activities as a teacher, this collection includes publications, programs, memorabilia, and student assignments.

Longtime partners in work and life, Norine Kotts and Cheryl Lewis met in San Francisco in 1980. Kotts, daughter of a law enforcement officer and a homemaker, whose family who moved frequently, was a freelance photographer; Lewis, a biracial Chicago native and daughter of a furniture maker and a schoolteacher, who grew up in Rockland County, N. Y., was an art student in the Bay Area and a lifelong cook. They moved back to the house Kotts was sharing with a group of lesbians, in Somerville, Mass., and eventually into the world of food collectives, restaurants, and hospitality. In 1982, along with two co-founders, Kotts and Lewis opened the cafe Beetle’s Lunch in Allston, a Boston neighborhood. Named “1983 Best Punk Restaurant” by Boston magazine, Beetle’s Lunch became known as a welcoming alternative community space situated at a convergence of queer and feminist politics, new concepts in art and music, and the changing food scene, with a dash of idealism, especially on the part of its young feminist founders. Relocating to Portland, Me., in 1985 Kotts and Lewis opened Café Always, playing a significant role in fostering and shaping that city’s burgeoning food culture: as Portland’s first restaurant to employ local farmers and incorporate local ingredients into the daily menu, Café Always garnered national attention. After selling the business in 1995, the couple opened Aurora Provisions, a gourmet food and wine shop with an in-store restaurant and catering service, which they ran until selling it in 2001. As consultants they continued to participate in and influence the food scene in Portland, helping to launch Portland favorite El Rayo Taqueria in 2009.

The Kotts and Lewis Papers provide glimpses into the formation and operation of several notable New England food establishments, documenting the creative, professional, and personal aspects, as well as the food itself. The collection contains menus, photographs, business plans, correspondence (including a set of letters Kotts wrote to her mother on the backs of menus), recipes and cookbooks, memorabilia, and a guest book filled with diners’ comments. Kotts and Lewis are also the subjects of a series of oral histories conducted by sociologist Janice Irvine.

The oldest active Polish folk dance ensemble in the United States, the Krakowiak Polish Dancers of Boston was formed in 1937 by a group of young ladies of Polish heritage interested in promoting Polish culture through the mediums of song and dance. The club opened its membership to young men in 1947, and was offcially incorporated in 1957. Since its formation, the dancers have appeared throughout the U.S., Canada, and Poland, and the group has received recognition and awards worldwide, including a special performance before his Holiness Pope John Paul II in 1983.

The collection includes programs for performances from the club’s earliest days, tickets, newspaper clippings featuring articles about the group, and copies of the organization’s constitution describing the group’s mission and membership.

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.