Collecting area: Massachusetts

The collection includes demands and receipts 1804-1809 for taxes (parish, highway, town, county, and state) on various tracts of land in Greenwich, Massachusetts owned by Dr. William and Eleanor Porter. It also includes three documents dating from 1800-1808 regarding the settling of accounts with local individuals: Ichabod [Trandell], James Mills, and Isaac Hunter, and an agreement ca. 1807 to sell pasture land to Captain West of Greenwich.

Klaus Postler was a visual artist and curator who lived and worked in New England. Born Michael Edward Postler on March 23, 1951, he grew up in Yonkers, New York, and Connecticut. He was an avid collector of paper ephemera, which he included in his large-scale paintings and collages. From the late 1970s he was an enthusiastic participant in the international mail art movement, labelling his enterprise the Social Artists Reality Empire (S.A.R.E.). One of the exhibitions he curated was the Ray Johnson Memorial Mail Art Show at UMass Amherst, in 1996, for which he put out an open call and received mailed responses from around the world. Postler traveled in Europe and forged relationships with artists there, especially in Germany. In addition to his art practice, he worked for many years picking apples and pruning trees at New England orchards. Postler pursued his education at a number of institutions, with some difficulty due to his dyslexia, and completed his bachelor’s degree in 1998 through the University Without Walls program at UMass Amherst. He was a MacDowell Colony fellow in 2000, and returned to UMass to earn his MFA in studio art in 2005. Late in his life he cared for the estate of the artist Robert Mallary. He died on January 6, 2013, at his studio in Conway, Massachusetts.

The Klaus Postler collection contains a variety of sketchbooks that also functioned as diaries, as well as daybooks and dream journals; slides of his work; and photographic prints. Also included is an assortment of mail art, some created by Postler but mostly work sent to him by other artists, which Postler included in exhibitions he curated in Brattleboro, Vermont, and at UMass Amherst. Thomas Jahn, known as Horsefeathers, is a prolific contributor of mail art. The collection also includes documentation from posthumous gallery shows and a commemorative book about his work published by his partner, Eileen Claveloux.

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.

Established in 1968, PATCO was certified as the exclusive representative for all FAA air traffic controllers. A little more than a decade later, union members went on strike demanding better working conditions despite the fact that doing so was in violation of a law banning strikes by government unions. In response to the strike, the Reagan administration fired the strikers, more than 11,000, and decertified the union. Over time the union was eventually reformed, first in 1996 as an affiliate with the Federation of Physicians and Dentists union, and later as an independent, national union in 2004.

Correspondence, financial records, notes and memos documenting the activities of the Boston area branch of PATCO. Letters, announcements, and planning documents leading up to the 1981 strike shed light on the union’s position.

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.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the populations of four towns in the Swift River Valley, Mass., were relocated to make way for completion of the Quabbin Reservoir. Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott were formally disincorporated in 1938, marking an end to over a century of small town government in the region.

The Quabbin Broadside Collection contains as assortment of printed and posted notices issued in three of the four Massachusetts towns that were flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir. These include announcements for dances (including the Enfield Fire Department Farewell Ball in 1938), for plays performed by the North Dana Dramatic Club, and notification of voter registration and tax assessment.

The collection consists of five maps prepared by the Massachusetts Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission of the anticipated site of the Quabbin Reservoir, some with hand-written notations, and one map showing the route of Boston’s water supply.

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.

A collection of newspaper clippings documenting the Swift River Valley towns that were evacuated to make way for the Quabbin Reservoir, including Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, Millington (New Salem), and Prescott. The clippings are concentrated on the towns’ final days and include an incomplete run of The Springfield Union series, “Letters from Quabbin,” series, which recorded the history of the Quabbin Reservoir from site selection to the relocation of houses and people and the disbanding of local organizations and communities.

During the 1920s and 1930s, the populations of four towns in the Swift River Valley, Mass., were relocated to make way for completion of the Quabbin Reservoir. Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott were formally disincorporated in 1938, marking an end to nearly a century of small town government in the region.

The annual reports of the four towns of the Quabbin region provide important documentation of the activities of the local officials and the lives of residents in Dana, Enfield, Greenwich, and Prescott. Issued under various titles and with variable content, these reports include information on the activities of town officials, including the Selectmen, Overseers of the Poor, School Committee, and Library. In most years, the reports also include town expenditures and a list of residents with a valuation of property and taxes paid. Although substantial, this collection is not complete, particularly prior to 1880.

Quaker Miscellaneous Manuscripts is an artificial collection that brings together various single items or small groups of related materials relating to Quakers and Quakerism. The materials included within the collection are items that are not formally part of the New England Yearly Meeting records but may relate to or supplement that collection.