Collecting area: New England

An urban planning firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that assisted New England cities and towns with initiating and managing urban development projects. The firm had two main types of contracts, urban renewal and comprehensive community planning, and many of their projects were supported with funds designated by the Federal Housing Act of 1949.
Includes organizational histories, memoranda, correspondence, proposal guidelines, materials for citizen participation, job inventories and reports, brochures that document urban growth management and the problems of suburbanization in New England, background studies, planning reports, growth management policies, zoning bylaws and amendments, and the files of Katharine Kumala.

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.

Pleasant Street Monthly Meeting was formed in 1952 when a group from the programmed Worcester Monthly Meeting sought unprogrammed worship. After more than a decade as an independent meeting, Pleasant Street came under the care of Connecticut Valley Quarterly Meeting in 1963, and a decade later, they began to hold joint meetings with Worcester, formally merging in 1979 to form the Worcester-Pleasant Street Monthly Meeting (later Uxbridge Monthly).

This small collection consists of photocopies of the two original minutebooks compiled by Pleasant Street Monthly Meeting prior to its merger with Worcester to form the Worcester-Pleasant Street Monthly Meeting (now Uxbridge Monthly Meeting).

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.

Founded in 1989, the Polish Genealogical Society of Massachusetts is a not-for-profit organization devoted to encouraging and supporting research into Polish family history and more generally into Polish culture and history. The Society sponsors educational programs and publications and operates a research library at the Polish Center of Discovery in Chicopee, Mass.

The collection consists of a complete run of the semiannual newsletter of the Polish Genealogical Society of Massachusetts, Biuletyn Korzenie (Roots Bulletin), from 1990-2023. At that point the Society became a chapter of the national organization, and Biuletyn Korzenie is continued as Massachusetts material in the Polish Genealogical Society of America journal, Rodziny.

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.

A textile manufacturer, Ponakin (or Ponikin) Mill was established on the north branch of the Nashua River, half a mile from North Lancaster, in 1861, near the site of an earlier cotton mill. By the end of the Civil War, it boasted 40 employees who produced 500,000 yards of brown sheeting, but by the time it was incorporated in 1888, specializing in the production of cotton yarn, manufacturing in Lancaster was already on the decline. The company survived at least into the 1920s.

This survival from a central Massachusetts textile manufacturer contains miscellaneous business records copied into a letterpress (or wet press) copy book, in which a combination of moisture and pressure was used to transfer ink from the original onto a sheet of tissue paper. This records cover a wide terrain, including inventories of stock on hand, accounts payable, insurance and IRS tax information, payroll data (without names), shipping lists and lists of customers, and a few copies of business letters.

Pondtown Monthly Meeting of Friends, based in Winthrop, Maine, began as a worship group under the care of the Winthrop, Maine Monthly Meeting in 1982. After a year, it was set off from Winthrop Monthly Meeting to become a monthly meeting as part of the Vassalboro Quarterly Meeting. Eight years later, in 1991, the Farmington Monthly Meeting was set off from Pondtown.

The collection consists of six folders, containing minutes from 1991-1993, State-of-the-Society reports for 1991 and 1992, some correspondence and a query.