Howes Brothers Photograph Collection
Alvah, Walter, and George Howes brothers traveled the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts in the last two decades of the 19th century, taking photographs of the residents and documenting the customs, fashions, architecture, industry, technology, and economic conditions of rural New England.
The Howes collection includes 200 study prints selected from 20,000 negatives held by the Ashfield Historical Society. An inventory of the study prints is available online.
The Howes brothers, Alvah, Walter, and George, traveled the Pioneer Valley of Massachusetts taking photographs of the residents, documenting pictorially the customs, fashions, architecture, industry, technology, and economic conditions of rural New England at the turn of the century. This collection consists of 200 study prints selected from 20,000 negatives on microfilm in the W.E.B. Du Bois Library (name and town index available with the microfilm). The original glass plates are housed in the Ashfield Historical Society, Ashfield, Massachusetts.
The collection is open for research.
Copies of these study prints in whatever form can be obtained only by permission of the Howes Brothers Project, Ashfield Historical Society, Ashfield, Mass.
Cite as: Howes Brothers Photographic Collection (MS 313). Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.
A microfilm set (number 5121, reels 1-29) in the Du Bois Library’s Microforms Area, includes all of the more than 20,000 Howes photographs in the Ashfield Historical Society’s collection.
Acquired from Ashfield Historical Society, 1980
The images in this collection were printed from the originals held by the Ashfield Historical Society, Ashfield, Mass.
Processed by SCUA staff.
An article describing the collection is filed in Folder I of the box of study prints in the Archives:
Flint, Linda J., “Preserving Photos as a Historical Resource: the Howes Brothers’ Photography,” U.S. Dept. of the Interior, Heritage Conservation and Recreation Service, 11593: Information Related to
Responsibilities of the Secretary of Interior, vol. 5 no. 2 (June 1980), pp. 11-13.