The proprietor of a general store and postmaster in Wendell Depot, Mass., W. W. Hunt carried on a thriving business for a small Franklin County town during the 1880s and 1890s. Selling a range of dry goods, foodstuffs, and other goods, Hunt catered to residents in Wendell and neighboring communities up and down the Miller River.
An extensive ledger, marked No. 5, the W.W. Hunt account book contains records of sales of a surprising range of dry goods and foodstuffs, snaths and scythes, stamps and envelopes, and other goods useful to a rural community. Although most of Hunt’s customers were individuals seemingly purchasing for personal consumption, he also sold goods to the Farley and Goddard Wood Paper Companies, the Ladies Aid Society, and the town of Wendell, with some accounts marked “Town Farm.”
Subjects
Merchants--Massachusetts--Wendell DepotWendell Depot (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th century
George W. Barton was born in Sudbury, Massachusetts in 1896. After attending Concord High School in Concord, Barton began his studies in horticulture and agriculture at Massachusetts Agricultural College.
The Barton collection includes diaries, scrapbooks, photographs, newspaper clippings, programs, announcements, and his herbarium, and relates primarily to his career at the Massachusetts Agricultural College where he studied horticulture and agriculture from 1914-1918.
Subjects
Botany--Study and teachingHorticulture--Study and teachingMassachusetts Agricultural College--Students
A pioneer in war and documentary photography, the Anglo-Greek photographer Felice Beato was an important chronicler of late-Edo and early-Meiji era Japan. Between 1863 and 1877, Beato took a stunning array of views, portraits, ethnographic images, and genre scenes and helped train the first generation of Japanese photographers.
The Beato Collection includes ten images taken by Felice Beato in Japan between 1863 and 1871, including his famous view of Daibutsu, the Great Buddha at Kotokuin Temple, Kamakura; his view of one of the residences of the Shimabara clan; two very scarce views of a farmhouse and agricultural laborers, probably taken along the Tokaido Road; two views of Yokohama; and a fine view of a naval fleet at Nagasaki.
Subjects
Japan--PhotographsJapan--Social life and customsNagasaki (Japan)--PhotographsTemples--Japan--PhotographsYokohama (Japan)--Photographs
Melancton B. Callaghan operated a general store in rural Charlton, New York, in the decades straddling the Civil War.
This daybook of a general store in Charlton, New York, documents Callaghan’s purchases from various wholesale merchants, including Van Heusen and Charles (Albany), Asher Cook, H.C. Foster, Craig and Company (Schenectady), Schenectady and Mohawk Sheeting Company and various unnamed peddlars. The book also includes lists of purchases (1844-1857), some arranged by wholesaler, and an inventory of goods on hand between 1859 and 1860.
Acquired from Charles Apfelbaum, 1987
Subjects
Charlton (N.Y.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryCook, AsherCraig & CoFoster, H. CGeneral stores--New York--CharltonGeneral stores--New York--Charlton--InventoriesInventories, Retail--New York (State)--New YorkPurchasing--New York--CharltonSchenectady & Mohawk Sheeting CoVan Heusen and Charles
Professor and Head of the Agricultural Economics Department at the Massachusetts Agricultural College who also worked briefly for Presidents Woodrow Wilson and Herbert Hoover, as well as the United States Department of Agriculture.
Includes biographical materials, correspondence concerning Cance’s role in the agricultural cooperative movement, addresses, articles (both in typescript and published), lectures, book reviews, typescript of a Carnegie study of factors in agricultural economics, a summary of a U.S. Senate report of which he was co-author, “Agricultural Cooperation and Rural Credit in Europe,” and research material. No documentation of his role as a delegate to the Hoover Conference on Economic Crisis, 1920, or his position as Supervisor of Market Research with the U.S. Department of Agriculture, 1922.
Subjects
Massachusetts Agricultural College--FacultyMassachusetts Agricultural College. Department of Agricultural EconomicsMassachusetts Agricultural College. Department of Agricultural EconomicsMassachusetts State College--Faculty
Businessman in several partnerships in south-central Worcestor county who owned a general store in Webster, Massachusetts. Includes lists of partners (such as John P. Stockwell of Stockwell and Carroll), yearly salaries and profits, accounts of what he sold and how he was paid, lists of individual customers and manufacturing companies, and labor accounts of workers. Also contains an alphabetical index to the ledger and several pages of notes receivable and notes payable.
As a child, W.E.B. Du Bois lived for several years on a five acre parcel of land on the Egremont plain near Great Barrington, Mass. Although barely five when his family moved into town, Du Bois never lost his feeling for this property that had been in his family for six generations, and when presented with the opportunity to reacquire the site in 1928, he accepted, intending to build a house there and settle.
Walter Wilson and Edmund Gordon purchased the Du Bois homesite in 1967 with the intention of erecting a memorial to Du Bois’ life and legacy. On October 18, 1969, the site was formally dedicated as the W. E. B. Du Bois Memorial Park, with civil-rights activist and future Georgia legislator Julian Bond giving the keynote address and Ossie Davis presiding as master of ceremonies. Nineteen years later, the Du Bois Memorial Foundation donated the property to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, designating the University of Massachusetts Amherst as custodian.
Narrated by Davis and including Bond’s keynote address, this documentary (originally shot on 16mm motion picture film) depicts the 1969 dedication ceremonies. For additional information, please visit the website for the Du Bois boyhood homesite.
Subjects
Du Bois, W. E. B. (William Edward Burghardt), 1868-1963--Homes and hauntsGreat Barrington (Mass.)
Joseph W. Estey was the owner of a farm in Greenwich, Massachusetts with a grist and sawmill. The account book (started in Springfield and Ludlow, Massachusetts with his business partner Abner Putnam) documents business dealings, hired male and female help, personal and farm expenses (hiring tanners and blacksmiths), and a deed.
Subjects
Agricultural laborers--Massachusetts--GreenwichDomestics--Massachusetts--GreenwichFarmers--Massachusetts--GreenwichGreenwich (Mass.)--Economic condition--19th centuryHowe, EdwardHowe, GideonLincoln, BenjaminLudlow (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryMarcy, LabanMills and mill-work--Massachusetts--GreenwichOaks, JohnParson Clapp TavernPutnam, A. W.Putnam, AbnerSpringfield (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryVaughan, JosiahWare Manufacturing Co. (Ware, Mass.)Warner, John
Barrie Barstow Greenbie was a key member of the Department of Landscape Architecture and Urban Planning at UMass Amherst from 1970-1989. In a long and remarkably diverse career, Greenbie worked as an artist with the Works Progress Administration, as a soldier and journalist, as a professor of theater, an architect, inventor, author, and landscape planner. After earning a BA in drama from the University of Miami (1953), he worked for several years in the theatre program at Skidmore College. While there, he added architecture to his array of talents, designing the East 74th Street Theater in New York in 1959, and founded a company to produce a “self-erecting” building designed to substitute for summer tent theaters. Two years after joining the faculty at UMass in 1970, he completed a doctorate in urban affairs and regional planning at the University of Wisconsin and continued with a characteristically broad array of creative pursuits, designing the William Smith Clark Memorial, among other things, and conducting an extensive aerial survey of the landscapes of the Connecticut River Valley. In monographs such as Design for Diversity and Spaces: Dimensions of the Human Landscape, Greenbie examined the interactions between humans and nature. He died at his home on South Amherst in 1998.
The Greenbie Papers document a long career as academic, writer, artist, architect, and theatrical designer. Of particular note is the extensive and engrossing correspondence, which extends from Greenbie’s years as a student at the Taft School in the late 1930s through his World War II service with the Sixth Army in the South Pacific and Japan, to his tenure at UMass Amherst (1970-1989). The collection also includes a small but interesting batch of correspondence between Greenbie’s parents (1918-1919).
Subjects
University of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of Landscape Architecture and Regional PlanningWorld War, 1939-1945
Western Massachusetts political leader, publisher, and banker (1881-1960), trustee of the University of Massachusetts (1940-1956), and founder, editor and publisher of the Greenfield Recorder newspaper (1912-1928); political positions included State Representative (1909-1913), State Senator (1913-1915, 1923-1927), and State Treasurer (1929-1930); in 1934, was Republican candidate for Lieutenant Governor, and in 1936, candidate for Governor.
The Haigis collection includes scrapbooks (1903-1936), chiefly of clippings, together with speeches (1936), posters, badges, campaign material, and photographs, mainly from Haigis’s unsuccessful campaigns for lieutenant governor (1934) and governor (1936); and tape of an interview (1974) with Leverett Saltonstall about Haigis, conducted by Craig Wallwork.
Subjects
Campaign speeches--MassachusettsLegislators--Massachusetts--History--20th centuryMassachusetts--Politics and government--1865-1950Montague (Mass. : Town)--Politics and government--20th centuryPolitical candidates--Massachusetts--History--20th centuryRepublican Party (Mass.)--History--20th century
Contributors
Haigis, John W., 1881-1960Saltonstall, Leverett, 1892-Wallwork, Craig