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Clark Family Papers

1679-1814

1 box 0.5 linear feet

Call no.: MS 654

The Clark family played a prominent role in the colonial and early national history of Newton, Massachusetts. John Clark and his wife Elizabeth Norman settled in Cambridge Village (now Newton), Massachusetts, in about 1681, and played an active role in the public life of the town. His son William, grandson Norman, and great-grandson Norman followed in John’s footsteps, serving as Selectmen and, in the case of Norman, Jr., as the Collector of taxes during and after the Revolutionary War.

This small collection traces the early history of Newton, Mass., through the lives and activities of four generations of the family of John Clark. While the majority of the collection consists of deeds or related legal documents pertaining to properties in Newton (or in one case, Connecticut), a few items provide glimpses into other Clark family activities. As tax collector for Newton during and after the Revolution, Norman Clark, Jr., left an interesting documentary trail that touches on financial priorities in town, including the collection of taxes for support of the church, Revolutionary War soldiers, and road building.

Subjects

Clark FamilyNewton (Mass.)--History--18th centuryReal property--Massachusetts--NewtonTaxation--MassachusettsUnited States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783

Contributors

Clark, JohnClark, NormanClark, William

Types of material

DeedsMapsWills

Related collections: Massachusetts (East)

Association for Gravestone Studies

Association for Gravestone Studies Ephemera Collection

1788-1939

1 box 0.25 linear feet

Call no.: MS 651

Digital

Finding aid

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

Depiction of Lamprey and Dickey business card — Lamprey and Dickey business card

Founded in 1977, the Association for Gravestone Studies (AGS) is an international organization dedicated to furthering the study and preservation of gravestones. Based in Greenfield, Mass., the Association promotes the study of gravestones from historical and artistic perspectives. To raise public awareness about the significance of historic gravemarkers and the issues surrounding their preservation, the AGS sponsors conferences and workshops, publishes both a quarterly newsletter and annual journal, Markers, and has built an archive of collections documenting gravestones and the memorial industry.

The AGS Ephemera Collections contains a mix of materials relating to gravestones and the slate and marble industries. Most of the items relate to the marble and slate industries in Western Massachusetts and adjacent areas in Vermont and New Hampshire.

Subjects

Marble industry and tradeSlate industry

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesFair Haven Marble and Marbleized Slate CoFarr Alpaca Co

Types of material

Business cardsCircular lettersEphemeraMemorial cards

Related collections: Gravestones, Massachusetts (West)

Baszak, Mark A.

Mark A. Baszak Papers

1991-1992

1 box 0.25 linear feet

Call no.: MS 653

Born in Springfield in 1960 and raised in the Pioneer Valley, Mark A. Baszak received a bachelors degree in music composition and MEd. from UMass Amherst. Beginning shortly after completing graduate study, Baszak played a prominent part for over two decades in promoting the arts at his alma mater, serving as Acting Director of the Performing Arts Division (1987-1989), Coordinator and then Director of the Jazz in July program (1990-2008), Associate Director of Multicultural Programs (1993), and organizer of the Black Musicians Conferences and Festival (1989-1999). As an arts and culture representative of the Massachusetts Hokkaido Sister State Association in the early 1990s, Baszak helped foster exchanges between the sister states, visiting Hokkaido with the first official state delegation in 1991. Baszak died after a brief illness on September 25, 2008.

Documenting the early efforts to build upon the 1990 designation of Hokkaido and Massachusetts as sister states, the Baszak collection includes materials concentrated on the first Hokkaido Week in Amherst and the delegation that accompanied Gov. William Weld to Hokkaido in 1991. In addition to correspondence and memos, the collection includes ephemera collected by Baszak during the various ceremonies and transcripts of speeches delivered.

Subjects

Massachusetts-Hokkaido Sister State Association

Contributors

Baszak, Mark AWeld, William F

Related collections: Japan, Massachusetts

Andrews, Carol D.

Carol D. Andrews Collection

2001-2002

1 box 0.5 linear feet

Call no.: PH 031

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

A resident of New Braintree, Massachusetts, Carol Andrews became interested in the work of gravestone carvers when working on the history of her local cemetery. She has subsequently conducted research on the history and production of carvers from central and western Massachusetts during the eighteenth and early nineteenth centuries.

The Andrews Collection contains photographs and research notes arranged in alphabetical order regarding the work of identified Massachusetts carvers. Among the names represented in the collection are Abercrombie, Codner, Colburn, Daugherty, Geyer, Hartwell, Hastings, Kenfield, Kilburn, Kinney, Lewis, New, Park, Pool, Pratt, Rankin, Reed, Sikes, White, and Woods. Andrews assembled more comprehensive representations of the work of the Soules (Beza Sr. and Jr., Coomer, et al.), William Young, and Thomas Harmon. The collection also includes some correspondence with Vincent Luti and Robert Drinkwater relating to her research.

Subjects

Sepulchral monuments--MassachusettsStone carving--Massachusetts

Contributors

Andrews, Carol DAssociation for Gravestone StudiesDrinkwater, RobertLuti, Vincent

Types of material

Letters (Correspondence)Photographs

Related collections: Gravestones

Duane, Edward H.

Edward H. Duane Collection

1967-1992

1 box, portfolio 0.5 linear feet

Call no.: PH 029

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

While working as caretaker for veterans’ graves in 1966, Edward H. Duane became concerned about the deterioration he saw affecting the older tombstones. A resident of Leicester and (after 1968) Paxton, Mass., Duane was employed for many years as a shipper for companies in nearby Worcester, but preserving the information on tombstones became his calling. Over the following years, he made hundreds of rubbings of New England tombstones, teaching the technique at workshops and classes throughout the region. Among other works, he was author of The Old Burial Ground, Rutland, Mass., 1717-1888 (1983).

The Duane Collection contains an array of materials used by Edward Duane in his stone rubbing workshops in the 1970s and 1980s, along with newsclippings and short publications on New England gravestones and gravestone preservation. Among other items is an early essay of his, “Old New England Headstone, 1668-1815” (1967), accompanied by related correspondence from Allan Ludwig.

Subjects

Sepulchral monuments--Massachusetts

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesDuane, Edward H

Types of material

PhotographsRubbings

Related collections: Gravestones

Broderick, Warren F.

Warren F. Broderick Photograph Collection

1982-1983

1 box 0.25 linear feet

Call no.: PH 028

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

A senior archives and records management specialist at the New York State Archives, Warren F. Broderick has published extensively on topics ranging from gravestone carving to the history of the upper Hudson River Valley. He is co-author of Pottery Works (1995), editor of a new edition of Granville Hicks’s Small Town (2004), and a contributor of numerous journal articles of historical subjects.

The Broderick Collection includes photographs of tombstones in Old Catholic Cemeteries in, Lansingburgh and Lebanon Springs, N.Y., and St. Josephs Cemetery, Pittsfield, Mass. The collection includes a folder of slides taken of St. Josephs Cemetery by Barbara Rotundo.

Subjects

Sepulchral monuments--MassachusettsSepulchral monuments--New YorkStone carving--New York

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesBroderick, Warren F

Types of material

Photographs

Related collections: Gravestones

Williams, Gray

Gray Williams Photograph Collection

ca.1988-2000

3 boxes 1.5 linear feet

Call no.: PH 027

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

The editor, writer, and photographer Gray Williams was born in New York City in 1932, and spent most of his life in Chappaqua (Westchester County), N.Y. A 1954 graduate of Yale, Williams worked in the publishing industry for many years, including for the Metropolitan Museum of Art and the Museum of Modern Art, and since 1988, he has been a freelance writer, editor, and photographer. Long dedicated to history and historical preservation, he has served as New Castle Town Historian, chair of the New Castle Landmarks Advisory Committee, trustee of the Westchester County Historical Society, and as a member of the Property Council at the National Trust property Lyndhurst. He is the author of Picturing Our Past: National Register Sites in Westchester County (Westchester County Historical Society, 2003). A specialist in the early stone carvers of New York and Connecticut, as well as the use of grave monuments to illuminate and enrich the study of American history, art, and culture, Williams is a former trustee of the Association for Gravestone Studies and has contributed articles to its annual journal, Markers, and its Quarterly. In 2007, he was awarded the Association’s Harriette Merrifield Forbes Award for contributions to scholarship and preservation in the field.

The photographs and research materials he has contributed to the Association for Gravestone Studies are largely devoted to the subjects of three articles in the AAGS journal, Markers: “‘Md. by Thomas Gold’: The Gravestones of a New Haven Carver,” in collaboration with Meredith M. Williams, Markers V (1988); “Solomon Brewer: A Connecticut Valley Yankee in Westchester County,” Markers XI (1994); “By Their Characters You Shall Know Them: Using Styles of Lettering to Identify Gravestone Carvers,” Markers XVII (2000). The collection also includes photographs taken during AGS conferences, principally in New England, as well as a small group taken in Natchez Cemetery in Mississippi.

Subjects

Sepulchral monuments--New YorkStone carving--New York

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesWilliams, Gray

Types of material

Photographs

Related collections: Gravestones, Photographs

Dudley, Joseph

Joseph Dudley Memoir and Diary

1866-1893

1 vol. 0.25 linear feet

Call no.: MS 650 bd

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

Born in Cheshire, Conn., in 1822, Joseph Dudley learned “the marble business” from his father Elias, who had in turn been trained by David Ritter of New Haven. A staunch Methodist swept up in the religious ferment of the Second Great Awakening, Dudley joined his father’s business as a stonecutter in about 1845 and notes that he was among the first to letter tombstones in the rural Ever Green Cemetery in Woodstock, Conn., when it opened in 1848. He later worked in Meriden, Conn.

By generations, this volume has served as an account book, diary and memorandum book, memoir, geneaological record, and scrapbook, with each layer accumulated over all previous. Dudley’s memoir (beginning p. 78) includes a discussion of his upbringing in Cheshire, the tumultuous religious revivals during the 1840s and his reception into the Methodist Church and the Millerites, and much on his introduction to the marble business and work as a stonecutter through about 1853. The diary somewhat erratically covers the years 1873-1893.

Subjects

Marble industry and trade--ConnecticutMillerite movementSepulchral monuments--ConnecticutStonecutters

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesDudley, Joseph

Types of material

DiariesMemoirs

Related collections: Business & industry, Connecticut, Gravestones, Religion

Alford Marble Works

Alford Marble Works Records

1870-1873

1 vol. 0.1 linear feet

Call no.: MS 649 bd

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

Beginning in the early nineteenth century, the small town of Alford in far southwestern Massachusetts was the site of significant marble quarrying operations. Highly profitable for several decades, the quarries began to decline in profitability by mid-century when new sites became accessible by rail. By the early 1870s, the Alford Marble Works stood as one of the last quarries in the region to remain active.

The Alford Marble Works ledger includes pay and work records for quarrymen during its last years of operation. Although the Marble Works is sometimes recorded as suspending activity in 1872, it is clear from these records that their work continued through the end of 1873.

Subjects

Marble industry and trade--MassachusettsSepulchral monuments--Massachusetts

Contributors

Alford Marble WorksAssociation for Gravestone Studies

Types of material

Account books

Related collections: Business & industry, Gravestones, Massachusetts (West)

Portland Granite Company

Portland Granite Company Records

1836

1 vol. 0.1 linear feet

Call no.: MS 648 bd

Finding aid

Part of: Association for Gravestone Studies Collection

Three months after it was incorporated by the state of Maine in March 1836, the Portland Granite Company acquired 17 acres of land from Seth Clark in Westbrook, Me., and began its quarrying operation. With 160 shares of common stock, the company’s members elected a board of three directors (Henry Iseley, M.P. Sawyer, and George Clark), with Henry R. Stickney serving as Treasurer and Secretary. Though not particularly prominent, the firm appears to have operated for at least fifty years, and is listed in directories of state industries through about the time of Stickney’s death in 1887.

Recorded on a slender seven pages in an otherwise blank bound ledger, the records of the Portland Granite Company provide slight but critical documentation of the organization of a significant quarrying operation. Included are the formal act of incorporation for the company, a record of approval by the corporation to accept their charter; notes on the election of officers; company by-laws; approval for the distribution of stock (160 shares); and an agreement with Seth Clark to purchase 17 acres in Westbrook, Me., for the operation.

Subjects

Granite industry and trade--MaineSepulchral monuments--Maine

Contributors

Stickney, Henry Rolfe, 1799-1887

Types of material

Articles of incorporationBylaws (Administrative records)

Related collections: Business & industry, Gravestones, Maine