Collections: mss

A storeowner, farmer, and citizen of Granby, Mass., Bela Burnett was born October 4, 1778, the second of seven children of Jonathan and Mehitabel (Dickinson) Burnett. Having relocated from Southampton, New York, to Battleboro, Vermont, in 1770, Jonathan and Mehitable settled in Granby in 1774, purchasing the farm of Aaron Nash where in 2010, Burnett descendants still live. Burnett had at least five children by two marriages, first to Clarissa Warner (1801) and second to Sally Allen (1808). Burnett died in Granby on April 16, 1846.

The Burnett account book includes careful records of goods sold, customers’ accounts, and the form and method of payment (cash, credit, or barter), as well as some information on family members and boarders, along with a handful of miscellaneous items laid in, such as calculations, notes, and a remedy for yellow jaundice.

A knitter in a Northampton silk factory during the years of the Great Depression, Carroll Bush was a Socialist and officer with the American Federation of Hosiery Workers.

The Bush papers offer a small but fascinating glimpse into political radicalism and union organizing among Northampton silk workers during the Great Depression. An active Socialist and union member in the Textile Workers Union of America, Bush corresponded with other textile workers and union organizers in Massachusetts and entertained an interest in union agitation more generally. The collection consists entirely of letters received by Bush.

Daybook listing financial transactions of Butler, Mills, Smith and Barker Woolen Mill, a small woolen manufactory in Williamstown, Massachusetts owned by Henry Mills, Silas Butler, Asa Barker and Ebenezer Smith.

Accounts provide detailed information regarding costs of commodities, labor, and boarding in the town and document the impact of a small factory on the local economy where residents sold soap, oil, and wool to the mill, boarded its workers, took in weaving and hauled freight for the business. Includes mixed personal and business expenses, information about employees and production in the two woolen mills in town, and information concerning the cost of commodities, labor, and boarding workers in the town.

Shortly before his twentieth birthday in 1918, Roswell “Ross” Calin joined the 44th Coast Artillery Corps and was sent overseas for service. Arriving in France in August 1918, Calin took part in the St. Mihiel offensive and was wounded in action. He returned to his home in Providence, R.I., early in 1919 and was active in veterans’ organizations for years, including serving as Rhode Island State Adjutant of the Disabled American Veterans in the mid-1920s.

The Calin collection consists of two scrapbook “volumes,” now disbound, assembled by Ross Calin to document his experience in the First World War. Labeled a “memoir,” the volumes consist primarily of photographs and postcards (including many real photo postcards) depicting American troops in the field, war damage, and sites visited by Calin in France. Also included are a selection of medals received by Calin, including a Victory Medal with St. Mihiel clasp, and some newspaper clippings, primarily from the post-war years.

Brothers from Wilbraham, Mass., David and Marshall Calkins received medical degrees together at the Worcester Medical Institution in 1848. Although David died at the age of 31 in 1855 while just beginning a career, Marshall went on to build a considerable reputation in medicine, working with the Springfield City Hospital for many years and teaching at the University of Vermont.

Kept during the Calkins brothers’ years in Monson, Mass., the three daybooks that comprise this collection list patients treated and their origin or race, along with medical class notes, services provided, remedies, and forms of pay, including bartering for goods. Also included is an account of a stay in Wilbraham.

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.

In 1979 the Vietnamese invaded Cambodia removing the Khmer Rouge from power and ending the four year reign of a regime responsible for the deaths of more than a million people. In the upheaval surrounding the invasion hundreds of thousands of Cambodians fled to nearby Thailand. From camps along the border of Thailand and Cambodia 150,000 Cambodian refugees eventually resettled in the U.S.

The Cambodian Crisis Committee in Amherst, Massachusetts worked to educate Americans about the situation of the refugees, as well as help Cambodian families reunite. Elaine Kenseth Abel, a member of the Family Reunification Advocacy Project, received numerous letters from Cambodian refugees in the U.S. seeking assistance in getting their family members out of Thailand. The collection consists of case files, correspondence, and photographs documenting Cambodian refugees and their American advocates reunite families. The collection also includes newsletters and correspondence from other advocacy groups like the Cambodian Crisis Committee throughout the U.S.

The Central Labor Union was active in the Boston and Cambridge area as early as the 1870s, and by the turn of the twentieth century, the Cambridge Central Labor Union was a thriving organization. Active in many of the significant labor campaigns of the day, including the struggle for an eight hour day, the regulation of child labor, and the fight for collective bargaining, the Cambridge Central Labor Union was said in the late 1930s to represent nearly 30,000 workers in the city.

The minutes of the Cambridge Central Labor Union document the day to day operations of a union representing a cross-section of trades in the city of Cambridge, its relations to other organized labor groups, and the impact of the Depression of 1929 on working people in Massachusetts.

Anthony “Tony” Campano and Shizuko Shirai met by chance in January 1955 as Tony was passing through Yokohama en route to his new post in Akiya. Recently transferred to Japan, Tony enlisted in the U.S. Army a little over a year earlier, serving first in Korea. As their relationship blossomed, Tony and Shizuko set up housekeeping until his enlistment ended and he returned home to Boston. Determined to get back to Japan quickly and marry Shizuko, the two continued their courtship by mail, sending letters through Conrad Totman and Albert Braggs, both stationed in Japan. By the summer of 1956, Tony re-enlisted in the Army, this time stationed in the Medical Battalion of the 24th Division located in Seoul, Korea. There he remained until August 1957 when he was finally able to secure official authorization to marry Shizuko. Cutting their honeymoon short to deal with her medical emergency, Tony returned to his post in Korea. The couple reunited in November of that year after Tony secured a new assignment in Yokohama.

The letters of Tony Campano to Shizuko Shirai during the year or more they were separated document their unlikely romance. Soon after Tony returned home when his first enlistment ended, friends and family tried to discourage him from pursuing a relationship with Shizuko. Despite their age difference–Shizuko was eleven years older– and the language barrier, the two ultimately married. In addition to the couple’s long-distance courtship letters, the collection also contains about 100 letters exchanged between Campano and Conrad Totman, dating from their early days in the U.S. Army to the present; taken together they document a friendship of more than fifty years.

A housewife, mother and active community member, Sadie Campbell was born in 1881 and lived at 1 Depot Street in Cheshire, Massachusetts for most of her life until she died in 1971. Sadie was closely tied to the Cheshire community where she had a large circle of friends and acquaintances, and was active in a a number of organizations, such as: the Cheshire Ladies Reading Club, the Merry Wives of Cheshire Shakespeare Club, and the Cheshire Cash Tearoom.

The collection documents three generations of a western Massachusetts family. The variety and nature of the materials in this collection offer a good view into the local and social history of western Massachusetts through the lives of Sadie Campbell and her family.