The University of Massachusetts Amherst
Robert S. Cox Special Collections & University Archives Research Center
CredoResearch digital collections in Credo

Collecting area: Trades

Adams, William A.

William A. Adams Daybook

1876-1878
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 624 bd

During the 1870s, William A. Adams maintained a blacksmithing shop close to the intersection of Walnut and Hickory Streets in Springfield, Mass. His trade ran from farriery to repairing iron work, wheels, and wagons, and situated as he was near the southern end of Watershops Pond, one of the industrial centers of the city, his customers ranged from local residents to manufacturing firms, the city, and the Armory.

The Adams account book contains approximately 150 pages containing brief records of blacksmithing work for a range of customers located in the immediate area. Among the more names mentioned are the grocers Perkins and Nye, W. and E.W. Pease Co., J. Kimberley and Co., and Common Councilman William H. Pinney and J. W. Lull, all of whom can be located within a few blocks of Adams’ shop.

Acquired from Dan Casavant, 1999

Subjects

Blacksmiths--Massachusetts--SpringfieldHorseshoers--Massachusetts--SpringfieldSpringfield (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th century

Contributors

Adams, William A

Types of material

Daybooks
Brackett and Shuff

Brackett and Shuff Ledger

1844-1846
1 vol., 270p. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 487 bd

The firm of Brackett and Shuff manufactured moldings, doors, and sashes in Lowell, Massachusetts, during the 1840s.

This slender ledger includes sparse accounts (fewer than 30p.) of millwork done by Brackett and Shuff, documenting the manufacture of moldings, doors, and sashes. Crudely kept and only partly filled out, it includes some records of setting up machinery, including tempering plane irons and truing shoulder saws.

Subjects

Lowell (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryMillwork (Woodwork)--Massachusetts

Contributors

Brackett and ShuffBrackett, John BShuff, Allison S

Types of material

Ledgers
Cushing, Timothy

Timothy Cushing Account Book

1764-1845 Bulk: 1781-1806
2 vols. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 485 bd

A carpenter by trade and a farmer, Timothy Cushing lived in Cohasset, Massachusetts, throughout most of his adult life. Born on Feb 2, 1738, the eighth child of Samuel Cushing, a selectman and Justice of the Peace from the second district in Hingham (now Cohasset), Cushing married Desire Jenkins (b. 1745) on June 4, 1765, and raised a considerable family of eleven children. During the Revolutionary War, he served for a brief period in companies raised in Cohasset, but otherwise remained at home, at work, until his death on December 26, 1806.

Cushing’s accounts offer a fine record of the activities of a workaday carpenter during the first decades of the early American republic, reflecting both his remarkable industry and the flexibility with which he approached earning a living. The work undertaken by Cushing centers on two areas of activity — carpentry and farm work — but within those areas, the range of activities is quite broad. As a carpenter, Cushing set glass in windows, hung shutters, made coffins, hog troughs, and window seats; he worked on horse carts and sleds, barn doors, pulled down houses and framed them, made “a Little chair” and a table, painted sashes, hewed timber, made shingles, and worked on a dam. As a farm worker, he was regularly called upon to butcher calves and bullocks, to garden, mow hay, plow, make cider, and perform many other tasks, including making goose quill pens. The crops he records reflect the near-coastal setting: primarily flax, carrots, turnips, corn, and potatoes, with references throughout to cattle and sheep. During some periods, Cushing records selling fresh fish, including haddock and eels.

Subjects

Agricultural laborers--Massachusetts--Cohasset--18th centuryCarpenters--Massachusetts--Cohasset--18th centuryCohasset (Mass.)--Economic conditions--18th centuryCohasset (Mass.)--Economic conditions--18th century

Contributors

Cushing, Isaac, 1813-1891Cushing, Timothy, 1738-1806

Types of material

Account books
Cushman, Artemas

Artemas Cushman Account Book

1822-1846
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 073 bd

Born in Middleborough, Mass., in 1781, Artemas Cushman relocated to the central Vermont town of Braintree as a young man and spent decades as a carpenter and house joiner. He and his wife Phebe Spear raised a family of nine, one of whom (Artemas’ namesake) rose to local prominence as a officer in the state militia and representative in the state house and senate. Cushman died in Braintree in 1864.

Cushman’s small ledger is a fine record of the day-to-day work of an antebellum carpenter in rural Vermont. Part daybook and part account book, and often lacking in detail, Cushman’s entries document the work of a skilled artisan engaged in constructing or repairing houses, windmills, cider mills, bake houses, sheds, and barns, and at least one school. Occasionally, he applied his skills to smaller projects such as mending a wheel or making a wagon body or coffin, and less frequently he was compensated for manual labor (haying or planting). In a cash-poor economy, Cushman was typically repaid through an exchange of labor, or through commodities such as brandy, grain, or pork.

Subjects

Braintree (Vt.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryCarpenters--Vermont--Braintree

Types of material

Account booksDaybooks
Griswold, Jonah B.

Jonah B. Griswold Ledgers

1841-1876
4 vols. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 638

An industrious artisan with a wide custom, Jonah B. Griswold made gravestones and sepulchral monuments in Sturbridge, Mass., during the three decades saddling the Civil War. Making 20 or more stones a month, Griswold had clients throughout southern Worcester County, including the Brookfields, Charlton, Wales, Woodstock, Warren, Brimfield, Union, Oxford, Worcester, Southbridge, Holland, New Boston, Spencer, Webster, Dudley, and Podunk, and as far south as Pomfret, Conn.

The four volumes that survive from Griswold’s operation include: record of cash expenditures for personal items, 1843-1876, combined with accounts of work performed for Griswold and daybook with records of marble purchased and stones carved, 1861-1876; daybook of cash on hand 1841-1842, with accounts of stone purchased and stones carved, April 1843-1849; daybook of stones carved, 1849-1860; and daybook of stones carved, 1855-1876. Griswold seldom records inscriptions, with most entries restricted to the name of the client and/or deceased, location, and cost, such as: “Oct. 14. Brookfield. Stone for Mr. Woods child 25.43” Prices during the antebellum period ranged from $10 (half that for infants) to over $140, with larger monuments going higher.

Subjects

Sepulchral monuments--MassachusettsStone carving--MassachusettsSturbridge (Mass.)--History

Contributors

Association for Gravestone StudiesGriswold, Jonah B

Types of material

Daybooks
Hemenway, Phinehas

Phinehas Hemenway Daybook

1818-1828
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 627

The tanner Phinehas Hemenway was born in Bolton, Worcester County, Mass., in September 1794, the fourth of six children born to Simeon and Mary (Goss) Hemenway, but he resided nearly his entire adult life in the Franklin County hill town of Shutesbury. Although little is known about his life, Hemenway appears to have married twice, to a Polly or Mary Gray in about 1816, and to the widow Mary Sears of Prescott in Aril 1838. Hemenway died in Shutesbury on December 21, 1850.

With approximately 150 pages of brief, but closely written records of daily transactions, the Hemenway daybook documents the range of activities of rural tannery in antebellum Massachusetts. Along with the names of clients, the date and amount, and a brief notation on whether the work was for dressing, tanning, currying, or (apparently) the sale of finished product, Hemenway records work in a variety of leathers, from calf to sheep, hog, and horse and from sole leather to upper leather, sometimes specified as for shoes. The daybook also includes credit entries for labor performed, the purchase of hemlock bark or hides, or more rarely for cash to settle accounts.

Subjects

Shutesbury (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryTanners--Massachusetts--Shutesbury

Contributors

Hemenway, Phinehas, 1796-1850

Types of material

Daybooks
Karl Finison Connecticut River Valley History Collection

Karl Finison Connecticut River Valley History Collection

1803-1912
2 boxes 1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1226

Karl S. Finison was an undergraduate (class of 1975) and then graduate student at the University of Massachusetts Amherst, studying Anthropology and local agricultural history. His 1979 master’s thesis “Energy Flow on a Nineteenth Century Farm,” was a part of a Anthropology Department research series on the ecological anthropology of the Middle Connecticut River Valley, studying demographic and other trends from 1650 to 1900 in the area. Part of this work was supported in 1970s by the Connecticut Valley Population Ecology Project. While doing this work, Finison also began to collect agricultural journals, books, and original manuscripts about the ecological history of Upper and Middle Connecticut River Valley.

This collection consists of five original accounting logs and ledgers from western Massachusetts and southern Vermont, offering insight into the commerce and community in these areas in the 19th-century and early 20th-century:

  • An 1803-1826 account book covers agricultural and business transactions in the Middle Connecticut River Valley, including in such Massachusetts towns as Chester, Granby, Northampton, Northfield, and Shelburne.
  • A ledger of the accounts of E. F. Reed and Co. (Dummerston, VT) from 1883-1894, is the only volume with a known authorial origin.
  • A mixed-use logbook includes 1845-1846 worker logs (lumber industry) in Ashfield, MA; 1849 diary and expense entries from Shelburne Falls, MA; diary entries from 1851, ca. 1855, and 1878; and undated “little sermons.”
  • An account book of unknown origin, 1881-1905, mainly transactions regarding  shoes, boots, and harnesses.
  • A “Time Book,” tracking the labor of agricultural workers at an unknown location in summer 1912.
Gift of Karl Finison, 2024.

Subjects

Agricultural laborers--Connecticut River ValleyAgriculture--Economic aspects--Connecticut River ValleyConnecticut River Valley--Economic conditions--19th centuryIndustries--Connecticut River ValleyMassachusetts--Economic conditions--19th centuryVermont--Economic conditions--19th century

Types of material

Account books
Ricci, James B.

James Ricci Machine Tool Companies Printed Materials Collection

1885-2005 Bulk: 1940-1989
17 boxes 25.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1214

For more than fifty years, Jim Ricci collected both machine tools and the books,  catalogs, and manuals that relate to the machinery and the industry as a whole. A graduate of UMass Amherst (’71) and the son of a faculty member, Ricci is an historian of reel lawn mowers who has written extensively on the subject, publishing the book Hand, Horse, and Motor: The Development of the Lawn Mower Industry in the United States in 2016.

The collection represents more than 750 companies and includes brochures, catalogs, manuals, and parts lists from machine tool manufacturers. The majority of the companies represented are located in the United States; international companies are located in Austria, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, China, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, England, France, Germany, East Germany, West Germany, Hungary, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Poland, Scotland, South Africa, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland, Taiwan and Turkey.

Machine tools are machines that make parts and pieces for end products or other machine tools. These tools range from lathes, range from lathes, milling machines, grinders, manual and hydraulic presses, drill presses and saws to drills, mills, grinding wheels and cutting tools as well as measuring tools, jigs and fixtures. The machine tool industry evolved dramatically throughout the 20th century with the introduction of multi-function workstations. Multi-axis machines with attached tools changers are driven by sophisticated computer-controlled programs. The evolution of the industry is reflected, in part, in this historical collection of printed materials.

Gift of James B. Ricci, 2023.

Subjects

Bearings (Machinery)Cutting machinesGrinding machinesMachine-tool industryMachinery--Parts
Smith, Daniel

Daniel Smith Account Book

1773-1801
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1088 bd

A chair-maker and Revolutionary War veteran, Daniel Smith lived on High Street in Ipswich, Mass. As early as 1774, Smith was bottoming and repairing chairs, and for several decades, he produced chairs of various sorts, including waist chairs, four-back chairs, “green chairs,” great chairs, round chairs, and low chairs. Smith died in Jan. 1844.

This rough, but noteworthy volume records nearly two and half decades of production by a Massachusetts chair maker in the early National period. The volume begins as a cipher book, apparently kept by Smith in his late teens, but by the earliest accounts in 1774, Smith records “bottoming and mending” chairs and, by 1785, making “six four back chairs & a grat chair” for Thomas Smith.

Acquired from M&S Rare Books, May 2006 (2006-072).

Subjects

Chair-makers--Massachusetts--IpswichIpswich (Mass.)--Economic conditions--18th century

Types of material

Account books
Snow, Ephraim

Ephraim Snow Daybook

1822-1878
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 198 bd
Depiction of

The wheelwright Ephraim Snow was born in Rochester, Mass., on Sept. 9, 1821, the son of Samuel and Rhoda (Stewart) Snow. Apparently beginning as a general carpenter, he moved to neighboring Mattapoisett shortly after 1850, where he worked as a wheelwright for many years. He married Silvia A. Nickerson on July 1, 1858, who died after giving birth to their fourth child in 1874. Ephraim Snow appears to have died in Mattapoisett in either 1880 or 1881.

This unusual daybook offers an intimate glimpse into the lively shipbuilding and whaling village of Mattapoisett as these industries peaked and begin to decline. The earliest portions of the books include sparse accounts apparently kept by Samuel Snow, Ephraim’s father, with Ephraim’s day book covering the period 1842-1878. Most of his work involved repairing or manufacturing wagon wheels or shafts, but he applied his skills quite widely in repairing wheelbarrows, chairs, cradles, and boxes, hanging doors or doing general house carpentry, and taking boarders in his home. Interspersed in the volume are a large number of poems, a few nicely rendered pen and ink drawings, and a small handful of letters.

Acquired from Charles Apfelbaum, 1987

Subjects

Mattapoisett (Mass.)--HistoryMattapoisett (Mass.)--Social conditionsWheelwrights--Massachusetts--Mattapoisett

Contributors

Snow, Ephraim

Types of material

Pen drawingPoemsTintypes (Prints)