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

Collecting area: Massachusetts (Central)

Armelagos, George J.

George Armelagos Papers

1964-1989
1 box 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: FS 038

George Armelagos, expert on the diet of prehistoric humans and author of the book Consuming Passions: the Anthropology of Eating (1980) was a professor in the University’s Anthropology Department from 1971 until 1989. Armelagos was born in Lincoln Park, Michigan in 1936 and earned his B.A from the University of Michigan in 1958, his MA and PhD from the University of Colorado in 1963 and 1968 respectively. Armelagos became the face of physical anthropology in the 1980s, publishing popular works on forensic studies of prehistoric man and his research in the field of paleopathology attempted to apply the findings of skeletal research to contemporary nutrition and medicine. While at the University, Armelagos undertook a forensic study of the towns flooded by the Quabbin Reservoir. Armelagos left the University for a position at the University of Florida in 1989.

The George Armelagos papers include correspondence, grant proposals, and lecture notes from his time at the University of Massachusetts. There is a folder of materials from his study of the Quabbin Reservoir and photographs from the Mesa Verde Path. The remainder of the collection contains Armelagos’ published and unpublished works, stretching from his time as a Ph.D. student through his time at the University.

Subjects

University of Massachusetts Amherst--FacultyUniversity of Massachusetts Amherst. Department of Anthropology

Contributors

Armelagos, George J
Berlin, Bolton, Feltonville Stage Coach Line

Berlin, Bolton, & Feltonville Stage Ledger

1854-1867
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 138

Stage coach line that carried passengers and mail from Berlin, Bolton, and Feltonville (Hudson) to the Boston area. Includes account book documenting expenses of running the line, with passenger fares recorded elsewhere. Last several pages contain an individual’s accounts, as well as photocopies of passages about the stage coach line and a poem written when the company folded. Amos Sawyer, Jr., and his son-in-law Lorren Arnold ran the business.

Subjects

Berlin (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryBolton (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryFreight and freightage--MassachusettsStagecoach lines--Massachusetts

Contributors

Berlin, Bolton, & Feltonville Stage

Types of material

Account books
Boarding House (Swift River Valley, Mass.?)

Boarding House Register

1850
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 098

Twenty-four page register kept by unnamed person, possibly from a Quabbin town, listing boarders by name, payment received, and employee accounts. Payments noted in detail from February to October, 1850. Boarders included several doctors and L.S. Hills, possibly Leonard S. Hills of the Amherst, Massachusetts hat factory. Employee accounts list many women with Irish surnames, including Ellen O’Leary, Ellen Callahan, and Margaret Murphy.

Subjects

Boardinghouses--Massachusetts--19th centuryIrish American women--History--19th century

Types of material

Account books
Brookfield (Mass.). Selectmen

Brookfield (Mass.) Records

1736-1795
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 595

Settled in 1660 and incorporated in 1718, the town of Brookfield (Worcester County) straddles the Boston Post Road, one of the major arteries during the colonial period connecting Boston with the towns of the Connecticut River Valley and New York.

This assemblage of documents from the town of Brookfield consists primarily of warrants for town meetings, many with agendas, issued through the local constable. Concentrated in the 1770s, these warrants provide relatively detailed information on matters of local importance, including town finances, tax assessments, contributions to the poor house, roadways, and property disputes. During the Revolutionary and post-Revolutionary years, however, issues of interest to the town were often wrapped up in regional or national political issues. Town freeholders, for example, were called to consider requests to “come into any Vote or Resolve Respecting the East India Company Tea,” the encouragement of manufacture of firearms, smallpox inoculation, and pay for the town’s Minute Men.

Subjects

Brookfield (Mass.)--History--18th centurySmallpoxUnited States--History--Revolution, 1775-1783

Contributors

Forster, Jedediah

Types of material

Warrants
Brooks, Burt V.

Burt V. Brooks Photograph Collection

1889-1934
3 boxes 1.5 linear feet
Call no.: PH 060
Depiction of

The artist Burt Vernon Brooks was one of the outstanding chroniclers of daily life in the Swift River Valley before it was inundated to create the Quabbin Reservoir. Born in Brimfield, Mass., in 1849 and raised in Monson, Brooks moved to Greenwich with his family in the 1870s, where he worked on the family farm. At some unclear point before he turned 40, Brooks became active as an artist, painting local homes and scenery and taking photographs of the landscape, residents, and daily life in the Quabbin region. A prolific photographer, he was, in the words of historian Donald W. Howe, “hardly ever seen without his camera strapped to his back,” remaining active for decades. Three years after following his second wife to the west, Brooks died in Los Angeles in 1934.

The great majority of the 92 photographs in this collection are 5×7″ dry plate glass negatives taken by Brooks in the earliest years of the twentieth century, documenting the houses and people of Greenwich. Brooks’ work includes landscapes, houses, and a significant series of images of the Hillside School, but some of his best works are studio portraits, images of people at home or with their carriages, and posed scenes of children at play or at work. The collection also includes eight images by Brooks at Enfield, Greenwich, and Dana that are the property of the Swift River Valley Historical Society, and six images taken by Chetwynd and Pike in the Quabbin region to document properties slated for removal.

Gift of Friends of Quabbin through Gene Theroux, Paul Godfrey, and Les Campbell, June 2014

Subjects

Agriculture--Massachusetts--Greenwich--PhotographsCarriages and carts--Massachusetts--Greenwich--PhotographsChildren--Massachusetts--Greenwich--PhotographsDana (Mass.)--PhotographsDwellings--Massachusetts--Greenwich--PhotographsEnfield (Mass.)--PhotographsGreenwich (Mass.)--PhotographsHillside School (Marlborough, Mass.)Horses--Massachusetts--Greenwich--PhotographsNew Salem (Mass.)--PhotographsPlowing--Massachusetts--Greenwich--PhotographsPrescott (Mass.)--Photographs

Types of material

Dry plate gelatin negativesGelatin silver negativesPhotographs
Brown & Brothers Livery Stable

Brown and Brothers Account Book

1862-1873
1 vol. 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 092

Freight haulers from Dana, Massachusetts. Includes information about products that were hauled (such as palm leaf hats, mats, lumber, railroad ties, and waste) and the companies for which they were carried. Also contains information about how Brown was paid (cash, barter, manure, chopped wood, stone) and the names of many people and places with whom Brown and Brothers conducted business.

Subjects

Dana (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryFreight and freightage--MassachusettsFurniture industry and trade--MassachusettsPanama hat industry--MassachusettsSwift River Valley (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th century

Contributors

Brown and BrothersBrown, Harry

Types of material

Account books
Brown, Robert E.

Robert E. Brown Southbridge (Mass.) Collection

1973-1977
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 029

During the mid-1970s, Robert Brown worked as a fifth grade teacher at the West Street School, Southbridge, Mass., while pursuing a graduate degree in anthropology at UMass Amherst under Joel Halpern. Part of Brown’s research involved conducting oral histories with Southbridge families identified as “ethnic,” including Albanian, Greek, Polish, Portuguese, Italian, and Puerto Rican, as well as the only African American family in town at the time. Brown published his work in local newspapers and ultimately in the book, The New New Englanders (Worcester, Mass.: Commonwealth Press, 1980).

The Brown collection includes copies of his newspaper articles, profiles of the families he studied, and apparently complete transcripts of two oral history interviews. Also included are copies of two papers by Brown on Southbridge, possibly for an anthropology class, analyzing the education of Puerto Rican students and the lives of Rumanian Americans.

Subjects

African Americans--Massachusetts--SouthbridgeGreek Americans--Massachusetts--SouthbridgeImmigrants--MassachusettsItalian Americans--Massachusetts--SouthbridgeRumanian Americans--Massachusetts--SouthbridgeSouthbridge (Mass.)--History

Contributors

Brown, Robert E

Types of material

Oral histories
Carroll, Lucius W.

Lucius W. Carroll Ledger

1841-1862
1 vol. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 245 bd

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.

Subjects

Barter--Massachusetts--History--19th centuryDudley (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryDudley Woolen Manufacturing Company (Dudley, Mass.)General stores--MassachusettsMerchants--Massachusetts--Economic conditions--19th centuryShopping--Massachusetts--History--19th centurySlater, GeorgeStockwell & CarrollUnion Mills (Webster, Mass.)Uxbridge (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryWebster (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryWebster Woolen Mills (Webster, Mass.)

Contributors

Carroll & CrosbyCarroll, Lucius W

Types of material

Account books
Chickering Family

Chickering Family Papers

1813-1873
2 folders 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 095

Nathaniel Chickering came to Enfield, Massachusetts, in 1800 with his son Otis and operated a grist mill for twenty years. One of Otis’ children, Bertrand, operated the Enfield telephone system in the Howe family store and lived with the Edwin H. Howe family.

Includes land and pew deeds of Nathaniel Chickering and Mrs. Otis Chickering’s account booklet with C.F. Wood and Co.

Subjects

Chickering family
Dana (Mass.)

Dana (Mass.) Collection

1801-1938
21 vols. (digital), 1 folder 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 012

Situated in the northeastern reaches of the Swift River Valley in western Massachusetts, Dana was one of four towns inundated in the 1930s to create the Quabbin Reservoir. Rural and relatively sparsely populated, Dana’s economy centered on agriculture, leavened with manufacturing wood products and soapstone quarrying.

The Dana Collections include a comprehensive records of town meetings from incorporation through disincorporation (1801-1938), plus rich records for the Congregational Church and its affiliate organizations, the Ladies Aid Society, the Orthodox Congregational Society, and the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor. Most of the materials listed in this finding aid are held at the Swift River Valley Historical Society in New Salem, Mass., and were part of a cooperative digitization project centered on the records of the Quabbin towns.

Gift of Donald Howe, 1960

Subjects

Congregational churches--Massachusetts--Dana--HistoryDana (Mass.)--HistoryDana (Mass.)--Politics and governmentDana (Mass.)--Religious life and customsDana (Mass.)--Social life and customsPoor-Massachusetts--DanaQuabbin Reservoir Region (Mass.)--HistoryQuabbin Reservoir Region (Mass.)--Social life and customsWomen--Massachusetts--DanaWomen--Societies and clubs

Contributors

Dana (Mass. : Town)Dana (Mass. : Town). Overseers of the PoorFirst Universalist Church (North Dana, Mass.)Ladies' Aid Society (Dana, Mass.)Orthodox Congregational Church (Dana, Mass.)Young Peoples Society of Christian Endeavor

Types of material

Church records