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

Collecting area: Massachusetts (East)

Chase, Lot

Lot Chase Account Books

1837-1848
2 vols. 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 199

Mariner from Harwich, Massachusetts, who was involved in the cod and mackerel fishing industry in Barnstable County. Two account books include expenses, income, and final settlements with those involved with annual voyages of 1837 and 1848. They also contain lists of crew members and part owners, many of whom were members of the Chase family.

Subjects

Barnstable County (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryChase familyCod fisheries--Massachusetts--Barnstable County--HistoryFisheries--Massachusetts--Equipment and supplies--HistoryFisheries--Massachusetts--Finance--HistoryFishers--Massachusetts--HistoryFishing--Economic aspects--MassachusettsHarwich (Mass.)--HistoryHorace (Schooner)Mackerel fisheries--Massachusetts--Barnstable County--History

Contributors

Chase, LotChase, Nathaniel

Types of material

Account books
Chigas, George

George Chigas Collection

1987
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 180
Depiction of Men at consecration of statue at the Trairatanaram Temple, 1987
Men at consecration of statue at the Trairatanaram Temple, 1987

A Senior Lecturer in Asian Studies at the University of Massachusetts Lowell and formerly the Associate Director of the Cambodian Genocide Program at Yale University (1998-2001), George Chigas is a noted political commentator on the genocide perpetrated by the Khmer Rouge during the 1970s.

This small collection is comprised of photographs taken by George Chigas of Cambodian sites and ceremonies in Lowell, Mass. The images document the ordination of novice monks, the consecration of a Buddhist statue, a Cambodian festival kite, and a community money tree celebration.

Gift of George Chigas, Sept. 1987

Subjects

Cambodians--MassachusettsLowell (Mass.)--History

Contributors

Chigas, George

Types of material

Photographs
Clark family

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
Clark, Gloria Xifaras, 1942-

Gloria Xifaras Clark Papers

1943-2015
21 boxes 10.75 linear feet
Call no.: MS 865
Depiction of Gloria Xifaras Clark and student, 1964
Gloria Xifaras Clark and student, 1964

Gloria Xifaras Clark was working as an elementary school teacher in her home town of New Bedford in 1964 when she answered the call to enlist in the Mississippi Freedom Summer Project. A recent graduate of Wheelock College, she was assigned to teach in the Benton County Freedom School in Holly Springs for several months, and stayed on to help organize the Mississippi Freedom Democratic Party and to teach literacy and Negro history in Benton, Tippah, and Union Counties. She continued on the activist path after returning to Massachusetts, devoting her energies to economic justice initiatives and work with the Friends of SNCC and the NAACP, and diving headlong into the antiwar movement as head of the Greater New Bedford Draft Information Center. After spending three years in England with her family in 1972-1975, she resumed her civic and educational work in New Bedford, eventually earning appointment as head of the Commonwealth’s Office for Children under Michael Dukakis in 1983. With a keen awareness of the historical importance of the civil rights struggle, Clark became a key organizer of an oral history project during the 1990s that included her fellow veterans of the civil rights movement in northern Mississippi. The results are available digitally through the University of Southern Mississippi.

Documenting the evolution of one activist’s career, the Clark Papers offer valuable information on the Freedom Summer and Freedom Schools in northern Mississippi, particularly in Tippah and Benton Counties, and civil rights activism more generally. The collection includes communiques among civil rights workers in the region, a variety of correspondence, pamphlets, newsletters, and ephemera, plus a small, but noteworthy collection of photographs. Of particular significance among the later materials is a thick body of material from the Draft Information Center in New Bedford (1967-1968), the Vietnam Summer project (1967), and relating to Clark’s role in the Harvard Strike of 1969.

Subjects

American Friends Service CommitteeCivil Rights movements--MississippiCouncil of Federated Organizations (U.S.)Draft resisters--MassachusettsHarvard University--Student strike, 1969Mississippi Freedom Democratic PartyMississippi Freedom ProjectPeace movements--MasachusettsStudent Non-Violent Coordinating Committee (U.S.)Students for a Democratic Society (U.S.)Vietnam War, 1961-1975--Protest movements--Massachusetts

Types of material

Photographs
Coburn, Andrew

Andrew Coburn Papers

ca.1950-2015
15 boxes 22.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 936
Depiction of Andrew Coburn
Andrew Coburn

In taut and haunting prose, Andrew Coburn left a memorable impression as both novelist and journalist. Born in Exeter, N.H., on May 1, 1932, Coburn became serious about writing while fulfilling his military duty in Germany and earning a degree in English at Suffolk University. After landing a position with the local newspaper, the Lawrence Eagle-Tribune, he put his talents to good use. Building his career as a journalist covering organized crime by day, he managed to spend nearly every night writing fiction until dawn. His successes on the beat earned him steady promotions all the way to city editor, and he eventually founded two newspapers of his own, though fiction would be his future. Winning a Eugene Saxton Fellowship in 1965, Coburn drew upon his experiences on the streets of Lawrence to publish his first novel, The Trespassers, in 1974, followed by The Babysitter in 1979, and eventually eleven other novels, a novella, and a host of short stories and essays. A master of language and dialogue grounded in a strong sense of place, Coburn won both wide readership and praise from other writers. His work has garnered nominations for the Edgar Allan Poe Award and Pushcart Prize and has been translated into 14 languages. Three of his novels have been made into films in France. He was married to Bernadine Casey Coburn, a former journalist and public relations expert, with whom he had one son and four daughters.

The Coburn Papers contain working drafts and page proofs of Andrew Coburn’s novels and short stories, along with selected correspondence, and dozens of journals, scrapbooks, and notebooks used in his fiction. In many cases, the completeness of the collection makes it possible to follow a work from its earliest inception, often recorded as a sketch (literal or in prose), through to its final iteration.

Gift of Andrew Coburn, 2016

Subjects

Journalists--MassachusettsNovelists--Massachusetts

Types of material

JournalsPhotographsScrapbooks
Coffin, George R. (George Richards)

George R. Coffin Journal

1854-1857
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1000 bd

The son of a master mariner from Newburyport, Massachusetts, George Richards Coffin was born in Castine, Maine, on Feb. 12, 1832. Sent to Boston at the age of 19 to get his start in business as a clerk, Coffin became a wharfinger in 1854, just a year before he married Hannah Balch, the eldest daughter of a prominent Newburyport merchant. As his family grew to eight, Coffin thrived in his trade, becoming a long-time member of the Merchant’s Exchange in Boston and Inspector of Grain for the Commercial Exchange in the 1870s. By the 1880s, he relocated his family to the genteel western suburbs of the city and by the time of his death in 1894, he had earned a spot in the Boston Blue Book.

This beautifully written diary was kept by George Coffin as he was starting out in life. Kept regularly, though not daily, the entries are filled with details about his budding business and personal lives, providing a rich portrayal of an aspiring young man in antebellum Boston. Beginning during the last few months of his clerkship and courtship of Hannah Balch and continuing through their engagement and marriage to the birth of their first child, the diary is filled with descriptions of socializing at parties and lectures, religious attendance and recreational activities, and it includes his thoughts on marriage, family, and his career in business. Of particular note are Coffin’s accounts of a visit to the State Prison in Charlestown, his reactions to local resistance to the capture of Anthony Burns under the Fugitive Slave Act, and the steady growth of his relationship with Hannah.

Gift of Elizabeth Hartmann, Nov. 2017

Subjects

Boston (Mass.)--Social life and customs--19th centuryBurns, Anthony, 1834-1862Clerks--Massachusetts--BostonCoffin, Hannah B.Courtship--Massachusetts--BostonHusband and wife--Massachusetts--BostonMarriage--Massachusetts--BostonNewburyport (Mass.)--Social life and customs--19th centuryUnited States. Fugitive Slave Law (1850)Weddings--Massachusetts--Newburyport

Types of material

Diaries
Colman, William, 1768-1820

William Colman Account Book

1802-1822
1 vol. 0.2 linear feet
Call no.: MS 212 bd

Merchant and shoemaker from the Byfield Parish of Newbury, Massachusetts and Boscawen, New Hampshire.

Includes accounts of the prices paid for shoemaking and agricultural labor, accounts of the men and women who worked for his father’s shoe store and factory, notes of who lived in the younger Colman’s home, a page mentioning his move to New Hampshire, and accounts of agricultural produce sales and exchange of farm labor.

Subjects

Agricultural wages--New Hampshire--History--19th centuryBoscawen (N.H.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryBoscawen (N.H.)--Rural conditions--19th centuryHouseholds--Massachusetts--Newbury--History--19th centuryMerchants--Massachusetts--Newbury--History--19th centuryNewbury (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryShoemakers--Massachusetts--Newbury--History--19th centuryShoes--Prices--Massachusetts--History--19th century

Contributors

Colman, William, 1768-1820

Types of material

Account books
Communist Party of Massachusetts

Communist Party of Massachusetts Collection

1932-1957
1 box 0.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 538

A branch of the Communist Party of the United States of America, the Communist Party of Massachusetts enjoyed strong popularity during the 1930s and 1940s, organizing the textile and other manufacturing industries.

This small collection is comprised of a miscellaneous assemblage of fliers, broadsides, and ephemera issued by the Communist Party of Massachusetts and its affiliates from the mid-1930s through the repression of the McCarthy era. Originating mostly from Boston, the items in the collection center on significant themes in Communist thought, including opposition to Fascism and militarism, labor solidarity against capital, and elections. A small number of items relate to Party-approved cultural productions, including plays and gatherings to celebrate Lenin or the Russian Revolution. Many items are associated with Otis A. Hood, a perpetual candidate for public office on the Communist Party ticket who became a target for McCarthy-era repression in the mid-1950s.

Acquired from Eugene Povirk, 2008

Subjects

Antiwar movements--MassachusettsCommunists--MassachusettsElections--MassachusettsWorld War, 1939-1945

Contributors

Communist Party of Massachusetts

Types of material

BroadsidesFliers
Cook Borden & Co.

Cook Borden and Co. Account Books

1863-1914
3 vols. 1.25 linear feet
Call no.: MS 288 bd

Cook Borden (a great uncle of Lizzie Borden) and his sons were prosperous lumber dealers from Fall River, Massachusetts who supplied large mills and transportation companies in the region. Three volumes include lists of customers and building contractors, company and personal profits and losses, accounts for expenses, horses, harnesses, lumber, and the planing mill, as well as accounts indicating the cost of rent, labor (with the “teamers”), insurance, interest, and other items.

Subjects

Callahan, Daley & CoConstruction industry--Massachusetts--HistoryContractors--Massachusetts--HistoryCratesLumberLumber trade--Massachusetts--Fall River--Accounting--HistoryTextile factories--Massachusetts--HistoryTextile industry--MassachusettsTransportation--Massachusetts--HistoryWages--Manufacturing industries--Massachusetts

Contributors

Borden, Cook, 1810-Borden, JeromeBorden, Philip HBorden, Theodore WCook Borden & Co

Types of material

Account books
Currier, William A.

W.A. Currier Daybooks

1865-1869
2 vols. 0.2 linear feet
Call no.: MS 213

Located at 14 and 16 Main Street in Haverhill, Mass., W.A. Currier dealt in kitchen goods, home furnishings, and stoves around the time of the Civil War. His trade seems to have been diverse and dynamic: in the Haverhill city directory for 1865, he is recorded variously as a furniture seller, junk dealer, and carriage maker, while two years later, he is listed at the same address under stoves and tinware.

Covering the immediate post-Civil War years, Currier’s daybooks document customers, items purchased, prices paid, and transactions relating to the trade in home goods, stoves, and rags.

Acquired from Charles Apfelbaum, 1987

Subjects

Adams, GeorgeDaniels, W. FGildea, PeterGriffin, SamuelHaverhill (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryKimball, OO'Brine, J. WRags--Prices--Massachusetts--Haverhill--19th centuryStacy, W. PStove industry and trade--Massachusetts--Haverhill--19th centuryStoves--Repairing--Massachusetts--Haverhill--19th centuryTinsmiths--Massachusetts--Haverhill--19th century

Contributors

Currier, William A

Types of material

Account booksDaybooks