The Lawrence Monthly Meeting of Friends evolved from Boston Monthly in the late 1880s and 1890s, achieving status as a monthly meeting in 1899. Although they became inactive in 1985, they were revived in 1994, and joined with a preparative meeting in Andover to form the present Lawrence-Andover Monthly Meeting.
The records of Lawrence-Andover Monthly Meeting include a relatively complete set of minutes, extending back to the earliest days as a preparative meeting to about the time of its becoming inactive in the mid-1980s. The collection also includes minutes and accounts for its Elizabeth Fry Missionary Circle, its Leprosy Mission, Missionary Society, and Sabbath School, along with records of births, deaths, and marriages in the meeting, 1892-1975.
Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017
Subjects
Lawrence (Mass.)--Religious life and customsMissionaries--MassachusettsQuakers--MassachusettsSociety of Friends--Massachusetts
Contributors
New England Yearly Meeting of Friends
Types of material
Minutes (Administrative records)Vital records (Document genre)
Blacksmith from Foxborough, Massachusetts. Documents the various kinds of work performed, such as mending chain links, shoeing horses, bolting and riveting wagons, repairing stoves, and the prices charged for such work. Includes customers arranged by surname and notations of the settlement of long-standing debts (without mention of the methods of payment).
Subjects
Blacksmithing--Massachusetts--Foxborough--History--19th centuryBlacksmiths--Massachusetts--Foxborough--Economic conditions--19th centuryFoxborough (Mass.)--Economic conditions--19th centuryFoxborough (Mass.)--History--19th century
The co-owner with Alan Peterson of Krackerjacks, a psychedelic clothing store in Boston, Donald “Jack” Levy grew the boutique he started in 1966 into a staple of the counterculture in the Boston area and eventually a franchise. Levy was at the center of a controversy in Cambridge when the city tried to ban “obscene” buttons. Though several stores removed the buttons, Levy refused and with community support, fought the city’s ban. Levy also opened several clothing stores in the Boston-area: Garbo, a women’s clothing store; Dazzle in 1973, a vintage clothing store; Goods in 1976, a natural fiber and novelty store; and purchased and refurbished the Blue Diner in 1986 (now the South Street Diner). He currently owns diners in Newton, Framingham, and Watertown Mass.
The Donald Levy Papers contain ephemera, photographs, and clippings primarily documenting Krackerjacks as well as Levy’s other clothing stores and the opening of Blue Diner. Of particular interest is a petition circulated by Levy during the city’s attempt to ban “obscene” buttons. Included among the signatures is a 15-year-old Jonathan Richman, who called the button ban, “an example of lingering Victorianism.”
Born in February 1800, Abisha Lincoln kept a general store in Raynham, Mass., selling groceries, hardware, dry goods, shoes, and many other items to residents of the north end of town. Successful in business, Lincoln won election to local and state office and was followed into business by each of his three sons.
These daybooks from Abisha Lincoln record customer names, goods sold (such as groceries, hardware, dry goods, and shoes) and the form of payment: principally cash, with some local trade of agricultural commodities.
Businessman from West Cambridge, Massachusetts with additional dealings in Charlestown, Quincy, Waltham, and Tyngsboro.
The volume includes lists of personal and business purchases, services provided for his family, and business services such as whitewashing, carting coal, sawing wood, carrying letters, collecting debts, relaying a brick fireplace, and “work loading Sloop Rapid,” and barter and cash transactions. References made to Locke’s involvement with Universalism and members of the Tufts family of Cambridge and Middlesex County.
Jazz musician and collector George G. Loring, known as Gid, played the cornet with a number of bands including his own (Gid’s Giddy Gang), especially after retiring from a career in the financial industry. Although he never considered himself a professional musician, he kept busy playing professional and semi-professional gigs and casual jam sessions in the Boston area, occasionally in his own home in Manchester, Mass. In addition to jazz, he played swing and Dixieland. Also dedicated to the environment, he was a founder of the Manchester Conservation Trust in 1963.
This collection contains an assortment of material relating to and describing jazz music and performances mainly from the 1940s through the 1960s, including collections of letters by musicians Jim Wheaton and James Weaver (mostly written in the early 1990s), notes about Boston Jazz Society performances, and ephemera including programs and clippings, with an emphasis on Louis Armstrong.
A manufacturer of electronics and radio communications, Frank Lyman was a native of Northampton and graduate of the Williston Academy and Harvard (class of 1931). The grandson of Joseph Lyman and great-nephew of Benjamin Smith Lyman, Lyman joined Harvey Radio in the late 1930s, during a time when it was building radio transmitting equipment, purchasing the company in 1940 and becoming its president. An investor in Boston-area radio stations, Lyman oversaw the company’s post-transition into the manufacture of of autmomatic machines and tooling and its merger into the electronics firm, Cambridge Thermionic Corporation (later renamed Cambion) in 1968. Lyman died in 1992, followed by his wife, Jeanne (Sargent), in 2005.
The Lyman Papers contain business correspondence and associated documents relating to both Harvey Radio Corporation and Cambridge Thermionic Corporation, along with associated materials pertaining to Frank Lyman’s investments and personal interests. Beginning during his time at the Williston Academy and extending through his adult life, the collection includes Lyman’s diaries and a small amount of personal correspondence.
Subjects
CambionCambridge Thermionic CorporationHarvey Radio CompanyRadio industry and trade--Massachusetts
As a journalist with the Boston Globe, a news commentator on WGBH television, and Curator of the Nieman Foundation for Journalism at Harvard, Louis M. Lyons was an important public figure in the New England media for over fifty years. A 1918 graduate of Massachusetts Agricultural College and later trustee of UMass Amherst, Lyons was an vocal advocate for freedom of the press and a highly regarded commentator on the evolving role of media in American society.
The Lyons Papers contain a selection of correspondence, lectures, and transcripts of broadcasts relating primarily to Lyons’ career in television and radio. From the McCarthy era through the end of American involvement in Vietnam, Lyons addressed topics ranging from local news to international events, and the collection offers insight into transformations in American media following the onset of television and reaction both in the media and the public to events such as the assassinations of John F. Kennedy and Martin Luther King, the war in Vietnam, and the social and political turmoil of the 1960s.
Subjects
Boston GlobeCivil rights movementsFreedom of the PressFrost, Robert, 1874-1963Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973Journalistic ethicsJournalists--Massachusetts--BostonKennedy, John Fitzgerald, 1917-1963King, Martin Luther, Jr., 1929-1968TelevisionUniversity of Massachusetts. TrusteesVietnam War, 1961-1975WGBH (Television station : Boston, Mass.)World War, 1914-1918
Quakers have a tangled history in Marion, Mass., a coastal town located on the northwestern edge of Buzzards Bay. As early as 1702, Friends established a preparative meeting in the village of Sippican (currently part of Marion), however this fed particular meetings in the neighboring towns of Rochester or Mattapoisett, rather than Marion itself. An independent worship ground was established in East Marion in 1946, followed in 1970 by a separate independent meeting in Marion under the care of Sandwich Quarter. This latter became the core of Marion Monthly Meeting, which was formally set off in 1973. The meeting was laid down in 1992.
Somewhat intermingled, this collection documents the complete, though comparatively brief history of the Quaker monthly meeting in Marion, Mass. It includes a thorough set of minutes for all but the final two years of the meeting, plus a small quantity of correspondence and financial information.
Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017
Subjects
Marion (Mass.)--Religious life and customsQuakers--MassachusettsSociety of Friends--Massachusetts
A Quaker worship group was held on Martha’s Vineyard from 1946 to 1953 under the care of Providence Monthly Meeting and was revived as an independent worship group in 1978. The group was accorded status as a monthly meeting under Sandwich Quarter in 1984.
The collection contains a nearly complete set of minutes for the Martha’s Vineyard Friends Meeting from its inception in 1984 to 2007.
Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017
Subjects
Martha's Vineyard (Mass.)--Religious life and customsQuakers--MassachusettsSociety of Friends--Massachusetts