Collecting area: Massachusetts

Owner of the Amherst Athletic Club and columnist for the Amherst Bulletin from 1991 to 2004, Larry Kelley is deeply involved with Amherst area relations and government. He ran for both Select Board and Finance Committee, and was instrumental in raising awareness about and banning the illegal sale of martial arts weapons in Massachusetts.

Included in the Kelley papers are over 100 newspaper clippings, either his editorials, letters to the editor, or guest columns, about issues ranging from the use of town safety services by Amherst College, his objection to the Civil Rights Review Commission’s right to subpoena, his fight to fly commemorative flags in downtown Amherst both on the anniversary of September 11th and on the day Osama bin Laden is captured, to his objection over the Amherst-Pelham Regional High School’s production of Eve Ensler’s The Vagina Monologues.

A notable figure in Amherst, Mass., prior to the founding of Amherst College, Rufus Kellogg was born on July 16, 1794, the child of Jerusha and Joseph Kellogg. Married to Nancy Stetson in June 1820, Kellogg made a successful, if highly varied living, serving as town postmaster (1809-1824), keeping an inn and tavern at the “City” beginning in 1818, and farming, and he became a stalwart of the local Masonic lodge. His son Rufus Bela Kellogg rose even higher on the social ladder, graduating from Amherst College in 1858 and became a prominent banker.

A diverse and fairly complicated book of records, the Kellogg ledger is part waste book, day book, memorandum book, and account book, marking records of lending a horse and sleigh are interspersed with accounts for the sale of grain and hay, boarding locals, repairing pumps, and other miscellaneous transactions. Although it is unclear precisely which member or members of the Kellogg family kept any individual record, it appears that Rufus must have initiated the book, although later entries were clearly made by one or more of his children.

The collection primarily consists of photographs taken by Elaine Kenseth-Abel of Cambodians refugees in Thailand who later relocated to Amherst, Massachusetts during the 1970s-1980s. The collection also includes color prints of drawings by E. Seng Huot depicting Cambodian genocide.

Fred “Lil” Kerslake was proprietor of one of the premier performing animal acts of the turn of the twentieth century, featuring a porcine troupe that did “everything but talk.” From about 1891 through the 1930s, Kerslake’s Pigs rolled barrels and jumped ropes, climbed ladders, played see saw, and drew carriages to the delight of audiences across the United States and Europe. With his wife Mary and, after 1913, his son Fred by his side, Kerslake’s Pigs toured with Carl Hagenbeck, Walter L. Main, and Ringling Brothers. Fred and Mary retired to Gill, Mass., in 1930 where they ran a dog kennel. Fred Kerslake died at home in Sept. 1949, with Mary following in 1954.

Assembled by Fred and Mary Kerslakes, the four scrapbooks in this remarkable collection are packed with photographs and ephemera documenting their far flung travels between the 1890s and 1920s, along with promotional and candid shots of their beloved pigs, donkeys, and horses. Interspersed in the volumes are photographs of clowns and other circus performers, brochures, fliers, and posters advertising Kerslake’s Pigs and the circuses that employed them.

The family of Roxana Kingsbury Gould (nee Weed) farmed the rocky soils of western New England during the late nineteenth century. Roxana’s first husband Ambrose died of dysentery shortly after the Civil War, leaving her to care for their two infant sons, and after marrying her second husband, Lyman Gould, she relocated from southwestern Vermont to Cooleyville and then (ten years later) to Shelburne, Massachusetts. The Goulds added a third son to their family in 1869.

A rich collection of letters and photographs recording the history of the Kingsbury-Gould families of Shelburne, Massachusetts. The bulk of the letters are addressed to Roxana Kingsbury Gould, the strong-willed matriarch at the center of the family, and to her granddaughter, May Kingsbury Phillips, the family’s first historian. In addition to documenting the complicated dynamics of a close-knit family, this collection is a rich source for the study of local history, rural New England, and the social and cultural practices at the end of the 19th and beginning of the 20th centuries.

A wool dealer in the firm of Horswell, Kinsley, and French of Boston, Edward W. Kinsley captured his memories of the Civil War in a series of written reminiscences. These typescript copies include his memories of the raising of the 1st North Carolina Colored Regiment, his second visit South and the Emancipation Proclamation Celebration, General Tom Stevenson’s confirmation as Brigadier-General, the second election of President Lincoln, and the fall of Richmond among others. The collection also includes passages from Kinsley’s diary, letters, a scrapbook, photographs, newspaper clippings, and notes from the diary of Edward’s wife, Calista A. Kinsley.

After emigrating from Dzieciekowo, Poland, Michael Kislo found work in a Northampton basket shop and later as a machinist at International Silver Company. He was a resident of Florence, Mass.

The Kislo collection contains nine volumes of Kislo’s writing (mostly in Polish and thematically religious, patriotic, personal, and autobiographical) and artwork (drawings and paintings with religious allusions, Polish costumes, weapons, imaginary animals and fanciful landscapes).

An award-winning photojournalist, Janet Knott was one of the first woman to become a staff photographer at the Boston Globe. Over a 31-year career, she covered a broad range of topics, from local assignments to longer-form photo essays and international coverage, producing iconic images of the space shuttle Challenger disaster, the late 1980s famine in the Sudan, and the violence accompanying the Haitian elections of 1987. She was only the third woman recognized with the Robert Capa Gold Medal and, among many other awards, won first place for spot news from the World Press Photography Foundation. After leaving the Globe in 2007, she became Chief of Staff for Boston City Councilor Salvatore La Mattina, representing East Boston and the first district.

The Knott Collection contains an array of letters, ephemera, and photographs documenting both her photographic and political careers. There is an extensive body of work from her years working as a photojournalist at the Boston Globe comprised of slides, negatives, prints, and contacts sheets.

The Mill River flood of 1874 was one of the great man-made disasters of late nineteenth century western Massachusetts. Following the collapse of an earthenwork dam on May 16 of that year, 600,000,000 gallons of water coursed through Williamsburgh, Skinnerville, and Leeds, destroying factories and homes, bridges and roads, and leaving 139 deaths in its wake.

The nineteen images in the Mill River Flood collection are a small sampling of a series of 110 stereographs taken by the Knowlton Brothers of Northampton to document the devastation caused by the flood of May 1874. The collection also includes one view taken by F. J. Moore of Westfield, who issued his own series of 21 stereographs, and one by an unidentified photographer.

Marion Ingraham was born January 6, 1911, the youngest of four children of George Hunt Ingraham and Ruth Forster Ingraham. She grew up on a farm in Millis, Mass., and was active in the Junior Extension Service programs run by Massachusetts Agricultural College, including Camp Gilbert. At least two of her siblings graduated from MAC (Edward in 1925 and Mary in 1927), as did her daughter. Marion Ingraham married Otto Kohler and lived in South Hadley. She died in 2000.

This small collection focuses on young Marion’s activities with the Junior Extension Service and includes ephemera, copies of the Camp Gilbert News newsletter, photographs, and pages from a scrapbook.