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

Collecting area: New England

Boston & Albany Railroad Company. Engineering Department

Boston & Albany Railroad Engineering Department Map Collection

1833-1920
19 v.
Call no.: MS 130

The Boston and Albany Railroad was formed between 1867 and 1870 from the merger of three existing lines, the Boston and Worcester (chartered 1831), the Western (1833), and the Castleton and West Stockbridge (1834). The corporation was a primary east-west transit through the Commonwealth, with branches connecting towns including Athol, Ware, North Adams, and Hudson, N.Y.

The nineteen atlases comprising this collection include detailed plans documenting the location and ownership of rights of way, land-takings, and other land transfers to or from the railroad company. Dating from the early years of operation for the corporation to just after the turn of the century, the atlases include maps of predecessor lines (Boston and Worcester Railroad Corporation and Western Rail-Road), as well as the Grand Junction Railway Company (Charlestown, Somerville, Everett, and Chelsea), the Ware River Railroad, and the Chester and Becket Railroad.

Subjects

Boston and Albany Railroad Co.--MapsBoston and Worcester Railroad Corporation--MapsChester and Becket Railroad--MapsGrand Junction Railway Company--MapsRailroads--Massachusetts--MapsReal property--Massachusetts--MapsWare River Railroad--MapsWestern Rail-Road Corporation--Maps

Contributors

Boston & Albany Railroad Company. Engineering Department

Types of material

Maps
Boston & Maine Railroad. Fitchburg Division

Boston and Maine Railroad Fitchburg Division Records

1918-1958
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 475

Chartered in June 1835, the Boston and Maine Railroad was the dominant railroad of northern New England for nearly one hundred years. This collection consists of records from the Engineering Department of the Fitchburg Division relating to the maintenance of bridges in Massachusetts, including correspondence, accident reports, financial records and progress reports on work recommended by bridge inspectors.

Subjects

Railroad companies--United States--History--20th century

Contributors

Boston and Maine Railroad. Fitchburg Division
Boston AIDS Consortium

Boston AIDS Consortium Records

1991-2005
12 boxes 18 linear feet
Call no.: MS 458

Temporarily stored offsite; contact SCUA to request materials from this collection.

In the fall 1987, a working group was formed in Boston to help coordinate planning for HIV-related services, prevention, and education. The Boston AIDS Consortium began operations the following January with the goal of ensuring effective services for people affected by HIV/AIDS and enabling them to live healthy and productive lives. In its eighteen year existence, the Consortium worked with over seventy public and private agencies and two hundred individuals.

The Records of the Boston AIDS Consortium provide valuable insight into community-based mobilization in response to the AIDS epidemic.

Subjects

AIDS (Disease)AIDS activists--MassachusettsAcquired Immunodeficiency Syndrome--Prevention and control

Contributors

Boston AIDS Consortium
Boston Jazz Society

Boston Jazz Society Records

ca. 1973-2014
6 boxes 10 linear feet
Call no.: MS 880
Depiction of

Founded in 1973, the Boston Jazz Society grew from a small group of enthusiasts listening to music in living rooms to a thriving organization that “kept Jazz alive” in New England. As Jazz’s popularity began to fade in the late 1960s, local Jazz societies formed to provide support to artists and give them the means and venues to continue to perform on the road. The Boston Jazz Society was originally inspired by one of the earliest, the Left Bank Jazz Society of Baltimore. Like the Left Bank, BJS produced concerts in clubs, theaters, and hotels but expanded their efforts to include exhibits, television and radio shows, and a Jazz education program for grade school students. The longest running BJS activities, however, were the annual Jazz Barbecues and starting in 1975, the BJS Scholarships. The scholarship program raised funds for young Jazz musicians to attend the New England Conservatory of Music’s Jazz Department and the Berklee School Of Music and began the musical careers of many important musicians, composers, and teachers. BJS was also deeply connected to the local music scene, celebrating Roxbury, Mass. natives Alan Dawson and Roy Haynes, whose brother Vincent was a long-time board member, among many others. After 42 years of promoting Jazz music in Boston, the Boston Jazz Society, Inc. dissolved in 2015.

The Boston Jazz Society Records extensively document BJS’s meetings, events, business dealings, and scholarship administration through meeting minutes, posters, correspondence, photographs, recordings, videos, and BJS’s own propaganda and publications. The majority of the BJS records came from the collection of founding member and longtime president Aureldon Edward Henderson and also represents his involvement in promoting Jazz in the Boston area.

Gift of Aureldon Edward Henderson, July 2014, Aug. 2015

Subjects

Jazz musicians--Massachusetts--BostonJazz--Massachusetts--Boston

Contributors

Berklee School of MusicHaynes, RoyHenderson, Aureldon EdwardNew England Conservatory of Music
Boston Monthly Meeting of Friends

Boston Monthly Meeting of Friends Records

1870-1974
37 vols., 1 box 3.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 902 B678

Although Quakers first worshipped in Boston in 1661, they were late in the game in organizing a formal meeting. A preparative meeting operated in the city for just over a hundred years (1707-1808) under the auspices of the Salem Monthly Meeting, and a second attempt at building a community began in 1870 with authorization of an indulged meeting in Roxbury. Set off formally as the Boston Monthly Meeting Friend in 1883, this meeting continued until 1944, when it merged with an independent meeting in neighboring Cambridge to create the current Friends Meeting at Cambridge.

The records in this collection offer thorough documentation of the Boston Monthly Meeting of Friends from its establishment as an indulged meeting in 1870 through to its merger in 1944 and change of name to the Friends Meeting at Cambridge. In addition to the meeting minutes, the collection includes substantial records of the monthly’s Friends Guild and Women’s Foreign Missionary Society.

Gift of New England Yearly Meeting of Friends, April 2017

Subjects

Boston (Mass.)--Religious life and customsQuakers--MassachusettsSociety of Friends--Massachusetts

Contributors

New England Yearly Meeting of Friends

Types of material

Minutes (Administrative records)Vital records (Document genre)
Bowman, Mitzi

Mitzi Bowman Papers

ca.1970-2010
10 boxes 15 linear feet
Call no.: MS 761
Depiction of Mitzi Bowman, 2012
Mitzi Bowman, 2012

For years, Mitzi Bowman and her husband Pete were stalwarts of the progressive community in Connecticut, and tireless activists in the movements for social justice, peace, and the environment. Shortly after their marriage in 1966, the Bowman’s settled in Newtown and then in Milford, Conn., where Pete worked as an engineer and where Mitzi had trouble finding employment due to her outspoken ways. In close collaboration, the couple became ardent opponents of the war in Vietnam as well as opponents of nuclear weaponry. The focus of their activism took a new direction in 1976, when they learned of plans to ship spent nuclear fuel rods near their home. Founding their first antinuclear organization, STOP (Stop the Transport of Pollution), they forced the shipments to be rerouted, and they soon devoted themselves to shutting down nuclear power in Connecticut completely, including the Millstone and Connecticut Yankee facilities, the latter of which was decommissioned in 1996. The Bowmans were active in a wide array of other groups, including the New Haven Green Party, the Connecticut Coalition Against Millstone, the People’s Action for Clean Energy (PACE), and they were founding members of Fight the (Utility Rate) Hike, the Progressive Action Roundtable, and Don’t Waste Connecticut. Two years after Pete died on Feb. 14, 2006 at the age of 78, Mitzi relocated to Vermont, carrying on her activism.
The Bowman Papers center on Mitzi and Pete Bowman’s antinuclear activism, dating from their first forays with STOP in the mid-1970s through the growth of opposition to Vermont Yankee in the approach to 2010. The collection offers a valuable glimpse into the early history of grassroots opposition to nuclear energy and the Bowmans’ approach to organizing and their connections with other antinuclear activists and to the peace and environmental movements are reflected in an extensive series of notes, press releases, newsclippings, talks, ephemera, and correspondence. The collections also includes extensive subject files on radiation, nuclear energy, peace, and related topics.

Gift of Mitzi Bowman, Dec. 2012

Subjects

Antinuclear movement--ConnecticutConnecticut Coalition Against MillstoneDon't Waste ConnecticutSTOP (Stop the Transport of Pollution)

Contributors

Bowman, Pete
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
Bramlage, Georgene A.

Georgene A. Bramlage Leverett (Mass.) Collection

1966-1992
1 box 0.5 linear feet
Call no.: MS 656

A free-lance garden and landscape writer, Georgene A. Bramlage has published widely on garden and food-related topics and has been a member of the Garden Writers Association since 1980. She is the wife of William A. Bramlage, a member of the faculty in Plant and Soil Sciences at UMass Amherst. Long-time residents of Leverett, Mass., the Bramlages relocated to Roanoke, Va., in 2009.

An avid local historian, Bramlage collected pamphlets and ephemeral publications relating to the history of her town. This small collection includes a few items relating to the town’s bicentennial in 1974, newspaper clippings, genealogical information, and articles on its residents, and items relating to civic affairs in town. Several cookbooks donated by Bramlage were transferred to the McIntosh Cookbook Collection.

Subjects

Leverett (Mass.)--History

Contributors

Bramlage, Georgene A
Brazier, Frederick William

Frederick William Brazier Scrapbooks

1888-1936 Bulk: 1888-1915
2 vols. 1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 1197

Frederick William Brazier (1852-1936) began his railroad career in 1877 as a car builder in his hometown of Boston, before working his way up the railroad business in Fitchburg, MA, where he was also involved with politics, including elected positions such as acting mayor of the city in 1893. He and his family then moved in 1893 to Chicago, IL, while he worked for the Illinois Central Railroad, and then left in 1899 for Yonkers, NY, where Brazier had an office in Grand Central Station while working for the New York Central Railroad. He concluded his career as Superintendent of Rolling Stock for the New York Central Railroad.

Brazier kept scrapbooks about the railroad throughout his life, and this collection includes two small (8×10) scrapbooks filled with clippings about the Fitchburg Railroad (and the town of Fitchburg in general), with a few pages about the New York Central Railroad. In addition to clippings, there is a small amount of related ephemera as well as personal items such as correspondence, Christmas cards, a few family photographs, and a 1904 pin recognizing Brazier as president of the Master Car Builders Association. Some scrapbook pages are stuck together and therefore inaccessible. A short biography of Brazier as well as his own essay, “My Railroad Service,” were included by the donor, a great-granddaughter of Brazier’s.

Gift of Jean Kilbourne, 2023.

Subjects

Boston and Maine Railroad. Fitchburg DivisionFitchburg Railroad CompanyRailroad companies--United States--History
Breck, John

John Breck Account Book

1801-1810
1 vol. 0.1 linear feet
Call no.: MS 196 bd

A prominent storekeeper in Northampton, Mass., at the turn of the nineteenth century, John Breck was born on April 20, 1770. Starting in business with his father as Robert Breck and Son from their store at the corner of Main and King Streets, Breck thrived dealing in “English and Hardware Goods” and “crockery and Glass ware.” According to historian Nancy Goyne Evans, he was recorded working with blacksmith Seth Pomeroy in 1800 supplying chair makers with imported and domestic turning tools.

Labeled on the cover “Petty debts B, Iron Accounts,” this volume of accounts includes records of a substantial business in selling iron and steel at the turn of the nineteenth century. Although the owner of the book is nowhere recorded, it has very tentatively been assigned to John Breck based on his signature on p. 101 (and p. 49), settling an account with the clockmaker Nathan Storrs. Most of the entries are brief, often for petty sums and often cryptic in nature, however a significant number note the sale of iron or occasionally steel.

Subjects

Iron industry and trade--Massachusetts--NorthamptonNorthampton (Mass.)--History

Types of material

Daybooks