Arvo A. Solander

Born in Wichendon, Mass., on August 26, 1909, the civil engineer Arvo A. Solander graduated from University of Maine and received a Masters Degree in Sanitary Engineering from Harvard University.

During the early years of his engineering career, Solander worked with the State Highway Commission of Maine, building bridges and roads in Eden and Hancock during the summer sessions of his junior year 1930-1932. In the following months, however, the Great Depression made it impossible for Solander to find any work in engineering, leaving him to take a job with the Harvard Employment Bureau. Although he helped engineer a dike for the Quabbin Reservoir, then nearing completion as a water source for metropolitan Boston, Solander was hired only as a “sand dog,” paid forty cents an hour for a forty-eight hour work week. His body fell into shape under the intense labor, though his back suffered the consequences.

After leaving the Harvard Employment Bureau, Solander worked for the State Department of Health at the Scituate Shellfish Plant in Scituate, Mass, taking responsibility for maintaining sanitation. While at Scituate, he took a series of examinations for the Massachusetts State Health Department, which opened the door for him to work in industrial waste.

From 1934 to 1935, Solander worked at a Tuberculosis Sanatorium in Rutland, about fifteen miles northwest of Worcester, Mass. Funds for this position were supplied in part by the New Deal relief agency, the Public Works Administration. He also worked as a salt marsh mosquito worker for the Massachusetts Reclamation Board, whose funds were supplied by another New Deal agency, the Civil Works Administration. From 1935 to 1937, Solander continued on his round of New Deal agencies, working as a teacher at Lake Dennison for the Civilian Conservation Corps, operating under the jurisdiction of the U.S. Army. The CCC was said to be the best of the various relief agencies in operation during the depression years. Solander taught mechanical drawing three nights a week with a modicum of success, however according to Solander, men selected in relief roles did not seem always interested in broader education.

For the next twenty years, Solander worked as a civil engineer for a long succession of agencies and water-related projects. His work in surveys of water, sewage, and garbage works in Alabama, Florida and Louisiana, he wrote, only “served to show the need for Federal Legislation to conserve one of our most valuable natural resources, water.” From February 1941 through May 1942, Solander helped engineer the drainage of almost 18,000 square miles in the Cumberland River Basin while his services were loaned to the Tennessee State Department of Health. During this time, he volunteered for military service with the Army’s Sanitary Corps, writing “In retrospect, I can very truthfully say that my work and accomplishments as a commissioned Officer in the Sanitary Corps, U.S. Army, were a greater contribution to the continued freedom of the United States than my civilian activities after the 1941 maneuvers.” Solander was commissioned a First Lieutenant, but by the end of the war, he had risen to the rank of Major.

In 1947, while stationed at the District Office of the U.S. Public Health Services in New Orleans, Louisiana, Solander aggravated a hernia and had to be confined to bed for several days. While laid up, the funds for his research on septic tanks ran low, and the project was shut down. “As the son of Finnish emigrant parents,” Solander wrote, “it appears that I had reached my peak, namely, the honorary rank of Major in the Sanitary Corps of the United States Army. It did not appear quite proper to assign a man of my age, education, and experience to this type of work. As the record of the past twenty years is reviewed, it seems that as much or more physical work has been done since my Army career than at any other time in my professional career.”

While en route from Cincinnati to Winchendon, Solander was hired by the firm of Tighe and Bond, a company that contracted for sewerage work, mostly in West Springfield and Easthampton. Unfortunately, when the owner of Tighe and Bond passed away and the company was bought out, Solander was again out of work. Calling upon his training as a land surveyor, and purchasing the necessary tools, Solander set out on a new path. Becoming familiar with the Hampshire County Commissioners, he took a venture into the political field, running for the Board of Public Health in South Hadley in 1950. Short of cash and time for his campaign, Solander was edged out by 200 votes.

Arvo A. Solander died at the age of 66 on June 9, 1976, in Holyoke Hospital. A member of the First Congregational Church of South Hadley, the American Society of Civil Engineers, American Congress of Surveying and Mapping, Water Pollution Control Federation, Society of American Military Engineers and Engineering Society of Western Mass, he left behind his wife, Elizabeth (Ray) Solander, and three children: Richard F. Nancy Miller, Miss Joan L. Solander, and Mrs. Gregory V (Sarah) Camp.

The Solander collection consists of twenty four bound volumes of letters, documents, and ephemera, documenting the ups and downs of the life of a civil engineer during and after the Great Depression. From 1930 to 1958, Solander kept and collected a wide array of information on the varied engineering jobs on which he was employed, including photographs, blue prints, graphs, daily reports, references, journals, diagrams, articles, maps, specifications, and sanitation plans. The range of projects is remarkable: Solander worked primarily on water programs and construction, but at various times, his employers sent him from his home in New England to Tennessee, Mississippi, Louisiana, Alabama, Ohio, and Florida. The final volume includes various newspaper clippings pertaining to political matters, more specifically, pertaining to Solander’s campaign for election to the Board of Public Health. There are also flyers and articles on other Massachusetts electives and on the 1960 presidential election.

The material collected in these volumes provides an impressive resume and historical blueprint for the life of an engineer. The photographs and prefaces within the volumes add a personal touch. The later years and final volume entail an interesting attempt and scrapbook of political newsclippings. The majority of the volume consists of paperwork from Solander’s run for office and newspaper ads for himself and his competitors. Along with material from Solander’s own district, of the volume includes a few pieces relating to the 1960 presidential election. One piece on John F. Kennedy from his years in the Senate, and also a five page report from the U.S. News and World Report entitled “More Light on the ’60 Election,” which provides a basic breakdown of Kennedy’s? Finally, the collection includes twenty-one pieces of ephemera pertaining to political contests in Western Massachusetts, stemming from the various nominees for Governor, Senator, and House of Representative. The newspaper clippings mostly include articles on the same nominees.

Each scrapbook contains a table of contents prepared by Solander, which have been transcribed below.

In 1805-06, Captain Benjamin Briggs (1760-1834) of Scituate, Massachusetts listed the expenses of running his ship. He paid for harbor master’s fees, wages, “wharfage at St. Mary’s”, provisions, carpenter and blacksmith bills, glasses and plates, “pylotage”, loading labor, rigging, mending the sails, and more. Individuals whom he paid repeatedly were Absolom Ozbon, Daniel Wilcott, and Lewis Talon.

Between 1809 and 1820 there are various accounts with individuals who owed him for work, the use of his boy and horse, and wood or timber, for which services were sometimes exchanged. Some of the repeat customers were Ichabod Cook, Nathaniel Litchfield, and Jonathan Brown.

By 1820 the accounts are mainly for making and mending shoes and boots. The cobbler may have been one of Captain Briggs’ three sons–Billings, Paul, or James.

The account books kept by members of the Champion and Stebbins families of Saybrook, Connecticut and West Springfield, Massachusetts document account transactions of various businesses and professional activities. The ledger (1753-1777) of general store merchant, medical practitioner, shipping and marine merchant Reuben Champion lists accounts by surname, services rendered and method of payment. Daybook (1785-1787) of businessman and general store merchant Jere Stebbins of West Springfield, Massachusetts chronicles transactions with store customers, many of whom were women, and his activities as a local banker lending and collecting cash. Account books (1809-1865) of physician Reuben Champion of West Springfield, Massachusetts include entries for treatment and remedies listed chronologically with little patient information, in addition to personal account information relating to boarders in his home, farm services accepted as credit, and pasture rentals.

Champion recorded very little personal information about patients in these books and usually noted simply that he had been called in, without recording the reason. The cases which he did note frequently include broken bones, “ulcers” (swellings), “parturition” (childbirth), and extracting teeth. Champion followed the homeopathic school of medicine, which relied on purges, emetics, and bleeding, and frequently recorded his treatments. His medicines ranged from asafetida to zinc powders, including arsenic, hemlock, magnesia and mercury. He also prescribed patent medicines such as “Bateman’s Drops,” and occasionally treated horses.

Patients or their families frequently earned credit by working Champion’s land. He also profited from loaning out horses or oxen, and by selling wood. Many transactions were cash, but he accepted a variety of goods as credit. “Strained honey” appears frequently, as do shoes and clothes.

Champion’s list of patients remained fairly steady over the years, among them some African-Americans and many women. Frequent patients included Elijah Ashley, Aaron Bagg, Petatiah Bliss, Reuben and Moses Champion, Martin Ely, and Jere Stebbins families.

This collection is organized into three series:

• Series 1. Reuben Champion Ledger, 1753-1777
• Series 2. Jere Stebbins Daybook, 1785-1787
• Series 3. Reuben Champion Daybooks, 1809-1865

John Chandler was born in Massachusetts in 1836. By 1860,
he was working as a whaleman and, with his brother George (a
housepainter), was boarding in the house of Nathan Dunham, a
seaman. During the 1860s, Chandler became a ship’s captain,
undertaking voyages to Barbados and St. Vincent in 1867 and
1868. Sometime in the 1860s or 1870s he married a woman named
Ruth and they moved to Orrington, Maine. Then, in 1874, John
and Ruth Chandler executed an agreement (copied into the
account book near the back) to take care of Nathaniel and
Nancy Rider of Bucksport, Maine, in return for the deeding of
land in Bucksport to the Chandlers. Captain Chandler settled
into agricultural life in Bucksport for the next forty
years.

The organization of the account book/diary is haphazard.
The first entry is a record of hauling loads of hay in 1896.
The next twenty pages contain ledger accounts for crewmembers
on voyages to Barbados and other places in 1867-1868 and
1876-1877. Following are 10 pages of various accounts for
labor, supplies and merchandise, headed “Bucksport” and
dating from 1878 to 1882. These accounts are followed by
about thirty pages of pasted in bills for taxes, clothes,
coal, boots and other commodities, dating from 1853 to 1866,
all in the town of Provincetown, Massachusetts. Concluding
are approximately 75 pages of a farm journal covering
Chandler’s activities from 1899 to 1914. Included in this
last part are notations about livestock, selling apples, work
performed and general mention of the elder Chandler’s comings
and goings. The wide range of Chandler’s economic activities
— he sold apples, cream, and livestock; performed labor or
carted goods for his neighbors; and he leased parts of his
farm — are documented on a regular basis, as well as
personal items such as travels and visits, weather, and new
purchases.

Lot Chase of Harwich, Massachusetts, was a mariner
involved in the extensive cod and mackerel fishing industry
located in Barnstable County. When he captained the schooner
Horace in 1837 he was fifty years old and he remained active
in the industry at least through 1850. These were the waning
years of the cod and mackerel industry’s use of the
traditional hook and line catching of fish. By 1853, the
introduction of the purse seine method of capturing whole
schools of fish began to transform local fishing from a
small-scale labor-intensive enterprise into an expensive,
capital-intensive industry which undermined the family-owned
schooners of the sort captained by Lot Chase.

The two account books detail the expenses, income, and
final settlements with those involved in the annual cod and
mackerel voyages of 1837 and 1848. Included is an accounting
of the large and small bills incurred to provision the
schooner for each voyage — custom-house expenses, wharfage
charges, cook’s wages, bait, supplies, and charges for
errands — divided among the crew and charged as a debit to
each man’s individual account. There is also a credit side
for crewmembers based on the number of fish caught and other
chores for which they received pay. A portion of the total
income from each voyage (about one quarter) was set aside as
the “schooner’s share” to be divided by the owners. Thus,
Captain Lot Chase, for instance, earned two owner’s shares
(one as captain and one as part owner) of the 1837 voyages
plus money for the more than 4000 fish he caught.

For the year 1838, there were eleven crewmembers, five of
whom were also part owners, enabling them to reap two sources
of income from the voyages. There were also two part owners
who were not on the voyages. In 1848, the crew totaled
eleven, but divided the schooner’s share among fifteen
individuals, three of whom were investors, and one — Captain
Nathaniel Chase — who handled all the shore duties,
including the selling of fish.

Lot Chase’s cod and mackerel business was certainly a
family enterprise. The seven part owners of the schooner
Horace who divided the profits from the 1837 voyages included
six men with the surname Chase (residing in Harwich and
Dennis) and a David Wixon who was a neighbor of Freeman
Chase, one of the owners. In 1848, ten of the 15 principals
connected with the schooner Cornelius shared the Chase
surname. Another was Elijah Doane, Lot Chase’s next-door
neighbor, and the other four were married to either a Doane
or a Chase.

Although Lot Chase was the captain, the shore-man
Nathaniel earned the greatest gain from the voyages,
suggesting that he was actually the driving force behind the
enterprise, although that is not clear. Nevertheless,
Nathaniel cleared $923 in 1837 (a considerable sum for that
time) but just $287 in 1848, in part demonstrating the
decline of the fishing industry in these years. Lot, on the
other hand, cleared about $150 in 1837 and about $215 in
1848. Crewmembers netted between $40 and $200 after expenses
for the 1848 voyages.

Thomas Nye (born ca. 1760-1770) appears to have been either an agent for or part-owner of the firm T. and A.R. Nye or, perhaps, a ship’s chandler who did a good deal of work for that firm. The cash book covers both his personal expenses (i.e., “gave to Hannah,” his wife; “paid black woman for washing;” etc.) and his business accounts. In the latter category, he received much of his money from T. and A.R. Nye, although he occasionally received sums from other firms or individuals. He also paid bills of large sums to other Fairhaven and New Bedford, Massachusetts firms in addition to small bills for labor, repairs, food, blacksmithing, and other items or services.

The cash book consists of six smaller cash books bound together in non-chronological order, covering the years 1830 to 1842: Part 1 – November 1837 to March 1839; Part 2 – March 1839 to February 1841; Part 3 – March 1841 to March 1842; Part 4 – December 1830 to November 1834; Part 5 – May 1837 to November 1837; and Part 6 – June 1834 to May 1837.

In addition, there are two pages between parts 3 and 4 listing deaths in the Nye family, including the death of Thomas’ mother Mary (1797), his father Obed (1815), several of his brothers, and members of his wife’s (Hannah Hathaway) family. Also included are notations of the lading of several ships, one of the clues suggesting he may have been a ship’s chandler or a wharf agent.

This volume contains the bonds entered in application for a Certificate of Enrollment for vessels of commerce at the port of Dennis in the District of Barnstable, Massachusetts. Enrollment certificates were used by the U.S. government to regulate domestic commerce. The information on the enrollment bond included the managing owner, the name and weight of the vessel, the sum of the bond, the master of the vessel, and information about ownership. Bond amounts typically ranged from $800 to $2,000.

The 80 completed bonds (of the some 200 bound in the volume) offer some insight into the commercial activities of the residents of the towns of Dennis, Yarmouth, and Harwich, in Barnstable County. They provide information on approximately 30 different schooners (many were used more than once) and a larger number of owners and masters. The various schooners were captained and owned by more than one individual, suggesting different partial owners for differing voyages. For example, enrollment certificates for the schooner Calvin F. Baker were issued in November 1889 to Luther Fisk (managing owner) and N.F. Baker (master); in January and April 1890 to David Fisk (managing owner) and W.W. Hatch (master); and again in July 1894 to Calvin Baker (managing owner) and Edson Chase (master). In some of the more detailed entries on ownership, the portions are divided into 64 shares.

Among the schooners for which enrollment certificates were issued frequently are: the Ira Laffrinier, the James H. Hoyt, the Florence Norvell, the Clarence Venner, the Menancatuck, the Wetherell, and the M.E. Eldredge. Among the owners and masters frequently listed are: Uriah and Luther Fisk; Abbot, Walter, Edson, and George Chase; Perry, Eleazar, and Peleg Crowell; Thomas and Joshua Nickerson; Roland Kelley; Joseph Adams; William Hatch; William Bourne; and James T. and Charles F. Baker. The collector for Barnstable County was F.B. Goss, but his deputy, H.H. Fisk, conducted most of the business in Dennis.

The account book of C.S. Toppan, a wealthy merchant in Portsmouth, New Hampshire, contains 298 hand-written pages detailing his ventures in ship owning and his investments in manufacturing companies and real estate. He began the book with total assets as of January 1845 of his “property in possession…the same being valued as is earmarked for capital in trade.” Among his debtors were various men, women, businesses (Merrimack Manufacturing Co., Lowell, Massachusetts), religious groups (Baptist Society), and political groups (Whig Committee). The last pages were written by his will executors, describing his estate at his death.

Paul Wing was a seaman born in Rochester, Plymouth County, Massachusetts in 1792. His accounts reflect, principally, the provisioning of schooners and sloops on which Wing was a sailor (and possibly captain) between 1812 and 1820. The accounts are randomly scattered in the book, but provide information on work done, cargo and passengers carried, provisions bought, wages, ship expenses, and port charges.

Among the ships for which there are accounts are the Sally, which sailed to Bermuda in 1812-1813; the Good Hope, which docked in Riceborough, Savannah, Boston, Nantucket, and Rochester; and the sloop Harmony for which there are the most complete accounts in 1817 and 1818. There are what appear to be accounts for crew members’ expenses on the Harmony from September 1817 to May 1818, cash received by the ship for boarding passengers from Providence to Savannah and back, a freight list, detailed provisions lists, and settlements between Paul Wing and the sloop’s owners — John Carswell, Judah Hathaway, and Ezra Sturtevant — suggesting that Wing may have been the captain on that voyage. (He was also listed as a captain when he married in 1817.) In the rear of the volume, there are notes of wages for two seamen — Denis Clifton and Jacob Briggs — and a cook aboard the schooner Sally in 1816.

Toward the front of the book are scattered accounts of Philip Wing (born 1788), Paul’s older brother, for agricultural, butchering, and carpentry work between 1805 and 1810, including some ship carpentry on the sloop Sophia, for the Liberty, and for the Jefferson.

Paul Wing died on a voyage to the West Indies in 1822 at age 29. There is a loose sheet inside the front cover of the volume concerning probate court proceedings in 1823 and 1824 that probably relate to settling Wing’s estate on his widow, the former Sally Sturtevant, and his two daughters, Louisa (born 1818) and Ophelia (born 1820).