Town of Enfield, Massachusetts, which was among the Western Massachusetts towns abolished in 1938 to allow the Swift River Valley to be flooded, thereby creating the Quabbin Reservoir to provide Boston with water. A graphic blueprint depiction prepared by the Metropolitan District Water Supply Commission of the lots of landholders in Enfield Village in 1930.

Fifty-one men from Enfield served in World War I. This collection consists of two dance cards from an event welcoming the soldiers back, each filled out chiefly with initials. The back cover identifies W.H. Young as Floor Director, along with five aides.

Grammar school in Enfield, Massachusetts, a town abolished in 1938 to allow the Swift River Valley to be flooded, thereby creating the Quabbin Reservoir to provide Boston with water. Includes programs of the graduation exercises held at the Town Hall in 1902, 1906, 1913, and 1914. Also contains lists of graduates, speakers, and performers.

Account books for school districts of Enfield, Massachusetts. The schools’ appropriations accounts kept by selectmen between 1816-1856 show the amount raised by the town annually for the support of the schools, and include how, when, and to whom money was disbursed. The account book for Enfield’s school district number 4, 1854-1868, includes records of the disbursement of money for teaching, boarding the teachers, supplying cord wood, making fires, and repairing the building. Also lists the names of teachers and members of the Prudential Committee (who kept the records and sometimes taught).

Erected in 1832 in the business district of Enfield, Massachusetts, the Swift River Hotel began as a mealtime stopping place for travelers on stagecoaches running to and from Boston. The Quabbin Inn in Greenwich was built in 1900, and served as a vacation spot in summer, offering farm-fresh food and cool breezes off Quabbin Lake.

The collection consists of a menu from the Swift River Hotel proprietorship of William H. Galvin and two brochures depicting the bucolic setting and atmosphere of the Quabbin Inn in Greenwich.

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.

Non-partisan political organization based in Amherst, Massachusetts that influences public policy through education and advocacy by registering voters, organizing candidate forums, publishing voting guides, and disseminating general information on the legislative process and the functioning of government on the local, state, and federal levels.

Includes minutes, annual reports, financial records, publications, extensive files on specific programs, photographs, video- and audio-tapes, scrapbooks, and newspaper clippings. Also contains information on two league members who rose to national prominence: Lucy Wilson Benson (Under Secretary of State in the federal government in 1977) and Jane F. Garvey (Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration in 1997).

Nearly two thirds of this town treasurer’s account book from Bridgewater (later Brockton), Massachusetts, is devoted to a monthly accounting of money paid to the families of Civil War volunteers, beginning in April 1861 and carrying through 1881, made mostly by town treasurer R.P. Kingman; accounts of school district expenses and revenues for the years 1858 to 1869, for the 14 school districts in North Bridgewater (teacher salaries, supplies, and accounts with textbook publishers such as Harper & Bros. and Heath & Co.); and listings of salaries paid town officers, including the Superintendent of Streets, Overseer of the Poor, city clerk, city treasurer, and the Police Department.

An urban planning firm based in Cambridge, Massachusetts, that assisted New England cities and towns with initiating and managing urban development projects. The firm had two main types of contracts, urban renewal and comprehensive community planning, and many of their projects were supported with funds designated by the Federal Housing Act of 1949.

Includes organizational histories, memoranda, correspondence, proposal guidelines, materials for citizen participation, job inventories and reports, brochures that document urban growth management and the problems of suburbanization in New England, background studies, planning reports, growth management policies, zoning bylaws and amendments, and the files of Katharine Kumala.

Club that met weekly or bi-weekly in Storrsville, Massachusetts, to debate questions of local, national, and international interest including religion, abolition and slavery, human nature, penal reform, the lure of the West, intemperance, and war and peace. Single minutebook includes two versions of the constitution, proposed and debated questions, the teams, the outcome, and notations of any additional activities that took place during the formal meetings.