Haying at MAC

In 1922, the Commonwealth of Massachusetts appropriated $15,000 for the Massachusetts Agricultural College to purchase sixty acres of land lying immediately north of the existing Experiment Station. Known as the William P. Brooks Experimental Farm, the property was intended as a site for experimental work devoted to the dominant crops of the Connecticut Valley, tobacco and onions.

This small homemade photograph album documents a picnic and group outing at the Brooke (i.e. Brooks) Farm at Massachusetts Agricultural College in September 1922. Although the participants — over thirty of them — are unidentified, they took part in standard picnic activities, including a tug of war, three legged race, and rope jumping. The album contains labeled snapshots pasted onto thick brown paper, tied with a brown ribbon, and includes images of haying on the farm (with Stockbridge Hall in the background) and the homes of William P. Brooks and Prof. Arthur N. Julian.

Sapporo Ag. College students, 1881

Two years after graduating from Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1875, William Penn Brooks accepted an invitation from the Japanese government — and his mentor, William Smith Clark — to help establish the Sapporo Agricultural School. Spending over a decade in Hokkaido, Brooks helped to introduce western scientific agricultural practices and the outlines of a program in agricultural education, and he built a solid foundation for the School. After his return to the states in 1888, he earned a doctorate at the University of Halle, Germany, and then accepted a position at his alma mater, becoming a leading figure at the Massachusetts Experiment Station until his retirement in 1921.

Brooks’ papers consist of correspondence, photographs, newspaper clippings, an account book, and translations which provide rich detail on Brooks’ life in Japan, the development of Sapporo Agricultural College (now Hokkaido University), and practical agricultural education in the post-Civil War years.

Meditation on Blueberry Hill, 1971
Photo by Gary Cohen

Having joined the the Brotherhood of the Spirit commune in 1973, Dan Brown remained a member for a decade as it evolved first into Metelica’s Aquarian Concept and then into the Renaissance Community. Throughout his time as a member, he photographed his fellow communards as they moved through a variety of localities, including Turner’s Falls, Gill, and Warwick, Mass. Since leaving the community in 1983, he has written and lectured regularly on its history for audiences throughout the region.

One of the principle photographers of the Brotherhood and Renaissance Community during the period 1973-1983, Brown preserved an archive of approximately 450 photographs documenting the commune from its founding in 1968 through the time of Michael Metelica’s death in 2003. In addition to his own work, he collected and preserved images of many other photographers, most notably Gary Cohen.

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Former Massachusetts legislator, state auditor, and justice in the Essex Court, active in the Boston, Massachusetts-area Polish community. Fifty-five photographs including portraits of Judge Buczko with Pope John Paul II, Robert and Edward Kennedy, Carl Yastrzemski, Francis Sargent, Hubert Humphrey, and various Massachusetts politicians and friends.

Timothy Lindall, Salem, Mass., 1699

A local historian from Bethany, Connecticut, Alice Bice Bunton (1924-2000) was a long-time member of the Association for Gravestone Studies. Author of a book on the historic houses of Bethany in 1972, she attended AGS conferences regularly beginning in the late 1970s. Bunton died on October 18, 2000, at the age of 75.

Many of Bunton’s photographs documenting cemeteries in Connecticut, Massachusetts, and New Jersey were taken during tours associated with the AGS annual conferences. Also included in the collection are AGS conference brochures and other printed material, newspaper clippings, grave rubbings, and a small amount of correspondence.

Sadie Campbell and sons Harold and Robert Leslie

A housewife, mother and active community member, Sadie Campbell was born in 1881 and lived at 1 Depot Street in Cheshire, Massachusetts for most of her life until she died in 1971. Sadie was closely tied to the Cheshire community where she had a large circle of friends and acquaintances, and was active in a a number of organizations, such as: the Cheshire Ladies Reading Club, the Merry Wives of Cheshire Shakespeare Club, and the Cheshire Cash Tearoom.

The collection documents three generations of a western Massachusetts family. The variety and nature of the materials in this collection offer a good view into the local and social history of western Massachusetts through the lives of Sadie Campbell and her family.

Relief program established for unemployed men by President Franklin D. Roosevelt whose main work in Massachusetts through the 1930s and early 1940s was tree planting, fire fighting, insect control, and tree and plant disease control. Contains photographs arranged alphabetically by forest name that depict road building, tree planting, and other developments in the state forests. Includes some images of workers.

Three Manobo girls

The entomologist Charles F. Clagg was born in Barnstable, Mass., in 1904 and received his bachelor of science degree from the Massachusetts Agricultural College in 1927. Although never able to complete his graduate degree, Clagg enjoyed a long and productive career in entomology. Listed as a graduate student at MAC in 1929-1930, Clagg took part in an extensive collecting trip to the Philippines in 1930 and 1931. Beginning in June 1930 near Calian in Davao del Sur (Mindanao), Clagg spent several months collecting flies in and around the active Mount Apo volcano, in the Lawa and Calian river valleys, and in the Lalun mountains, traveling to the eastern peninsula of Davao early in 1931. He remained in the Pacific region later in his career, working as an entomologist for the U.S. Navy.

The twenty photographs taken by Charles F. Clagg in 1930 document his entomological collecting trip to Davao, Mindanao, in the Philippines. Primarily personal in nature, rather than professional, they were taken on Clagg’s visit to a coconut plantation run by American expatriates Henry and George Pahl and illustrate the local sights in Davao, including work in harvesting coconuts and the production of copra, the production of Manilla hemp, a horse fight at Calian, and Manobos who came to the plantation trade. Also included are three photographs of Clagg’s quarters while collecting high in the Lalun Mountains. The captions provided by Clagg on the back of each photograph have been transcribed verbatim.

Janina Smiertka, 1934

Raised in a Polish American family from Greenfield, Mass., Janina Smiertka Davenport was the epitome of a life-long learner. After graduating from Greenfield High School in 1933, Davenport received degrees from the Pratt Institute in Food Management and from the Franklin County Public School for Nurses (1937). In 1938, she began work as a nurse in the U.S. Navy, receiving two special commendations for meritorious service during the Second World War. She continued her formal and informal education later in life, receiving degrees from Arizona State University in 1958 and UMass Amherst in Russian and Eastern European Studies (1982). Davenport died in Greenfield in March 2002.

The Davenport Papers contain a thick sheaf of letters and documents pertaining to her Navy service before and during World War II, along with assorted biographical and genealogical data, materials collected during educational trips to Poland and elsewhere, and approximately one linear foot of family photographs and photo albums.

Maurice A. Donahue was elected to the Massachusetts House of Representatives in 1948 as part of its first Democratic majority. In 1950, he was elected to the Massachusetts Senate, became Senate Majority Leader in 1958, and in 1964, became Senate President, a position he held until 1971 when he took the position of Professor of Political Science and Director of the Institute for Governmental Services at the University of Massachusetts. Legislation he sponsored while in the Senate established the Willis-Harrington Commission on Education, the University of Massachusetts Boston campus and Medical School, state scholarships for needy students, commissions to improve vocational education, study problems of urban school systems, and extend educational facilities in Massachusetts.

Correspondence, speeches, press releases, appointment books, constituent courtesy files, memorabilia, scrapbooks of clippings, audio recordings of radio talks and speeches, and photographs pertaining to Donahue’s activities and functions as state legislator of Massachusetts.