Colrain Archives

A FEW  Possible Volunteer  Tasks: 1 --   1392   Photo Album 1997 - Number each page with Sharpie                                 - Identify & label the people in the Village Faire Album on Post It Note                                  - pack away for future "bust apart" and scanning   **** DONE **** 2 ----- 1390   Photo Album 1996 Village Fair      "      "          ***** DONE ***** 3 -----  List all the articles in the 200th Anniversary Newspaper Supplement.  This 10-page item has dozens of separate articles on Town history. ...

 On the 29th, 5 volunteers worked at the Pitt House from 1-4:30, cleaning and sorting;    We discussed possible storage locations for objects we are removing from display.    -  Old upstairs bathroom would be good location for shelving , but it needs carpentry work. Would $5000 expenses + 3 volunteer workers get the job done in a week?  Remove toilet, bathtub. Take down the south wall so the "hidden room" is open. Demo the ceiling lath and plaster. Insulate ceiling and install sheetrock.   THEN, we could install  storage shelving for boxes. This rook is NOT possible for furniture storage due to the narrow entrance door.   We reviewed last weeks' storage boxes up in the Pitt bedroom and listed  items for easy retrieval. We cataloged and boxed up more items in living room and library, such as an old lantern, a Rhoda Shippee photograph. Drawers in the large dresser in Breakfast Room were sorted. Two more "tag sale" boxes were filled wi...

 5 trusty volunteers met at the Pitt House (CHS Museum) Thursday to sort and pack items so that we can be in better shape to welcome the public this season. Dave Allen , Sarah Hollister, Prentice Crosier, Guy & Debby Wheeler and Gail Johnson. What a crew !  We worked together like a well-oiled machine between 1-4:30pm. The goal was to pack away various loose items and free up floor and table surfaces for future more serious cleaning. Guy assembled a shelf unit for the archives room so we can have fewer boxes on the floor. Debby and others looked through the several boxes of not-so-interesting china and agreed that nuch could be disposed of. So that material was taken to the barn and labelled "Tag Sale". 2 cartons with tee shirts and tote bags were moved from the office to the upstairs old bathroom. We labeled and then  moved 2 cartons of small framed paintings etc upstairs to the "little room" at head of stairs.     The Canton Ware china in the closet w...

 Item # 2410 in our archives includes objects and documents from Richard Sessler's US Navy career during World War II. This box came to CHS from his family a year or so ago, and has recently been cataloged, including scans and photos. Highlights include certificates he received after crossing the Equator: Richard was stationed in the Philippines . We also have a photo album of his daily life there. Richard grew up on Nelson Rd. in East Colrain. Curator Sarah Hollister learned to swim at the Sessler family swimming hole on the Green River. The box also contained metal objects . Sarah felt metal objects should not be stored with paper. The  archivists at PVMA confirmed this opinion and the objects were separated. We used archival boxes for paper and metal storage and discarded the original box after photographing it. To see  all the items in this box, click here.  

In addition to the "Hale Johnson Estate " boxes, Debby Wheeler acquired several other "Hale Johnson" items at Douglas Auctions. These have been cataloged this month and include:  A 22 page hardbound ledger of "Maple Sugar accounts", recording maple product sales over several years - 1901-1906. The owner is unidentified but possibly one of Hale's ancestors. In a packet of 4 letters, we found one on Colrain Inn letterhead, "The Colrain House, H.A. Hale, Proprietor". This tells us that Herbert Hale, grandfather of Hale Johnson, ran the Inn in 1921. The first page of the letter is below (item #2450-8). In another packet of 40-50 letters related to the Benjamin Miller family, we found this interesting note of donations to the Miller family after their house burned. Note that the first donation was $100.00 from George Washington Miller, Benjamin's father. An early "Go Fund Me" campaign! To see all the Hale Johnson auction acquisitions...

Feb 18, 2024    Dave Allen:   "Time Study" to scan 8 diaries After the CHS collection items get numbered, they are (in most cases), scanned or photographed. Today I "scanned" portions of 8 old diaries by C.N. Carpenter. These are multi-page booklets, typically 3' x 5", of handwritten notes. The first picture is the cover next to  a Post It Note with Item Number and a brief description, followed by several other pictures (maximum 15) to give the researcher a sense of the contents. The inside front cover with owners name and inside back cover is included, as is back cover. These pics are then named with item #  (as in "2357-01.jpg"), and stored in a computer file folder of same name. It took about 2 hours to photograph and process files for the 8 diaries. The bulk of the time was photographing the several inside pages.  It would take an hour if all I did was the cover , name page and back cover. Adding the items to the database and uploading pics to...

 Feb 18, 2024 - dave allen This week we scanned 21 items in Document Box 14B - a small archival box with 15 diaries, 2 autograph books, and 4 other small booklet items.     We have 8 diaries by a "C.N. Carpenter" from 1866-1897. Most of his diary entries are quite "dry" (boring !), with daily weather reports and lines like "went to Greenfield". But taken as a whole, this set would be good for a future researcher to look into the life of one Colrain man who lived a long time ago.  One diary is a 1909 from "R. Taylor" .  Below....Who was he?       During World War 2 (and after) Winifred Lincoln of Shelburne Falls kept 2 very detailed 5-year diaries. Her daughter married Colrain's Reuben Donelson.  Together the dairies span 1940-1947. Each page in a 5-year diary has all 5 years on the same sheet. On July 4th 1941 she went to the 4th of July parade in Shelburne Falls, but the next year there was no parade due to the war. Note (above) that it...

----------------by Dave Allen  Feb 17 2024----------------------------------- Sarah and I reviewed 4 boxes of Hale Johnson material which came to CHS from his estate last summer.   It appeared to us that this material was most likely collected by Hale's mother , Louise Hale Johnson, and that it should be kept at CHS. Louise's roots are deep into Colrain, and she was a founding member of the Colrain Historical Society. Once we were convinced of the Colrain historical value, we decided to catalog all the boxes. This took several days, (including a lot of scanning) but it was a good February task. There are 70+ Airtable catalog entries.  Catalog entries can be a single piece of paper or an object like a bible, or a set of objects/papers, like "5 small framed photos".  We use that "set" scheme to save cataloging time when there are several similar items.  However, in the case of the set of photo albums , we cataloged each as separate items as each c...

Simple Airtable  Dec 2024: Airtable Database Basics    for Colrain Historical Society. There are over 2700 items (aka "records")  in the CHS database, using "Airtable", an online database program. 1500 of the items have pictures You can access it at home .  BELOW is what you should see: =========CHAPTER  1  ============ == ====FILTERS are best way to Search ============= 1)   Click on Filter  2) to find all photos of Shattuckville , try this: The result: Note that Filters are only available when using a computer ... unavailable on IPhones etc. 3) to EXPAND the record. To see the full screen of item 1083 above (for example) click on the two diagonal arrows in the left-most cell of the line as in: The result: This (above) is just the top 1/2 of the full screen (expanded).  On a PC, to see the rest, use the slider on the right side of your screen. 4) to ENLARGE the picture. To enlarge the picture, click on it and it will fill your scr...