What surnames come to mind when you think of NEHGS — Alden, Bradford,
Cooke, Fuller, Standish, and Winslow or perhaps Adams, Cabot, Forbes,
Lowell, Quincy, and Winthrop? While our library has many sources on the
prominent families of New England history, the NEHGS acquisitions
committee has placed significant emphasis on acquiring resources that
assist research on nineteenth and twentieth-century immigrant families
as well as African-American and Native-American families. Unfortunately,
for long the manuscript collection was not a particularly strong source
for ethnic research, but this situation is slowly changing.
Descriptions of some of the collections recently acquired by the R.
Stanton Avery Special Collections Department (all since 1997) will
illustrate the kinds of records NEHGS is seeking to enrich our holdings.
Brotherton Indian Collection (Mss 395)
NEHGS received the Brotherton[1] Indian Collection in 1997. It
contains the research of Rudi Ottery, tribal genealogist for the
Brothertons and Certified American Indian Lineage Specialist. The
collection contains records on the Brotherton Indians including tribal
rolls, censuses, charts of descendants from Brotherton progenitors, and
enrollment files collected from individuals of Brotherton descent
wishing to be placed on the Brotherton Indian rolls. The enrollment
files include supporting documentation such as notes, family group
sheets, correspondence, vital records, newspaper articles, land records,
and some photographs. The collection also contains photocopies of
historical records, including treaties, deeds, government reports,
powers of attorney, letters, and other documents primarily concerning
the tribe’s land dealings.
Clifford Abbott Papers
NEHGS received this collection in 2002. Besides researching his own
ancestors, NEHGS member Clifford Abbott has been documenting Polish
families who settled in Newmarket, New Hampshire. The first Polish
family settled in Newmarket around 1893, but the majority came between
1900 and World War I. Clifford conducted one-on-one interviews with many
of the immigrants, as well as members of subsequent generations. He
supplemented this information with data from town reports, federal
census, obituaries, and naturalization records. It would be wonderful if
more towns had genealogists as dedicated as Mr. Abbott to record the
personal knowledge of immigrants — knowledge invaluable to future
generations. This collection is currently being processed and will be
available to patrons soon.
Diary of Edwin Swan Dahl
NEHGS received these diaries in 2003. Edwin S. Dahl immigrated to
America from Sweden with his widowed mother and two older brothers in
1889. He graduated from Garrett Theological Seminary, now part of
Northwestern University, and kept a diary each year of his ministry,
from 1900 to 1977. There are ninety volumes all. The diary entries
primarily concern ministerial duties and notes on family activities;
however, some volumes also include baptisms, marriages, and funerals
that he attended. Edwin was a minister for predominately Swedish
congregations in the Chicago, Illinois, area, then in Brooklyn, New
York, and Chelsea and Worcester, Massachusetts. Edwin finally ended his
career and a second retirement job in East Douglas, Massachusetts, at
the age of eighty-one. He moved to Lynchburg, Virgina, to be near his
two daughters and died in 1985, only two months shy of his one hundred
and fourth birthday. This collection is currently being processed and
will be available to patrons soon.
The special collections department does have a few other collections
of this type, although their primary focus isn’t specifically ethnic or
single families. The Richard Andrew Pierce papers (Mss 484), for
example, consist of client research that includes many Irish and a few
Italian families. The Society has three boxes of papers, 1685–1787, kept
by the Company for the Propagation of the Gospel in New England and
Parts Adjacent in America, that contains data used by scholars
researching Native-Americans. In 2002, the special collections
department received probably our first genealogy in Chinese called The
Chou’s family from China: original inhabitants of the village of
ZhouHan, town of JiangShanzhen, county of YinXian, province of ZheJiang (in
traditional Chinese) written by Thomas Chou. The forty-two page
genealogy focuses on the ancestors of Mr. Chou who emigrated from China
and settled in Connecticut. In addition, the Ed Friendly Papers,
currently waiting to be processed, is our first significant Jewish
collection.
Traditionally, NEHGS manuscript sources for ethnic genealogy were
limited in scope and often “buried” within other collections. Good
examples are manuscript resources held by NEHGS for African-American
research described in Beth Anne Bower’s “African American Family History
Resources at NEHGS” on NewEnglandAncestors.org (see Educational
Center>Articles and Publications>African American Research in New
England). As more of the manuscript collection is processed and
cataloged, finding “hidden gems” will become easier. In addition, a
better understanding of the kinds of data within our collection will
enable the Society to expand those holdings in both quantity and
quality. NEHGS will continue to acquire collections like those discussed
above, in addition to more “traditional” material, to assist all
patrons in researching their ancestors. Perhaps soon surnames such as
Aupaument, Skeesuck, Jablonski, Kartaszewicz, Wojcik, and Chou will come
to mind also when you think of NEHGS!
Timothy G.X. Salls is archivist at NEHGS.
Note
1 Also known as Brothertown.