Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month began as just a ten-day long celebration in early May of 1978 before it was expanded by Congress in 1992 so that it would last the entire month. According to a Census.gov website, the week was initially established to “coincide with two important milestones in Asian/Pacific American history: the arrival in the United States of the first Japanese immigrants (May 7, 1843) and contributions of Chinese workers to the building of the transcontinental railroad completed May 10, 1869.” Asian immigrants arrived in Boston and New England a little bit later than that, the City of Boston has recorded that the first influx of Chinese immigrants were single men who arrived in 1873 to work in a factory in North Adams. By the time these directories were published nearly fifty years later, the Chinese population in New England had greatly increased.
The New England directories in our collection date to 1930 and 1931, and both are on display in our main library reading room. The directories list Chinese owned businesses by category for each New England state, along with many advertisements, a few of which are pictured below. The bulk of the advertisements are for Chinese owned businesses, like the one below left that features two restaurants in Boston’s Chinatown. But there are also a fair amount for non-Chinese owned businesses, like the one below right. Freeman O. Emerson (general insurance) and Dublin Brothers (cigars and tobacco) both took out ads in the directory and wrote about their services in Chinese to reach new audiences. The advertisements for non-Chinese owned businesses written in Chinese show that business owners acknowledged the importance of New England’s Chinese residents as a vital part of the community and economy.
In addition to the bi-lingual business listings and advertisements, the directories also included welcome letters by the Massachusetts Governor, Lieutenant Governor, and Boston Mayor, along with essays on immigration and trade, and a list of Chinese students enrolled at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology and Harvard. In the 1931 directory, the letter from Boston Mayor James Curley was addressed to Mr. Wong C. Poy, and a search of his name lead us to a Boston Globe article published on May 5, 1931 about the publication of this directory. The article identifies Mr. Poy as a prominent Chinatown merchant and as the compiler behind this directory. We can assume that he wrote the preface, which explains the impetus behind this directory as follows, “for the past few years, the ever-growing Chinese population in this section of the country has been demanding a concise and complete directory of their nationals in New England” and that “practically every city or town of any importance, within the confines of New England, numbers among its merchants, a Chinese laundry, restaurant, or store.” The need for a directory of this nature, which both served as a valuable resource for Chinese residents and helped non-Chinese business reach a Chinese audience that might have otherwise been unattainable, highlights the role that Chinese Americans played in New England in the early 20th-century as their population grew in size.
Visit the library this month to see these directories in person and learn more about Asian American and Pacific Islander Heritage Month here.
Elizabeth Roscio
Preservation Librarian
