On October 31, 1938, the Boston Globe donated a collection of forty-four original photographs of World War I soldiers to the State Library of Massachusetts. Consisting primarily of members of the 101st, 104th, 301st, and 302nd Infantries of the 26th (“Yankee”) Division, this collection depicts groups of soldiers at military training camps, most often Camp Devens in Ayer, Massachusetts, and Camp Darling in Framingham, Massachusetts.
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| Co. D, 6th Regt., Mass. Infantry, Camp Devens, 1917 |
As part of our ongoing efforts to make our collections freely available online, we have digitized and uploaded this historical collection to our online repository, and it is now available for viewing at this link.
Although most of the photographs lack annotation, some do include a list of the soldiers’ names and addresses on the back, which might be of particular interest to genealogists. For example, several photos of soldiers from the 104th Regiment include handwritten names and addresses from Massachusetts cities such as Salem, Peabody, Beverly, and Quincy, as shown below.
This recently digitized collection is complemented by another large photograph collection: individual portraits of WWI “Yankee Division” soldiers, which were also donated to the State Library by the Boston Globe. You may view that collection in our online repository and read all about it in a previous blog post from the State Library.
If you have any questions about either of these WWI photograph collections, please don’t hesitate to reach out to our Special Collections Department, either by phone at 617-727-2595 or by emailing us at Special.Collections@mass.gov. And keep an eye on our online repository, as we are adding new publications and collections each weekday.
Laura Schaub
Cataloging Librarian
