What is in a Name? A Treasure of the State Library from 1941: "The Origin of Massachusetts Place Names of the State, Counties, Cities and Towns"

During the Administrations of President Franklin Roosevelt, a federal program, known as the Works Progress Administration (WPA), was implemented to provide employment to those searching for work during the years of the Great Depression.

In Massachusetts, part of the effort was led by the Writers’ Project and the State Library owns some very important materials produced by this group. Publications of the Federal Writer's Project of the Work Progress Administration of Massachusetts in the library's collections include:

•  An almanack for Bostonians, 1939: Being a truly amazing and edifying compendium of fact and fancy, designed primarily for the delectation of those who live in the shadow of the Bullfinch dome, but one which may be used with profit and pleasure by dwellers in the outer darkness of Cambridge, Somerville, Chelsea, Newton and even more outlandish places.
• Stories of Massachusetts - compiled and written by the Massachusetts WPA Federal Writers’ Project for use in the Boston Public Schools
• A brief history of the towne of Sudbury in Massachusetts together with the programme of the exercises enacted in commemoration of the three hundredth anniversary, 1639-1939            

One publication of this enterprise, however, has a particular “relationship” with the State Library. It is: The Origin of Massachusetts Place Names of the State, Counties, Cities and Towns.

This gem was actually written under the sponsorship of State Librarian Dennis A. Dooley, who served in that position from 1936-1959. Dooley wrote a forward to the 1941 publication, noting “Every compilation of scattered material in a convenient form is valuable.”

This booklet, kept in the third floor Reference area of the library, has helped answer many questions posed to the library staff.

                               

The “Name of the State” definition is long and in-depth: 

The origins of the cities and town names are again, very helpful for answering reference questions:

For information on the state and its cities and towns, one should definitely visit us here in the State House. The Library is located in Rooms 341, 442 and 55, the latter being where the Special Collections Department is located. 

 

The library collects voluminous materials concerning the commonwealth and her 351 cities and towns.

Pamela W. Schofield
Legislative Reference Librarian

Thomas Cate’s Civil War Sword (Manuscript 37)

The State Library of Massachusetts has a number of small collections, each with its own fascinating story. For archival collections the archivists create a “finding aid,” a record listing the collection’s contents and information about its origin. I work as an intern with the Special Collections department and uncovered the story of one particular collection - the “Papers relating to the Lt. Thomas Jackson Cate Civil War Sword” (Manuscript 37) - as I created its finding aid.

Thomas Jackson Cate was born in 1829 in Effingham, New Hampshire. He moved to Lawrence, Massachusetts and joined a volunteer militia at the start of the Civil War, becoming a lieutenant in Company F of the 6th Regiment. On April 19, 1861, his regiment marched through Baltimore, MD and was attacked by rioters, suffering the first four casualties of the war. One of the fallen, Sumner Needham, was a personal friend from Lawrence.

First and second page of Cate's notarized document willing the sword to
his male descendants bearing his name

Cate’s experience as a mason made him invaluable to the Union Army and he was tasked with building the first ovens that baked bread for soldiers’ rations. He told his story in a 1905 article for New England Magazine, transcribed by J. Rodney Ball.

Major McDowell called for men who could build ovens to bake this flour into soft bread. I was experienced as a mason, and went on the detail prepared to lay brick. Looking over our materials, it was found that there were no castings for the ovens, and it was feared that we should have to continue to subsist on hardtack.

“Is there a man here,” asked Major McDowell, “who can build an oven without castings?”

I thought of the oven in the old house in New Hampshire where I was born, and its construction with a plank for a door, and I volunteered to take the responsibility of building such ovens. (p. 347)

Cate went on to become a first lieutenant of the 36th regiment, U.S. Colored Troops, and was accorded the rank of brevet major for his service. After the war, Cate returned to Lawrence, Massachusetts, where he worked as a bricklayer, contractor, and builder. He died there in 1912.

Channing Cox, Massachusetts state governor
from 1919-1921, signed this letter acknowledging
receipt of the Cate Sword. 

In 1895, at age 66, Cate decided to draw up a document that would will the sword he carried during his Civil War service to his male descendants bearing his full name. Should the line end, the sword would be given to the State of Massachusetts to be placed with other relics of the “Old Sixth.” His grandson, Pvt. Thomas Jackson Cate, 2nd, died while fighting in World War I, and as he had no children, the sword was given to the State by his widow in 1921.

The collection no longer includes the sword; although it was once on display in the Senate Reception Room of the State House, its current location is unknown. What we do have, however, are the original legal document that Cate created and the letters written between the governor, Channing Cox, and the Sergeant-at-Arms regarding the donation. It was exciting for me to piece together the life of Lt. Cate using a magazine story and town directories, and create a sense of a real person - a veteran, a builder, and a father and grandfather - who wanted his memory to live on.


Katie Seitz
Special Collections intern

Brown Bag on Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834

Join us for a Brown Bag Lunch
On Thursday, May 22nd, 2014
State Library of Massachusetts
Room 442, State House
12 until 1:30 PM

Bring your lunch and join us to hear Nancy Schultz talk about the most notorious act of anti-Catholic violence in Boston’s history:  the 1834 riot that destroyed an Ursuline convent school in Charlestown, Massachusetts.  What would cause a mob of drunken men to attack a boarding school for young ladies in civilized nineteenth-century Boston?  Come and find out some of the answers to these questions.  The torching of the school is chronicled in Schultz’s prize-winning Fire and Roses: the Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834.

Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Ph.D., is Professor of English at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts.  In addition to Fire and Roses, she is the author, most recently, of Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle: The Prince, the Widow, and the Cure that Shocked Washington City, just published in paperback this spring by Yale University Press.  She is also the editor of three books, including the acclaimed Salem: Place, Myth, and Memory.  In March, she appeared on the Travel Channel premiere of the series “Church Secrets and Legends,” in a segment on the Salem Witch Trials.

For more information about these books, please visit www.fireandroses.com and http://www.mrsmattinglysmiracle.com.

To register, please visit:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JFQ6WJ8. You may also call the Reference Department at 617-727-2590 or send an e-mail to Reference.Department@state.ma.us to let us know you will attend.

Patents and Trademarks

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) is a federal agency that grants patents and registers trademarks. Patent and trademark law is part of the United States Constitution; Article One, Section 8, clause 8:

“The Congress shall have power…To promote the process of science and useful arts, by securing for limited times to authors and inventors the exclusive right to their respective writings and discoveries.”

 According to the United States Patent Office, “a patent is an intellectual property right granted by the Government of the United States of America to an inventor “to exclude others from making, using, offering for sale, or selling the invention throughout the United States or importing the invention into the United States” for a limited time in exchange for public disclosure of the invention when the patent is granted.” At the present time, a patent has a term of 20 years.

The first U.S. patent was issued to Samuel Hopkins for an improvement “in the making of Pot ash and Pearl ash by a new Apparatus and Process.” President George Washington signed this on July 31, 1790. The first patent issued to a woman was on May 5, 1809. Mary Dixon Kies of Killington, Connecticut was issued a patent for: “In Weaving Straw with Silk or Thread.”

The Patent Office operates on fees collected by its users and not on monies from taxpayers. At times, fees that have been collected from the Patent Office have been put into the general budget of the U.S. Treasury. There has been opposition to this by patent practitioners. The use of the funds to improve the office and the system is deemed more desirable.

As of 2011, over 8,743,423 patents have been granted and over 16,020,302 applications have been received.

Trademarks were protected under State common law in colonial times; and in 1881 Congress passed a Trademark Act. Trademark law prevents copying a “source-identifying mark.” One can acquire a trademark if one uses a logo or brand name for a product or packaging.

There are four categories of trademarks: 1. arbitrary and fanciful ; 2. suggestive; 3. descriptive and 4. generic.

In New England, the largest collection of patents can be found, since 1790, at the Boston Public Library.

The United States Patent and Trademark Office (USPTO) provides detailed information in assisting citizens to search for patents/trademarks and to register them.

Please visit the State Library in room 341 or room 442 of the State House to use our public access computers in researching the USPTO.


Bette L. Siegel
Government Documents Librarian

Charles Dickens and the Lowell Mill Girls

Cover design of the "Lowell Offering."
From Lowell: The story of an industrial
City, National Park Service handbook,
1992

The State Library of Massachusetts owns originals and reprints of The Lowell Offering, a publication by female mill workers or “mill girls” from Lowell. The mill workers wrote essays, poetry and fiction for the monthly magazine which was published from 1840-1845. Another publication about working in the Lowell mills is: Loom and spindle: or, Life among the early mill girls: with a sketch of "The Lowell offering" and some of its contributors. This book was written by Harriet Hanson Robinson in 1898 and it is about her experiences working in the Mills starting at the age of 10 in 1935. It is among other publications the library has about the Lowell Mills and its will workers.

Harriet Hanson Robinson.
From The Belles of New
England, by William Moran, 2002

The Boston Globe recently featured an article (12/15/2013) about Charles Dickens reading and borrowing passages from the Lowell Offering, especially stories about ghosts, and turning them into A Christmas Carol. The two researchers Natalie McKnight, an English professor and a dean at Boston University and Chelsea Bray, a former BU undergraduate and current Boston College Graduate student came up with this theory. The two plan to publish their argument in a book about Dickens in Massachusetts. 

Some argue that A Christmas Carol was taken from the story of Lazarus in the bible or from Dickens own The Pickwick Papers. However, McKnight feels that A Christmas Carol is closer to The Lowell Offering in tone, structure, and theme. The article also points out that it was common in that time period to borrow from other people and not credit them.

The State Library has books by or about Charles Dickens. Books about Dickens visit to Massachusetts in 1842 include: 

• Dickens days in Boston: a record of daily events
• Report of the dinner given to Charles Dickens, in Boston, February 1, 1842
• Quozziana: or, Letters from Great Goslington, Mass., giving an account of the Quoz dinner, and other matters  

The latter is a satire on the dinner given in Boston to Charles Dickens in 1842.

Other books by or about Dickens include: 

• The letters of Charles Dickens
• Dickens as an educator
• The Dickens encyclopaedia: an alphabetical dictionary of references to every character and place mentioned in the works of fiction, with explanatory notes on obscure allusions and phrases
• Dickens's dictionary of London, 1879 : an unconventional handbook 
• Pen photographs of Charles Dickens's readings: Taken from life 

Naomi Allen
Reference Librarian

Preservation Week -- A Glimpse into our Preservation Lab

Preservation Week is here, so it is my pleasure to share with you a little bit about what I do as a preservation professional. While I work in the Special Collections department as the Preservation Librarian, I oversee the collection maintenance and in-house preservation/conservation treatments for the whole library. My ultimate goal is to conserve, preserve and protect our circulating and non-circulating material to the best of my ability using the resources we have in our Preservation Lab. The tools that I have in the lab are critical to ensuring quality work, and that the collections get the best care possible. The lab is filled with tools ranging from document repair tape to a sizeable encapsulator. Each item is so important, and so useful, that they each deserve their own blog post!  However, in the interest of time, I would like us to take a look at the lab basics. These are items that I use almost every single day, and couldn’t produce quality work without.

Preservation tools

Much of the work my intern and I produce in the lab begins with surface cleaning. Before any type of material is re-housed, repaired or encapsulated, it has to be cleaned. In the image above you will see the tools we use to make this happen. Soft brushes sweep away dirt, grime, and debris. Surface cleaning sponges are two-sided tools that we can use to clean documents (with the white, soft side) or artifacts (with the blue, rough side). Q-tips can be used for small areas that need spot cleaning, and erasers are perfect for getting rid of stray pencil marks that we often times find in our atlases or directories.

Book cloth

Repairing books is a major responsibility of the Preservation Lab. Regular readers of our blog will know that we recently underwent a significant cataloguing project that entailed physically going through our entire collection. There are many books in the lab awaiting repair; loose pages, damaged spines, and missing cover boards are included in their ailments. These are the tools that I will go to constantly to make these books like new again (well, almost!): White adhesive, applied with a standard painting brush is a necessity, as is book cloth. In the above image you can see a large sheet of book cloth that can be cut to size, and a roll of self-adhesive book cloth, which is perfect for spine repairs. Tissue paper, when interleaved between pages and covers, helps keep the adhesive from sticking to any area that it should not. The small spray bottle of de-acidification spray is a handy tool and a necessity when items are becoming yellowed or fragile.

Book clamps

Once books are repaired, we can use weights or book clamps to hold them together until the adhesive dries. In the above picture, my intern Andra is setting up a book in a book clamp.

Micro-spatulas

Bone folders

As in the images above,  these items, though they be small, are used several times a day for a number of different projects. Bone folders (left) are used to fold and crease mat board, smooth book cloth, and mark fabric. Micro-spatulas (right) are used for lifting tape, removing adhesives, book-binding, and for putting adhesive in those small, hard to reach areas.

These gadgets (above) are always accessible to Andra and me, as we use them on a daily basis as well. We have dozens of the weights at our fingertips for when we are binding books or flattening objects. Pencils, scissors, rulers, and utility knives ensure that we cut mat board, paper, and book cloth straight and even every time. A PH pen can let us know if material is turning acidic; this helps us figure out what conservation and preservation efforts should be taken so that the item does not deteriorate even more. Tweezers help lift fragile items for re-placement or to lay Japanese tissue paper down for mending. The blue handle with the round metal wheel is used to score mat board or fabric, so we know where to fold or cut.

One of the final steps in our conservation and preservation efforts is to make sure that the material that we repaired, and the rest of our collection, is properly housed. We do this by having archival quality, acid-free supplies on hand. Document boxes, folders, envelopes, and photograph sleeves are always on hand so that we can re-house our paper material, books, and photographs properly. If a book is in need of its own box, one can be fabricated, like the ones above, to suit its measurements.

I hope you enjoyed your glimpse into the lab. Check in with the State Library of Massachusetts every day on Twitter during Preservation Week to get tid-bits on how you can take care of your family documents, photographs, and scrapbooks at home!

Kelly J. Turner
Preservation Librarian

In Honor of Preservation Week: Preserving a Historic Album

In 1904, students of the Classical and English High School in Salem, Massachusetts created a historical photograph album depicting “Salem and Vicinity.” The unpublished manuscript is a compilation of write-ups, images, and photographs - all constructed and organized by the pupils. The outcome was a visually interesting and in-depth look at all of the historical landmarks and significant people of Salem and its surrounding areas. The album contained a preface written by then principal A.L. Goodrich, who described the book as a “collection of photographs of public buildings and places of historic interest.” Four students from Classical and English High School prepared the photographs used in the album: Harry Batchelder, Harry Bates, Edward Harlow, and Nathaniel Simonds. Harry Bates passed away before the album was completed, and his father stepped in and finished his son’s part of the project. Thirty-two upper classmen put an obvious amount of time and effort into this project, and it was part of our collection that deservedly needed some attention.

The damage on the album included a spine in poor condition, loose cover-boards, a detached signature (group of pages), and leather binding that has since decayed and flaked away. I began the conservation/preservation treatments by gently taking apart the cover-boards, spine, and text block with a scalpel. The spine, and what was left of the cover, was coated in Cellugel – a strong consolidant used for the prevention of leather deterioration. It’s important to salvage as much as you can from an original piece. As they dried, I moved on to cleaning the spine and covers. This included removing all of the material that will not be used in the construction of the new book – old tape, deteriorating book cloth, old batting, and spine mesh. I was left with a clean text block and book covers that were ready to be assembled.

 
Re-assembling the photo album began with applying fresh batting to the covers with archival quality adhesive. Batting was used as part of the construction of the original album, and we try to keep things as close to the original as possible. As they were setting, I cut some book cloth to size; this entailed measuring the spine of the book and cover-boards to ensure ample coverage. Once the batting was affixed to the cover-boards and the book cloth was properly measured and cut, I adhered the cover-boards to the cloth, leaving a space in-between them for the text block. The text block received a fresh strip of spine mesh – a reinforcement material for sewn spines. The text block was then placed in between the cover-boards, flanked with wax paper, and allowed to dry.

With the cover-boards, text block, and book cloth set-up, it was time to tip-in the loose pages. Tipping-In is a phrase used to describe the process of affixing an item to the text of a book. This process was completed by using a mix of Japanese tissue paper and adhesive, to paste the pages into the book. Once it was dry, I was able to move on to one of the final steps – reinforcing the cover boards with strips of archival paper.

Once all parts of the album were dry, it was time to focus on re-applying the original pieces of leather. The front was glued down with adhesive. The spine, given its fragile nature, would have been further damaged if I attempted to re-attach it. Instead, I constructed a four-flap enclosure – a protective container for permanently storing fragile items. This way, the album and the spine can be housed together safely.

Voila!

Kelly Turner
Preservation Librarian