Author: Matthew Lawrence, Archival Field Fellow
Lincoln Public Library is located in the center of a proud rural community located roughly twenty miles west of Boston. Town records are housed in two locations: vital records are located in Town Hall, and historic records are located at Lincoln Public Library. Originally built in 1884, the library contains a climate controlled vault, built in 2009, where archival collections are safely held.
The Flint and Chapin families have had a presence in Lincoln since the town’s founding in the eighteenth century, and the Town stewards the Flint-Chapin collection of records, which was described to the item level in 2011. Item-level description – in which literally every paper and object is described – is not standard. While potentially helpful to researchers, this process can be incredibly time consuming. It also opens the door for potential errors in description, which is why collections are more often described to the folder level (e.g. “Warren F. Flint Sr. Papers, 1970-1979”) or the series level (e.g., “Photographs”, “News Clippings”).
In 2016, an accrual of additional Flint and Chapin records were donated to the Library. The records had been retrieved from the attic and basement of Bertha Chapin’s homestead, as well as the research of Margaret S. Flint. These items were donated by Flint Realty Trust, which owned the house, and Margaret M. Weir, the daughter of Warren and Margaret S. Flint. The collection was appraised in 2016 and some mold- and pest-damaged items removed at that time. The collection was set aside for later processing. Because it is not practical to describe each item individually, it made more sense to treat the accrual as its own unique collection: “Flint-Chapin families collection II.”
The collection is remarkable for the number of formats contained within it: letters, books, pamphlets, maps, newspaper clippings, audiovisual materials including tape reels and audio cassettes, items of winter clothing, and even a box of mourning pins. I was previously unfamiliar with mourning pins, which are finished in black enamel and would have been used to pin the clothing of grieving relatives, who according to custom at the time would have only been allowed to wear black. A silver pin for a hat or a veil would not have been considered acceptable during the mourning period.
When I arrived in Lincoln, the 2016 accrual was stored in eleven non-standard record cartons with seemingly little original order to the arrangement. Three boxes originally belonging to writer Jane Langton were neatly organized. Some other items were stored in Ziploc bags. A great many of these items were unmarked: books, daguerreotypes and ambrotypes, mittens and a scarf, all seemingly untraceable to which Flint or Chapin family members originally possessed them. Antique photographs were affixed with Post-It notes declaring that the living descendants were unsure who was depicted in each image. The result is a visually compelling but historically challenging assortment of images.
l-r: Ran Cronin, Matthew Lawrence, John Warner, Sarah-Jane Poindexter. Photo: Virginia Rundell
In late November 2023 I met library staff as well as Massachusetts State Archivist John Warner and Roving Archivist Sarah-Jane Poindexter. My on-site supervisors for the fellowship were Assistant Director Ran Cronin and Town Archivist Virginia Rundell. We all took a look at the modest-seeming collection, spreading the boxes out on a table in the reading room, and agreed that I would begin work the following week.
My first task was to appraise the collection. Detecting no signs of mold or pests, I moved forward with considering how best to arrange the contents of these boxes. Oversized items, ranging from 1857 farming journals to voting signs from 1891 to posters for the town’s 1998 Fourth of July celebrations, were moved to one of the archive’s two flat files. Several ought to be flattened, including facsimile reproductions of 1776 regiment rolls. Only a few common items – a handful of old National Geographic maps – were chosen for deaccession.
Many of the papers in the collection belonged to James Lorin Chapin (1824-1902), his daughter-in-law Clara Flint Chapin (1867-1956), and Clara’s daughter Bertha Chapin (1902-1990), the last owner of the Chapin family homestead before it was given to Flint Realty Trust. There also a significant number of papers belonging to Warren F. Flint Sr. (1911-2001) and his wife Margaret S. Flint (1913-2007). Other materials include research into James Lorin Chapin, conducted between 2008 and 2013 by author Jane Langton for Strong Hands and a Willing Heart, an edited and annotated online publication of Chapin’s diary entries.
I developed a processing plan for the collection with a preliminary series arrangement: this included a proposed arrangement that I ended up modifying after realizing that my sub-series arrangements were too granular and that I overestimated the number of records related to the First Parish of Lincoln.
Once the plan was created, I placed a supply order, perhaps overestimating the scope of the collection and number of boxes that would be needed to rehouse the collection. I had already measured the more unusually sized items in hopes of finding suitable boxes for them.
Once the boxes arrived in early January, I began the process of arranging and rehousing the records according to nine series: Family papers, Town of Lincoln records, audiovisual materials, etc. This process took several weeks as I encountered several challenges. For instance, I knew that repetitive first names are a challenge with New England collections, but I was not expecting to become so easily confused by the number of Ephraims, Sarahs and Susans addressed in this collection. One Susan in particular caused me considerable grief as I could find no one in the family whose life would have overlapped with the dates on her letters. Further research revealed her position in the family tree, but it was a slow process.
Finally, I wrote a finding aid, using the spreadsheet I had developed along the way to log each item. This included more detailed biographical notes about the Flint and Chapin families as well as the life of Jane Langton (1923-2018), a Lincoln-based mystery novelist who spent so much time researching the lives of the Flints. Because Lincoln is over an hour from my home, I completed the finding aid remotely, which I later learned is not ideal. A small handful of items left me with lingering questions that I could not answer by simply walking over to inspect the item.
I should note that a highly unusual thing happened on my first full day in Lincoln: after lunch, archives director was taken from the library in an ambulance and she passed away in early January of complications from cancer. Though I only got to work with her for a few hours that first day, I am greatly appreciative to have met her.
The fellowship gave me a great experience working with a small but complicated collection of items that are significant to the history of Lincoln, arranging and describing the collections to aid future researchers.
Boxes in the vault, ready to be labeled (February 2024)
The Archival Field Fellowship is a grant offered by the Roving Archivist Program. The Fellowships increase hands-on assistance to Massachusetts repositories and provide emerging archivists with professional experience and mentorship. In 2023-2024, three institutions representing a diverse cross-section of archival repositories are hosting field fellows. As the fellowships are completed, field fellows share reflections and insights about their site experience on the MA SHRAB blog. This program is funded through support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.