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 2022-2023, six 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.
Author: Schuyler Fohrhaltz-Burbank
Photography could be argued as being one of the most important inventions in both human history and the history of documentation. Since the first surviving photograph showing a view of Nicéphore Niépce’s estate in 1827, photographs have changed how history is recorded and viewed both metaphorically and literally. It is through this medium of photography that I am introduced to both Historic Northampton, and the life and family of Hortense Clapp Pollard.
From the Hortense Clapp Pollard collection, courtesy of Historic Northampton, Northampton, MA
Residing in a late 19th century house off of the main thoroughfare of Northampton lives the 70+ boxes that make up the Hortense Clapp Pollard Collection. The collection provides a view not only into Hortense herself, but of her family and their part in the history of Northampton. Her father owned and ran a store in Northampton (Clapp & Clapp) until 1935, while Hortense and her sister Beatrice were part of Daughters of The American Revolution (DAR). The collection is enormous, which is why I was tasked with working on a very important piece of the collection, that being the photographs, photo albums, and photographic negatives.
As a fairly recent graduate from the Simmons University MLIS program with a focus on Archival Management, I surveyed the 7 boxes that I would be processing, inventorying, arranging and rehousing. My first thought upon seeing the collection was “This is certainly gonna be a complex task” and I will admit I felt fairly intimidated by the collection. My prior work with physical collections had unfortunately been limited due to various circumstances out of my control during my graduate work, and the archival work I had done before I was chosen for this Field Fellowship was on digital collections. I knew that this collection would be complex and that I had to do my best to push past the feelings of uncertainty and get the ball rolling.
The collection was housed in 7 boxes and had already been arranged into categories mainly focused around the direct and extended family using individual(s) or family groups as a way to organize the photos. One box had unfortunately been damaged by water in 2021 and contained materials that were in need of conservation. After the initial period of uncertainty, I was able to dive into the collection and determine the level of processing detail that I could go into while taking into consideration the timeframe I had to work with along with the needs of the collection. One of the first things I determined was that due to the sheer volume of photo negatives, along with the need to individually rehouse each negative in a negative sleeve, I wouldn’t be able to tackle the photo negatives in this collection. I also determined that the best way to arrange the collection was to work off of the previous arrangement that had already been done, as it would’ve been an extremely long and complex process to go through and identify the subject of each photo, not helped by the fact that Hortense had a huge extended family and that everyone in both the immediate and extended family took a large number of photographs. These determinations allowed me to focus on getting the collection arranged, rehoused and described. The collection mostly was made up of photographic prints (ranging from ambrotypes to Kodak color prints), photo negatives, photo albums, oversized photos, and some assorted ephemera.
The collection itself was housed in the basement archives of Historic Northampton, which was where I spent most of my time while working on the collection. The quiet and somewhat secluded nature of this area helped me focus on the task that lay before me. I was also given amazing support, advice, and input by Kelsy Sinelnikov (Collections Manager), Margy Jessup, and Thomas Doyle. They shared their own knowledge of the special needs of photographic collections and their housing and processing and provided me with insight into the day-to-day work and realities of archivists in the field. Their support really helped me to feel more confident in my ability to process the collections.
One thing I didn’t expect was the sheer number of boxes and containers needed to properly rehouse the collection, as when I first saw the collection it was in 5 document boxes, a folio box and an oversized box. The final processed collection (not including the box of photo negatives) was 19 boxes. This was in part because there couldn’t be more than 10-15 photographic prints in each folder, which meant that some series of photos were split over 6 to 7 folders. This was also in part due to the fact that there were many different types of photographic prints, including small paper prints and larger mounted prints. For this time period, it is unusual to see so many photos, indicating that this family was more well off than most as they could afford to take photos of their day-to-day lives and have professional portraits done.
Along with the sheer number of photographic prints, there were photo albums that had to be disassembled as their structural integrity was very poor. Here are some photos of those disassembled photo albums, along with one item I found very interesting:
From the Hortense Clapp Pollard collection, courtesy of Historic Northampton, Northampton, MA
From the Hortense Clapp Pollard collection, courtesy of Historic Northampton, Northampton, MA
From the Hortense Clapp Pollard collection, courtesy of Historic Northampton, Northampton, MA
I’d like to thank Kelsy Sinelnikov and Margy Jessup for their support and help with this collection, and Thomas Doyle for being an amazing source of knowledge that helped me tremendously during my work on this collection. I’d also like to thank Historic Northampton for welcoming me in with open arms and MA SHRAB for giving me this opportunity.