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TABLE OF CONTENTS
First
PagePhysical Description Explanations and Abbreviations Notes on the Collection Historical Notes Materials Descriptions: Photographs Stereoviews: Card Stereographs Stereoviews on paper (positive and negative prints) Postcards Broadsheets Engineering Drawings and Statistics (single sheets) Drawings and Printed Illustrations Maps Books, Pamphlets, and Reports (cataloged in NAPL OPAC) (not cataloged in NAPL OPAC) Manuscripts (cataloged in NAPL OPAC) (not cataloged in NAPL OPAC) Scrapbooks (cataloged in NAPL OPAC) Articles (bound & cat. in NAPL OPAC) Letters (1875-1951) Newpaper Clippings and Articles, etc. Microfilm Video Recordings Hoosac Tunnel Centennial and Post-Centennial Materials |
NOTES ON THE COLLECTION
The Hoosac Tunnel Collection at North Adams Public
Library documents the construction (1852-1873) and subsequent history
of the Hoosac Tunnel in western Massachusets along the Troy and
Greenfield Railroad line. The Hoosac Tunnel Collection is not an
organic collection. It is a collection of the disparate materials
that have found their way into the North Adams Public Library through
various means, not always documented or remembered. Some of the
materials were donated by William Bradford Browne, a local historian,
although there is no documentation of which ones he donated. Some
of the materials were donated by his daughter, Ruth Blackinton Browne,
the former director of the North Adams Public Library and member of the
Hoosac Tunnel Centennial Committee. Many more of the materials
were probably donated by Ruth Browne, but their provenance can
not be determined. Many of the objects will be listed in the future as
part of the Ruth Browne collection (the whole of which has not been
arranged or described as of yet), although they will be listed as well
in the finding aid of the Hoosac Tunnel Collection. The finding
aid is intended to facilitate the user's ability to locate all the
materials in the library that are related to the tunnel, including not
only unique archival materials dating back to the nineteenth century,
but also books written up to the present time. These materials
are kept in various locations in the library, notable in flat files,
vertical files, document cases, the vault, and stacks. The North
Adams Public Library will be undergoing a renovation in the spring of
2003, and all materials will be moved temporarily offsite; therefore,
it is not possible at this time to cite a permanent location for many
of the materials.
The collection consists of photographs (chiefly from the 1860s and 1870s), stereographs, negatives, postcards, drawings, prints, mechanical drawings, land plans and maps, engineers' notebooks and reports, one broadsheet, news clippings, scrapbooks, microfilm, letters, books, journals, pamphlets, reports from legislative hearings, railroad company reports to stockholders, a copper printing block, and various objects such as railroad spikes, an electric fuse exploder (blasting cap), and mineral samples from the Hoosac Tunnel. Individuals who created, published, or received the materials include George Mordey Mowbray (1814-1891), a chemist and expert in nitroglycerin; A. [Augustus] W. Locke , engineer in charge of the east end of the tunnel; E. A. [Edward Austin] Bond (1849-1929), assistant engineer; Thomas Doane (1821-1897), chief engineer from 1863-1867, and consulting engineer from 1873-1877; Benjamin D. Frost, chief state engineer during the Shanly contract of 1869-1874; John M. Bazan, who wrote pamphlets on the Hoosac Tunnel and collected original materials such as photographs; William Bradford Browne (b.1875), local historian and father of Ruth B. [Blackinton] Browne; Ruth B. Browne (1923-2002), librarian at North Adams Public Library, secretary of the Hoosac Tunnel Centennial Committee (founded 1971), and secretary of the Hoosac Tunnel Historical Association (founded 1973); and nineteenth-century photographers (W.P.) Hurd & Smith, H.D. Ward, Hurd & Ward, H.M. Ramsdell, John S. Moulton, E.D. Merriam, George W. Moore, and Bretton Perry. The library also possesses published items by the seminal figures in the Hoosac Tunnel debate, F.W. (Francis William) Bird (1809-1894), Alvah Crocker (1801-1874), and Herman Haupt (1817-1905). |