mums098 Boarding House Register, 1850 Finding Aid Finding aid prepared by Ruth Owen Jones. Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation. Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Amherst, MA

2002

Finding aid encoded using Perl scripts and edited in XMetal 2.0. Encoded by Eric Cartier. 2002-03-04 Finding aid written in English. 2005-09-23 mu64 converted from EAD 1.0 to 2002 by v1to02-5c.xsl (sy2003-10-15). Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst Boarding House Register, 1850 Finding Aid Manuscript Number 98 Compiled by Ruth Owen Jones October 1985 Encoding funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Collection Overview Boarding House Register 1850 MS 98 1 folder (0.3 linear ft.) Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst Boarding house register, possibly from a Quabbin town. Twenty-four page booklet includes accounts of payments and lists of boarders and workers, some of whom were Irish women. English. Biographical Note

The boarding house may have been located among one of the Western Massachusetts town abolished in 1938 to allow the Swift River Valley to be flooded, thereby creating the Quabbin Reservoir to provide Boston with water.

Scope and Contents of the Collection

This twenty-four page booklet was printed in 1848 by a New York firm specifically as a time book for laborers or as a boarding house register by the week or month. It contains tables to figure accounts. Payments were kept very carefully for Feb.-Oct., 1850, but there are few clues as to the name of the boarding house owner or the town. A comparison of the list of boarders and workers (final page) to census lists for 1850 might help. It may have been a Quabbin town as the book came from Donald W. Howe, donor of many Quabbin-towns materials. The list of workers includes Irish surnames--Ellen O'Leary, Ellen Callahan and Margaret Murphy, for example, though 1850 is fairly early for finding Irish in the Quabbin region, if that is where it is. The list of boarders includes a few doctors and L.S. Hills, possibly Leonard S. Hills of the Amherst, Massachusetts hat factory.

The collection is open for research.

Preferred Citation

Cite as: Boarding House Register (MS 98). Special Collections and University Archives, W.E.B. Du Bois Library, University of Massachusetts Amherst.

Acquired from Donald C. Howe, 1960.

Processed by Ruth Owen Jones, October 1985.

Search Terms Boardinghouses--History--19th century--Sources. Irish American women--History--19th century--Sources. Quabbin Reservoir Region (Mass.)--History. Account books.