Howes Brothers photo of house at 31 Main St., Hatfield, next to brick library and museum.

The Hatfield Historical Museum holds a collection of 78 (5×7) glass negatives taken by the Howes Brothers between 1886 and 1907 of houses and other scenes, including tobacco and onion farming, in Hatfield, MA. The three Howes Brothers (Alvah, Walter and George) toured southern New England as itinerant photographers, signing up customers and charging homeowners $1 for 3 prints. Hatfield’s negatives (or glass slides) — the 78 that we still hold — were given to the Hatfield Historical Society by the Ashfield Historical Society in the early 1970s. Ashfield holds about as many additional Hatfield slides as part of its overall collection of more than 23,000 glass negatives produced by the Howes Brothers between 1882 and 1907. These images include Ashfield and other towns from Massachusetts, Connecticut, and southern Vermont and New Hampshire. Please see their website or visit their museum for more information on this astounding collection.

But back to our collection, which has been digitized by the Boston Public Library on our Digital Commonwealth page (see link under Collections tab on the Museum’s main page). If you can provide location information or other detail for any of the images, please contact us via our website.

In addition to the glass slides, our collection also holds prints of a larger selection of Howes Brothers Hatfield images, which we have attempted to identify and separate by street location. We believe these prints were made by Ted Hendrick of Southampton, MA, as part of the overall Howes Brothers Project of the Ashfield Historical Society. Many thanks to both the AHS and Ted Hendrick! If you are a longtime Hatfield resident or particularly good at recognizing building features, we would love your help in providing better location info for these prints.