The Foxfire Reports were a series of class assignments given to Jr. High and Sr. High school students within the Hatfield public school system from 1982 until 2000.  Each student or pair of students researched and wrote about a topic relating to Hatfield, Massachusetts.  Most of the authors incorporated primary documents and personal interviews into their reports.  Both primary source materials and personal interviews have been documented in this finding aid to assist researchers.

This collection documents a wide variety of topics of interest to scholars of Hatfield, Massachusetts, agriculture in New England, and World War II.  The interviews with individuals in the People series offer a rich documentation on mid-20th century life in New England, and the projects on the earliest families who settled Hatfield provide a deeper historical context for the town.

Arrangement:

The files in this collection are organized into three series: People, Places, and Subjects.  The files within the People series are arranged alphabetically by last name, or by family name if there are reports on multiple family members.  Within the Place series, the files are arranged alphabetically by location.  The files within the Subject series include all topics not covered by People or Place, including businesses, events, organizations, and industries.  The files are listed alphabetically; if multiple files with the same title exist, they are listed chronologically.

A Finding Aid for this collection is available on the following page:

http://hatfieldhistory.weebly.com/resources.html

And several of the reports that have been digitized (on the topic of immigration) are available at the following link:

http://hatfieldhistory.weebly.com/foxfire-reports.html

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.

This collection of business records for Porter Machines Works, starting in 1882, renamed the Porter & McLeod Machine Shop, took a long time and a lot of saviors to get where it is today — inventoried, rehoused into acid-free folders and boxes, and ready to be studied by a scholar of local precision manufacturing (if our Mass Humanities grant is approved!) To get an idea of what that involved, including the nitty-gritty behind-the-scenes work and the three grants* that made it possible, check out this link:

http://hatfieldhistory.weebly.com/blog/for-every-mouse-you-see-there-are-usually-more

*Three grants: Research Inventory Grant from Mass Humanities, Supplies Regrant from the Mass. State Historical Records Advisory Board (SHRAB) and a Town of Hatfield CPA grant.

Due to our pending grant project, this collection will not be available to the general public until 2018, but please explore the inventory (link below) and if we can easily answer your questions, we will!

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets/d/1O-Tw4mIFQEVTm8SwLuXuhNfbw0RYQcNd880t5R-rXk0/edit?usp=sharing

Jonathan E. Porter founded Porter Machine Works in 1882. Its initial location was on one floor of the mill building on the north side of the river, which housed the Shattuck Gun Shop, rebuilt by C.S. Shattuck after the 1881 fire.  Porter then relocated directly across the river (at the falls), and built the shop that still stands today. In 1898, Porter’s shop foreman and son-in-law Hugh McLeod purchased the business for $10,000. Sometime after the business was renamed the Porter & McLeod Machine Shop. The shop did business across the country and abroad, and closed its doors in 1970. How did this modest machine shop, tucked away in a small farming town, manage to attract skilled machinists and produce such a thriving business with an international reach for so many years (nearly 90)? That’s what our Scholar in Residence grant aims to answer. Stay tuned!