nurses - The Cambridge Historical Commission Blog

The Cambridge Visiting Nursing Association

Posted on May 7, 2020May 8, 2020 by cambridgehistoricalcommission

In honor of National Nurses Week, today we are sharing the story of the Cambridge Visiting Nursing Association (CVNA), once headquartered at 35 Bigelow Street. The CVNA was established in 1904 by twelve Cambridge women in response to the community’s dire need for skilled home nursing care. As cities like Cambridge grew rapidly during the late 19th and early 20th centuries, and with neighborhoods becoming denser, it became even more necessary for nurses to travel to individuals to provide healthcare – especially at a time when most healthcare was provided in the home. An article in the Cambridge Chronicle states that the CVNA started when “a few ladies of old Cambridge supported a nurse who visited the very poor.”

80364343_2858127020874292_6234015197577609216_n — “On this day in 1922, the Cambridge VNA kicked off a highly successful fundraising campaign for home health care. Nurses gathered in front of the agency’s 35 Bigelow St., Cambridge, office for this photo.” Caption and image used with courtesy of VNA Care’s Facebook page, 1/16/2020.

During the CVNA’s first year, $5000 was raised to provide for the salary of three visiting nurses to make house calls to Cambridge residents, and for the fitting up of a nurses residence. From 1904-1908, the CVNA took quarters at 35 and 48 Bigelow Street, where the first two or three nurses employed were housed. By 1906 there were seven or eight nurses in residence, and in 1908, the CVNA purchased the entire home at 35 Bigelow for their official use. They remained headquartered there until 1987, when they relocated to 186 Alewife Brook Parkway. In 1995 the CVNA merged with VNA North Shore and the parent companies of Visiting Nurse Associates to create the VNA Care Network, “a nonprofit home health care, palliative care, hospice, and wellness provider serving more than 200 communities in Eastern and Central Massachusetts.”

PanasonicMECH=KV-S7075C SIDE=F — From the CVNA Seventh Annual Report, 1911.

From the beginning, the CVNA worked with people of all ages, though in its earlier days the nurses were chiefly involved with pre-natal care and home-births, instruction in infant care, and the treatment of tuberculosis, as well as polio and influenza. The CVNA supervisor would assign each nurse to a different case or neighborhood, discussing cases and patient plans with them.

Tribune19200214-01.2.98-a2-292w — Call for nurses – Cambridge Chronicle, February 14, 1920.

vnacaretwitter — Educational lantern slide, used with courtesy of the VNA Care Twitter account.

By the 1920s the CVNA collaborated with the Cambridge Anti-Tuberculosis Association in maintaining a health center at the Thorndike School in East Cambridge. The center offered a wide range of services, including “a nurse who gives all of her time to the district, a children’s clinic…a posture clinic…and an evening health clinic for adults.” The center also offered nutrition and hygiene classes, “training girls in the care of their younger brothers and sisters,” classes in physical exercise, mothers’ meetings, “and moving pictures and lantern-slide lectures on health subjects.”

Chronicle19200717-01.2.98-a2-295w — Cambridge Chronicle, Aug. 17, 1920

The CVNA also participated in numerous citywide activities and programs, such as educational health exhibits at the YMCA and plays put on by local school children centered around health lessons.

Chronicle19381222-01.2.89-a5-488w — “Visiting Nursing Association Makes 16,000 Visits Yearly.” Cambridge Chronicle, December 22, 1938.

As the needs of the community and healthcare delivery changed, the CVNA expanded their services to aid with the elderly and hospice services, and later added therapists, home health aides, social workers, and office personnel to their staff as well as the visiting nurses.

Chronicle19710506-01.2.21-a5-578w

Chronicle19710506-01.2.21-a6-568w — Cambridge Chronicle, May 6, 1971

In 1971 it was reported that the CVNA made 19,647 visits to 987 patients of all ages that year. They had 29 nurses on staff and worked alongside doctors and 35 other health services, including the Boston Visiting Nursing Association. The CVNA also provided disaster nursing relief alongside the Red Cross and were major caregivers during the HIV/AIDS epidemic.

Thank you to all nurses and caregivers!

vnatwitter — Cambridge visiting nurses biking to patients’ homes in 1974, used with courtesy of VNA Care’s Facebook page, May 3, 2018.

About 35 Bigelow Street:

35 Bigelow Street today. Cambridge Property Database.

A three-story mansard style house with a handsome side porch/piazza, built in 1869. In 1908 there was a first-floor addition built for the CVNA, followed by a second-floor addition in 1916 by the firm of Howe & Manning. In 1927 the brick garage was built for the CVNA and was changed to a two-story dwelling in 1985, now 35r Bigelow. Today the home is divided into condos.

Sources:

VNA Care, vnacare.org as well as their Twitter and Facebook accounts

CHS Proceedings, v. 18, 1925

Numerous articles from the Cambridge Chronicle, particularly 7/17/1920 and 3/28/1991

For photographs of other Cambridge community nurses, check out the Benedict Daniels Scrapbook on our Flickr page.

New Collections Available

Posted on March 5, 2019August 17, 2020 by Brittany F.

We have recently processed four small collections from our holdings and are currently working on updating their accompanying finding aids. Scroll down for sample images and descriptions from these collections. They include: the Hurley Family Photograph Collection, the Benedict Daniels Photograph Collection, the Harry Bagan Photograph Collection, and the Alfred E. Vellucci Snapshot Collection.

Hurley Family Photograph Collection

This collection consists of copy prints and original photographs donated by Virginia Hurley in 1994. Virginia lived at 5 Ellsworth Park in Cambridge and she was an active participant in city politics. As the secretary of the Gold Star Wives of America Inc., she helped protect widows from increased property taxes after the deaths of their husbands. For a period, she worked for the City of Boston as a secretary for Judge David Nelson and then for the Elder Affairs office. She later passed away in 2011.

The photographs in this collection are of the Hurley family’s ancestry, including the Moran, Graves, Welsh and Ward families. The images comprise of group and individual portraits of family members ranging from the late 1880s to the 1920s.

Joseph C. Moran Sr. posing in full Colonial militia attire for the 150th Anniversary of Washington taking command under ‘The Elm.’ Photographer unknown.

While some of the people in the photographs are unidentified, we do know that the Morans were an East Cambridge family of glass workers who were employed by the New England Glassworks company until 1888. Interestingly, on the other side of the Hurley ancestry, David Gregory Welch was known as Peter McGurr during the Civil War.

Portrait photograph of David Gregory Walsh. Photographer unknown.

Additionally, there is an outlying photograph of Marshal Ferdinand Foch at the Cambridge Parade after WWI. He was a French general and he served as the Supreme Allied Commander during the war.

Marshal Ferdinand Foch at the Cambridge Parade. Photographer unknown.

Benedict Daniels Photograph Collection

This collection contains scrapbook pages donated by Helen Benedict Daniels in 1980. Helen was a member of the Young People’s Society of Christian Endeavor (Y.P.S.C.E.) and a volunteer for the Red Cross. After she received her degree in natural history from Radcliffe College, she married and moved to Orange, New Jersey. The scrapbook was created by her sister Miriam Benedict, who was a nurse in Cambridge during the 1920s.

A page from the Benedict Daniels scrapbook. Photographer unknown.

Miriam probably worked for the East Cambridge Health Center, which directed attention towards programs that taught young mothers how to care for their newborn children. The unidentified people in the photographs were probably affiliated with the center.

Harry Bagan Photograph Collection

This collection includes three photographs with Harry Bagan, a Cambridge police officer. The collection was donated by Maria Sousa in October 1995; little information has been found on Sousa.

Photograph of Harry and Helen Bagan. Photographer unknown.

Harry Bagan was married to Helen Bagan, who is showcased in one of the photographs. They were known to be close to the Roosevelt family. He was also a prominent member of the Fat Men’s Club in Cambridge. The Fat Men’s Club was a widespread trend that began around 1910 which celebrated physical girth and required a weight qualification of over 190 pounds.

1951 Fat Men’s Club Outing at Silver Lake, Thompson’s Grove, Wilmington, Mass. Photographer unknown.

Alfred E. Vellucci Snapshot Collection

Included in this collection are mounted photographs conveying a “day in the life” of Cambridge Mayor Vellucci. He became a Cambridge School Committee member in 1951 and by 1955 he began his 34-year position on the City Council. This snapshot collection comes from 1976 and it displays Vellucci’s daily activities, such as conducting desk work, holding meetings, drinking coffee, and attending city council meetings. Vellucci later retired from public office in 1991. The collection was donated by Juliet Turner from the City Hall’s Finance Department in 2011.

Images forthcoming.

The finding aids for these collections will soon be made available online. Please check back soon to access them. Stay tuned for more updates as we continue to process collections and make them available for research!

Most of these photograph collections were donated in the 1980s but we are always accepting personal donations and family memorabilia related to Cambridge, Mass. We encourage you to contact the Cambridge Historical Commission if you have items you wish to offer. Please contact egonzalez@cambridgema.gov with any inquiries about the process.

To view the above collections, please make a research appointment at histcomm@cambridgema.gov. Our research hours are: Monday: 4:00-7:00 pm | Tuesday: 2:00-4:00 pm | Wednesday – Thursday: 10-12 and 2-4 pm.

Still Making History

Posted on July 25, 2017November 14, 2018 by Meta Partenheimer

In the archives field, we are often charged with describing, cataloging, and preserving memories in their physical form. A key first step is actually acquiring historic items and collections that can speak volumes about the past.

flyer001 — Our flyer requesting historic photographs

In 1980 the CHC initiated a project to document photograph collections in private hands. The Polaroid Foundation donated a copy stand, a camera, and cases of 4×5 instant film that also made high-quality negatives. The flyer, pictured above, was sent out with utility bills and generated hundreds or responses.

The staff had copied about 2,000 images when the CHC published A Photographic History of Cambridge in 1984. Donations, which included including the corporate collections of the Cambridge Electric and Gas companies and the Cambridgeport Savings Bank and many, many scrapbooks, slowly tapered off, but the recent donation of this photo shows that the simple flyer of 1980 continues to bear fruit.

flyer002 — Our appeal – “Don’t let our history fade away.”

A family residing in Buzzards Bay discovered our flyer while going through the papers of their mother, Julie Ferguson.

sally_howes001 — Sally Howes as a nursing student weighing “Baby Hope” in 1926.

Along with the flyer, the family included this photograph featuring nursing student, Sally Howes.

program001

program002 — Program for graduation exercises at the Cambridge Training School for Nurses, 1927. Sally Howes is the second graduate listed.

Ms. Howes is listed as a graduate of the Cambridge Training School for Nurses class of 1927. It is possible that she was a family friend or acquaintance of the donor’s mother.

program003 — Verso of the program featuring the Florence Nightingale Pledge.

These materials will soon be available for research. We are open for research Mon: 4:00-7:00PM and Tue-Thur: 9:30-11:30AM & 2:00-4:00PM. Contact us today for an appointment!