We have recently processed a collection donated last year by William B. King and his daughter, Rachel King. Its finding aid is now available on ArchivesSpace. Currently, the Historical Commission is offering limited research assistance. Please see our main webpage for the most up-to-date information. If you would like to research this or any other collections, please email us at chcarchives@cambridgema.gov.
The William B. King Collection contains textual records collected by William B. King related to his contributions to local Cambridge organizations, including Harvard Law School, Cambridge Civic Association, Buckingham Browne & Nichols School, and the Cambridge Historical Commission. It also holds external reports, newsletters, maps, and ads from other local institutions as well as the National Trust for Historic Preservation. The collection consists of approximately 100 folders of written records ranging from official typed forms, handwritten notes, draft documents, and printed publications.
King at Memorial Hall, 2000, CHC photo
A bit of background on Mr. King: he was born in Boston in 1932; he married the Cambridge native Sheila Malone in 1955, and the couple would go on to participate in civic and social activities in Cambridge. For more information on Sheila M. King, see her obituary here. They had three children, Stephen in 1960, Rachel in 1963, and Christopher in 1965.
After graduating from Harvard College in 1954, King received his law degree from Harvard Law School in 1959. After passing the bar that same year, he became an associate and in 1968 partner at Goodwin, Procter & Hoar, a position he held through 1999.
Harvard University 1954 Class Album
More pertinent to this collection, King served in many positions with the Cambridge Civic Association (CCA), including advisor, director, vice president, and finally president between 1965 and 1966. The CCA was a merger among the Committee for Plan E, the Cambridge Citizens Committee, and the Cambridge Taxpayers Association in 1945. Joining the organization in the 1960s, King participated in the “Save Magazine Beach” petition to defend a recreation and playground area from a planned highway extension along Memorial Drive.
In 1970 King became a trustee of the Buckingham School, an independent school in Cambridge that was coed through 6th grade and all-girls through 12th grade. He was actively involved in its 1974 merger with the Browne & Nichols School, an all-boys independent school (grades 7 through 12).
King at the Boys & Girls Club, 2015, holding the just-published oral history collection, We Are the Port, recollections of Area 4/The Port.
In 1973 King was appointed the lawyer member of the Cambridge Historical Commission and in 1986 became its chair. During his time at the Commission, he advocated for and helped develop operating procedures under Cambridge’s two precedent-setting, home-rule ordinances relating to Demolition Delay and the designation of Neighborhood Conservation Districts (NCD) and Local Landmarks. He sat on the city’s first NCD study committee that eventually led to the establishment of the Mid-Cambridge NCD and served on study committees establishing and/or revising the Avon Hill, Half Crown-Marsh, and Harvard Square Conservation Districts. In 2017, King retired from his Commission position.
The William B. King Collection is divided into six series comprising correspondence, drafts, legal and financial statements, memos, personal notes, newsletters, maps, reports, articles, and a recipe. The series are as follows: Series I: Harvard Law School; Series II: Cambridge Civic Association; Series III: Buckingham Browne & Nichols School; Series IV: Cambridge Historical Commission; Series V: External correspondence, publications, materials; Series VI: Personal.
We have recently processed a collection from our holdings and added its finding aid to ArchivesSpace . Currently, the Historical Commission is offering limited research assistance. Please see our main webpage for the most up-to-date information.
We have digitized a significant portion of this collection, so that it is available from the safety of your home. The items are available for viewing on our Flickr page here. If you would like to research this or any other collections, please email us at chcarchives@cambridgema.gov.
Alice Darling Secretarial Service letterhead. N.d.
Partial booklet of address labels. N.d.
The Alice Darling Secretarial Service Inc. Ephemera collection contains records of the business activities supplied by the corporation from 1948 to 1991. The bulk of the items were created between 1948 and 1955 when the Alice Darling Secretarial Services changed management and expanded its Alice Darling Secretarial School. Present are textual records that reflect the legal status, certification process, job descriptions, and financial costs involved in providing the vocational service of clerical work. Also available are draft letterhead designs and other evidence of the products of contracted work for clients, including correspondence and marketing tools. Of particular interest are the correspondence and business transactions connected to members of the Shia sect of Islam, some of which are written in Arabic. Scroll down to learn more about the historical background of this collection.
The Alice Darling Secretarial Service Inc. was started in 1913 at 1384 Massachusetts Ave. in Harvard Square, Cambridge. The founder, Alice Darling, born Azniv Beshgeturian in Turkey in 1883, belonged to a prominent Armenian family of clerks, bishops, professors, and ministers. She was brought to America in 1885 and attended Boston public schools and Bridgewater State Normal School (now Bridgewater State University), where she graduated in 1902. After graduation she taught for several years in Boston.
As a savvy businesswoman, Darling knew she’d find no lack of demand in Harvard Square. Typewriting began to supplant handwriting in business correspondence in the late 19th century. While many employers once employed male secretaries exclusively, women began to find employment opportunities as typists and stenographers, taking dictation in shorthand (coded language) and typing finished documents. Typing and stenography were skills that allowed women access to relatively high-paying office jobs, but were not widely valued by men; throughout the 20th century secretaries were almost always women. Many girls learned to type in high school, but men did not.
Typewriter diagrams and instructions, in Arabic. N.d.
While America’s growing businesses and industries were the major employers of secretaries, Cambridge’s academic community offered special opportunities for Darling’s services. Harvard students (entirely male until the 1940s) needed papers typed, often overnight; doctoral candidates required professional typists to prepare flawless dissertations meeting rigid standards for format, layout, and paper quality; and faculty authors needed assistance to prepare their manuscripts for publication. (It was cheaper to have a typist create a draft from an author’s longhand than to commission a printed page proof.) The gendered bias of mid-twentieth-century academia and its “approved” tasks made it undesirable for male students and scholars to type their own work.
In 1920 Darling expanded her business to include the Harvard Square Stenographers Bureau, also known as Miss Darling’s Business Employment Bureau, which facilitated job connections for secretarial services. In 1923 she founded the Alice Darling Secretarial School to provide women and college students with formal secretarial lessons. A person seeking to assume a role in Boston’s competitive secretarial market had to possess this knowledge. In the early years, the secretarial school only offered general stenography and typewriting courses, but it soon expanded its curriculum. In 1928 it introduced training in transcribing dictation from an Ediphone, an early recording machine.
Alice Darling Secretarial School pamphlet pages. N.d.
Darling’s school went above and beyond teaching classic secretarial competencies. Her school incorporated a psychological component, business ethics, and personality training. The Alice Darling School implemented a “tutorial system” that integrated office procedures and practical applications. Known for its talented secretaries and stenographers, Darling’s school drew people who wanted to make clerical work their vocation. A Cambridge Chronicle article from June 29, 1928 stated that the school “aside from enabling pupils to have confidence in themselves, which is an essential requisite for ultimate success, is also a means of increasing on a large scale their earning capacity.”
The school grew throughout the first half of the twentieth century. The Great Depression saw a rise in attendance because pupils were drawn to learning viable skills and networking through real world jobs in the public stenographic department. Graduates at this time were likely to earn a monthly income of $100, according to a Cambridge Chronicle article. During WWII, the school expanded again to accommodate war emergency courses. After the war, many women college graduates found that their employment opportunities were limited if they lacked secretarial skills.
Marston’s Office Service’s business card. N.d.
In the late 1940s, Alice Darling Secretarial Services was taken over by Theodora L. and John S. Marston, who had a prior business, Marston’s Office Services, at 1735 Massachusetts Ave. Theodora and John lived at 60 Brattle Street, Cambridge, and later at 17 Spring Street in Lexington. They received their state license to conduct business services in 1949. They were active participants of Cambridge’s Lesley-Ellis School, with John acting as treasurer of the Parents Association in 1954.
At this time, the Alice Darling Secretarial Services Inc. served as a licensed intelligence service for major clients, including the Internal Revenue Service. Its role as an employment facilitator extended to other state and federal positions because the company provided its workers certification by issuing the Civil Service Exam.
Letter from M. Beguel to Mr. and Mrs. John Marston. M. Beguel was the private secretary to the Aga Khan. 1959.
In the 1950s, the business served Prince Shāh Karim al-Husayni, the current Aga Khan (IV) of the Imāmate of the Nizari Ismāʿīli Shias, a sub-sect of Shia Islam. He was attending Harvard University at the time and his grandfather, Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah, Aga Khan III, provided the school with an endowment to create the Aga Khan Professorship of Iranian. When Aga Khan III died in 1957, Karim Aga Khan assumed the tenure of the religious leadership position while still attending school. Addressed as Karim Aga Khan in this collection, some of his business transactions are available for research.
Alice Darling published a “semi-autobiography” two years before her death in 1966. She recalled that she had typed papers for Franklin Delano Roosevelt and his sons; Henry Cabot Lodge and his sons; John F. Kennedy; John DosPassos; and many others. She typed so many papers for law students that she became interested in field and took a law degree from Northeastern University, graduating in 1939. Her profession, she said, had enabled her to acquire “a college education, free of charge, in one of the leading universities in the country.”
In 1998 Alice Darling’s long-time location in the Read Block in the heart of Harvard Square was sold for redevelopment. Now operating from an office on Mifflin Place, Alice Darling Secretarial Services offers transcription services via electronic media for “conferences, interviews, focus groups, meeting, film, press conferences etc.”
This month we finished re-processing and writing an updated finding aid for the McCarthy Family Collection. You can now read the new finding aid here! To get an overview of what is available, read on!
Lowell Police vs. Cambridge Police baseball club game at Lake View, Lowell. Aug 13, 1895. Cambridge won 12 to 8
This collection documents a longstanding and active family in Cambridge and various local organizations spanning a period of nearly 150 years. The members of the McCarthy family were longtime residents of Cambridge, Massachusetts. The first generation to live in Cambridge was Maurice McCarthy. An Irish immigrant born in County Cork, Ireland, Maurice became a U.S. citizen in 1860. A year later, in 1861 he purchased land in East Cambridge at 6 Lechmere Place. He and his wife, Mary Hurley McCarthy, had two children, Ellen McCarthy and Jeremiah H. McCarthy.
Invitation to Jeremiah and Julia’s 25th anniversary celebration. 1934.
Jeremiah was born in 1857 and married Julia Theresa Lane on November 24, 1900. Julia was also an Irish immigrant, but she moved to 29 Warren Street in East Cambridge when she was just 8 months old. As a child, Julia attended the Thorndike Grammar School where she learned the Duntonian System of penmanship created by Alvin R. Dunton, an overseer of penmanship studies in Boston schools. Many of her penmanship books are available for viewing in this collection. There are also many of her personal papers, including correspondence, memorabilia, and vital records, as well as photographs.
Julia Theresa Lane’s penmanship book. She graduated from the Thorndike Grammar School at the age of 13 in 1880.
Between 1900 and 1905 Jeremiah and Julia moved into a house at 134 Otis Street, where the McCarthy family resided until 1993. Jeremiah, sometimes known as “Jerry,” worked for 39 years as a patrolman out of the East Cambridge police station and he retired a year before his death in 1926. Julia lived until 1963 and she was noted for being the oldest East Cambridge resident and oldest graduate of the Thorndike School.
Julia Theresa (Lane) McCarthy, 1928. Likely in her yard at 134 Otis Street.
The couple had three sons, Gerald F., John L., and Justin H. McCarthy. They and their children were active members in the Catholic community in Cambridge. This collection has many of their papers relating to the East Cambridge Catholic Club and the Sacred Heart Church.
Page 30 from Justin McCarthy’s photo album containing a clipping about Gerald “Jerry” becoming a Cambridge cop. Ca. 1930s
Gerald F. McCarthy was born on January 25, 1902 and sometimes referred to as “Jerry” like his father. He worked for the Cambridge Police Department, the Metropolitan Police Department, and finally for the Massachusetts State Police as a lieutenant. He also served in WWII from October 30, 1942 to May 10, 1946. Content accumulated about the Cambridge Police force offer some insight into what he and his family deemed important about that subject.
Front page of The Elm¸ a publication of Cambridge Council, Knights of Columbus. 1933.
John Lane McCarthy was born on February 15, 1904 and attended Harvard Dental School. He had an office in Central Square and was also employed as one of Cambridge’s school system dentists. In 1934 he married Margaret Loretta Roche in Woburn. He then served in WWII as a lieutenant in the Naval Reserve in 1939 and he began his active duty as a lieutenant commander of the Dental Corps in June 1943. He was also affiliated with the Bainbridge Naval Hospital Training Center in Maryland and the U.S.S. War Hawk that participated in the Pacific Theater. John was also a member of the Cambridge Elks Lodge, the Knights of Columbus, the Guild of St. Apollonia, and the Agnes Holy Name Society. Our collection has printed materials and other records relating to these groups and other subject matter.
Front cover and page 25 from Justin McCarthy’s photo album. Shown: 134 Otis Street, Justin, Jeremiah, John Lane, Gerald, and Julia McCarthy. Ca. 1920s
Justin H. McCarthy was born in 1906 and worked as a marine electrician at the Boston Navy Yard as well as Western Electric. While serving for the Navy, he embarked on trips to Bermuda. There are many photographs taken during his trips to Bermuda as well as his experiences in the Navy. He retained many of his holiday cards, which provide additional information about his extended family and friends. He also compiled a photo album that we digitized for preservation purposes. It is available for viewing on our Flickr page, here:
Beyond these central family members, the collection includes nearly 300 photographs of McCarthy family members and friends (1890s-1980s), over 250 photographs of unidentified people and places, 10 tintypes, and 1 drawing.
Portrait of Helen Keller in her college graduation cap and gown (Wikimedia)
Helen Keller (1880-1968), was a world renowned author, activist, lecturer, and the first deaf-blind person to earn a Bachelor’s degree. Born in Alabama, Helen later moved to Massachusetts with her teacher and friend Annie Sullivan and attended the Perkins School for the Blind and Cambridge School for Young Ladies in pursuit of her goal of attending college. She successfully passed her exams and was admitted to Radcliffe College, known then as the Harvard Annex, in the fall of 1900.
When she began her studies at Radcliffe, Helen and Annie were living at 14 Coolidge Avenue, now 24 Coolidge Hill Road.
24 Coolidge Hill Road (CHC Collection)
Helen not only immersed herself in her studies, she also participated in social activities. According to an article in the Radcliffe Quarterly, “she played chess and checkers with unusual concentration, and was an enthusiastic wheelwoman often seen on the Cambridge streets on her tandem… when elections for officers were held, Helen was chosen Vice President.”
Helen with her dog, Phiz, a gift from her college classmates (Wikimedia)
In 1904, both Helen Keller and Annie Sullivan moved to 73 Dana Street. The building was designed by the architect Arthur H. Bowditch and constructed in 1898. The 6-unit apartment building was designed to look like a large single-family dwelling.
73 Dana Street (CHC)
Helen graduated cum laude that same year. Her classmates praised her accomplishment by writing in the yearbook:
Beside her task, our efforts pale,
She never knew the word for fail;
Beside her triumphs, ours are naught,
For hers were far more dearly bought.
Helen went on to a remarkable career advocating for people with disabilities, campaigning for women’s suffrage, labor rights, and anti-militarism. She lectured around the world and became acquainted with many leading figures in politics and the arts.
In 1954 at Helen’s 50th college reunion, Radcliffe College dedicated a garden to her and a fountain to Annie Sullivan, located at the Cronkhite Graduate Center on the corner of Brattle and Ash Streets.
Helen Keller at the dedication of the garden and fountain at Radcliffe (Wikimedia)
The fountain today (CHC)
Sign dedicating the fountain to Anne Sullivan (CHC)
‘IN MEMORY OF
ANNE SULLIVAN
TEACHER EXTRAORDINARY — WHO,
BEGINNING WITH THE WORD WATER
OPENED TO THE GIRL HELEN KELLER
THE WORLD OF SIGHT AND SOUND
THROUGH TOUCH
BELOVED COMPANION THROUGH
RADCLIFFE COLLEGE
1900 — 1904’
Sources:
The Three Lives of Helen Keller, Richard Harrity and Ralph G. Martin, Doubleday & Co., New York, 1962.
Perkins School for the Blind Archives, Watertown, MA
The Commission is happy to announce the availability of newly digitized images and updates to finding aids for four of our collections! Scroll down for descriptions and samples of images from the following collections: Inner Belt Scrapbook, Godinho Family Photograph Collection, Cambridge Manual Training School/ Rindge Manual Training School/
Rindge Technical School Collection, and the Curtis Mellen Photograph Collection.
Inner Belt Scrapbook
Proposed in the mid-1950s, the Inner Belt was once a planned highway that would have been Interstate 695. If built, this highway would have run a route through parts of Cambridge, Boston, Somerville, and Brookline. Many citizens protested the plan as it would have divided neighborhoods and displaced thousands of residents. This collection contains scrapbook pages detailing the saga of the Inner Belt campaign from 1960-1969.
Flyer: State House Rally, Jamaica-Plain-Roxbury Expressway Committee, 1969
Clippings: Inner Belt Activities; Morning Union Leader, Christian Science Monitor, The Cambridge Chronicle; March 1966
Additional pages from the Inner Belt Scrapbook can be viewed here.
Godinho Family Photograph Collection
Scrapbook page: Members of the Godinho Family, c. 1920
This collection contains photographic materials and personal items of the Godinhos, a Portuguese family who lived in Cambridge from the late nineteenth to mid twentieth century. Although little is known about the individuals depicted, including many of their identities, the collection contains photos of the Azores, a region in Portugal, indicating that this may be where the family originated. When whaling and fishing declined towards the end of the nineteenth century, many Portuguese immigrants, who had been whalers and fishermen in New Bedford, Massachusetts, moved to industrial towns near Boston, including Cambridge. The Portuguese Catholic population became large enough that in 1902 St. Anthony’s Church was opened in East Cambridge.
Unknown Boy: Gribal Godinho Family – First Holy Communion Portrait, c. 1915-1920
Joseph Godinho (left) and Unknown Man, c. 1920
Additional images from the Godinho Family Photograph Collection can be viewed here.
Cambridge Manual Training School/ Rindge Manual Training School/
Rindge Technical School Collection
The Cambridge Manual Training School for Boys was founded by Frederick Hastings Rindge in September 1888. The Cambridge School Committee renamed the school Rindge Manual Training School in 1899 in honor of Mr. Rindge after he retired. Considering its broadened offerings in technical education, the school was later renamed Rindge Technical School. In 1977, the Rindge Technical School merged with the Cambridge High and Latin School to form the Cambridge Rindge and Latin School (CRLS).
Having been assembled from multiple sources, items in this collection are related to the school and range from the 1880s to 1940s. Formats include photographs, documents, correspondence, and objects. Photographic subjects include events and classes at the Rindge School and Camp Rindge, as well as fire brigade practice operations.
Chemistry classroom, c. 1920s
Fire brigade operations, c. 1910
The bulk of this collection includes photographs of sports teams and individual players at Rindge Technical School. Many images depict the football team, but also include crew, hockey, track, swimming, and baseball.
Curtis Mellen Photograph Collection The Mellens were a very prominent family in Cambridge, and their soap business, Curtis Davis & Co., became the American branch of Lever Brothers, the largest soap manufacturer in the world at the time.
Interior View: Curtis Davis and Co., 180 Broadway
This collection includes family photographs as well as photographs of both the interior and exterior of Mellen family homes in Cambridge. Depicted are homes on Broadway, Chauncy, Forest, Linnean, and Hampshire streets. Many of the photographs have been attributed to Edwin D. Mellen and depict lavish interiors with intricate fixtures and furnishings.
Interior View: 33 Washington Avenue, c. 1880s
Interior View: Unknown address, c. 1880s-1890s
Additional images from the Curtis Mellen Photograph Collection can be viewed here.
To schedule an appointment for in-person research, please contact the Cambridge Historical Commission today at 617.349.4683 or e-mail our Archivist, Emily at egonzalez@cambridgema.gov.
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.
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.
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 Howes as a nursing student weighing “Baby Hope” in 1926.
Along with the flyer, the family included this photograph featuring nursing student, Sally Howes.
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.
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!
In the late 1990s, Ronald R. Rindge donated a collection of materials that had belonged to his grandfather, the philanthropist Frederick Hastings Rindge (1857-1905). Earlier this month, Frederick Hastings Rindge’s great-great-granddaughter, Melissa Rindge, came to visit the commission. CHC Executive Director Charles Sullivan showed Melissa a selection of Rindge items. This collection is comprised of materials relating to the Rindge family’s business interests in New England and Frederick Hastings Rindge’s donations to the city of Cambridge, including the Cambridge Public Library (1887), Cambridge Manual Training School (1888), and City Hall (1889).
Charlie showing Melissa the Cambridge Manual Training School Yearbook from the class of 1897.
Born to a wealthy textile merchant family in Cambridge, Massachusetts on December 21, 1857, Frederick Hastings Ridge grew up to become a successful businessman. Rindge was privately tutored before continuing his education at Harvard. The passing of his parents in the late 1880s left him with an inherited estate of approximately 2 million dollars.
Portrait of Frederick Hastings Rindge from his book Happy Days in Southern California.
The Cambridge Historical Commission is proud to house the Frederick Hastings Rindge Collection, which contains materials from 1852-2001. Included are correspondence, photographs, financial records, family papers, and architectural drawings, among other items.
Ledger page detailing real estate and property inventory, 1 July 1893.
Rindge’s business interests in New England comprised a number of textile mills and manufacturing companies and he owned a large number of real estate properties, mostly inherited from his father. Many of our records represent the family business as well as Rindge’s philanthropic efforts.
Photograph of Monadnock Mills, located in Claremont, New Hampshire c. 1890s.
Monadnock Mills comparison financial statement, 31 May and 30 November 1897. Francis J. Parker was one of Frederick Hastings Rindge’s business managers.
Happy Days in Southern California was published in 1898. The book begins with a history of this region and follows with descriptions of animals, flora, and scenery.
In 1888 Rindge relocated to California, where he purchased large tracts in Los Angeles and a 17,000-acre Spanish land grant north of Santa Monica that is now occupied by the town of Malibu. Between 1888 and 1890, Rindge’s old schoolmate, William E. Russell, then Mayor of Cambridge, urged him to fund the construction of a number of projects in Cambridge, including the Cambridge Manual Training School (later renamed the Rindge Manual Training School and now the Cambridge Rindge and Latin High School). Rindge hired the architects, superintended the construction, hired the faculty, reviewed applications from students, and supported the school for five years before turning it over to the city. Because Rindge was living in California, all these matters were the subject of extensive correspondence with his agents in Boston.
Rindge Manual Training School Register, March 1903.
Photograph of the Rindge Manual Training School baseball team, 1925.
Many records held in the collection relate to the Cambridge Manual Training School and Camp Rindge, a summer camp program for the CMTS students at Lake Winnipesaukee, NH.
A tent erected at Camp Rindge, c. 1893.
This collection is open for viewing and research at the Cambridge Historical Commission. Stop by during our research hours: Monday: 4:00-7:00PM, and Tuesday/Thursday: 9:30-11:30AM and 2:00-4:00PM, or feel free to call and make an appointment with our archivist!
