Getting Lost in Local History at the “Quincy Room”

Unfortunately I was unable to make my planned visit the Massachusetts Historical Society (I rely on the red line to get into town, and that has not been working out so much this week…). So I decided to visit an easily accessible local collection in the Thomas Crane Public Library in Quincy, MA. The “Quincy Room” houses the special local history collections, including maps and atlases, manuscripts, Vital Records to 1850, Quincy Annual Reports from 1889 to present, as well as copies of the Patriot Ledger newspaper from 1837 to date. I grew up in this city, but I’m more familiar with the history concerning John Adams and his homestead because this part of the city’s history attracts the most attention, especially from out-of-town tourists. I decided that these collections in the Quincy Room would provide an intriguing opportunity to research other aspects of my hometown’s history. I was most interested in seeing the photographs and the collections about Quincy’s industrial history, namely the granite quarries and shipbuilding.

A view of the Thomas Crane Public Library, sans snow (with all of the snow banks, I was not able to stand somewhere safely to take a current shot like this!) Photo credit: National Register of Historic Places

Part of me was hoping that the special collections would be housed in the oldest part of the library, the original castle-like structure designed by Henry Hobson Richardson in 1881. I learned from the circulation desk staff that the Quincy Room is located on the second floor of the new addition to the library (decidedly not in the impressive Richardsonian wing.) I made my way upstairs to find and speak with the reference librarian. She was very interested in my research purposes and appeared to be most excited that someone wished to view the local history materials. She confessed to me that these collections are not frequently requested by visitors to the library. Knowing this made accessing these materials myself somewhat more special. Only a few people have physically handled these materials, and I would be one of them.

The librarian went over the restrictions and rules of use with me. The materials in the Quincy Room may only be viewed under the direct supervision of the reference librarian, and the researcher is required to sit at one of the desks adjacent to the reference desk, not at one of the “regular” desks for the general public to use. My photo ID remained in the librarian’s possession until the end of my visit, when I returned my items and they were thoroughly inspected for any damage. I was not permitted to make any reproductions of any materials without the express authorization of the librarian, and I did not dare make any for fear of bothering her repeatedly.

The first collection I wanted to view was the Warren S. Parker Photograph Collection, which includes prints, glass slides, and negatives of local sites from 1890-1930. Some of the prints are available digitally through the library’s website, but I wanted to hold the original prints and glass slides. I requested a smaller sub-collection, containing photographs of Quincy’s granite quarries taken in the 1800s. This area today has been redeveloped, and is home to a golf course, restaurant, walking paths, and condominium and apartment complexes. This is not the Quincy quarries that I saw depicted in the old photographs. These photographs revealed the quarries as they existed well before my lifetime. There are images of enormous cuts of granite, workers blasting into the quarry walls, and pictures of old machinery and equipment. There are also several photos of a “Titanic memorial statue,” presumably made from a slab of Quincy granite. There are many images of nameless men, covered in dirt at work in the quarries. My favorite of these is titled “Quarrymen coming up in boat out of Granite Railway Quarry for dinner.” The image shows a group of men piled into a “boat” that is hanging precariously from a crane above a deep quarry, slowly being pulled up to the top. I have a terrible fear of heights and even viewing this image made me uneasy; I could never by a quarryman. My family lived in the neighborhood of the Quincy quarries, and my older brothers used to jump the quarries (before the redevelopment when the deep pits were still filled with water.) After viewing these pictures, I think I have a better understanding of just how dangerous and stupid that was.

“Quarrymen coming up in boat out of Granite Railway Quarry for dinner”    I did not make my own reproduction of the original print, but managed to locate a digitized version of the photograph on the Thomas Crane Public Library’s website. Photo credit: Warren S. Parker Photograph Collection

I do not know the names of the quarrymen in the prints, and they are not listed in the finding aid or in any captions of the photographs. All I have are these brief moments of their lives, captured and frozen in these photographs. These feel, to me, like Farge’s Parisians in the city’s judicial archives. These quarry workers remain frozen in the state when their photographs were taken, just as Farge’s subjects “remain stuck pleading” in the court records (Farge, 26). The photos of the quarrymen at work, in a sense, catch the quarries “red-handed” and in action, just as Farge’s judicial archives caught Paris red-handed for her.

After taking a trip back in time at the quarries, I decided to explore another area of Quincy’s industrial history: shipbuilding. I knew that the Fore River shipyard was a hub of activity during World War II, and I asked the librarian if she could recommend any good materials on that time period. She told me that I “absolutely” needed to consult the “Winnie the Welder Oral History Project.” She disappeared into the Quincy Room and returned moments later with a thick binder. Inside were dozens of dvds containing recorded interviews with some of the women who worked at the Fore River and neighboring Hingham shipyards from 1941 to 1945. Most of these interviews were conducted in the late eighties and early nineties, and I learned later that many of the interviewees have since passed away. It seems fortunate that someone had the good sense to record their stories and experiences before they were lost forever.

As the dvds are not exactly sensitive materials, the librarian set me up at another nearby desk with a computer so that I could watch the interviews. As I settled in, I could not help but feel like Arlette Farge must have when she discovered the voices of Paris’ long forgotten women in the judicial archives. I spent much longer than I realized, inserting disc after disc, going through the women’s interviews. It was fascinating to hear their stories and about the challenges they faced being women workers in a traditionally male industry. On top of work challenges, these women were living in a society at war and dealing with daily problems like rationing and child care. The propagandist image of “Rosie the Riveter” and general narrative of women’s role in World War II is not an accurate representation of the sheer diversity of these interviewees’ experiences. The women who worked at Fore River and Hingham shipyards came from different backgrounds, entered wartime work for their own reasons, and each had different experiences working at the shipyards. This collection of interviews revealed to me “existences or stories that are irreducible to any typology or attempt at synthesis, and do not fit neatly into any easily described historical context” (Farge, 86).

Carolyn Steedman said that “no one historian’s archive is ever like another’s” (Steedman, 1163) and I feel that given my pre-existing connection to these locations, my experience viewing these local history collections was unique for me. The quarries and the shipyards closed for business long before my childhood, and I was not familiar with these sites when they were bustling centers of industrial activity. I was familiar only the newly redeveloped quarries and Hingham shipyard, and the largely abandoned eye sore that is the Fore River shipyard today. The photographs and the oral history collection brought Quincy’s industrial past back to life for me. Going through these materials, I was “struck by an impression of reality that no printed text” can give (Farge, 5). These photographs peeled back the layers of modern Quincy and showed me the city as it was long before my lifetime, and the oral history interviews brought the shipyard and its workers to life. My visit to view the Quincy Room collections did indeed bring me on “a roaming voyage through the words of others” (Farge, 123) through the city I thought I knew well. I was not entirely familiar with these aspects of Quincy’s history before, but after this visit I have a much greater understanding and appreciation for the granite quarries and shipyards.