Spring 1939
Holyoke High School, Senior Class Officers, 1939
Holyoke High School, Senior Class Officers, 1939
President — John Whalen
Vice President — Helen McGrath
Secretary — Helen Loudon
Treasurer — Elmer Hyde
Sergeant-At-Arms — William Lemiech
Louis LaFrance of Holyoke
11 December 1904
[Note: this piece was published in 1904 and should be considered representative of the time. Initially a bit verbose, as the article continues there is some interesting information on the French Canadians in Holyoke and Springfield. Because of the length, the article has been split into six parts, this is Part II of VI.]
Race, Integrity and Language Preserved to a Remarkable Degree–Causes of the Immigration Movement — Customs and Literature.
The movement of French-Canadian immigration into this country dates properly from about the middle of the last century. The census records show that it amounted to little, if anything, before 1850. From 1850 to 1860 it was still small. From 1860 to 1870 it had reached considerable proportions, while in the two decades from 1870 to 1880 and from 1880 to 1890 probably three-quarters of the French-Canadian immigrants now in the country first crossed the border. Since 1890 the movement may be said to have stopped altogether, so few have been the immigrants. the causes of the movement are clear. The French-Canadian families, in the first place, are notoriously large, the children numbering very commonly 10 to 15 in one family in Canada. This in time brought about what was, under the given conditions, and overpopulation. And, further, in 1867 and the following years, the French-Canadians suffered an economic crisis which is supposed in part to have been due to the tariff competition entered into at the time between the United States and Canada. At all events, there suddenly became little market for their farm produce and evil times stared them in the face. High wages and altogether better opportunities were open to them in the States, particularly in the growing mills of New England, into which much of the larger number of the French Canadians have gone as operatives. Continue Reading →
Rev. Albert H Ball 1937
Was 94 Years Old — formerly Held Pastorate at Greenfied –
Was Graduate of Amherst College
Holyoke, Dec. 3 – Rev. Dr. Albert Ball, 94, died here today. He would have been 95 years old next March.
Since the death of his wife in 1926, Mr. Ball has made his home at Faculty House, Mount Holyoke College, with his daughter Prof. Margaret Ball. Besides his daughter, he leaves two sons, Prof. Allen Ball of the College of the City of New York, and Walter S. Ball, a retired member of the editorial staff of the Providence Journal. His wife was Helen Savage of Stowe, Vermont., a graduate of Mount Holyoke in the class of 1865.
Mr. Ball was born in Amherst, New Hampshire and grew up in Amherst in this state, where his father was twice pastor of the Baptist church. He was a graduate of Amherst College in the class of 1866, and of Colgate Theological School. He held pastorates over Baptist churches n Greenfield, Windsor, Vermont, New Haven and Springfield, Illinois, and later became a Congregationalist and was pastor of churches in Elgin, Ill., Anderson, Ind., and Passaic, N.J. Retiring because of deafness in 1906 he lived in Westfield for 20 Years and from there went to South Hadley.
The funeral will be conducted by the Rev. Dr. Henry D. Gray of South Hadley, at the Alger Funeral home, Holyoke, at 4 tomorrow afternoon. Cremations will take place on Sunday morning in Springfield cemetery. Friends are asked to omit flowers.
04 December 1937, Springfield Republican.
The Ball Family Papers may be available for research through Amherst College.
Miles Tombstone, Side 1
Walter T. Miles, 1866-1933
Annie A. (Aitken) Miles, 1871-1933
John A., Their son, 1893-1894
11 December 1933
Workman at Mill Dies From Injuries
Walter Thomson Miles, 67, of 127 Beech St., died yesterday morning in the Holyoke Hospital of injuries suffered when he was crushed by a 3500-lb. roll of paper in an elevator at the Whiting No. 2 Mill Friday afternoon. Continue Reading →
A Street in Château-Richer, Quebec
11 December 1904
[Note: this piece was published in 1904 and should be considered representative of the time. Initially a bit verbose, as the article continues there is some interesting information on the French Canadians in Holyoke and Springfield. Because of the length, the article has been split into six parts, this is Part I of VI.]
Race, Integrity and Language Preserved to a Remarkable Degree–Causes of the Immigration Movement — Customs and Literature.
There are today in New England upward of 525,000 French Canadians. Of these over 250,000 live in Massachusetts. in Fall River alone there were 38,000 before the strike, and there are 31,000 now. The large proportion of our total population in whose veins thus flows still almost unmixed and pure the blood of pleasant France, for race integrity is one of the strongest characteristics of the French Canadian, must surprise one who has not had special wisdom to inform himself. That fact is important. To explain why the numerical strength of this stock is not more generally realized would be of itself to draw much of the picture of the French Canadian, which it is the object of this article to reproduce. But outlined most briefly as an introduction the principal causes may be set down as: The high intelligence and therefore the ready adaptability to new conditions of the average French-Canadian, the failure until perhaps recently to make use of the possible political power which numbers and race cohesion have placed in his hands, and many characteristics both of body and mind that are markedly different from those of the real Frenchman of toady, particularly the Parisian, who is naturally set down as the French type. Continue Reading →
