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Date: 9/8/2022
AGAWAM — The Agawam Historical Association purchased a filing cabinet this summer with money received from a grant from the Agawam Cultural Council. It is made from black powder coated steel with brushed aluminum handles, approximately 4 cubic feet in size. It cost $2,500 and is by a significant margin the newest object on the top floor of the Agawam Historical and Fire House Museum at 35 Elm St., where a group of dedicated local historians have been hard at work meticulously sorting, cataloging and preserving a trove of historical documents and artifacts.
David Cecchi, Sue Scantlen, Katy Krause and Anne Liptak have been meeting every Monday morning this summer sorting through boxes of never-before cataloged ephemera, mostly donated, some as old as the 1700s.
To a certain extent, their job is to separate the wheat from the chaff. On a table in the middle of the room where Cecchi sits, poring over ancient tax records, are two sets of stone arrowheads. One collection in a Ziploc bag is believed to be authentic, possibly centuries old; the other is clearly the work of vintage hucksters, a gift-shop novelty of too-perfect slate arrowheads mounted and shrink-wrapped over a cardboard insert that looks maybe 30 or 40 years old.
“One of the things we’re trying to do is sort,” said Cecchi. “Sometimes what people think is . . .” he said, trailing off.
Although Agawam (a word meaning “low land,” according to Cecchi) originates from the language of indigenous peoples, the land the town is on was not the territory of the Agawam people, a tribe who lived in what is now Essex County on Massachusetts’ North Shore.
Much of the items to be gone through are of early European-American origin. One artifact is a $5 banknote from 1865, issued by the Bank of Agawam, in Springfield. Christopher Columbus is depicted on the backside of the note.
The town’s 1758 tax records are another artifact in the collection. Inscrutable to those unfamiliar with the flowing script of the era, a more recent notecard kept along the document clarifies what it is, “First tax list / 112 names / Slaves listed as property / treasurer’s copy,” the card reads.
Cecchi says there is currently no plans to digitize the archive: “We need to be fairly more organized before we can start digitizing.”
The museum traditionally opens to the public on a handful of days each year, though none are listed on its website for the remainder of 2022. Instead, the site refers the association’s work “undergoing a complete re-inventory and reorganization” and preparing for a new exhibit.
The Historical Association, a nonprofit group, is actively seeking new members to join its ranks, and plans to have a meeting sometime in October, although the exact date is yet to be determined. For more information, visit agawamhistoricalassoc.webs.com.