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The Lillian Savery Collection

I was fortunate to be given access to a large collection of Middlefield pictures and documents by Rod Savery. The collection belonged to Rod’s aunt Lillian Lucy Savery and was rescued by Neil Nickerson and given to his brother Rod after Lillian’s death on 29 September 1987. It is clear that Lillian was very interested in the history of Middlefield and took the time to document her family, friends and town. She was a true historian.

As a side note, Neil gave me several very early Ferris photographs from his grandmother Clara Ferris and greatly assisted with my early family genealogical studies. I greatly miss his photographic mind and keen interest in everything Middlefield.

Lillian was born 30 April 1897 to Justin Savery and Jennie Perry at Middlefield. She lived on West Hill with her mother Jennie, brothers Ed and John and sister Elizabeth. Later in life she married Amasa Graves on 5 August 1967 at Middlefield. They settled in Bancroft where I remember Amasa walking his pet oxen down Town Hill Road.

Lillian’s brother John married Ethel Graves, grand-daughter of Henry Ferris and 1^st cousin of my grandfather, John Ferris. The John Savery line is thus connected to my Ferris clan.

The first thing I digitized was Lillian’s every-day diary for 1919 containing 112 pages. Rod has indicated that several more yearly daily diaries are in the hands of family members. I hope I get the opportunity to digitize them as I believe these are the only surviving first-hand details of Middlefield daily farm life in the early 20^th century.

There is a 22-page household cash journal for 1939 that details how the family functioned at the end of the depression. There are two books containing vital records and general happenings around Middlefield. The first I call a Scrap Book (1903-25) and is 38 pages. The second is a spiral bound note book she named “General Information” and is 36 pages in length. It covers 1910 to 1970.

Lillian notes in the Scrap Book that John Ferris (my grandfather) bought the Frank Green place on April 9^th (1921) and moved in on October 5^th. This was the house at 95 Town Hill Road that was recently owned by Jack Cobb. Lillian’s family was close to the extended Ferris clan who were the only other ones on West Hill from 1880 to 1910. Nowhere else would I ever find a detail like this.

I have scanned about 170 identified family and Middlefield photographs – mostly mounted in albums and of people. I did not try to digitize the many pictures of farm animals and other subjects that are not identifiable or are duplicates. There are two one-pound candy boxes full of unidentified snap shots. I scanned 125 photos of people into multi-photograph panels. They can easily be stripped out to single images with any photo-editing program if identification is made.

Lillian was very interested in Middlefield houses. In 1970 she took snap shots of about 125 houses. I will present these 50-year-old photos as a separate collection that is of great interest to the town. I was particularly interested in the Bancroft photos as they included some of the mill houses on the Becket side. I am preparing a study of Bancroft so these are really irreplaceable.

There were two large photos - one of the Becket side Bancroft paper mill before 1900 with all the workers gathered outside. Jennie and Elizabeth Savery are pictured. The second was of a Houle family wedding I identified as being in Bancroft. I will write a separate article on this.

I found 8 small photo albums that I knew were not Lillian’s work. I suspected they were by Philip Mack Smith, co-author of the 1924 Middlefield History. They contained early shots from the History and family groups who I suspect are Smiths. Nothing was labeled but I did find a note tucked into one of the albums stating “With best wishes for a Merry Christmas and a Happy New Year – Philip Mack Smith”.

One of the bought albums was labeled 1919 which was just before the History was completed. I don’t know the connection between Smith and Lillian that would have him send her eight albums, but this is a large and fascinating study of his photographic work. I suspect he was responsible for all the photographs in the History.

I have another 5-page Smith album which includes my grandfather from 1912. It is a prized family heirloom. I will treat these nine albums as a separate topic. There is a total of 143 pictures in this new Smith collection. As face recognition software improves, we will be able to identify many of the Middlefield people in Smith’s photographic studies.

In total, I have digitized over 550 photographs and over 200 pages of Lillian’s hand written notes and records. I will put the picture inventory on spread sheets for hard printing or web publishing. I will make the scans available on DVD (archival M-Disc) and on the web at middlefieldma.org for the widest dissemination.

This collection will almost double the Middlefield Museum’s local historic photographic holdings.

Howard Knickerbocker
Middlefield – Oct 2019