By Pam Murray, Processing Archivist, Concord Free Public Library's Special Collections. Questions about the collection may be addressed to Leslie Wilson, Curator.

While Gleason is primarily known as a photographer of Concord and in particular of Thoreau's haunts (some of which were used to illustrate the 1906 Walden and Manuscript Editions of Thoreau's writings), his work goes far beyond this. Over a period of forty years, Herbert Wendell Gleason took thousands of pictures covering a remarkable range of subjects: from the world's first offshore oil wells drilled on the beach at Summerland, CA to the formal garden estates of New England and far beyond. Gleason lugged his cumbersome equipment across the United States and Canada: a huge view camera, a tripod, and thousands of glass plate negatives. His earliest surviving photographs were taken in 1899 while he was living in Minnesota. Among his first subjects were Victorian interiors and logging operations.

An important milestone in Gleason's career was his work for the National Park Service photographing the nation's early national parks and wilderness areas under consideration for national park status by Congress. Although Gleason enjoyed success in his own lifetime, his achievements with a camera were largely forgotten following his death in 1937.

Today, barely over a century after Herbert Wendell Gleason produced his first pictures, his extensive collection of photographic negatives is being afforded the care and attention it deserves thanks to this project. As its first phase is nearing completion, the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) in Andover, MA is microfilming the negatives to ensure preservation of the collection. After the microfilming process is complete, the Gleason negatives will have a permanent home in the library's temperature controlled vault.

What Exactly Does a Processing Archivist Do?
The bulk of my work as the processing archivist was the physical handling of the collection -- it took nearly ten months to remove the 5,000+ negatives from their acidic envelopes and to transfer them to archival enclosures. It was also dirty work. When the Gleason negatives arrived at the library, they were stored in old wooden boxes and musty cardboard containers. Some of the film negatives were deteriorated to the point where it was doubtful as to whether the images would reproduce on microfilm. Before processing of the collection could continue, a sampling of ten film negatives showing different stages of deterioration, was brought to NEDCC for evaluation and a test run. The test microfilm turned out better than we had expected. As a result, most of the negatives in question were kept for microfilming. Badly deteriorated negatives were brought to NEDCC and destroyed.

Although Gleason carefully labeled and dated the original enclosures for his images, it was not always easy to transcribe the information as one might think. For example, Gleason sometimes identified a town in Massachusetts only by its traditional section or village name. Before I could arrange the negatives for the Massachusetts series by the current name of the municipality, I had to determine whether a place name was a town, section or village. For help, I consulted the Historical Data Relating to Counties, Cities, and Towns in Massachusetts (prepared by the Secretary of the Commonwealth, 1997). The book gives summaries for each town including the section or village names. All current names of municipalities along with section and village names are listed alphabetically in an index at the back of the book. I could look up Cochituate, Mass. in the index and learn it was not the name of a town but a section of Wayland.

From Smiley, California to the Arnold Arboretum
A good part of my project work over the past few weeks has centered on obtaining background information for writing the finding aid to the collection. For instance, as I was processing the series of negatives of California, I was curious about Gleason's large number of images (over 120) of Redlands, CA, particularly Smiley Heights (photo above - click image for larger view). I emailed the archivist at the Smiley Public Library for information. During the time of Gleason's visits (1907-1911), Redlands, CA was an important winter resort for wealthy Easterners, a Palm Springs of its day. Smiley Heights was the popular name for Canon Crest Park, winter residence and 200-acre botanical garden built by identical twin brothers, Alfred H. and Albert K. Smiley, Quaker entrepreneurs from the East. The park was a horticultural marvel of over 1,200 species of plants with landscaped paths, drives, and pools. The Smileys opened their private estate to visitors for free. Daniel Smiley (photo at right - click image for larger view), the younger brother of the twins, took over running the estate after the death of his brothers. The Smileys built the famous Lake Mohonk resort in New York where Gleason took photographs in 1911.

My research also took me to the Arnold Arboretum in Boston (there are over 300 images from the Arboretum in the Gleason collection). Gleason had used the stamp "Official Photographer Arnold Arboretum" in his correspondence. The horticultural archivist at the Arboretum informed me that Gleason was not the "exclusive" photographer, but one of several photographers who worked for the institution. Gleason's work at the Arboretum brought him into contact with the owners of private gardens and estates of which he took hundreds of photographs.

Once the project is completed, the full finding aid and 200-300 scanned images from the collection will be made available on the library's website.

Photos:
Top - 'Our Climb on the Ice' - HW Gleason at Great Glacier, British Columbia, Canada September 1906 (?)
Middle - Across Canyon from Petunia Drive (2 summer houses) Smiley Heights, Redlands, Cal. May 3, 1911
Bottom - Mr. [Daniel] Smiley under palm by driveway in front of house. Smiley Heights Redlands, Cal. May 2, 1911.
All photos courtesy of the Special Collections of the Concord Free Public Library.