Yearbooks and Prominent Figures in North Adams

Yearbooks and Prominent Figures in North Adams

North Adams Families

Multiple Items. Four Yearbooks that she considers her yearbook project. The yearbooks mean more to her then just a book. The yearbooks begin with the Mark Hopkins School yearbook in her 5th/6th grade. The Hugh Peyton family photos and yearbooks are very clear as well. Williams College and Drury High School Yearbooks were also brought in. The sast yearbook was the Navy yearbook, which Mr Flaherty sent back to Mr Peyton for helping him get into the Navy.

2018-11-3

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Rosemari Demers

Justyna Carlson

North Adams Public Library

Interviewer: Tell us about the object that you brought and what makes it special to you.
Justyna Carlson: Ok I brought four yearbooks, kind of what I call my yearbook project. I was
here Wednesday night for the gentle from Brattle Street Books, who did a fantastic job [pause]
mentioned that the story behind the books is so much more important than the books themselves.
[pause] And I hadn’t quite decided what I was going to bring because I got tons of stuff at home
[laugh] but I decided that my yearbook project would be what I would bring [pause] and the year
between my [pause] fifth and sixth grade at Mark Hopkins. [pause] One of our neighbors passed
away and they were having a tag sale and they asked my mother, my father, and I if we would
work [pause] help out in the house and they assigned me to the books [laugh] and tell me to try
to sell some but I could have anything I wanted to take home. So I ended up taking home a
number of things, the gentleman who was involved was U.P. Drysdale who was a lawyer in
North Adams [clears throat] this was a silhouette back on any trip, this was Washington D.C. but
if you went to the boardwalk in Atlantic city instead of a picture taken, you would have your
silhouette done. He lived at 48 Cherry Street I grew up at 36 and now we live at 32. He actually
came from Alves Scotland, that’s his home and his name was Hugh Peyton Drysdale and Peyten
was a family name, some of the things were signed by Patens who wrote to him. He prepared, as
they said then, at Drury academy and this is the first yearbook which is 1897 from Williams
College and I marked his page [pause] with his description, Hugh Peyten Drysdale, born in
Alves Scotland, December 12th, 1875, prepared for Williams at Drury, in North Adams. Since
entering college, he’s been interested in baseball and tells his whole life story. I also mentioned to them that, there is a Roy Miner, who is also from North Adams, born here, prepared for college
at Drury Academy. He was going to the general theological seminary in New York, his father
had been a super indent of schools here and [pause] Miner Street and there was a Miner Street school was named for him. But Mr. Drysdale his father worked on, had an office on main street.
And the other thing that’s really interesting in the year book from Williams is all the ads and
businesses in North Adams. And there are many that I’m not in business anymore, but they really
had some creative ads and [pause] you will see that the majority of them were North Adams businesses rather than Williamstown or elsewhere.
So, he went on to law school and so I took his first yearbook and I got very much interested in that.
He was very successful. When he first went, he was studying [pause] and this letter that I had brought in was mailed from Naples, a relative who was there. It [pause] they weren’t sure he would get it, this was only two years after he got out of school, so he wasn’t a prominent lawyer yet, and so they addressed it to Hugh Payton Drysdale in care of Honorable George P. Lawrence who was the representative from North Adams. They were sure that he’d get it and then he could pass it on and it’s interesting that it was airmailed back then because this was 1899. It was via Cherbourg which was a port. And some ship coming out of France brought it over from Naples. And once he became prominent, he did happen to live across the street from the Lawrences’. This invitation I brought was, again, Mr. H. P. Drysdale and Mrs. Drysdale care of the Honorable G. P. Lawrence and it came from the White House and it was an invitation from President Teddy Roosevelt the earlier. (Reading the invitation) “President and Mrs. Roosevelt request the pleasure of the company of Mr. and Mrs. Drysdale at a reception to be held at the White House Thursday evening, February the 16th, 1905, from nine to half after ten o’clock.” The way things were expressed then. So, he became very prominent. So, I had his yearbook and then farther down the line he and representative Lawrence got a local “boy” into Annapolis, into the Naval Academy. So, this is his yearbook from the Naval Academy which he sent back to Mr. Drysdale to say thank you for helping me get into the Naval Academy. And so, I have this one marked and this is the page for Michael Flaherty who signed it to give it to Mr. Drysdale and it says “North Adams, Massachusetts.” And he went on to become a Rear Admiral. He didn’t just stay in the Navy (I moved some of this stuff around) [looking for something] [reading articles] “Flaherty takes command of the U.S.S. North Hampton at Norfolk, Virginia.” This is when he was an Admiral. And so, there’s quite a few, this one says, [reading the paper] “Rear Admiral Flaherty promoted by the Navy to a cruiser command.” So, there’s a number of these that, and I think they made copies of a lot of these while I was eating lunch. So, he had passed on, he had this to give to Mr. Drysdale. So, I really got interested in yearbooks because of this. And so, when I got to Drury High School, we had...the [1962] Nathanite was the yearbook then. (um) What they did at the time, a lot of schools would put all seniors on the yearbook staff. And nobody knew what they were doing because it was only for one year. Drury was very smart, and they had five juniors on the yearbook staff, so you got…of course we had to do all the legwork and go out and get all the ads. But you learned a lot about the yearbook and then senior year you had twenty other people with you plus the five of us who had been on. And so, I did stick to it then and was editor of the yearbook. And (opens book) what I had, I just kind of had just picked the Nathanite staff so you could see who was on the yearbook. We did work very, very hard. And I did have some of the other, my other, neighbors from Cherry Street who came in. What we did for the sections was silhouettes. I wonder where I got that idea, after the (laughter) silhouettes that came around at the beginning. So we had all silhouettes, like the president and vice president of our class and the principal and guidance director when we did administration. And the ones down here, no this one, these two (points to lower left corner of right-hand page) turned out to be Kathryn Gallup and George Higgins. He was president of the Berkshire Bank at the time and she was a real estate agent. She had lived at 36 Cherry, where we lived, and he was across the street at 17 Cherry. So, I asked them if they would head up the section on advertising. Which was…again, its interesting to look at ads because so many times those store are not here anymore but you do get…there’s Sprague Electric, and all the banks of North Adams. And we had interspersed pictures, Ted Kennedy came to speak when we were in high school. And we had interspersed pictures of our years along with the ads. And so we put the business people in front of the ads section. And Again, (turns to page and points) this is the silhouette. [Um} and I can remember Irving Toupencee was head of the, he was in the business department. He was head of the, advisor to the yearbook and we were lining up the photography, and he said, “Who’s coming this afternoon?” And I said, “Umm, George Higgins and Catherine Gallup”. He said, “They are coming to Drury to get their pictures taken?” (laughter) Because they were pretty prominent in town. I said, “Yeah, they’re my neighbors. They’re coming to have their picture taken for the Drury yearbook”. So I’ve always loved yearbooks and we worked very hard on this. But what we said was, “We’ll do everything else in college, but not touch the yearbook”. We put so many hours in, and the five of us who had been on the staff for the two years, we all went to college and we all were active in everything else…but we never touched the yearbook (laughter) after that. But I did bring my college yearbook. Because of the (picks up large yearbook) [inaudible] this is another tiny one. I just marked my page. Because if the fact that is says “North Adams Massachusetts” and I had picked a poem about Greylock… as my saying for the yearbook. Which was, “My heart is in the mountains still, where ever my steps may be, Greylock, Oh maiden of the hills, my heart is there with thee.” I was going to school in New Jersey where it was flat and there were no hills in sight at all. We were at the court and we were called Courtiers, and so that was the story of yearbooks. And that’s why I picked yearbooks.

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