By WILLIAM HOLDER
Waltham Times Contributing Writer
If there is one thing Dana Hamlin can’t stand as Waltham Public Library’s archivist, it’s an unsolved mystery in the archives.
Hamlin is hoping that a WCVB Channel 5 video posted on the library’s website will produce a lead to help her unravel the story behind a photograph in the “Waltham Rediscovered in Portraits” collection. The portrait collection grew out of the book, “Waltham Rediscovered,” published to commemorate the city’s 250th anniversary. It was the culmination of a massive, four-year project to document the city’s immigrant history through hundreds of interviews and donated historical photographs.
Out of 12 photographs displayed in the library’s Waltham Room from 1996 to 2021 (since moved to the microfilm room), this photo is the only one whose subjects remain unidentified.
“It kills me that I don’t know who they are,” Hamlin said.
The photo was taken most likely between the 1860s and 1930s. The seven individuals in the photograph — four children and three adults who may have belonged to the same family — look straight at the camera as if to secure their place in history. The mustachioed man is wearing what appears to be a military uniform, but no one has been able to provide conclusive identification of the country his uniform represented, though some viewers have suggested Italy as a possibility.
When she looks at the photograph, Hamlin said she wonders whether they might have fled the Armenian genocide, which started in 1915, or conscription by the Russian army, or whether they came for more peaceful reasons such as following family, as did many in the waves of immigrants who settled in Waltham and provided labor for its industrial development.
Given the powerful tools now available to archivists, Hamlin hopes that one solid lead will give her an opening into their story.
Telling such local history stories is what drew Hamlin to archival work, following a path that began with a college semester abroad at Oxford University’s Bodleian Library in England. Before coming to Waltham, she worked for 12 years at MIT libraries, mostly in the archival Distinctive Collections.
“I’ve always been a history nerd,” she said.
A treasure trove of Waltham history
She noted that the Waltham Public Library has some real “gems.”
They include a leather-bound book containing handwritten stories of Civil War veterans from Waltham. The stories recount battles, injuries, personal histories and powerful moments of service dictated by the soldiers. Earlier this year Hamlin secured a Veterans’ Heritage Grant from the Massachusetts Secretary of State’s Office, which enabled the library to conserve and digitize this unusual resource.
The gems also include the Ryan family papers. Albert Ryan was a prominent Waltham citizen active around the turn of the 20th century who used his skills as a historian and artist to paint small pictures of what Waltham had looked like in earlier times.
“There is so much history in this city,” Hamlin said. People who are relatively new to the city may not know, for example, that the Massachusetts city of Lowell is named for Francis Cabot Lowell, who established the first integrated textile mill in America in Waltham, next to the Charles River.
Hamlin also noted that one of Waltham’s most famous sons, Nathaniel P. Banks, got his start working as a “bobbin boy” at the Boston Manufacturing Co., the mill established by Lowell. Banks became governor of Massachusetts, a general in the Union Army during the Civil War, and Speaker of the U.S House of Representatives. The area where Main Street divides into Route 20 and Route 117 is named Banks Square after him, and there is a statue of him on the common. As the library’s archivist, Hamlin not only preserves such stories but is committed to sharing them. She invites anyone with questions about Waltham history to send their inquiries to her at dhamlin@minilib.net.