Esther Howe Wheeler Anderson Slide Collection, [ca. 1941]-1975

Esther Howe Wheeler Anderson, 1945

Vault B5, Unit 24

EXTENT: 2,657 35 mm. color transparencies, plus lecture notes for seven slide lectures.

ORGANIZATION: Organized into three series: I. Slide lectures; II. Loose slides, by subject; and III. Slide lecture notes. Series I holds transparencies for six slide lectures: I.A. Thoreau Country; Walk to Wachusett; I.C. Autumnal Tints; I.D. Thoreau’s Gardens; I.E. Cape Cod; I.F. Ireland. Series II is organized into ten subseries: II.A. Farming and horses; II.B. Concord landscape (natural, built, and historical); II.C. Massachusetts places other than Concord; II.D. Places beyond Massachusetts; II.E. The rivers (Merrimack, Concord, Sudbury, and Assabet); II.F. Plants, flowers, shrubs, and trees; II.G. Animals and insects; II.H. Atmospheric effects and natural phenomena; II.I. House, yard, and gardens; and II.J. People (E.H.W.A., family, friends, and neighbors).

BIOGRAPHY: Born in 1891, Esther Howe Wheeler was the second of six daughters of successful market gardener Frank Wheeler and his wife Lucie Howe Brigham Wheeler, who lived at Nine Acre Corner in Concord, Massachusetts, in the house now numbered 148/154 Fitchburg Turnpike. Her siblings were: Hilda (born 1889); Priscilla (1894); Elizabeth (1899); Eirene (1901); and Frances (1904).

After her father’s death in 1919, she kept the Frank Wheeler Farm in operation, relying on foreman Michael (Mike) Burke and Irish and Nova Scotian farm help for muscle and on her uncle William Wheeler for financial oversight. At the end of her life, she looked back with some amazement at the responsibilities she had assumed as a young woman, when she maintained eight greenhouses, purchased tons of soft coal to fuel the farm boilers, and trucked produce to market.

In 1920, Esther Wheeler married Leslie O. Anderson, who worked for and ultimately took over what had been Towle and Kent’s grocery store on Concord’s Mill Dam. The couple had become acquainted through Leslie’s visits to Nine Acre Corner to pick up produce and make deliveries. The Andersons had three children and, eventually, sixteen grandchildren. Their daughter Pauline Anderson (1921-2002) married Stanley Ellis Wilson, with whom she had five children—Stanley Ellis, Jr., L. Scott, Lucie, Maurine, and Barbara. William Wheeler Anderson (1924-1992) married Mary Richardson and had four children—Kenneth D., William W., Jr., Kristin, and Elizabeth, (Libby). David Anderson (1927-2007) married Charlotte M. Lehto and had seven children—Janice, Bonnie, Beverly, Jennifer, Donna, Lori, and David.

Esther and Leslie Anderson and their family lived in the Frank Wheeler farmhouse at Nine Acre Corner. The alliance of the Frank Wheeler Farm on the outskirts of Concord and Anderson’s Market in the village center worked to the advantage of both enterprises, providing the farm with a dependable outlet for its produce and the store with a ready supply of fresh, local vegetables, fruits, and herbs. (Esther Anderson was especially interested in growing herbs and collected publications on the subject.)

Although Nine Acre Corner is removed from the center of Concord, Esther Howe Wheeler Anderson formed part of the social fabric of the town. She was a member of the First Parish in Concord, the Concord Art Association, and the Concord Antiquarian Society. Beyond Concord, she belonged to the Massachusetts Market Gardeners’ Association, the Middlesex Canal Association, and the Massachusetts Herb Society. An avid admirer of Concord author Henry David Thoreau, she was a founding member of the Thoreau Society (established 1941). Leslie Anderson, too, was an active community member. He belonged to the Rotary, the Elks, the American Legion, the Concord Chamber of Commerce, and the Massachusetts Retail Grocers’ Association. Accomplished equestrians, Esther and Leslie Anderson were both members of the Concord Boot and Saddle Club for a time.

Mrs. Anderson was a gifted photographer with a particular fondness for landscape work, in Concord and beyond, and a familiarity with the work of earlier Thoreauvian photographer Herbert Wendell Gleason. She built an extensive body of interpretive landscape photographs (thirty-five millimeter color slides) and grouped images into coherent slide lectures, most of which were inspired by Thoreau’s writings. From the 1940s, she presented her slide lectures to friends at her home, to the annual gathering of the Thoreau Society in Concord, and in other New England venues. Esther Anderson passed her interest in photography on to her son William, who founded Anderson Photo in Concord Center.

Leslie Anderson died in 1957. In July of 1961, Esther Anderson wrote in her farm journal, “Home place put on sale.” (Her son David purchased it.) Mrs. Anderson moved from the Wheeler homestead into a house (“Glenside”) at 262 Garfield Road in Concord. She died in 1985, at the age of ninety-three.

SCOPE AND CONTENT: 2,657 35 millimeter color transparencies (almost all images by Esther Howe Wheeler Anderson, but including a few commercially produced slides and a few images by William Wheeler Anderson, Sr.) and typed lecture notes with manuscript additions for seven slide lectures compiled by Mrs. Anderson.

The images in this collection were all taken between about 1941 and 1975. Mrs. Anderson captioned most of them in pencil or ink (some captions revised after the initial identification was made). For slides in the collection processed without a date stamp on the cardboard mounts, it is possible to establish a date range through the graphics printed on the mount (see the Kodachrome slide mount chart at http://trainutz.com/rcMOUNT.shtml). A large proportion of slides in the collection were date-stamped when processed. In addition, Mrs. Anderson included dates in a small number of the manuscript captions she wrote on her slides. However, as noted in captions for some individual slides, these are not always accurate.

Series I of the collection contains 824 slides, for the lectures “Thoreau Country,” “Walk to Wachusett,” “Autumnal Tints,” “Thoreau’s Gardens,” “Cape Cod,” and—the only lecture unrelated to Henry David Thoreau—“Ireland.” Her typed lecture notes for these slide lectures are housed in Series III, along with transcribed versions by her grandson, William Wheeler Anderson, Jr. (Series III also includes Esther Anderson’s lecture notes for a slide lecture on herbs, which was donated to the New England Herb Society by her daughter-in-law Mary Anderson prior to the acquisition of this collection by the Concord Free Public Library.)

The 1,833 slides in Series II are organized loosely by subject, with significant overlap between subseries (for example, there are slides of many plant specimens among the “House, Yard, and Gardens” slides even though there is a separate slide grouping for plants, and many “people pictures” scattered throughout the collection even though there is a separate “People” grouping). The broad subject groupings in Series II are: farming and horses; the Concord landscape—natural, built, and historical (including historical sites, markers, and patriotic and historical commemorations); other places in Massachusetts (including many images of Mount Watatic and Mount Wachusett); places beyond Massachusetts (Florida, Maine, New Hampshire, Vermont, Virginia, and Washington, D.C.); rivers (Merrimack, Concord, Sudbury, and Assabet); plants, flowers, shrubs, and trees; animals (wild and domestic) and insects; atmospheric effects and natural phenomena (including clouds, sunsets, and rainbows); Mrs. Anderson’s house, yard, and gardens (at both 148/154 Fitchburg Turnpike and 262 Garfield Road); and people (Esther Anderson and her family, friends, and neighbors).

PROVENANCE: After Esther Anderson’s death, her slides were held by her grandson, William Wheeler Anderson, Jr., until purchased by the Concord Free Public Library.

SOURCE OF ACQUISITION: Collection and rights relating to it purchased from William Wheeler Anderson, Jr., March 2006 (collection received February 2006).

RELATED HOLDINGS: Esther Howe Wheeler Anderson Collection of Herb Publications (William Munroe Special Collections, Concord Free Public Library, Vault A45, Anderson, Unit 1); Wheeler and Related Family Papers (CFPL, Vault A45, Wheeler, Unit 5).

NOTES/COMMENTS: Accessioned March 29, 2006 (AMC 139).

The comprehensive organization, arrangement, and numbering system for all slides in the collection—designed to allow the assignment of a unique number to each slide—was devised at the time of processing. In processing the slide lectures, which arrived at the CFPL in slide carousels in numbered sequence, Mrs. Anderson’s sequencing has been taken into account. In processing her loose slides, no attempt has been made to maintain the order (or disorder) in which they arrived. The date of images (documented or inferred) does not play a role in the arrangement of slides.

Esther Anderson’s slide lectures as here described represent the final iteration of what were, for her, evolving presentations. There is strong evidence on her slides and in her lecture notes that she added and subtracted items to and from her slide lectures over time and sometimes substituted later (superior) images for some shown as part of an original lecture. Since she presented some of these lectures over a period of decades, she had ample opportunity to rework them. For this reason, some numbered slides corresponding to entries on her lecture note cards are no longer found among the slides in the lectures. (These are identified in the slide listing by the phrase “No slide no. [--].”) Slides earlier removed from previous versions of slide lectures are distributed among the loose slides of Series II. Four sets of lecture slides include some slides labeled “Extras”—images that were included in the carousel(s) containing the slides for a particular lecture on their arrival at the CFPL but that did not match up with entries in the lecture notes.

A few slides may have migrated into or out of the lectures following Mrs. Anderson’s death, when her grandson William Wheeler Anderson, Jr., stewarded and used them.

Most captions in the slide listing are Esther Anderson’s. In cases where slides lack captions or in which the captions require some expansion for clarity, interpolations by the processing archivist have been added in square brackets ([ ]). Mrs. Anderson’s occasionally idiosyncratic spellings have, for the most part, been preserved, with corrected spelling in square brackets. A few simple misspellings have been corrected without the use of brackets. Punctuation has been added where it clarifies the sense of a caption, again without use of square brackets.

PROCESSED BY: LPW; finding aid completed January 14, 2014.