Table of Contents

Biographical Note

Scope and Content Note

Information for Researchers

Administrative Information

Collection Inventory

Subject Headings

Inventory of the Llewellyn Howland III Papers

In the New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library

Biographical Note

Llewellyn Howland, son of William Dillwyn and Caroline Thomas (Child) Howland, was born in South Dartmouth (Massachusetts) in 1877. After receiving his education at Friends Academy, Milton Academy and Harvard University, he entered the building materials and oil businesses in Boston (Massachusetts), serving as president of New England Oil Company from 1920 to 1925 and remained active as a business executive until 1940 when he returned to South Dartmouth and began his second career as a writer. Howland's stories, sketches, and poems evoke his childhood in the South Dartmouth area and often reflect his interest in sailing. Howland married Hope Waldo in 1901 and had four children: Priscilla (1902), Hope (1906), Waldo (1908), and Llewellyn Jr. (1912). Following the death of his first wife in 1940, Howland later remarried Georgina (Paine) Fisher in 1948 and continued writing his nostalgic tales until his death in 1957.

Born in 1912, Llewellyn Howland Jr. graduated from Milton Academy and was a member of the class of 1935 at Harvard College. After working for the Merchant’s National Bank of Boston and as a Marblehead agent for the Benjamin Tower real estate office, Howland moved to South Dartmouth in 1942 where he became co-owner of Concordia Company, Inc., as well as operating W. & L. Howland Insurance Agency and Howland & Howland, a real estate partnership. For many years, Howland was the leading rental and sales agent for the Dartmouth summer communities of Salters and Mishaum Points in addition to Nonquitt and later specialized in the valuation and sale of large country properties. He was also very active in Dartmouth town affairs, serving as captain and clerk of Fire District No. 1, as a long-time town meeting member, and as a Trustee of New England Reservations where he worked to preserve open spaces in Dartmouth and along the East Branch of the Westport River. Llewellyn Jr. married Sarah Ives in 1934, and the couple had three children: Sarah (1935), Llewellyn III (1937), and Hope (1940). Llewellyn Jr. passed away in 2004, two years after his wife's death in 2002.

Born August 21, 1937, Llewellyn “Louie” Howland III graduated from Milton Academy in 1955 and then from Harvard College in 1959. Following his graduation from Harvard and his time serving in the United States Army Reserves, Louie worked for publisher Harcourt, Brace, and World and literary agent Sterling Lord. In 1965, he joined Little, Brown, and Company in Boston as a senior trade editor. In 1978, Louie established Howland and Company, an antiquarian dealership specializing in maritime books and literary first editions. He contributed innumerable forewords and articles to books and periodicals and was the author of The New Bedford Yacht Club: A History (2002) and No Ordinary Being: W. Starling Burgess (2014) among other works. Over the years, Louie supported and engaged with many maritime and historical organizations, including the New Bedford Whaling Museum where he served as a Trustee. Louie married Jessie W. “Jay” Howland in 1967 and had two children: Jessie (1969) and Cornelius (1972). Louie passed away on June 21, 2019.

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Scope and Content Note

Materials in this collection primarily reflect three generations of Howland family members consisting of correspondence, personal papers, and research notes related to the lives and careers of Llewellyn Howland Sr. (1877-1957), Llewellyn Howland Jr. (1912-2004), and Llewellyn “Louie” Howland III (1937-2019). Material for Llewellyn Howland Sr. dates from 1891 to 1961 and consists principally of his correspondence and his writings. His letters span the years 1891 to 1956 with the bulk of them from his wife, business associates, and other family members. Llewellyn’s writings consist of his original poetry and essays and date from 1897 to 1961. Although the majority of Llewellyn’s writings are dated, some are not. The remainder of Llewellyn’s papers consist of documentation for the years 1894 to 1898 related to his education at Milton Academy and Harvard. There is also a 1904 sailing journal, a 1912 Russian ruble, and several newspaper clippings from 1908 to 1957 documenting his life, his Padanaram residence, career accomplishments, and his second marriage to Georgina Fisher in 1948.

This collection also contains material related to Llewellyn’s wife, Hope Waldo Howland. Her papers span the years 1892 to 1997 and consist of correspondence, journals, and Waldo family genealogical material primarily in the form of newspaper clippings and advertisements for businesses owned by Waldo family members. Also represented is Llewellyn and Hope’s youngest daughter, Hope Howland, who passed away shortly after her thirteenth birthday in 1919. Hope’s papers span the years 1912 to 1919 and consist mostly of her schoolwork in the form of assignments, art projects, essays, and poems. Her papers also include a letter she wrote to her father in 1918, in addition to prayers and memorials written in 1919 shortly after her death in commemoration of her life.

Papers for Llewellyn Howland Jr. consist mainly of his correspondence spanning the years 1931 to 2001 dealing primarily with his South Dartmouth reality business and real estate ventures but also includes many letters documenting family affairs and Dartmouth events. Llewellyn Jr. amassed a great deal of correspondence from 1988 to 1993 concerning the Concordia Company South Wharf’s lease and documentation related to the Sarah I. Howland Trust. Llewellyn Jr. also compiled a notable set of letters concerning the Seahorse Pub of Padanaram (South Dartmouth) and neighborhood complaints due to excessive noise and rowdiness from 1989 to 1990. In addition to his correspondence, the collection also contains his travel diaries and notes from 1972 to 1975 documenting trips to the Erie Canal, London, and Madeira. Llewellyn Jr.’s collection also contains a great deal of legal documentation from 1960 to 1997 related to several trust funds in the form of agreements, financials, payment information, reports, leases, and deeds. Legal documents also include a 1989 Dartmouth Zoning Board complaint and a 1991 complaint versus the First Presbyterian Church concerning the descendants of George Howland. There is also a significant amount of bills and receipts from 1940 to 1942 related to the building of Llewellyn Jr.’s house at 53 High Street in South Dartmouth. Additional financial records also include his check register from 1966, bills and receipts related to Concordia Company, estate records, and floor plans for his Fisherville Lane house in Westport. Personal effects from Llewellyn Jr.’s earlier days include documentation from his attendance at Milton Academy from 1930 to 1934 and several World War II items including certificates, passes, and ration cards collected from 1944 to 1945.

Papers for Llewellyn Jr.’s wife, Sarah Ives Howland, span the years 1930 to 2002 and consist mainly of correspondence and genealogical documentation related to the Ives family, including invitations to Ives family weddings, a 1943 war ration books, and genealogical notes related to various members of the Ives family. One particular letter addressed to Sarah on 12 December 1996 includes transcriptions of letters written by Eleanor Harris Sanders from 1917-1919. Sarah also served as a member of the Garden Club of Buzzards Bay and collected several materials pertaining to the club including a poem written in 1976, a newsletter printed in 2000, and a scrapbook documenting the Club's affairs from 1930 to 2002.

The bulk of the collection, however, centers around material created, collected, and compiled by Llewellyn “Louie” Howland III from 1952 to 2019 over the course of his life and career as an author and publisher but also as a local historian and genealogist. Louie's correspondence dates from 1952 to 2019 and documents the various stages of his life, with the bulk consisting of letters to his mother and father documenting not only family affairs and local events, but Louie's life and career. Letters from 1960 to 1965 deal with his enrollment in the United States Army Reserves up until his honorable discharge in 1965. Louie's correspondence from 1980 to 1992 mostly concerns his involvement in the publication, distribution, and sale of the second edition printing in 1981 of Early History of Naushon Island and the 1984 publication of Naushon Data. There is also a set of letters from 1999 to 2002 dealing with the research and writing of Louie's 2002 book The New Bedford Yacht Club. Correspondence from 2000 to 2016 principally concerns the Old Dartmouth Historical Society / New Bedford Whaling Museum, as Louie served two separate stints on the Museum's Board of Trustees during this time. Museum business includes talks of moving and building a new research library, Museum publications, exhibitions, trustee meetings, and committee meetings.

Although Louie's correspondence constitutes a considerable portion of his collection, his papers also contain progress reports, report cards, transcripts, and school assignments related to his graduation from Dartmouth High School in 1951, his attendance at Milton Academy from 1951 to 1955, and his enrollment in Harvard from 1956 to 1960. Following his graduation from Harvard, Louie served in the United States Army Reserves from 1959 to 1965, compiling several basic training notebooks, enlistment papers, pay vouchers, a meal card, an identification badge, and discharge papers during this time. Following Louie's graduation from Harvard, he pursued a career in publishing, and his papers contain documentation in the form of proposals, contracts, financial statements, and order forms for several book publications Louie spearheaded, authored, or published. Titles with the greatest representation in this collection include the second printing of Early History of Naushon (Boston: Howland and Company, 1981), Naushon Data (Milton, Mass.: Privately printed, 1984), The New Bedford Yacht Club: A History (South Dartmouth, Mass: The Club, 2002), and On the Wind: The Marine Photographs of Norman Fortier (Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 2007). As Chair of the New Bedford Whaling Museum's Scholarship and Publication Committee, Louie oversaw the production of several Museum publications, including Ingenious Contrivances, Curiously Carved (Jaffrey, NH: David R. Godine, 2012), Arctic Regions (Boston: David B. Godine, 2013), The Dabneys (Lisbon: Luso-American Development Foundation, 2013), and A Genius at His Trade: C. Raymond Hunt and His Remarkable Boats (New Bedford, Mass.: Old Dartmouth Historical Society/New Bedford Whaling Museum, 2015).

An active genealogist, Louie compiled research notes, correspondence, bills, receipts, journals, newspaper clippings, obituaries, estate records, and research notes documenting several members of the Howland family and his lineage spanning the years 1758 to 2005. Louie's genealogical research followed several Howland family lines, including the England line and the Cayuga County (New York) line. Specific Howland family members represented in Louie's collection by means of manuscript material include Matthew Howland (1814-1884), Rachel Howland (1816-1902), and Matthew Morris Howland (1850-1927) with material also relating to George Howland Sr. (1781-1852), Susan Howland (1791-1872), George Howland Jr. (1824-1892), and Sylvia Ann Howland (1806-1865). Matthew Howland's correspondence spans 1841 to 1868 and consists primarily of letters written to him and his wife, Rachel Collins (Smith) Howland, from their children. This collection also contains love-themed poetry that Matthew collected during the years when his romantic relationship with Rachel was blossoming. Rachel Howland’s extensive letters date from 1832 to 1897 and are addressed to her from family and later her children, with one 1870 letter from the American Quaker poet John Greenleaf Whittier. Matthew Morris Howland’s correspondence dates from 1866 to 1906 and reflects his business affairs at the Providence Journal in addition to his strong interest in Howland family genealogy.

Louie's interests also focused on the Old Dartmouth region of New Bedford, Acushnet, Dartmouth, Fairhaven, and Westport, and his papers reflecting this research span the years 1721 to 2016. Items of note include accounts of the 1938 Hurricane that hammered New Bedford in addition to house histories, real estate, and property documentation of Dartmouth, New Bedford, and Westport for the years 1897 to 2012. New Bedford area business documentation contains research notes, checks, bills, receipts, and advertisements for several nineteenth and twentieth century businesses. The collection contains a sizeable number of bank checks from members of the Howland family, Captain James Cox, and several other New Bedford residents from New Bedford Safe Deposit National Bank, New Bedford Institution for Savings, New Bedford Marine Bank, New Bedford Merchants National Bank, New Bedford Commercial Bank, and the Fall River First National Bank. Louie also compiled a significant set of research notes related to several textile mills, including Gosnold Mills, Hoosac Mills, Howland Mills, Butler Mills, Rotch Spinning Mills. Additionally, Louie collected material documenting several New Bedford area families, including the Barney, Butler, Collins, Grinnell, Jenkins, Knowles, Lincoln, Parsons, Ricketson, Rotch, Smith, and Swift families, as well as the Green family of Round Hill (Dartmouth). In addition to family research, Louie also collected several broadsides, advertisements, and programs for various Old Dartmouth entertainment events held between the years 1836 and 1954. The collection also includes newspaper clippings and scrapbooks date from to and include the Rotogravure section of the Sunday Standard Times detailing yachting at Padanaram and a Park Supplement from the New Bedford Mercury in May 1902.

Louie's papers also contain a substantial amount of yachting and maritime history documentation. Yachting materials consist primarily of yacht and sailing boat designs and specifications spanning the years 1857 to 2015. These descriptions and write-ups originated from magazines such as The Rudder and Yachting and highlight the designs of several companies, including Beetle Boat Company, Casey Boat Building Company, Concordia Company, and Palmer Scott and Company. Additional yachting materials include documentation related to yacht races from 1857 to 2008. These items include an 1857 journal transcript kept onboard the yacht Scout, various articles and clippings printed from 1857 to 1933 concerning races and the Colonel E.H.R. Green Round Hill Trophy, and newspaper clippings mostly in the form of obituaries dated 1927 to 2008 detailing several notable sailors and yachtsmen. One racing article in 1894 highlights a collision that occurred in New Bedford harbor during a race, while there is also a promotional flyer for the New Bedford Yacht Club Regatta in 1857. Louie also collected historical documentation spanning the years 1897 to 2000 for several yacht clubs, including the Nantucket Yacht Club, Naval and Military Yacht Club, New Bedford Yacht Club, and Waikiki Yacht Club in the form of membership notes, treasurer's reports, and newspaper clippings. Additional items related to yachting include lecture notes from 1996 to 2002 on yachting in Buzzards Bay, yachting and sailing artwork from 1941 to 1990, and notes related to William H. Hand Jr. and L. Francis Herreshoff from 1896 to 2015.

In addition to Louie's interest in yachting, he also collected materials related to maritime history in general. These documents range from ships papers dated 1832 to 1870, whaling history notes and documentation from 1841 to 2010, steamship notes and documentation dated 1875 to 1985, and marine artwork from 1935 to 1949. Ships papers consist primarily of bills of sale for the nineteenth century vessels Ann (Sloop), Clara Bell (Bark), Cortes (Ship), Florida (Ship), George (Ship), Onward (Bark), St. George (Ship). Whaling history notes and documentation contain mostly voyage abstracts and vessel histories for the Canton (Bark), Corinthian (Ship), Cortes (Ship), Euphrates (Ship), George Howland (Ship), John R. Manta (Schooner), and the Rousseau (Bark). The bulk of materials focusing on marine artwork consists of reproductions of marine artwork by Benjamin T. Stephenson during the years 1935 to 1949.

Researchers should also note that Louie collected several imprints related to yachting, local history, maritime history, and the Howland family. These titles have been cataloged and shelved discretely and are searchable through the Library's online catalog along with all other holdings.

Arrangement of Collection

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Information for Researchers

Access to Collections

Unrestricted. Consult librarian for an appointment.

Preferred Citation

New Bedford Whaling Museum Research Library Mss 197, [sub-group, series, sub-series, folder/volume as appropriate], [item]

Copyright Notice

The copyright law of the United States (Title 17, United States Code) governs the making of photocopies or other reproductions of copyrighted materials. The Privacy Act of 1974 (5 United States Code 552a) governs the use of materials that document private individuals, groups, and corporations.

Under certain conditions specified in the law, libraries and archives are authorized to furnish a reproduction if the document does not infringe the privacy rights of an individual, group, or corporation. These specified conditions of authorized use include:

If the researcher later uses a copy or reproduction for purposes in excess of "fair use," the researcher is personally liable for copyright, privacy, or publicity infringement and agrees to indemnify the New Bedford Whaling Museum from any legal action as a result of the error. Permission to obtain a photographic, xerographic, digital, or other copy of a document does not indicate permission to publish, exhibit, perform, reproduce, sell, distribute, or prepare derivative works from the document without permission from the copyright holder and from any private individual, group, or corporation shown or otherwise recorded.

Permission to publish, exhibit, perform, reproduce, prepare derivative works from, sell, or otherwise distribute the item must be obtained separately in writing from the holder of the original copyright (or if the creator is dead, from his/her heirs) as well as from any individual(s), groups, or corporations whose name, image, recorded words, or private information (e.g. employment information) may be reproduced in the source material. The holder of the original copyright is not necessarily the New Bedford Whaling Museum. The New Bedford Whaling Museum is not legally liable for copyright, privacy, or publicity infringement when materials are wrongfully used after being provided to researchers for "fair use."

This institution reserves the right to refuse to accept a copying order if fulfillment of the order is judged in violation of copyright or federal or state privacy law. This institution also places restrictions on the use of cameras, photocopiers, and scanners in the research room.

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Administrative Information

Provenance

Materials in this collection were donated to the New Bedford Whaling Museum by Llewellyn Howland III from his widow Jessie "Jay" Howland on 1 March 2020 as part of Accession 2020.33.

Processing Information

Processed by: Mark Procknik, 2022

Encoded by: Mark Procknik, 22 April 2022

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Collection Inventory

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Subject Headings

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