Recently the Archives acquired a photo album kept by Jean M. Bigelow, who attended Northampton School for Girls in 1925-26. Since Northampton School had just opened a year earlier, in 1924, the contents of the album represent some of the earliest images we have.
We don’t know much about Jean Bigelow — in fact, her identification in the photograph above is based on an ambiguous caption on another copy of this photo given us by Elva Minuse, class of 1927 (that’s Elva in the second row, second from right), and comparison with uncaptioned family photos elsewhere in Jean’s album. Beyond her academic transcript, she left no paper trail in our alumnae records. According to Social Security records, she was born in 1907 and died, aged 78, in 1986. She attended Vassar College, class of 1930, and lived in Worcester, Mass.
And that’s about all we know. But the photos capture Northampton School for Girls at its very beginning, so this is a significant addition to the Archives.
