Martha's Vineyard Museum

Table of Contents

Summary Information

Biography/Historical Note

Scope and Content Note

Administrative Information

Related Materials

Controlled Access Headings

Collection Inventory

Descriptive Summary

Repository	Martha's Vineyard Museum Gale Huntington Research Library 59 School Street P.O. Box 1310 Edgartown, MA 02539 (508) 627-4441
Call Number	RU471
Creator	Borrowdale Bookshop
Title	Borrowdale Bookshop account books
Date [inclusive]	1949-1965
Extent	1 box (0.711 cubic feet)
Language	The materials are in English.
Abstract	The Borrowdale Bookshop account books contain the accounts of a bookstore in Edgartown, Massachusetts, ranging from 1949 to 1965. Borrowdale Bookshop was owned and operated by Gerald Chittenden and his family. This collection also contains advertising pamphlets disseminated by Borrowdale Bookshop.

Administrative Information

Access Restrictions

There are no restrictions to access.

Use and Reproduction Restrictions

Requests to reproduce material from this collection should be directed to museum staff. Reproduction fees may apply.

Acquisition Information

These materials were donated in 2002 by William Stewart, a cousin of Julie Chittenden, accession number 2002.075. In addition to the materials in this donation, William Stewart donated the sign from Borrowdale Bookshop in 2001 (Accession number 2001.007) and an oral history interview he recorded of his cousin Julie Chittenden in 2000 (Accession number 2013.030).

Publication Information

Martha's Vineyard Museum

Gale Huntington Research Library
59 School Street
P.O. Box 1310
Edgartown, MA 02539
(508) 627-4441

Processing Information

Finding aid prepared and machine-encoded by Nathaniel Janick, June 2014.

 Creation of this finding aid was sponsored by the Council on Library and Information Resources (CLIR) funded by the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation.

Related Materials

Related Materials

The museum holds two oral histories related to the history of Borrowdale Bookstore:

• Oral history interview with Julie Chittenden, 2000 March 29

  Note

  Accession number: 2013.030.001; this interview was conducted by William Stewart

• Oral history interview with William Stewart, 2014 February 3

  Note

  Accession number: 2014.002.005; this interview was conducted by Linsey Lee

Separated Material

Part of Stewart's donation, a scrapbook containing New Bedford Standard-Times clippings from 1949 of its Edgartown column, was removed from the collection and placed with the Martha's Vineyard Museum scrapbook collection.

Biography/Historical Note

Gerald Chittenden, 1882-1962, was an English professor at St. Paul's School in Concord, New Hampshire. He and his wife Margaret, 1891-1963, were summer residents of Martha's Vineyard since the 1920s and moved to Edgartown year-round after Mr. Chittenden retired from his job in 1948. When he retired, they refurbished a shed behind their Edgartown property on Oliver Street, and turned it into a bookstore.

After the deaths of Mr. and Mrs. Chittenden, the business was taken over by their daughter Julie Chittenden, 1924-2000, who ran the store until it closed in the mid-1970s.

Gerald Chittenden was also president of the Dukes County Historical Society (predecessor to the Martha's Vineyard Museum) from the late 1940s until the early 1950s.

Scope and Content Note

The Borrowdale Bookshop account books contain records of the shop's sales. The store was open from 1948 until 1973, and the collection is incomplete. Also included in the collection are print materials used to advertise the Borrowdale Bookshop.

Arrangement

The materials are arranged by form and therein chronologically.