Edward Bellamy Memorial Association

05/15/2026

Join out friends at the Chicopee Historical Society next week for a look at a piece of Chicopee's industrial history!

INSTALLATION OF THE INSHAW RIFLE!



Our long-anticipated installation of the Inshaw Rifle is only a week away! The Historical Society is deeply grateful to the Chicopee Public Library for hosting this exhibit on permanent loan to share with the community.

Ms. Laura Bovee, Director of the Chicopee Public Library, will also speak at the event, and we thank her for her participation and support of this project.

We are also indebted to two members of our group, Atty. James F. Gregory, for his help in guiding us through the process of obtaining permission from City departments to place the Inshaw Rifle at the library; and Mr. Larry Gwozdz, for helping us obtain funding from the American Society of Arms Collectors.

The talk will take place in the Bazan Community Room of the library, but the museum display case will be located in the local history room. Everyone will have a chance to see the Inshaw Rifle in its new home, and for many, this may be the first time for them to actually visit the local history room, which is an excellent source not only for Chicopee history, but for material and help to work on family genealogy. For those who have never visited this room, it will be a fine opportunity to become acquainted with this important archive.

The Inshaw Rifle installation event will take place Wednesday, May 20, 2026, at 6:30 p.m. at the Chicopee Public Library, 449 Front Street. The event is free and open to the public. The press is invited to come earlier at 6:00 p.m. for a preview.

The display case was manufactured by the Small Corporation of Greenfield, which specializes in archival exhibit cases and other conservation products for museums and libraries.

The funds for purchasing this case came in part from the sale of our book, Richard B. Inshaw: A Craftsman’s Life and Work in Chicopee, Massachusetts and the sponsor ads that appear in the book, but the chief source of funding came from a generous grant from the American Society of Arms Collectors. We thank them most sincerely for helping us achieve this goal.

04/27/2026

When you think 19th-century wallpaper, you probably think of designs with flowers, stripes, or geometric patterns...not squirrels. But, according to Edward Bellamy's daughter, squirrels eating nuts covered the wallpaper in the front hall. That wallpaper is long gone, but we're still hoping to one day find a scrap of it in a closet or behind some woodwork!

04/01/2026

Finishing our celebration of Women’s History Month is Edward Bellamy’s mother, Maria (Putnam) Bellamy (1816-1892). Maria was born in Royalston, Vermont to parents who believed in education for women; she attended the Charlestown Female seminary where she studied Greek, Latin, and mathematics. She was intellectual, spiritual, conservative, and formal – in line with the women of her time. It was from his mother that Edward got his love of books and his commitment to helping others. In 1868, on her insistence, Edward joined his cousin in Germany, where he witnessed the poverty of the working classes that influenced Looking Backward.

Pictured: Maria (Putnam) Bellamy from The Year 2000 by Sylvia Bowman

03/21/2026

Did you know that Edward Bellamy's wife, Emma, was one of the founders of the Chicopee Falls Woman's Club, even hosting meetings at her house? These meetings took priority over other family members' activities. According to her daughter's memoir, "When the time came for the clubs to meet at our house and the back parlor, my father’s study, must be opened for the occasion, my father pitched in cheerfully and helped to reduce the room from the chaos it usually presented to some semblance of order. He laboriously picked up from the floor the numberless loose pages of manuscript he dropped there and collected his writing material and books and dictionaries and removed them until the affair was over." Unfortunately for Emma, though, "in no time at all it went back to the usual scene of disorder”!

03/11/2026

In honor of Women's History Month, we're highlighting some of the women of the Bellamy family. First is Eliza (Re*****on) (Sanderson) Mallory, Edward Bellamy's mother-in-law! In 1887, Mrs. Mallory was appointed the first police matron for the Springfield Police Department. According to state law, a police matron was required to attend to a woman who had been arrested until she was either released or sent to prison. At the time of her resignation in 1901, Mrs. Mallory had taken care of 2,185 women under arrest, 276 women who were detained, and 27 lodgers, as well as about 50 lost children per year. Born in 1836, she died in 1926 at the age of 89.

02/10/2026

According to the 1850 census, only 7 of Chicopee's 8,291 residents identified as Black. We've discovered that one of those 7 residents was 21-year-old Sarah Porter, who was living with the Bellamys at their home on East Street. This is all we know about her so far, but we're hoping to find out more.

01/02/2026

We tend to think of fonts from the Victorian era as elegant, but more creative lettering was used in publications, too. On January 2, 1892, Edward Bellamy's paper, The New Nation, introduced this new font for their heading that they thought their readers "may find pleasing."

12/03/2025

We began our year of monthly writing prompts with the first line of a story, so we're ending the year with a closing sentence. Write a story that ends with the concluding sentence of Edward Bellamy's short story "At Pinney's Ranch": "The writer, who has merely endeavored to put this story into narrative form, has formed no opinion on it which is satisfactory to himself, and therefore abstains from any effort to influence the reader's judgment."

12/02/2025

As an all-volunteer organization, our ability to preserve the Edward Bellamy House and its historical collections depends on the support of our donors and volunteers. This Giving Tuesday, please consider making a monetary donation, or sign up to help clear snow from our front walk or mow the lawn. Every contribution helps, whether it's a few dollars or a few hours!

The Edward Bellamy Memorial Association has maintained the Edward Bellamy House—Chicopee’s only National Historic Landmark—for nearly 50 years. Beyond resources on Bellamy, our historical collectio…

11/05/2025

While Edward Bellamy is best known for Looking Backward, he wrote five other novels as well. His first novel, Six to One: A Nantucket Idyl, was published anonymously in 1878 and tells the story of an overworked newspaper editor who goes to Nantucket for his health. As Bellamy was a newspaper editor himself in the 1870s, the book likely reflected some of the stress he felt from his own career. Feeling ambitious? For this month's writing prompt, write the first three chapters of a semi-autobiographical novel.