By Nancy Heywood, Lead Archivist for Digital and Web Initiatives

MHS recently launched the MHS Digital Archive, a system that preserves and provides access to born-digital files and reformatted audiovisual material. Our last blog post provides an overview of the Digital Archive and how to search its contents. This post shares some specific examples for adventurous readers to explore!

MHS’s digital preservation system is a multi-faceted tool that allows us to responsibly ingest (accept), describe, manage, migrate, monitor, and make digital files accessible.  The availability of reformatted audiovisual files via the MHS Digital Archive is especially significant because we don’t have any other way to make audio tapes; cassettes; and VHS, beta, and 16mm films accessible to researchers.   

Video about the history of Suffolk Downs

Item: This stand-alone digital video created in 2023, Suffolk Downs: Race Through Time, focuses on the history of the East Boston racetrack and legalized betting and horseracing in Massachusetts.

Example of a digital video: When MHS accepted this digital video, we knew we would be storing the file and the metadata in our digital preservation system and making it available via the MHS Digital Archive.

Explore in the MHS Digital Archive or start with the catalog record in ABIGAIL and follow the link. 

Spiritualist session recordings from the Leslie Shah Qualls papers

Collection: Leslie Shah Qualls (1903-1989) was a spiritualist who conducted psychic readings and mediumship.  Her papers mainly consist of her spiritual writings but also contain audio recordings of spiritualist sessions she led. 

Example of reformatted audio tapes: The original open reel audio tapes (nine audio tapes, seven with content on both sides) were converted to 16 digital files to provide access to the content. These tapes were in poor condition and required reformatting to preserve the information on them. Even if the tapes were in better condition, archival repositories don’t generally make original AV materials available in reading rooms because of the significant logistics of providing playback equipment for old formats to researchers, as well as the risk of damage or deterioration to the originals during repeated playbacks.

Explore in the MHS Digital Archive or examine the guide to the full collection and follow a link to a specific audio file.

Massachusetts Moderators Association records

Collection: The Massachusetts Moderators Association was founded in 1957 and provides resources and collaboration opportunities to town moderators.  The collection was donated in 2023 and is comprised of both physical and digital files.

Example of born-digital files: The digital materials within the Massachusetts Moderators Association were created as electronic documents in formats such as PDF and open-doc spreadsheets. These files include meeting minutes, lists, and digital files relating to various handbooks to help those leading town meeting sessions.

Explore in the MHS Digital Archive or read the guide to the full collection and follow the links to the digital files.

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

This will be my eighth and final post about the Perry-Clarke additions, and in the hot seat today is Susan Cabot (Lowell) Sohier (1823-1868). Her daughter Alice married into the Clarke family, which is how Susan’s papers became part of this collection.

The oldest child of John Amory Lowell, Susan was a scion of the famous Lowell family of Boston. She and her husband, William Sohier, had six children, three of whom tragically pre-deceased them. Susan herself died of tuberculosis at the age of 45.

But I’d like to end this blog series on a fun note. Susan’s papers include a manuscript volume entitled “Preferences,” a kind of guest book filled out by her friends and family members beginning in 1862. Among the contributors were noted Unitarian clergymen Edward Everett Hale, Henry Wilder Foote, and Robert Collyer.

Rather than just sign, individuals were asked to name a preference in each of 24 categories. The categories were: poet, prose writer, occupation, amusement, vacation destination, method of travel, “time of rising,” study, language, character in history, character in fiction, living preacher, animal, musical instrument, flower, system of government, name, dish, drink, extravagance, economy, proverb or quotation, novel, and “year of life to live over if forced to – this not penitentially.” (If there were a category for favorite question, the last one would be mine.)

Rules for the game included “You must tell the truth” and “Answer as if you had unlimited power of choice, and were in no fear of criticism or punishment.” Many contributors had fun with their responses. Here’s a selection:

Method of travel: “Cars when I’m not upset”; “Driving a 2 seated vehicle with 2 agreeable companions who shall do the talking”; “Balloon”

Time of rising: “After my second morning nap”; “I heartily enjoy getting up early in summer but dont do it”; “Just before breakfast”

Study: “The faults of others”

Language: “The language I speak, Yankee”

Character in history: “I hate history & all the characters in it”

Living preacher: “Anyone who can keep me awake”

Animal: “Almost all animals at a respectful distance”

System of government: “I haven’t any choice really” (from a woman); “Absolute Monarchy myself the Queen”; “Petticoat Government”

Names: “Clarissa Jane, for a boy decidedly Hezekiah”

Extravagance: “Gas bill”

Year of life to live over: “15 years ago” (from a 15-year-old); “25 as seen from 45”; “The year I fell in love”

There were a few consistent favorites. Popular authors included Sir Walter Scott, Baron Macaulay, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dickens, Shakespeare, and Charlotte M. Yonge. Horses, dogs, and cats topped the animal category. A few people listed the human voice as their preferred musical instrument.

This volume definitely reminds me of the early days of email and those questionnaires our friends forwarded to us. What would your answers be?

by Brandon McGrath-Neely, Library Assistant

When family and friends come to visit Boston, there are a few places we always visit. We wind through the North End’s narrow streets, grabbing treats at Bova’s Bakery. We stand at the site of the Boston Massacre and look up at the Old State House, with modern buildings soaring behind it. And in between those two stops, we always visit the Faneuil Hall Marketplace.

The Marketplace, which includes Faneuil Hall and its younger siblings—Quincy Market, North Market, and South Market—began when merchant and slave trader Peter Faneuil constructed Faneuil Hall in 1742. Over the next 283 years, the building would change in size, style and substance (and a name change is currently under discussion). The collections of the MHS were actually stored in its attic from 1793 to 1794! Luckily, our materials had moved elsewhere before a series of fires and expansions changed the building—especially an 1806 expansion by famed architect Charles Bulfinch. The three market buildings were added between 1826 and 1827.

As both the Faneuil Hall Marketplace and the city of Boston grew, the Marketplace fell into disrepair. In drastic need of revitalization, the architectural design firm Benjamin Thompson and Associates was selected in 1971 to breathe new life into the iconic landmark. When the project was completed in 1978, the Marketplace was closed to vehicles and instead emphasized foot traffic. Travelers from all over the world can now wander through everything the site has to offer. According to Newsweek, it is the 10^th most popular tourist attraction in the country. Each year, around 18 million visitors come to explore its food, stores, and attractions.

The records of this redesign project are held by the Massachusetts Historical Society in the Ben and Jane Thompson Faneuil Hall Marketplace Records. The rich set of materials help show how the older versions of the Marketplace have changed to become the gathering place we know and love today. Whether Faneuil Hall is on your bucket list, or you’ve been a thousand times, the records offer new ways to experience the market.

If you’re interested in architecture, you can browse the many designs and planning documents, including elevations, floorplans, and images of scale models. If you want to learn about advertising and marketing, you can explore the large number of press materials and see how Faneuil Hall Marketplace became the most visited location in Massachusetts. And if you just like looking at old photos of Boston, the rare images of Quincy Market under construction are a delightful peek behind the scenes.

The Faneuil Hall Marketplace Records are some of my favorite materials at the MHS, because they allow you to experience the iconic landmark in so many ways. They were also processed using the More Product, Less Process approach, described in this Beehive post, which makes the whole collection feel like finding hidden treasures tucked away for decades. So next time you bring a friend to Faneuil Hall, bring them by the MHS to see how it grew up!

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

In previous Beehive posts, I’ve introduced you to several members of the Clarke family. Well, the Clarkes were related by marriage to the illustrious Boston Lowells, so the Perry-Clarke additions at the MHS also include papers from members of that family.

If there were prizes for the most prevalent 18th- and 19th-century Boston Brahmin names, “Anna Cabot Lowell” would have to be up there. Our catalog lists four of them, and that doesn’t even include married women or namesakes. The one I’d like to highlight today is Anna Cabot Lowell (1768-1810), a.k.a. Nancy.

Nancy was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on 30 March 1768, the oldest of Judge John Lowell’s nine children. Her biological mother, Sarah (Higginson) Lowell, died when Nancy was four years old, and her father re-married twice. Nancy herself never married or had children, and died of tuberculosis on 18 December 1810 when she was 42 years old.

But her family connections aren’t the reason I wanted to write about Nancy today; her letters are just really entertaining! To give you a sense of her style, here’s what she wrote about her friend Betsey Lee on 3 February 1799.

She still laughs & Rants, is rational & absurd in the same breath, & after exhausting the powers of the English language finds she cannot express herself – in short is the same extravagant, good, charming, provoking girl she ever was. […]

I went to one play with her, the Castle Spectre, with which we were highly entertained. We were told afterwards that we ought not to have been […] but we unluckily suffered ourselves to be pleased before we considered the propriety of being so and have been honest enough to own it.

A prolific correspondent with a wide social network, Nancy was one of those people who elevated letter-writing to an art. Her friends included Ann Bromfield (later Mrs. Tracy); Eliza Susan Morton Quincy, wife of Congressman Josiah Quincy; and Scottish author Anne MacVicar Grant. The Perry-Clarke additions contain many of her letters to Bromfield—like the one quoted above—and the MHS also holds a collection of her correspondence with Quincy and Grant.

Nancy’s letters are alternately funny, mournful, worried, silly, and philosophical, but always intelligent and well-written. The gossip also flew fast and furious, especially when it came to who was “paying attentions” to whom. In fact, some of the gossip may have been too much for Anna’s niece, another Anna Cabot Lowell (1808-1894), who compiled her aunt’s letters in 1881. In addition to adding a few explanatory annotations, this younger Anna was probably the one who scribbled out some apparently incriminating passages.

According to Eliza Quincy’s memoir, “For intellectual gifts and exalted character, Miss Lowell held an acknowledged pre-eminence among her contemporaries in Boston. Her writings, both in prose and verse, are stamped with genius.”

Quincy’s youngest daughter, named in her friend’s honor, also had a way with words and became a published poet.

by Alexandra Moleski, NHD Program Coordinator

kkʷey! In part 1, we explored the life of Pial Pol Osunkhirhine, author of the 1830 Wo̲banaki kimzowi awighigan that is held in the MHS archives. Now we are back with part 2 because it turns out that Osunkhirhine’s learning book is not quite written in the language we at the MHS thought it was. 

On ABIGAIL, the digital library catalog of the MHS, the learning book was categorized as a “spelling and reading book in the Penobscot dialect of the Abnaki language.” This description comes from Bibliography of the Algonquian Languages, an 1891 publication by ethnologist James Constantine Pilling that also resides in the MHS collections. However, Pilling’s categorization of Osunkhirhine’s native tongue proves inaccurate. My first clue that Osunkhirhine is speaking an Abenaki dialect other than Penobscot was his upbringing at Odanak.

Abenaki does not refer to a singular tribal nation, but a group of various bands, including the Penobscot, living across Wabanakik (“Dawnland”), or what is now the northeastern US and southern Canada. As we learned in my previous post, the traditionally nomadic Abenaki began settling in various regions in the late 17th century due to warfare and displacement by European colonizers. Some Abenaki settled in present-day Québec and established the communities of Odanak and Wôlinak, while the Penobscot established their primary community in what is now Maine. And the Odanak, Wôlinak, and Penobscot communities were not the only bands of Abenaki in the region–many bands historically lived across Wabanakik but as a result of colonization, were gradually absorbed by the surviving Abenaki nations. Despite their geographical distance, the Abenaki dialect spoken by those at Odanak and Wolinak is closely linked to the Penobscot dialect, though they do have their differences.

My suspicions that Osunkhirhine is not speaking the Penobscot dialect were confirmed by linguist John Dyneley Prince’s 1910 essay, “The Penobscot Language of Maine.” The Abenaki dialect spoken at Odanak and Wôlinak as well as the dialect spoken by the Penobscot both belong to the Algonquian language family. However, residents of Odanak and Wolinak speak a dialect of Western Abenaki–or Canadian Abenaki as Prince describes it–while Penobscot is a dialect of Eastern Abenaki.

In an earlier 1902 essay titled “The Differentiation between the Penobscot and the Canadian Abenaki Dialects,” Prince explains that Abenaki and Penobscot are sister dialects that evolved from a common language, Old Abenaki. The consonant system, grammar, and vocabulary are largely the same between the two dialects. The biggest differences between them are found in the vowel system and intonation. Penobscot has a complex system of intonation and has almost a musical quality to the way syllables are accentuated, similar to the Passamaquoddy language. Meanwhile, the intonation of Abenaki is more monotone–much like the French language the Abenaki were exposed to in New France, later Lower Canada.

With confirmation that Osunkhirine is speaking Western Abenaki rather than Eastern Abenaki, I reached out to our wonderful library team here at the MHS and they quickly updated the listing in our online catalog. Now when you visit Wo̲banaki kimzowi awighigan in ABIGAIL, it categorizes the learning book and Osunkhirhine’s mother tongue as Western Abenaki.

This research experience reminds me that history truly is a living, breathing thing that we are all continuously still learning to understand, whether you are a seasoned historian or a new National History Day student. It also perfectly exemplifies the importance of researching deeply and checking your sources as you work on your NHD projects!

wə̀liwəni!

Further reading:

Penobscot language resources 

“Neg8nsosakilal8mow8gan: the voice of our ancestors” – Abenaki language learning app