Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Authors will not read their essays but will offer brief remarks; please read the paper ahead of time and come prepared to join in the discussion. If you are not a subscriber to the series (subscribers receive online advance access to the papers) you may pick up a copy at the MHS front desk on the day of the program. Please phone 617-646-0568 with any questions.

This project is a comparative study of attitudes toward infertility in early modern England and colonial New England from c.1650 to 1750 through analysis of a wide variety of contemporary sources. To compare early modern England with its own “child,” colonial New England, is to examine two societies linked by cultural and religious norms but facing different challenges. These challenges are explored by analyzing infertility’s representation in popular, religious, and medical literature and personal writing from both societies. As the two societies’ relationship was often described through reproductive language, analyzing representations of infertility provides a different angle through which to view the links between “Old” and New England while highlighting the connections between the sources themselves. The topic of infertility provides the opportunity to untangle the web of emerging anatomical discoveries, social ideas about gender relations, the family, and the importance of children, and religious ideas about generation that characterized attitudes toward reproduction in the early modern period.

MHS Fellows and Members are invited to a special preview and reception for the Society’s fall exhibition. The Cabinetmaker & the Carver provides visitors with an opportunity to view nearly 50 examples of rarely seen furniture borrowed from distinguished private collections in the greater Boston area. Ranging in date from teh late-17th century to about 1900, these privately held treasures, generously lent by their owners, provide a look at the trajectory of cabinetmaking in the Hub.

To Reserve: Tickets are $25 (no charge for MHS Fund Giving Circle members). Please click on the registration link to purchase tickets.

The exhibition is presented as part of Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture a collaborative project of the Massachusetts Historical Society and ten other institutions that features exhibitions, lectures, demonstrations and publications to celebrate the Bay State's legacy of furniture-making. Visit fourcenturies.org. 

Image: Desk and bookcase, carving attributed to John Welch, Boston, Mass. ca. 1750-1755, private collection. Photograph by Laura Wulf

Co-sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Historical Society, this day-long symposium is devoted to new scholarly research on the design, production, and circulation of furnishings in New England. New Thoughts on Old Things will feature keynote speaker Glenn Adamson, Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum (V&A) in London, along with a select group of emerging scholars. The event is associated with Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture—a collaborative of 11 institutions celebrating furniture and furniture-making in Massachusetts. For more information on the Four Centuries initiative and events, please visit: http://www.fourcenturies.org/.

To Reserve: The symposium is free with admission to the museum. Advanced ticketing recommended. For information, please contact Lauren Spengler at lspengler@mfa.org.

Event Details

Keynote Speaker: Glenn Adamson, Head of Research, V&A Museum, Furniture History: The View from Old England

Speakers

• Tania Batley, E. W. Vaill Patent Chair Manufacturer (Worcester, MA)
• Nicole Belolan, Aunt Patty's Furniture: Adult Cradles and the History of Physical Mobility Impairment in Early America
• Louisa Brouwer, “Vanishable Antiques”: The Story of Israel Sack, Inc., and the Building of an American Industry
• Ben Colman, Between Memory and Antiquity:The Circulation of Seventeenth-Century Furniture in 18th-Century Plymouth
• Philippe Halbert, Noblesse in New France: Furnishing the Hôtel de Vaudreuil and the Chateau Saint-Louis 1725-1760
• Marissa S. Hershon, The Egyptian Revival in the 1870's: The Reception Room at Cedar Hill (Warwick, RI)
• Jennifer N. Johnson, Patterns of Gentility: Pictorial Needlework Upholstery of Eighteenth-Century Newport

This exhibition provides visitors with a rare opportunity to see nearly 50 examples of significant furniture borrowed from distinguished private collections in the greater Boston area. Ranging in date from the late-17th-century to about 1900, these privately held treasures, generously lent by their owners, provide a look at the trajectory of cabinetmaking in the Hub. They are supplemented with documents, portraits, and other material from the Society's collections that help place the furniture into historical context.

The exhibition is part of Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture a collaborative project of the Massachusetts Historical Society and ten other institutions that features exhibitions, lectures, demonstrations and publications to celebrate the Bay State's legacy of furniture-making. Visit fourcenturies.org.

Image: Desk and bookcase, carving attributed to John Welch, Boston, Mass., ca. 1750–1755, private collection. Photo by Laura Wulf.

Using the broad theme of “Rights and Responsibilities” as a springboard, you’ll explore how to approach primary source research in special libraries and archives, the Massachusetts Historical Society & the National Archives, through a range of historical documents, including letters, diaries, songs, petitions, and government records.

You’ll collect evidence, analyze information, draw conclusions, assemble your findings into an historical narrative, and design a history project as a paper, website, exhibit, documentary, or performance.

By applying National History Day methodologies, the “dreaded” history project is transformed into the creation of imaginative, engaging, and meaningful history experiences. Representatives from Massachusetts History Day will share how the program works.

This free workshop is open to students, teachers, librarians, and archivists. Lunch will be provided. Teachers can earn 10 Professional Development Points.

For more information, or to register, please contact Kathleen Barker at the Massachusetts Historical Society: education@masshist.org or (617) 646-0557.

This workshop is presented by the Massachusetts Historical Society and the National Archives at Boston in collaboration with Massachusetts History Day.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Authors will not read their essays but will offer brief remarks; please read the paper ahead of time and come prepared to join in the discussion. If you are not a subscriber to the series (subscribers receive online advance access to the papers) you may pick up a copy at the MHS front desk on the day of the program. Please phone 617-646-0568 with any questions.

This project investigates the market, commodities, producers, suppliers, vendors, and consumers of spurious merchandise in early Anglo-America. In so doing, it reclaims forgotten commercial actors and networks and downplays the primacy of mercantilism to emphasize individualism (defined by counterfeits' propensity to subvert legal commerce for personal gain). Given that the underground economy constituted half of all economic transactions in this period, individualism may have been the more important commercial doctrine, a full century earlier than most scholarship suggests.

Boston’s history is written not only in documents and manuscripts but in the three-dimensional objects that its craftsmen and factories have made, and its citizens have used, since 1630. This presentation will offer an opportunity to learn about and tour this loan exhibition of more than 40 rarely seen examples of Boston furniture from ca. 1690 to ca. 1900 with guest curator Gerald W. R. Ward.

Gerald W. R. Ward is the Katherine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston.

To Register: Tickets are $10 per person (no charge for Fellows and Members). Please call 617-646-0560 or register online by clicking the ticket icon above.

Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Authors will not read their essays but will offer brief remarks; please read the paper ahead of time and come prepared to join in the discussion. If you are not a subscriber to the series (subscribers receive online advance access to the papers) you may pick up a copy at the MHS front desk on the day of the program. Please phone 617-646-0568 with any questions.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

Join us as part of the Fenway Cultural District’s Opening Our Doors, Boston’s largest single day of free arts and cultural events. Visit the MHS and view The Cabinetmaker & the Carver: Boston Furniture from Private Collections and enjoy a demonstration related to furniture on display by craftsmen from the North Bennet Street School.

This event is free and open to the public.

In 1945–1946, Bostonians pursued an ambitious dream: to become not only “the Hub” but also the Capital of the World—the headquarters site for the new United Nations. Drawing from her book, Charlene Mires will present an illustrated talk about the dramatic, surprising, and often comic story of civic boosterism awakened by the UN ’s search for a home.

Charlene Mires is Associate Professor of History and Director of the Mid-Atlantic Regional Center for the Humanities at Rutgers University—Camden. She is the author of Independence Hall in American Memory, editor-in-chief of The Encyclopedia of Greater Philadelphia, and a co-recipient of a Pulitzer Prize in journalism.

To Register: Tickets are $10 per person (no charge for Fellows and Members). Please call 617-646-0560 or register online by clicking the ticket icon above.

Jane Franklin, the sister of Benjamin Franklin, was a constant presence and influence in her brother's life. Like her brother, Jane Franklin was a passionate reader, a gifted writer, and an astonishingly shrewd political commentator. Making use of a collection of little-studied material, including documents, objects, and recently discovered portraits, author Jill Lepore brings Jane Franklin to life. Lepore provides a revelatory portrait of Benjamin Franklin’s youngest sister and a history of history itself.

Jill Lepore is the David Woods Kemper '41 Professor of American History at Harvard University and a staff writer at The New Yorker.

To Reserve: This event is free and open to the public. Visit the Boston Public Library's website for additional information and directions.

The early 19th century was a time of prosperity for the City of Boston and produced some extraordinary furniture. Irfan Ali, a collector of American furniture, will examine Boston’s answer to the call of classicism by looking at furniture made by craftsmen such as Thomas Seymour, Isaac Vose, and Archibald and Emmons.

To Register: This program is free and open to the public.

This project explores the ways in which American Catholics fought to establish, preserve, reclaim, and expand conceptions of religious liberty in early America. Virtually ignored in church-state historiography until the 1840s, Catholics played a heretofore overlooked role in challenging and redefining America's ideal church-state relationship during the colonial period and in the early Republic. By paying closer attention to how Catholics interacted with the laws and culture around them, this project offers fresh insights into questions pertaining to church-state relations and the history of religious freedom.

This program will explore how the influx of English cabinetmakers and chairmakers and the fashionable desires of a new Boston elite combined to transform the furniture trade in Boston in the period after the establishment of the new Charter in 1691. Producers and consumers collaborated to invent a new Boston that was a commercial center more than a providential city on a hill. 

Edward S. Cooke, Jr., the Charles F. Montgomery Professor of American Decorative Arts in the Department of the History of Art at Yale University, has published extensively on both historical and contemporary furniture. Prior to returning to Yale in 1992, he was a curator at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, and taught at Boston University.

To Register: Tickets are $10 per person (no charge for Fellows and Members). Please call 617-646-0560 or register online by clicking the ticket icon above.

Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Authors will not read their essays but will offer brief remarks; please read the paper ahead of time and come prepared to join in the discussion. If you are not a subscriber to the series (subscribers receive online advance access to the papers) you may pick up a copy at the MHS front desk on the day of the program. Please phone 617-646-0568 with any questions.

Are we more "global" today than people in the past were, better able to span and understand the entire planet?  Planetary consciousness, our awareness of living on a globe with finite resources, did not begin with those luminous, exquisitely beautiful Apollo 8 photographs of the Earth taken from space in 1968, as is often asserted. Rather, it began with the now-500-year-old tradition of going around the world, the longest human activity done on a planetary scale. Around-the-world travelers' long and self-aware tradition of engagement with the planet questions our sense of uniqueness and may teach us something worth knowing about why we think of the Earth the way we do.

Joyce E. Chaplin is the James Duncan Phillips Professor of Early American History at Harvard University and author of Round About the Earth: Circumnavigation from Magellan to Orbit.

To Register: Tickets are $10 per person (no charge for Fellows and Members). Please call 617-646-0560 or register online by clicking the ticket icon above.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Authors will not read their essays but will offer brief remarks; please read the paper ahead of time and come prepared to join in the discussion. If you are not a subscriber to the series (subscribers receive online advance access to the papers) you may pick up a copy at the MHS front desk on the day of the program. Please phone 617-646-0568 with any questions.

This project resurrects the history of the China Trade and the early nineteenth-century Pacific as key sites of American economic and political intervention. It explores the formation of an American sense of self through a study of several individuals, including a “beachcomber,” a sea captain’s wife, and a U.S. Consul.

The fourth annual Cocktails with Clio will take place on 7 November 2013. Named for the muse of history, this festive evening celebrates American history and the 222-year-old mission of the Society. Following an elegant cocktail buffet at the Society’s building, guests will proceed to the nearby Harvard Club for dessert and a conversation with political commentator, author, and MHS Overseer Cokie Roberts. As the evening progresses, Ms. Roberts will discuss her approach to writing bestselling books about history and historical figures, her work as a political commentator, and how she has used MHS collections in her research.

Tickets cost $250 per person. All net proceeds from the event will support the Society's outreach efforts.

Become a sponsor of Cocktails with Clio

Our sponsors are crucial to the success of the event. As a result of their generosity, the Society’s outreach efforts have expanded. The additional funding has an important impact on our programming, and this year we hope to surpass last year’s goal in order to further enhance our exhibitions, public programs, and education initiatives. 

We are proud to offer sponsorship opportunities at the following levels:
$5,000 - Clio’s Circle
$2,500 - Patrons of the Muse
$1,000 - Friends of the Muse   

For more information about becoming a sponsor, please contact Carol Knauff at cknauff@masshist.org or 617-646-0554. 

Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Authors will not read their essays but will offer brief remarks; please read the paper ahead of time and come prepared to join in the discussion. If you are not a subscriber to the series (subscribers receive online advance access to the papers) you may pick up a copy at the MHS front desk on the day of the program. Please phone 617-646-0568 with any questions.

This two-day workshop explores how to use local resources – documents, artifacts, landscapes and the rich expertise in every town – to examine historical issues with a national focus. We will concentrate on the period just after the Revolution and the concerns and conflicts, hopes and fears, experiences and expectations of the people living in western Massachusetts at a time of uncertainty, fragility, and possibility. We will investigate such questions as: What was it like to live in a town that had been around for a long time in a country that was new? When the nation was first forming after the Revolution, what were people in our town/region worried about? How much did the geography, economy, culture, and social makeup of our region influence those concerns? How can we find out? What resources/pieces of evidence does our community have that relate to this time period and the people living in it? How can we best present this evidence and allow people of all ages to discover answers to some of these questions? How does our local focus add a crucial dimension to our understanding of a key period in American history?

The workshop is open to teachers, librarians, archivists, members of local historical societies, and all interested local history enthusiasts. Workshop faculty will include the MHS Department of Education and Public Programs, Gary Shattuck, author of Artful and Designing Men: The Trials of Job Shattuck and the Regulation of 1786-1787, MHS Teacher Fellow Dean Eastman, and the staff of the Berkshire Historical Society. The program will also include visits to the Berkshire Athenaeum and the Crane Museum of Papermaking. There is a $25 charge to cover lunches both days; program and material costs have been generously funded by the Richard Saltonstall Charitable Foundation. Educators can earn 15 PDPs and 1 Graduate Credit (for an additional fee) from Framingham State University.

To Register: Please complete this registration form and send it with your payment to: Kathleen Barker, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215.

For Additional Information: Contact the Education Department: 617-646-0557 or  education@masshist.org.

This talk discusses variations in archival regimes, their relationship to the writing of Black urban history, and their implications for efforts to secure redress for past urban spatial injustices, such as school bussing in Boston, and the razing of African-Canadian communities in Vancouver and Halifax.

American furniture collectors John and Marie Vander Sande will discuss late 17th-century joined case pieces, early 18th-century cabinetwork, and pre-1730 chairs produced in Boston. The style, construction techniques, woods chosen, and motivation for the applied decoration, as well as the use of the pieces in the home, will be highlighted.

To Register: This program is free and open to the public.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

Governor James and General John Sullivan, two brothers who forged remarkable and versatile careers during the American Revolution and early republic, were honored in their own time and remained remembered and respected through the 19th century. How should we remember them today? Join Murray Forbes as he discusses his work on the fascinating lives of these two men.

Today we remember James Sullivan as first Massachusetts Governor of Irish descent and as founder and first president of The Massachusetts Historical Society. Yet his achievements defending Irish immigrants, elucidating injustices in Irish history and his landmark legal defense of the Catholic Church against being taxed to support the Commonwealth's official Protestant religion, remain almost unknown. He was also a significant diplomat, a brilliant legal scholar, and historian who influenced the creation of the United States Constitution. He continued throughout his political career to be the principal voice in Massachusetts supporting popular rights.

His brother John Sullivan initiated hostilities of the American Revolution in New Hampshire, played a major role in the Siege of Boston, performed heroically at Long Island, Brandywine, and Germantown, brilliantly at Trenton and Princeton, and incomparably at Butte's Hill.  While serving in Canada he kept the American Army intact during the failed invasion of 1776, and in 1779, Sullivan led a massive campaign against the Iroquois who had sided with the British in the Revolution. As member of the Continental Congress he strengthened the French and Spanish alliances and allayed anti-Catholic prejudice. After the war, he served three terms as Governor of New Hampshire and, confronting hundreds of angry farmers, personally averted another Shays's rebellion. Yet Sullivan's military career has sometimes been downplayed, while his other accomplishments have been undervalued.

Their immigrant father, an indentured servant and dispossessed Chief of Clan O'Sullivan Beara, had extraordinary Irish forbears who rose to prominence in conditions partly presaging the American Revolution. He passed something extraordinary on to these sons.

How did the American Revolution change the colonial American economic culture and patterns of natural resource exploitation? How did the “release of energy” produced by the new political order contribute to new definitions of public and private acquisitiveness, wealth, and progress?

J. Ritchie Garrison, the Director of the Winterthur Program in American Material Culture, will explore Boston’s craft community with a focus on three themes: production as part of a regional network, inequalities that drove artisans’ decisions, and the city’s furnituremakers’ adaptations to a number of factors.

To Register: Tickets are $10 per person (no charge for Fellows and Members). Please call 617-646-0560 or register online by clicking the ticket icon above.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

The famed 19th-century humorist Finley Peter Dunne once commented that life “would not be worth living if we didn’t keep our enemies.” John F. Kennedy could certainly appreciated the wisdom behind this observation. At nearly every stage of his noteworthy political career, Kennedy collected his fair share of enemies. Some, like Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., or Richard Nixon, presented formidable political obstacles to his attaining public office. Others, like Nikita Khrushchev during the Cuban Missile Crisis, threatened the very survival of the human race. This lecture will focus on the complex and strained relationship Kennedy had with longtime FBI director J. Edgar Hoover and how their mutual hostility inadvertently led to his death at the hands of Lee Harvey Oswald on November 22, 1963.

Thomas J. Whalen is an associate professor of social science at Boston University and author of Kennedy versus Lodge: The 1952 Massachusetts Senate Race. His forthcoming book, JFK and His Enemies, will be published in March 2014. An expert in modern American politics, American foreign policy and the American presidency, Whalen's commentary has appeared in the New York Times, ABCNews.com, Wall Street Journal, USA Today, Boston Globe, Los Angeles Times, and the AP. He has also appeared on several national broadcast outlets including CNN, NPR and Reuters TV.

To Register: Tickets are $10 per person (no charge for Fellows and Members). Please call 617-646-0560 or register online by clicking the ticket icon above.

Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Authors will not read their essays but will offer brief remarks; please read the paper ahead of time and come prepared to join in the discussion. If you are not a subscriber to the series (subscribers receive online advance access to the papers) you may pick up a copy at the MHS front desk on the day of the program. Please phone 617-646-0568 with any questions.

Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Authors will not read their essays but will offer brief remarks; please read the paper ahead of time and come prepared to join in the discussion. If you are not a subscriber to the series (subscribers receive online advance access to the papers) you may pick up a copy at the MHS front desk on the day of the program. Please phone 617-646-0568 with any questions.

This project seeks to explain the enormous changes taking place in American society between 1774 and 1776 by examining the failed invasion of Canada. The campaign played a crucial role in shaping colonial attitudes toward Catholicism and Britishness, the escalation of rebellion into an imperial civil war, and the looming issue of American independence.

Early 19th-century Boston witnessed new styles of architecture and furniture. Homes were embellished by a wealth of imported goods such as paintings and sculpture, porcelain, and luxurious fabrics. This lecture will provide a glimpse of the interiors of the homes of some of the city’s wealthiest citizens, among them Nathan Appleton, Charles Russell Codman, Benjamin Bussey, Barney Smith, and David Hinckley.

To Register: Tickets are $10 per person (no charge for Fellows and Members). Please call 617-646-0560 or register online by clicking the ticket icon above.

MHS Fellows and Members are invited to celebrate the season with the Trustees and staff of the MHS at a special year-end reception. The event is open only to MHS Fellows and Members.

Become a Member today.

Fifty years ago, our country was jolted by tragedy: our 35th president was shot. In End of Days: The Assassination of John F. Kennedy, Edgar award-winning, New York Times bestselling author of the highly acclaimed Manhunt: The 12-Day Chase For Lincoln's Killer and historian James. L. Swanson, offers a comprehensive understanding of this historic day, lending edge-of-your seat, storyteller's mastery to the subject. With fascinating, colorful detail culled from vast historic resources, Swanson sets the stage for his central drama: the unfolding of the private final hours of John F. Kennedy and Lee Harvey Oswald as their destinies converge in a rifle's crosshairs-one man bound for infamy, the other for myth. Told in characteristic riveting narrative style, End of Days tracks the seemingly inevitable, and equally improbable, collision course between two men that would change history, devastate a hopeful generation, and spur one of our country's greatest national mysteries.

To Register: This event is free and open to the public.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

There are no precirculated papers for this program.

The late 17th-century conflict known as King Philip's War has haunted colonial New Englanders and diverse tribal communities.  Their remembrances of this violence have taken shape in highly local ways, through material objects, performances, and stories about landscapes.  This study highlights the importance of such overlooked sources for understanding the persistent, widespread effects of warfare and settler colonialism in the Northeast.

Students of the Boston University course “Making History” discuss the MHS exhibition that they have researched and compiled. The semester-long project on Salem and the wider fear of witches in England and colonial America includes work on letters and diaries, sermons, early printed books, and objects from the period. James H. Johnson, who teaches the course, is Professor of History and a prize-winning author.

To Register: This event is free and open to the public. Please call 617-646-0560 or email education@masshist.org to register.

Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568.

Authors will not read their essays but will offer brief remarks; please read the paper ahead of time and come prepared to join in the discussion. If you are not a subscriber to the series (subscribers receive online advance access to the papers) you may pick up a copy at the MHS front desk on the day of the program. Please phone 617-646-0568 with any questions.

In the federal period (1790-1820), wealthy Boston merchants expanded trade to the West Indies and China. As part of this trade, they imported rare and expensive lumber into Boston. Mechanical inventions and the harnessing of waterpower made sawing this lumber into thin veneers possible. New specialists, known as inlay makers, were able to dye, stack, and cut those veneers into decorative geometric bandings which cabinetmakers used as inlays in neoclassical furniture.

Guest speaker Michael Wheeler has recently discovered that red, white, and blue banding was made in Boston during the federal period of the new republic. In his presentation, he will take us through his discovery and research, followed by a gallery tour of the inlaid furniture in our exhibition and his example of modern patriotic banding.

To Register: This program is free and open to the public.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.