Due to weather conditions the MHS will be closing at 4:00 PM today.
More
With support from the Guggenheim Foundation, Joyce Chaplin is compiling a database of manuscript notes about weather in early American almanacs, 1647-1820. Her talk focuses on how people recorded weather in numbers (including degrees Fahrenheit) and in words, ranging from “dull” to “elegant!” These notations are significant as records of a period of climate change, the Little Ice Age, also as records of how people made sense of and coped with that climatic disruption.
MoreThe library closes at 3:45PM in preparation for an evening event.
More
MHS Fellows and Members are invited to the Society’s annual holiday party. Celebrate the season with an evening of holiday cheer and jovial camaraderie.
This event is open to Members and Fellows of the MHS
To reserve: Please register online at www.masshist.org/events.
This event is sold out: Space is limited
MoreThe History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
More
From 1820 to 1920, Boston grew by leaps and bounds through an intensive (and often contentious) process of immigration and migration that ultimately created the modern metropolis. In this presentation and virtual exhibit, Professor Andrew Robichaud and students from Boston University will present more than twenty rare artifacts and documents from the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Through letters, diaries, drawings, photographs, reform tracts, and memoirs, presenters will unearth the complex and nuanced dimensions of immigration and migration to Boston
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This essay considers the life of an indigenous woman, known as “One-Eyed” Sarah, who provided full-time nursing care to poor communities in early nineteenth-century Providence, RI. The only historical sources that describe Sarah’s work never provide her last name or details beyond the description “Indian.” So who was she, and how do we tell her story? Using sometimes patchy sources of non-elite people, the author hopes to gain new insights into social welfare history and explore how ordinary women made the poor law function.
MoreThe Library and Exhibition Galleries close early at 3:30PM for a staff event.
MoreThe History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
MoreIn preparation for an afternoon event, the library closes at 3:00PM.
More
For 400 years, Africans and African Americans carved out a distinctive culture for themselves even as they sought equal rights in American society. This program will consider how African Americans struggled to gain equal access to political and social rights, all the while making the American experience their own.
This program is part four of a four program series titled Legacies of 1619. The series is a production of the Massachusetts Historical Society and is co-sponsored by the Museum of African American History and the Roxbury Community College.

Born in San Juan in 1931, Ana Livia Cordero was a trailblazing physician and activist-intellectual whose life illuminates the crucial role Puerto Ricans played in Cold War-era freedom struggles. Cordero worked as a physician, public health advocate, and radical organizer in New York, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Ghana, Egypt, and Nicaragua for over four decades. Using a new framework of feminist social medicine, this essay examines Cordero’s contributions to the field of social medicine, particularly maternal and children’s health.
MoreThe History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
MoreThe Society is CLOSED.
MoreThe Society is CLOSED for Christmas.
MoreThe Society is CLOSED.
MoreThe Society is CLOSED.
MoreThe Society is CLOSED.
MoreThe Society is CLOSED.
MoreThe Society is CLOSED.
MoreDue to weather conditions the MHS will be closing at 4:00 PM today.
close
During the American Revolution, printed material played a crucial role as a forum for public debate. Joseph Adelman argues that printers—artisans who mingled with the elite but labored in a manual trade—used their commercial and political connections to directly shape Revolutionary political ideology and mass mobilization. Moving through the era of the American Revolution to the war’s aftermath, this history details the development of the networks of printers and explains how they contributed to the process of creating first a revolution and then the new nation.

With support from the Guggenheim Foundation, Joyce Chaplin is compiling a database of manuscript notes about weather in early American almanacs, 1647-1820. Her talk focuses on how people recorded weather in numbers (including degrees Fahrenheit) and in words, ranging from “dull” to “elegant!” These notations are significant as records of a period of climate change, the Little Ice Age, also as records of how people made sense of and coped with that climatic disruption.
closeThe library closes at 3:45PM in preparation for an evening event.
close
MHS Fellows and Members are invited to the Society’s annual holiday party. Celebrate the season with an evening of holiday cheer and jovial camaraderie.
This event is open to Members and Fellows of the MHS
To reserve: Please register online at www.masshist.org/events.
This event is sold out: Space is limited
closeThe History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
close
From 1820 to 1920, Boston grew by leaps and bounds through an intensive (and often contentious) process of immigration and migration that ultimately created the modern metropolis. In this presentation and virtual exhibit, Professor Andrew Robichaud and students from Boston University will present more than twenty rare artifacts and documents from the archives of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Through letters, diaries, drawings, photographs, reform tracts, and memoirs, presenters will unearth the complex and nuanced dimensions of immigration and migration to Boston
close

This essay considers the life of an indigenous woman, known as “One-Eyed” Sarah, who provided full-time nursing care to poor communities in early nineteenth-century Providence, RI. The only historical sources that describe Sarah’s work never provide her last name or details beyond the description “Indian.” So who was she, and how do we tell her story? Using sometimes patchy sources of non-elite people, the author hopes to gain new insights into social welfare history and explore how ordinary women made the poor law function.
close
Archival collections held in local institutions can help historians uncover the untold stories of historic houses in Massachusetts. The library of the New Bedford Whaling Museum documents the homes of the great whaling families, while Harvard documents the Ward House and the American Antiquarian Society welcomes us into the Salisbury Mansion in Worcester. The Mary Baker Eddy library documents the many houses where she lived, and, of course, the Massachusetts Historical Society brings the Adams family and their houses to life.
closeThe Library and Exhibition Galleries close early at 3:30PM for a staff event.
closeThe History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
closeIn preparation for an afternoon event, the library closes at 3:00PM.
close
For 400 years, Africans and African Americans carved out a distinctive culture for themselves even as they sought equal rights in American society. This program will consider how African Americans struggled to gain equal access to political and social rights, all the while making the American experience their own.
This program is part four of a four program series titled Legacies of 1619. The series is a production of the Massachusetts Historical Society and is co-sponsored by the Museum of African American History and the Roxbury Community College.

During the American Revolution, printed material played a crucial role as a forum for public debate. Joseph Adelman argues that printers—artisans who mingled with the elite but labored in a manual trade—used their commercial and political connections to directly shape Revolutionary political ideology and mass mobilization. Moving through the era of the American Revolution to the war’s aftermath, this history details the development of the networks of printers and explains how they contributed to the process of creating first a revolution and then the new nation
close

Born in San Juan in 1931, Ana Livia Cordero was a trailblazing physician and activist-intellectual whose life illuminates the crucial role Puerto Ricans played in Cold War-era freedom struggles. Cordero worked as a physician, public health advocate, and radical organizer in New York, Puerto Rico, Cuba, Ghana, Egypt, and Nicaragua for over four decades. Using a new framework of feminist social medicine, this essay examines Cordero’s contributions to the field of social medicine, particularly maternal and children’s health.
closeThe History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
closeThe Society is CLOSED for Christmas.
close