Volunteer, the America’s Cup victor—of 1887

By Peter Drummey, Librarian

The extraordinary come-from-behind victory of Oracle Team USA in the recent America’s Cup competition calls to mind a time when Boston was the center of American yacht racing design and development.  Between 1885 and 1887, the local team of Charles Jackson Paine (owner) and Edward Burgess (designer), first as part of a syndicate and then twice on their own, defended the Cup in three successive campaigns.  The triumph of their center-board sloop, Volunteer, over the British challenger, Thistle, in September 1887, was the cause of an enormous victory celebration that took place, on October 7, 1887, 126 years ago , at Faneuil Hall in Boston.  While photographs of elegant Volunteer evoke a romantic, now long-lost age of sail, she was, in her own day, as innovative as the wing-sailed catamarans that vie for the Cup today.  Designed and built in great secrecy with steel frames and plating, Volunteer could carry ballast lower in her hull than her wooden-hulled predecessors.

Although 19th–century Boston was increasingly divided along ethnic and political lines, in 1887 the entire city came together in a joyous outpouring of patriotism at a monumental reception for their local heroes. So many ardent supporters attended the event—which included the reading of a poem written for the occasion, “Bostonia Victrix”— that the program was interrupted at several points “to allow the assembled multitude to greet the guests of the evening with a hand-shake.”  Newspaper reporters estimated that 7,000 people queued up for the opportunity to personally thank “enterprising” Charles J. Paine and equally “inventive” Edward Burgess, the “guardians of the Cup.”    

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This Week @ MHS

By Dan Hinchen

It is another busy week here at the MHS now that public program season is in full swing. On Friday, 4 October, our new exhibition opened to the public. Be sure to come in soon to see “The Cabinetmaker & the Carver: Boston Furniture from Private Collections,” on display six days per week, Monday-Saturday, 10:00AM – 4:00PM.

On Tuesday, 8 October, the Society presents its first Environmental History Seminar of the season. Starting at 5:15PM, John Lauritz Larson of Purdue University will present “From Wilderness Environments to Well-Ordered Plantations: The Gifts of God Perfected by Industry.” Comment provided by Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University. Be sure to RSVP for this program by emailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568. Subscribe to received advance copies of the seminar papers.

Then, on Wednesday, 9 October, come by at noon for “An Empire of Fakes: Counterfeit Goods in Eighteenth-Century America.” This project by Catherine Cangany of the University of Notre Dame investigates the market, commodities, producers, suppliers, vendors, and consumers of spurious merchandise in early Anglo-America. The work reclaims forgotten commercial actors and networks and downplays the primacy of mercantilism to emphasize individualism. This individualism may have been the more important commercial doctrine, given that the underground economy constituted half of all economic transactions in this period. Brown Bag Lunch talks are free and open to the public.

And on Wednesday evening, join us at 6:00PM for “Behind the Scenes at the Museum: The Curator’s View of ‘Boston Furniture from Private Collections.'” 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, the Katherine Lane Weems Senior Curator of American Decorative Arts and Sculpture, Art of the Americas, at the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. There will be a pre-talk reception at 5:30PM. Registration is required for this event. Tickets are $10 per person (no charge for Fellows and Members). Please call 617-646-0560 or register online.

On Thursday, 10 October, the MHS will sponsor another seminar, this time from the History of Women and Gender series. Beginning at 5:30PM and taking place at the Schlesinger Library at Harvard University, Kate Dossett of the University of Leeds presents “‘Qualified Women’: Women, Performance and Political Labor in the New Deal,” with comment provided by Susan Ware, General Editor of American National Biography. Seminars are free and open to the public; RSVP required. Subscribe to received advance copies of the seminar papers. To RSVP for this program, email seminars@masshist.org or phone 617-646-0568.

Finally, on Saturday, 12 October, visit the Society for The History and Collections of the MHS, a 90-minute docent-led tour that explores all of the public rooms in the building will touching on the art, architecture, history, and collections of the Society. 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.

 

 

 

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Chinese Hanzi Characters in 1801

By Andrea Cronin, Reader Services

 

On 30 July 1801 the snow Pacific Trader bound for Canton floundered in the Pacific Ocean when the vessel took on water in the midst of a violent two-day gale. The winds tore the sails and mangled the rigging so terribly that the ship and its small crew limped into safe harbor at Macao on 23 August 1801. Proprietors William and Sullivan Dorr in Canton received more than ten letters from Captain Samuel Edes aboard the Pacific Trade in the subsequent month while the ship sheltered and was repaired in Macao. These letters are contained in the Samuel Barrett Edes papers held at the MHS.

On 27 September 1801 Captain Edes writes to inform the Dorrs of the progress of ship repairs and the condition of the cargo. However, it is the verso page of the letter that truly captures my imagination. The verso functioned as the envelope, containing the address information of the intended recipient, Sullivan Dorr. Far more interesting than the address is the beautiful example of Chinese Hanzi characters composed on the verso.

I imagine that the Hanzi message reveals directions due to its location close to the address, just near the seal. However, a larger question looms in my mind. Who wrote this inscription? The small crew of the Pacific Trader hailed from Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Ireland, St. Croix, Guadeloupe, and Bengal according to a crew list in the Samuel Barrett Edes papers. None of these men were native to China or surrounding countries that utilized Hanzi script. Although some crewmen may have learned the spoken language, the beautiful and careful script of the Hanzi suggests to me that a native writer composed the message.

Are you familiar with 19th century Chinese Hanzi script? Can you read this inscription? We would love to hear from you!

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John Adams and the Bill of Rights

By Amanda A. Mathews, Adams Papers

On this day in 1789, President George Washington wrote a short letter to each state’s governor, enclosing a copy of twelve proposed amendments to the new United States Constitution for consideration, which Congress had passed on September 25 with the signatures of the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, Vice President John Adams. Of the twelve, ten received the necessary ratification and collectively became known as the Bill of Rights.

These amendments corresponded with many of the changes for which John Adams had expressed a desire when he first read the proposed Constitution. “A Declaration of Rights I wish to see with all my Heart,” he confided in early 1788, “though I am sensible of the Difficulty of framing one, in which all the States can agree.— a more compleat Seperation of the Executive from the Legislative too, would be more Safe for all. The Press, Conscience & Juries I wish better Secured.— But is it not better to accept this Plan and amend it hereafter?”

Adams certainly was “sensible of the Difficulty” of writing a constitution. A decade earlier, in the fall of 1779, he toiled over his draft of the Massachusetts constitution, drawing upon the other states’ constitutions as well as his own extensive study and consideration of law and government. Not only did he include protections for the press, religious belief, and juries, but reflecting the importance the Declaration of Rights held for Adams, he had placed it ahead of the frame of government itself.

While the proposed amendments did not repair all the defects that Adams perceived in the federal Constitution (he particularly opposed the limited presidential veto and the need for Senate approval of nominations), he understood that the Constitutional Convention’s achievements could not be diminished, even if the final product remained flawed. “A result of accommodation cannot be supposed to reach the ideas of perfection of any one,” Adams admitted in the conclusion of his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, “but the conception of such an idea, and the deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a plan, is, without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.” The new Bill of Rights moved the nation another step toward a “more perfect union.”

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This Week @ MHS

By Dan Hinchen

It is a busy week here at the Society with a variety of public programs for your enjoyment, so clear your calendar and check out ours!

Starting the week off on Tuesday, 1 October, is the first event of the season from our Early American History Seminar series. Join us as Karin A. Wulf of William and Mary College presents a “Town Hall Meeting with the New Director of the Omohundro Institute of Early American History and Culture.” This town hall meeting will provide an opportunity to discuss the present and future of the OIEAHC. Through conferences, fellowships, and publications including the William and Mary Quarterly, the institute fosters scholarship on colonial and early national American history as well as the Atlantic world. Wulf began her tenure on 1 July. Be sure to RSVP for this program by e-mailing seminars@masshist.org or phoning 617-646-0568. Program begins at 5:15PM.

On Wednesday, 2 October, come in at noon for a Brown Bag Lunch talk. This week, Marisa Benoit of Oxford University presents “New England Teares, for Old England’s Feares: Comparing Attitudes Toward Infertility in Early Modern England and Colonial New England.” Through analysis of a wide variety of sources from 1650 to 1750, this comparative study of attitudes toward infertility in colonial New England and early modern England examines 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 writings from both societies. Analysis of these representations of infertility provides a different angle through which to view the links between “Old” and New England, a relationship often described through reproductive language, while highlighting the connections between the sources themselves. The topic 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. This event if free and open to the public. Pack a lunch and come on by!

Thursday, 3 October, will see the preliminary unveiling of the Society’s newest exhibition. MHS Fellows and Members are invited to a special preview and reception for “The Cabinetmaker & the Carver,” beginning at 6:00PM. This exhibit 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 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.Tickets are $25 (no charge for MHS Fund Giving Circle members) and RSVP is required. To register by phone or e-mail, call 617-646-0552 or e-mail bwillett@masshist.org.

This exhibit opens to the public on Friday, 4 October, and will be on display Monday through Saturday, 10:00AM to 4:00PM, until 17 January 2014. The furniture pieces are supplemented with documents, portraits, and other material from the Society’s collections that help place them in historical context.

Coinciding with the public opening of the exhibition, also on Friday, 4 October, is “New Thoughts on Old Things: Four centuries of Furnishing the Northeast.” This day-long symposium, co-sponsored by the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, the Colonial Society of Massachusetts, and the MHS, is devoted to new scholarly research on the design, production, and circulation of furnishings in New England. The program will feature keynote speaker Glenn Adamson, Head of Research at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London, along with a select group of emerging scholars. Taking place at the Museum of Fine Arts and beginning at 10:00AM, the symposium is free with admission to the museum. Advanced ticketing is recommended. For information, please contact Lauren Spengler at lspengler@mfa.org.

The Society’s exhibition and the public symposium are presented as part of Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture, a collaborative project of the MHS and ten other institutions that features exhibitions, lectures, demonstrations, and publications to celebrate the Bay State’s legacy of furniture-making. Visit fourcenturies.org to learn more.

Finally, on Saturday, 6 October, the MHS, in collaboration with the National Archives at Boston and Massachusetts History Day, will present “Painless: A Survival Guide to the ‘Dreaded’ History Project.” This free workshop for teachers, students, librarians, and archivists explores how to approach primary source research in special libraries and archives through a range of historical documents including letters, diaries, songs, petitions, and government records. The workshop will take place at the National Archives in Waltham and begins at 9:00AM. For more information, or to register, please contact Kathleen Barker at the Massachusetts Historical Society: eduation@masshist.org or 617-646-0557.

 

Attention researchers: The library of the MHS will close at 3:30PM on Thursday, 3 October.

 

 

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