By Dan Hinchen
There are no events on the calendar this week at the Society. Please note that the library is closed on Friday, 3 July, though the exhibition galleries will remain open, 10:00AM-4:00PM. The MHS is closed on Saturday, 4 July. Normal hours resume on Monday, 6 July.
Happy Independence Day!
By Wesley Fiorentino, Reader Services
Fielding reference questions at the MHS often means I come across fascinating material that I might not have the opportunity to discover for myself. One particular inquiry introduced me to Moses Grandy, an African-American born into slavery in about 1786 whose experiences during and after his bondage have fortunately been recorded for posterity. The Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy: formerly a slave in the United States of America is a disturbing but truthful account of one man’s suffering under forced servitude. Grandy’s narrative provides a firsthand insight into the lives of the men and women who lived in captivity.
The story of Grandy’s life, written down by noted abolitionist George Thompson and first published in 1843, became popular with the abolitionist movement both in the United States and abroad. Grandy’s story, like a number of other slave narratives including those of Frederick Douglass and Solomon Northrup, served to illustrate for a wide audience the cruelties of slavery and the outrages endured by those kept in bondage. Stories of this kind helped to spread the message of abolitionism far and wide in the decades prior to the American Civil War.
Like many enslaved men and women, Grandy witnesses the break-up of his family when his siblings and father are sold away. He recounts how his mother at times would hide some of her children to prevent them from being sold, but several of his brothers and sisters would be sold away never to see him again. Grandy later witnesses the sale of his first wife. When he protests her sale to the man who has purchased her, he is threatened at gunpoint and forced to watch her go. As she is taken away, Grandy beseeches her new master to let him see her one last time. “I asked for leave to shake hands with her, which he refused, but said I might stand at a distance and talk with her. My heart was so full, that I could say very little.” In addition to this heart-wrenching instance, Grandy describes in detail the atrocities endured by his fellow enslaved Americans, including beatings and malnourishment. Grandy himself states that he was often half-starved for lack of proper meals.
Grandy’s account also offers detail into some of the common practices of slaveholders and into the variety of responsibilities with which an enslaved individual may have been entrusted. The narrative is an important historical source for studying the practice of “hiring out” slaves to work temporarily for different masters. Moses is hired out by his master James Grandy at the age of ten. He describes in detail some of the horrific incidents he experienced in the employ of various individuals, ranging from brutal beatings to being fed so little that he was forced to eat ground cornhusks. One particular master who hires Grandy multiple times is described as a great gambler who would keep Grandy up for several nights in a row without sleep to wait on his gambling table. In one case, Grandy writes that he “was standing in the corner of the room, nodding for want of sleep, when he took up the shovel, and beat me with it: he dislocated my shoulder, and sprained my wrist, and broke the shovel over me.” A number of frightful incidents like this are described or referred to in the narrative, sometimes with Grandy as the victim and other times with him as a witness to similar instances of brutality.
However, Grandy also provides a valuable account of many of the tasks he performed at one time or another. Grandy’s narrative provides a unique example of how enslaved men and women often became highly skilled laborers and artisans. Grandy himself is managing ferry crossings at Sawyer’s Ferry in Camden, North Carolina by the age of fifteen. He is eventually hired as a freightboat captain for several boats which navigate and transport goods on the Great Dismal Swamp Canal and the Pasquatonk River. Grandy explains that he “took some boats on shares…I gave [the owner] one-half of all I received for freight: out of the other half, I had to victual and man the boats, and all over that expense was my own profit.”
Grandy works a wide variety of other jobs as well, including the cutting of timber for the canal and working as a field hand. Through these different tasks, Grandy is able to save up enough of his earnings to purchase his freedom. However, he twice gives the money for his freedom to his respective masters and twice they keep his money and refuse to free him. Ironically, it is one of the most brutal overseers described in his narrative who apparently expresses outrage over Grandy’s treatment and who connects him with a man who is willing to buy Grandy and help him earn his freedom.
The Narrative of the Life of Moses Grandy can be read in its first American edition, published in Boston by Oliver Johnson in 1844, here in the MHS reading room. For those researchers who are unable to come to the MHS in person, Grandy’s narrative can be read through Project Gutenberg, as well as through the Internet Archive.
By Hope Hancock, Hope College
One year ago, I embarked on my first major archival research project outside of the comfort of Hope College in Holland, Michigan, where I am an undergraduate student studying English literature, communication, and music. The first stop on my journey was at the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) to connect with my research advisor, Professor Natalie Dykstra, and an MHS archivist, Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, who is a Hope alumna.
My research project, titled “Voices of the Exhibition,” is a series of four podcasts intended to bring the stories of different people who visited the Centennial Exhibition to life. The Centennial Exhibition of 1876 was a world’s fair held in Philadelphia to commemorate the 100-year anniversary of the signing of the Declaration of Independence and was attended by 10 million people from around the globe, making it the highest attended world’s fair at that time.
Many diaries and letters of Exhibition-goers have been catalogued at the MHS and other Boston archives. In searching through these archives, I found many interesting sources, but my favorite is the diary of Frank Dudley Chase, which currently resides in the collections at the MHS.
Frank Dudley Chase was 16 years old when he visited the Exhibition, and in elegant penmanship he dutifully recorded everything he encountered while at the fair. From the cost of his train ticket to elaborate descriptions of the exhibits, Chase left little about his journey out of his diary.
Chase was a typical teenage boy who loved being outdoors and did not always like to do his chores. He travelled from Dedham, Massachusetts to Philadelphia for the Exhibition and was at the Exhibition for five days from October 23 to October 28. From descriptions of ammunition to meticulously painted foreign vases, Chase’s diary is a vivid record that provides a glimpse of what exhibits and oddities attracted youthful Exhibition visitors.
On Tuesday, October 24, Chase wrote:
Had a heavy rain last night in the night. Pleasant. Visited Main building. First went through U.S. dept. Near So. Entrance of building were a number of large fancy mirrors. Among these was a couple one concave; the other convex one showing an object unnaturally broad; the other unnaturally slim … Also saw an immense crystal of alum, weighing 9 tons, a 365 bladed pocket knife, a table knife 9 ft 6 in costing $1500 … the silk exhibit showing the eggs, butterflies, cocoons and raw silks … In the Brazilian department saw precious stones among them white topaz, amethyst and agate; collections of beetles and butterflies; a leather exhibit and a porcupine fish…
He and the rest of his group were undoubtedly eager to take in every facet of the Exhibition. However, his diary provides more than a meticulous record of daily weather and exhibits: it is a window into Chase’s experience and the experiences of other teenagers who visited the Exhibition.
The Centennial Exhibition was a fair for the people. It was designed to bring together Americans to celebrate independence and express their patriotism. Furthermore, it provided an education tool that introduced Americans, like Chase, to cultures, inventions, and ideas that were brand new to them.
Before researching at the MHS, I was already able to recite many facts about the Exhibition. I would not call myself an expert in every detail, but I knew a lot. However, it was not until I read Chase’s diary that I fully understood the impact of the Exhibition on the American people. On December 31, two months after visiting Philadelphia, Chase said it best when he wrote: “One great event distinguishes this year in my life, and that is my journey to the Centennial where I learnt more than I should have in many years of quiet life.”
As I look back on the past year, I am still so thankful for the experience I had at the MHS. Not only did I find wonderful information in Chase’s diary, but I read the diary of George W. Ely, a young man who visited the fair, official addresses to the Centennial committee, and letters from prominent Boston citizens, such as members of the Saltonstall family and their friends.
As an undergraduate student, I never thought that I would have the opportunity to do research at such a prestigious institution. I cannot express enough the importance of the MHS to my education and professional development.
Listen to a podcast that features Chase’s diary, titled “Children at the Exhibition.” It is the second podcast in the four-podcast series, all of which can be found on my website at hopehancock94.wordpress.com.
By Amanda Mathews Norton, Adams Papers
Fathers have a tremendous impact on the lives of their children; and this is quite evident in the case of the Adams family. While John Adams and John Quincy Adams clearly and significantly influenced their children, I want to highlight the relationship of Louisa Catherine Adams with her father, Joshua Johnson. This relationship not only shaped Louisa’s upbringing, but indeed colored her entire life, and her relationship with the Adamses.
Joshua had moved to London before the Revolutionary War to forward his business interests, and during the 1790s served as the U.S. consul at London. Marrying an English woman, and raising his children in France and England, led some to question his patriotism and Louisa’s need to protect and defend her father’s honor and reputation is evident throughout her writings. This need not only grew out of Joshua Johnson’s long foreign residence but more especially because of her father’s financial circumstances at the period when she married John Quincy Adams. Just as she and John Quincy were married, her father’s business failed. Unable to provide the dowry he had promised and in debt, Joshua Johnson quickly took his family from London back to the United States to attempt to recover his losses. Louisa entered her marriage with the anxiety and shame that her husband and others would think that she and her father had conned John Quincy into marrying her with false promises; it was a sensitivity that never went away.
But for Louisa, her father had been entirely blameless, and this belief she also carried throughout her life. Fortune was unkind. His partners had cheated him. In her Autobiography, “Adventures of a Nobody,” Louisa reminisced:
The qualities of the heart and of the mind, excited a higher aim; and a romantic idea of excellence, the model of which seemed practically to exist before my eyes, in the hourly exhibition of every virtue in my almost idolized Father; had produced an almost mad ambition to be like him; and though fortune has blasted his fair fame; and evil report has assailed his reputation; still while I live I will do honour to his name, and speak of his merit with the honoured love and respect which it deserved— As long as he lived to protect them, his Children were virtuous and happy—amidst poverty and persecution.
Like many adults in times of sorrow or hardship, even at the age of 64, in her Diary in July 1839, she looked back with fondness and nostalgia for her childhood:
My Father! my Dear my honoured my revered Father! In the hour of sickness, of sorrow, of disappointment; memory carries me back to the days of my youth; when on the slightest complaint, I met thy sympathising tenderness, anxious solicitude, and affectionate indulgence to suffering and weakness; and the soothing encouragement which braced the nerves to fortitude, and the spirit to courage! Where in this world is thy likeness to be found! Thou wert not great, but thou wert good!!!
As we celebrate Fathers’ Day, this is yet another reminder that the emotions and relationships, particularly those of parent and child, remain familiar across the centuries.
By Dan Hinchen
It is another quiet week at the MHS with only two items on the calendar. First up, on Wednesday, 24 June, is the MHS Fellows Annual Meeting & Reception. MHS Fellows are invited to the Society’s annual business meeting and reception. The meeting begins at 5:00PM and registration is required at no cost. Plesae call 617-646-0572 with any questions. This event is open only to MHS Fellows.
And on Saturday, 27 June, if you find yourself strolling about the city and enjoying the new summer, why not stop by for a free tour? The History and Collections of the MHS is a free, docent-led, 90-minute tour that exposes visitors to all of the public spaces at the Society, while providing information about the art and architecture, history, and collections here. The tour is open to the public. Larger parties (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley in advance at abentley@masshist.org or 617-646-0508.
By Susan Martin, Collection Services
The Everett-Boyle papers fill only half of a narrow box here at the MHS, but they include a lot of terrific material from these two interrelated families. One of the family members represented in the collection is Samuel Williams Everett (1820-1862), who served during the Civil War as a surgeon in the Illinois Infantry and later as brigade surgeon. (The Everett family is originally from Boston, which is why their papers happen to be here.)
Unfortunately, we don’t have any of Everett’s war-time correspondence—at least not intact. Some letter fragments obviously date from that time, but the only complete letters by him were written between 1835 and 1851. What the collection does contain, however, are many of his fantastic drawings, beginning when he was a teenager and continuing into the war years. Here are some of my favorites:
“Camp at Lamine river, near Otterville.”
“View up the Ohio at Cairo.”
“Fort Prentiss. Cairo.”
“Military Ball.”
It’s not just Everett’s artwork that makes his letters so entertaining. He was also a gifted storyteller. Even when narrating the mundane happenings of his life, he elaborated and exaggerated for comedic effect. In one letter from early 1851, he wrote about how his coat and some surgical instruments were stolen from his room, and the whole thing reads like a whodunit, complete with a whimsical “royal we”: “On that evil day the sun shone brightly, & we were tempted out to our dinner without a coat, which garment was left sweetly slumbering with the Case of Instruments in its pocket.” The story is illustrated in several panels, ending with an image of two empty nooses captioned: “View of the gallows, upon which the thieves are yet unhung.”
Everett’s description of his brother’s wedding is hilarious:
The parson retreated to avoid being knocked over in the rush of congratulation and kissing. The latter part, it was previously agreed, was to have been omitted at the particular request of the mother, the bride and the bridesmaids; but as in several rehearsals of the performance the rule had been relaxed, so it was at the ceremony and was extended to every young lady present; and repeated upon the discovery that one had been omitted.
(It was either at this wedding or shortly before that he met the bride’s cousin, his future wife, Mary Smith. He described her this way: “In spite of her common name, an uncommonly pretty girl.”)
In another letter, Everett related a humorous—though frightening—incident involving a runaway carriage, when he lost control of his horse’s reins as it raced down the street and sent bystanders scurrying for cover: “Sounds of ‘woe’ were raised from all quarters & sundry individuals appeared willing to sacrifice their lives in trying to stop the runaway, but they only stopped themselves upon re-considering the question.”
Other creative touches make his letters a real pleasure to read. When writing to his family, he addressed different paragraphs to different family members with headings like: “The Misses E.” “Anybody.” “Mrs. E.” “Ditto.” Along the top of one letter, he wrote a note that actually made me laugh out loud: “Nothing worth stopping to read in the street.”
Everett also had a talent for rebuses. Anyone care to take a stab at solving either of these in the comments section below? (Hint: the second snippet is from a published work not original to Everett.)
Everett was shot and killed at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee on 6 Apr. 1862, not even one year into his military service. Multiple sources, including The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, identify him as the first Union medical officer killed in action. His “talent for drawing” was noted in his obituary in the 1864 Transactions of the American Medical Association (pp.212-4).
By Dan Hinchen
As our season of programs winds down, there is but a single lonely item on the calendar this week. Join us on Saturday, 20 June, for the History and Collections of the MHS. This free tour, open to the poublic, is led by a docent and lasts about 90 minutes. Visitors will tour the public spaces at the Society while learning about the art, architecture, history, and collections held here. No need for reservations for individuals and small groups. However, large parties (8 or more) should contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley in advance at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
And do not forget to come in and view our current exhibition. Open to the public and free of charge, “God Save the People!: From the Stamp Act to Bunker Hill” features documents, images, art, and artifacts from the Society’s holdings to illustrate this turbulent time in the city’s (and the nation’s) history. The exhibit is open Monday-Saturday, 10:00AM-4:00PM.
By Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Reader Services
Eighteen months ago, I sat down for lunch with former MHS research fellow Dr. Natalie Dykstra (Hope College), author of Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life (Houghton Mifflin, 2012). Over the meal, Natalie mentioned that she had been offered the opportunity to develop a faculty-student collaborative research program here in Boston for the Great Lakes Colleges Association (GLCA). From this seed of an idea, over the past year and a half, we have grown the GLCA Boston Summer Seminar, hosted here at the MHS this June.
Between June 1-18 we have three research teams in residence here in Boston, conducting research at five partner institutions: the MHS, the Center for the History of Medicine at Countway Library, Houghton Library, Northeastern University Archives & Special Collections, and Schlesinger Library. We are also offering behind-the-scenes archives tours and evening seminars with guest speakers who share their own experiences working with a wide range of archival materials. You can follow the Seminar in progress @GLCABOSTON.
Over the past five years, the MHS library has seen a dramatic increase in the number of undergraduate students who come through our doors or contact us remotely looking for sources to complete projects in various disciplines from architecture to English to history and political science. As a historian and librarian, I am excited to both observe and support these young researchers as they learn to navigate special collections material.
Some of these students will go on to careers in academic and public history or library science; hopefully all of them will develop a better appreciation for how historical sources can contribute to contemporary understanding. The six students participating in this inaugural Boston Summer Seminar are engaged in original, thoughtful research and I look forward to seeing where their projects take them!
By Dan Hinchen
Once again, we are doubling-up on the Brown Bag lunch talks this week. We also have a public program and a free tour on the slate.
First, on Monday, 8 June, stop by at noon for “Stray Threads: How the Factory System Unravelled Terms in Women’s Labor in the Early Industrial Era.” This talk is given by short-term research fellow Meghan Wadle of Southern Methodist University. Brown bag talks are free and open to the public.
And on Wednesday, 10 June, pack another lunch and come in for “Wilderness and the Continental Soldiers’ Mind: Eighteenth-Century Ideas About the Environment of Eastern Massachusetts, 1775.” This talk by Daniel Soucier, University of Maine, is part of a larger doctoral dissertation project and it focuses on Benedict Arnold’s invasion of Canada in 1775.
Also on Wednesday, beginning at 6:00PM, is a reception for Boston Historical Societies. The MHS is pleased to invite representatives of local historical organizations for a chance to mingle and inform their neighbors about recent accomplishments and current projects. RSVP required at no cost.
Finally, on Saturday, 13 June, come in for the History and Collections of the MHS. This docent-led, 90-minute tour exposes guests to all of the public spaces in the Society’s home on Boylston Street. The tour is free and open to the public. Parties of 8 or more should contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley in advance at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
By Elaine Heavey, Reader Services
Each year the MHS grants a number of research fellowships to scholars from around the country. For more information about the different fellowship types, click the headings below.
Our various fellowship programs bring a wide variety of researchers working on a full range of topics into the MHS library. If any of the research topics are particularly interesting to you, keep an eye on our events calendar over the course of the upcoming year, as all research fellows present their research at brown-bag lunch programs as part of their commitment to the MHS.
A hearty congratulations to all of the fellowship recipients. We look forward to seeing you all in the MHS library in the upcoming year.
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MHS-NEH Long-term Research Fellowships (thanks to the support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent agency of the U.S. government):
Christine Desan
Harvard Law School
“Designing Money in Early America: Experiments in Political Economy (1680-1775)”
Wendy Roberts
SUNY Albany
“Redeeming Verse: The Poetics of Revivalism”
Suzanne and Caleb Loring Research Fellowship On the Civil War, Its Origins, and Consequences (with the Boston Athenaeum):
Robert Mann
“The Contact of Human Souls”
Kevin Waite
University of Pennsylvania
“The Slave South in the Far West: California, the Pacific, and Proslavery Visions of Empire”
MHS Short-Term Research Fellowships:
African-American Studies Fellow
Ben Davidson
New York University
“Freedom’s Generation: Coming of Age in the Era of Emancipation”
Andrew Oliver Fellow
Joseph Lasala
Robert H. Smith International Center for Jefferson Studies
“Fiske Kimball’s Thomas Jefferson Architect”
Andrew W. Mellon Fellows
Rebecca Brannon
James Madison University
“Did the Founding Fathers Live Too Long?”
Christina Carrick
Boston University
“Among Strangers in a Distant Climate: Loyalist Exiles Define Empire and Nation, 1775-1815”
Travis Jaquess
University of Mississippi
“Founding Daddies: Republican Fatherhood and the American Revolution and Early Republic, 1763-1814”
Benjamin Kochan
Boston University
“Looking East and Thinking Below the Surface: Ecology and Geopolitics in the Northwest Atlantic Fisheries, 1945-2006”
Gregory Michna
West Virginia University
“Facing Outward and Inward: Native American Missionary Communities in New England, 1630-1763”
Scott Shubitz
Florida State University
“Emancipating the American Spirit: Reconstruction and Renaissance in New England, 1863-1877”
Sueanna Smith
University of South Carolina
“African Americans and the Cultural Work of Freemasonry: From Revolution through Reconstruction”
Jordan Taylor
Indiana University-Bloomington
“English Channels: Globalization and Revolution in the Anglophone Atlantic, 1789-1804”
Peter Walker
Columbia University
“The Church Militant: The American Émigré Clergy and the Making of the British Counterrevolution, 1763-92”
Benjamin F. Stevens Fellow
Sarah Templier
Johns Hopkins University
“Between Merchants, Shopkeepers, Tailors, and Thieves: Circulating and Consuming Clothes, Textiles, and Fashion in French and British North America, 1730-1774”
Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellows
Daina Ramey Berry
University of Texas at Austin
“Ghost Values of the Domestic Cadaver Slave Trade”
Amy Hughes
Brooklyn College – CUNY
“An Actor’s Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in Nineteenth-Century America”
Margaret Newell
Ohio State University
“Miles to Freedom: William and Ellen Craft and the Struggle for Black Rights in Nineteenth-Century America and England”
Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellow
Karen Weyler
University of North Carolina – Greensboro
“Urban Printscapes: One Hundred Years of Print in the City”
Marc Friedlaender Fellow
Mary Hale
University of Illinois – Chicago
“Fictions of Mugwumpery: The Problem of Representation in the Gilded Age”
Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellow
Katlyn Carter
Princeton University
“Practicing Representative Politics in the Revolutionary Atlantic World: Secrecy, Accountability, and the Making of Modern Democracy”
Ruth R. & Alyson R. Miller Fellows
Alisa Wade Harrison
CUNY Graduate Center
“An Alliance of Ladies: Power, Public Affairs, and Gendered Constructions of the Upper Class in Early National New York City”
Julia James
Syracuse University
“Women in the Woods: War, Gender, and Community in the Native Northeast”
W. B. H. Dowse Fellows
Katie Moore
Boston University
“‘a just and honest valuation’: Money and Value in Colonial America, 1690-1750”
Joanne Jahnke Wegner
University of Minnesota
“Captive Economies: Commodified Bodies in Colonial New England, 1630-1763”
New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) Awards (with 21 other institutions; the * indicates that part of fellowship will be completed at the MHS):
Jenny Barker-Devine
Illinois College
“American Athena: Constructing Victorian Womanhood on the Midwestern Frontier”
*Cynthia Bouton
Texas A&M
“Subsistence, Society, Commerce, and Culture in the Atlantic World in the Age of Revolution (1770s-1820s)”
*Jennifer Chuong
Harvard University
The Chargeable Surface: Investment, Interval, and Yield in Early America
Bradley Dixon
University of Texas at Austin
“Republic of Indians: Indigenous Vassals, Subjects, and Citizens in Early America”
*Mehmet Dogan
Istanbul Teknik Universitesi
“From New England into New Lands: The Journey of American Missionaries to the Middle East”
*Andrew Edwards
Princeton University
“Money and the American Revolution”
Michele Fazio
UNC at Pembroke
“The Case of Sacco and Vanzetti and the Italian American Family: Immigrant Women’s Roles Redefined”
Mary Freeman
Columbia University
“Letter Writing and Politics in the Campaign Against Slavery in the United States, 1830-1870“
Jeffrey Gonda
Syracuse University
“No Crystal Stair: Black Women and Civil Rights Law in Postwar America”
Cynthia Greenlee
Duke University
“The Fruits of Our Race: African-Americans and the Politics of Abortion, 1860-1975”
Amy Hughes
Brooklyn College – CUNY
“An Actor’s Tale: Theater, Culture, and Everyday Life in Nineteenth-Century America”
*Kathryn Lasdow
Columbia College
“Spirit of Improvement: Construction, Conflict, and Community in Early National Port Cities”
Rebecca Rosen
Princeton University
“Making the Body Speak: Anatomy, Autopsy, and Testimony in Early America, 1639-1790”
Elizabeth Sharrow
University of Massachusetts
“Forty Years ‘On the Basis of Sex’: Title IX, the ‘Female Athlete,’ and the Political Construction of Sex and Gender
Amy Sopcak-Joseph |
University of Connecticut
“The Lives and Times of Godey’s Lady’s Book, 1830-1877”
David Thomas
“Temple University
The Anxious Atlantic: Revolution, Murder, and a “Monster of a Man” in the Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World.”
*Emily Torbert
University of Delaware
“Going Places: The Material and Imagined Geographies of Prints in the Atlantic World, 1770-1840”
*Michael Zakim
Tel Aviv University
“Inventing Industrial America at the Crystal Palace”