The Adams Papers Digital Edition Turns Ten!

By Amanda M. Norton, Adams Papers

On July 1, 2008, the Massachusetts Historical Society launched the Founding Families Digital Editions, the home of the Adams Papers Digital Edition. This resource converted 45 years’ worth of published material, comprising 32 volumes and three generations of Adamses, and made them more accessible than ever with keyword searching, a cumulative index, and hyperlinked cross references on a freely available website. This massive multi-department undertaking took three years, financial support from the National Endowment for the Humanities and Harvard University Press, as well as technical support from Rotunda, the electronic imprint of the University of Virginia Press. Using a defined subset of the Text Encoding Initiative, an XML-based tagging language designed for the digital markup of various kinds of texts in the humanities, the website retains the editorial standards of the original letterpress volumes, while making the presentation more flexible for the digital environment. As originally conceived, this Founding Families project was to house both the Adams Papers and the seven volumes of the Winthrop Family Papers; however, over time, the projects were separated and the Founding Families page was renamed to simply the Adams Papers Digital Edition.

Over the last ten years, the website has only increased in its value to scholars and the public as thirteen more volumes have been made available, additional search and browse features were added, and displays were updated.

This summer we are pleased to announce that to celebrate its tenth anniversary, the Adams Papers Digital Edition has undergone a complete redesign. The all new web platform enhances not only its readability but also its usability, with more tailored search options, the ability to save your most recent search, and a better mobile experience. Last, but certainly not least, the relaunched website benefits from the addition of a new volume, Papers of John Adams, Volume 17. This volume includes a momentous occasion for both the Adamses and the nation—John Adams greeting King George III as the first minister from the newly independent United States. John’s detailed account of this dramatic meeting, written in code to the secretary of foreign affairs, John Jay, is just one highlight from a volume that also includes the first substantial correspondence between Adams and Thomas Jefferson and the beginnings of treaty negotiations with the Barbary States of North Africa.

While some of the Adams Papers volumes are also available on both the National Archives’ Founders Online and Rotunda’s Founding Era sites, only the Adams Papers Digital Edition website includes all of the historical documents and editorial content from all of the digitized volumes in one place; and the Adams Papers Editorial Project with the Massachusetts Historical Society is committed to continuing to expand its digital offerings. Visit our new site at www.masshist.org/publications/adams-papers.

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Massachusetts Students at National History Day

By Kate Melchior, Education

On June 10th, 64 middle and high school students from 25 different Massachusetts schools set out to the University of Maryland, College Park for the 2018 NHD National Contest. There they joined a group of over 3,000 students representing all fifty United States, Washington, D.C., Guam, American Samoa, Puerto Rico, and international schools in China, Korea, and South Asia.  Once at College Park, they spent the week presenting the history projects they’ve worked on all year, traded state pins and stories with students from around the world, and shared in the incredible experience that is National History Day.

Students bring pins from their state to National History Day, which they trade during the week. The goal is to collect every state and territory!


The annual National History Day contest serves as the final stage for a series of smaller NHD contests at the local and state/affiliate levels. There, students who have spent the year working on primary source-based research papers, exhibits, performances, documentaries, and websites and have made it through local, regional, and state contests compete against hundreds of other national and international projects. Massachusetts prize-winning projects explored this year’s theme of “Conflict and Compromise” through topics and historical figures including Deborah Sampson, the Treaty of Portsmouth, The Philippine-American War, Desmond Doss, and the Civilian Public Service.

Students visited the Lincoln Memorial during their D. C. Monuments Tour.


During their four day stay in College Park, students experienced life on a college campus, staying in dorms and eating in the school dining halls with students from around the world.  They viewed the exhibits and performances of other students and explained their own topics of research to new friends.  They also participated in a variety of activities with their Massachusetts cohort, including a monument tour of D.C., a trip to the National Zoo, and a Red Sox-Orioles baseball game at Camden Yards.  Finally, on the last day they participated in a massive parade and award ceremony in the UMD Stadium.

The MA students are wearing blue t-shirts with our tricorn hat logo on them.

 

The Massachusetts Historical Society is incredibly proud to recognize the following winners from the 2018 National Competition:

 

First Place – Senior Group Website

Tucker Apgar, Lily Ting, Sean Li

“‘By Winter We Will Know Everything’: The Prague Spring and Conflict over Control”

 Hamilton-Wenham Regional High School, Wenham MA

 

Outstanding Junior Entry from Massachusetts – Junior Paper

Heather Anderson

“The Penny War: How Children Fought to Compromise with Millionaires”

Hanscom Middle School, Lincoln MA

 

Outstanding Senior Entry from Massachusetts – Senior Group Website

Zijian Niu, Robert Sucholeiki

“The Geneva Accords: The Compromise That Sparked the Vietnam War”

Winchester High School, Winchester MA

 

We’d also like to extend a special shout out to William Sutton of Hingham High School for his selection as the Legacy Award nominee for Massachusetts, and to Massachusetts students who made it into the top ten finalists at NHD 2018: Angela McKenzie (Stoneham HS), Ben Franco and Massimo Mitchell (Applewild School), Nora Sullivan Horner (Hamilton Wenham HS), Arda Cataltepe (Weston HS), Robert Sucholeiki and Zijian Niu (Winchester HS), and Heather Anderson (Hanscom MS). Congratulations to all of our student historians!

If you are interested in learning more about NHD or joining us as a teacher, student, or judge for Massachusetts History Day 2018, please visit our website at www.masshistoryday.com.   


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This Week @ MHS

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 – Monday, 25 June, 12:00PM : Jean Franzino of Beloit College presents this week’s first Brown Bag talk, titled “Dis-Union: Disability in the U. S. Civil War.” Franzino’s project examines the emerging legal category of “disabled” American at the end of the nineteenth century in relation to the construction of disability in Civil War literature, broadly conceived. In texts ranging from hospital newsppaer poetry to mendicant narratives sold for veterans’ financial support, representations of Civil War injury engaged shifting understandings of disability: from individual condition to evolving social class.

This talk is free and open to the public. Pack a lunch and come on in!

– Tuesday, 26 June, 6:00PM : Stephen Bush of Brown University is on-hand to discuss his new book, William James on Democratic individuality. William James advocated a philosophy of democracy and pluralism that emphasizes individual and collective responsibility for our social arrangements, our morality, and our religion. In James’s view, democracy resides first and foremost not in governmental institutions but rather in the characteristics of individuals and in qualities of mind and conduct. It is a philosophy for social change, counseling action and hope despite the manifold challenges facing democratic politics, and these issues still resonate strongly today. Stephen Bush explores how these themes connect to James’s philosophy of religion, his moral thought, his epistemology, his psychology, and his metaphysics.

This talk is open to the public, registration required with fee of $10 (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).

– Wednesday, 27 June, 12:00PM : Judith Harford of University College Dublin leads the second Brown Bag talk of the week, and it is called “The Gendering of Diaspora: Irish American Women Teachers and the Rise of the Irish American Elites, 1880-1920.” This talk examines the education, professional training and wider public activism of first-generation Irish American women teachers during the peak of Irish emigration to the United States. 

This talk is free and open to the public.

– Friday, 29 June, 2:00PM : Guest curator and American furniture specialist Clark Pearce leads visitors through the current exhibition with this Gallery Talk: Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End, identifying highlights while giving deeper context to the life and work of two extraordinary Massachusetts craftsmen, Isaac Vose and Thomas Seymour.

This event is free and open to the public.

– Saturday, 30 June, 10:00AM : The History and Collections of the MHS 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.

While you’re here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose & Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825.

– Saturday, 30 June, 3:00PM : As a doctoral student at Boston University’s School of Theology, Martin Luther King, Jr., spent some of his formative years walking the streets of Boston and living in the South End. His life in Boston was King’s first immersive experience outside of the segregated South and while he experienced the de facto racism of the North he also enjoyed the acceptance of the BU and Boston area communities. The Martin Luther King Jr. in Boston Walking Tour will guide visitors through areas of Boston where King lived and socialized, where he met and courted Coretta Scott, and where he returned later at the height of the Civil Rights Movement to deliver powerful speeches on the struggle for racial and economic equality.

This event is open to the public, registration required with a fee of $10  (no charge for MHS Members and Fellows or EBT cardholders).

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“I still hear her whenever I open my window”

By Susan Martin, Collections Services

The MHS recently acquired two fascinating letters related to a woman named Nancy Barron, and when cataloging the collection, I found a surprising connection. 

The first letter, addressed to Dr. “Hayward” of Concord, Mass., was written on 20 July 1827 by R. Barron, Nancy’s mother. The Barrons lived in Boston. The letter begins:

Sir I sent a letter to you since Mr Stow was here but have receaved no answer. I take the liberty to state my curcumstances to you and hope that you will concider my case. My daughter is sick more or less all of the time. As for myself I cannot do any work of any consequence. Nancy can do some work all though not capable of takeing care of herself.

 

 

R. Barron asked the doctor for help with their rent, which was two months overdue, and explained that she and her daughter couldn’t come to Concord “as it would make Nancy as bad as she was before.” The family received some charity, but it wasn’t enough.

The only other letter in the collection was written almost a year later, this time to Dr. “Haywood.” The writer, D. Patten of Boston, pleaded on behalf of the Barrons, for whom circumstances had deteriorated. Mrs. Barron was “verry much afflicted with ill health,” and the family suffered “poverty and want in a great degree.” Adding to these troubles was Nancy’s “derangement of Mind […] which of late has become much worse.”

 

Just identifying the correspondents in this small collection was challenging. The two letters were clearly written to the same person, but spelled his name differently. I started with him, assuming he’d be the easiest to find. It took some digging, and through trial and error, I finally stumbled on Dr. Abiel Heywood (1759-1839). Neither Barron nor Patten had spelled the name right.

According to a biography of Heywood published in Memoirs of Members of the Social Circle in Concord (pp. 228-33), he began practicing in Concord in 1790, though he soon left medicine to serve in a series of public positions, including town clerk, selectman, tax assessor, justice of the peace, and Middlesex County judge. He was a very eminent member of the community in 1827, when Mrs. Barron appealed to him.

I never did identify the writer of the second letter, D. Patten. I also don’t know the first name of Nancy’s mother. But when I started looking for Nancy, I found more than I expected. A Google search turned up her name in, of all places, the journals of Ralph Waldo Emerson.

The relevant journal entry is dated 24 June 1840. By this time, Nancy was living at the Concord Asylum, an almshouse just 200 yards behind Emerson’s home, across the Mill Brook. The reference to her is unexpected and startling. Emerson wrote:

Now for near five years I have been indulged by the gracious Heaven in my long holiday in this goodly house of mine, entertaining and entertained by so many worthy and gifted friends, and all this time poor Nancy Barron, the mad-woman, has been screaming herself hoarse at the Poor-house across the brook and I still hear her whenever I open my window.

 

Ralph L. Rusk, who edited the published volumes of Emerson’s letters beginning in 1939, included citations for a few letters related to Nancy, but he misread her last name as “Bacon.” The error was corrected in an annotation in volume 7 (p. 336) by subsequent editor Eleanor M. Tilton. Apparently, between 1839 and 1843, Emerson corresponded with a Mary Mason about Nancy’s case; these letters are currently on deposit at Harvard’s Houghton Library. It seems Emerson and others provided financial support for Nancy’s care, which would account for how he knew her name.

Like his neighbor Abiel Heywood (the land adjacent to Emerson’s home is still called Heywood Meadow), Emerson belonged to the Social Circle in Concord, a private club for illustrious men of the town. Also among its members was Cyrus Stow—undoubtedly the man R. Barron mentioned in her letter. According to the Memoirs (pp. 295-301), Stow contracted with the town “to take charge of its poor for the use of the Cargill Farm.” Concord Asylum was located on Cargill Farm, probably near where the police and fire department building stands now. Stow was the last piece of the puzzle.

The only other result of my search for Nancy was a single line in the register of births,  marriages, and deaths in Concord: “Nancy Barron aged 46 years died March 29, 1843” (p. 355). Emerson acknowledged her death in his correspondence with Mary Mason.

The striking juxtaposition of Nancy Barron and Ralph Waldo Emerson, with just 200 yards and a narrow brook between them, may have been the kind of thing Henry David Thoreau had in mind when he wrote the following passage in Walden (p. 172):

But how do the poor minority fare? Perhaps it will be found, that just in proportion as some have been placed in outward circumstances above the savage, others have been degraded below him. The luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another. On the one side is the palace, on the other are the almshouse and “silent poor.”

Posted in From Our Collections

Introducing John Adams, Vice President

By Sara Georgini, The Adams Papers

“Huzza for the new World and farewell to the Old One,” John Adams wrote in late 1787, wrapping up a decade of diplomatic service in Europe and packing for his new farm, Peacefield. “For a Man who has been thirty Years rolling like a stone,” his recall was welcome news indeed. After completing several missions in Paris, The Hague, and London, Adams was eager to head home in order to witness the progress of the ratification of the U.S. Constitution and the establishment of the federal government. His last 28 months abroad, chronicled in the Adams Papers’ newest release, Volume 19 of the Papers of John Adams, were busy. The Massachusetts lawyer-turned-statesman secured American credit in Europe. He fought his way through the delicate etiquette of resigning his diplomatic commissions to Great Britain and the Netherlands. He wrote the second and third volumes of his landmark work on tripartite federalism, A Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America. With wife Abigail, he made plans for a quiet retirement in leafy Braintree. So long a citizen of the world, John Adams pondered his role in shaping the young nation’s progress. “Shall I feel, the Stings of Ambition, and the frosts of Neglect?” he wrote. “Shall I desire to go to Congress, or the General Court, and be a Fish out of Water? I Suppose so, because, other People have been so. but I dont believe So.”

Papers of John Adams, Volume 19

Volume 19, which stretches from February 1787 to May 1789, marks a transitional period in John Adams’ public career and personal life. Through the window of 341 documents, we watch a rich trove of stories unfold: the United States’ uneasy peace with Britain; the risky state of American credit abroad; the political fallout of popular uprisings like Shays’ Rebellion; the crafting of the federal Constitution; a surge in the British impressment of American sailors; and the monumental effort to form a cohesive federal government. Meanwhile, Adams settled into rural retirement with Abigail and watched the Constitution’s ratification evolve. His respite was cut short in April 1789. By volume’s end, John Adams returned to the adventure of public life, preparing to serve as America’s first vice president.

From Europe, Adams reported on a high tide of political crises. Piecing together Thomas Jefferson’s and the Marquis de Lafayette’s accounts of the reforms unspooling at the Assembly of Notables in 1787, and again at the convening of the Estates General two years later, Adams perceived France’s prerevolutionary peril. Adams, from his perch at No. 8 (now No. 9) Grosvenor Square, longed to go and see the “Illustrious” group. “I wish I could be a Sylph or a Gnome & flit away to Versailles on a sun-Beam—to hear your August Debates,” he wrote to Lafayette. To Adams’ mind, the late eighteenth century heralded both an age of revolutions and an age of constitutions that realigned the continent’s balance of power. “England will rise in Consideration and Power, and France will Fall, in the Eyes of all Europe,” he wrote.

John Adams portrait

John Adams spent his last summer in Europe traveling with family—including his first grandchild, William Steuben Smith—in rural Devonshire, compiling the second volume of his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States of America, and mulling his legacy. He answered reference questions about the Revolution from scholars such as Philip Mazzei, Mercy Otis Warren, David Ramsay, and Reverend William Gordon. Retirement beckoned, but Adams was conflicted about trading the public stage for the solitude of Peacefield. Reflecting on his service, Adams claimed two wins: the ratification of the Moroccan-American Treaty of Peace and Friendship; and the progress of a proposed Portuguese-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce. The Adamses’ exit saddened friends like Jefferson, who wrote: “I shall now feel be-widowed.” Adams packed up his papers, including the letterbooks where he kept a close financial record of what it cost to be an American diplomat in Europe–a fascinating (and frugal!) report of expenditures that appears in the Appendix of Volume 19. He sold his chariot at The Hague. He closed up the London legation. “And now as We Say at Sea,” Adams wrote to Jefferson, “huzza for the new World and farewell to the Old One.”

S.E. Prospect

Home at last in June 1788, Adams briefly settled into the life of a gentleman scholar. Throughout the autumn, a stream of support for Adams’ political ascent materialized in the mail. Reverend Jeremy Belknap, later a founder of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and Dr. Benjamin Rush conveyed support for Adams as a contender for the vice presidency. On 6 April 1789, senators began counting votes from the Electoral College. George Washington was the unanimous choice for president. Adams, who received 34 out of 69 votes, was elected as the first vice president. Basking in ceremonial fanfare, Adams traveled to New York City. To the ever-candid Adams, the Federalists’ victory felt bittersweet. The 54-year-old statesman now faced an unprecedented task in shaping the largely undefined office of the vice presidency. Adams’ days became a whirlwind of meetings, visits, and reunions. He was flooded with requests for patronage. Many Americans hoped to earn jobs as port collectors, naval officers, or customs inspectors. Office seekers appealed to Adams’ Federalist views, Harvard College roots, or New England connections. Within the Adams Papers, these letters form a unique genre documenting patronage in early American politics. Moved by the sentiment but bound by the Constitution, Adams rejected many pleas. Early on, he staked out strict constitutional boundaries for the vice president’s powers. Looking out from his seat in a Senate increasingly riven by regional factions, Vice President John Adams wondered: What came next for the new nation?

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

This Week @ MHS

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The week ahead is a busy one, loaded with public programs. Here is the round-up for the week:

The library closes early on Monday, 18 June, at 4:00PM.

– Monday, 18 June, 6:00PM : Join us for our first Juneteenth Open House, with a one-day display celebrating milestones on the road to the end of slavery. Featured items explore the 1783 abolition of slavery in Massachusetts; celebrations within the African American community in Boston of the ending of slavery in the British West Indies in 1833; Garrisonian protest banners; and a look at the evolution of depictions of Crispus Attucks’s death in the Boston Massacre as a symbol of black abolitionism before and during the Civil War.

This talk is free and open to the public, though registration is required.

– Wednesday, 20 June, 12:00PM : Matthew Fernandez of Columbia University leads the first Brown Bag talk of the week, titled “Picturing Modernism in the Work and Archive of Henry Adams.” This talk examines three interrelated elements of Henry Adams’s literary output: his transnational focus, his reconsideration of subject/object relations, and his interest in the visual arts. While travelling during the 1890s, Adams took a break from writing to immerse himself in painting and sketching—after which he produced acclaimed works like Chartres and The Education. His time abroad represents an important transitional moment between the Romanticism of the nineteenth century and the Modernism of the twentieth century.

This talk is free and open to the public.

– Thursday, 21 June, 6:00PM : Chateau Higginson: Social Life in Boston’s Back Bay, 1870-1920 is a recent work published by Margo Miller, Boston Globe (retired), and the title of this author talk. Miller’s work is a vivid and absorbing account of one man’s efforts to construct a building that would create “a new way for Bostonians—and Americans—to live.” Henry Lee Higginson is best known for founding the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but exploring his housing gamble helps bring him to life, as well as a whole social class in 19th-century urban America.

This talk is open to the public, registration required with a fee of $10 (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders). Pre-talk reception begins at 5:30PM, followed by the speaking program at 6:00PM.

– Friday, 22 June, 12:00PM : The second Brown Bag talk this week is with Joshua Morrison of University of Virginia, and is called “Cut from the Same Cloth: Salem, Zanzibar, and the Consolidation of the Indo-Atlantic World, 1820-1870.” This talk explores the economic and cultural exchange between New England and Zanzibar, the premier entrepôt of the Western Indian Ocean. This trade network linked the cotton magnates of Massachusetts with the Omani elite, Indian merchants, and Swahili slaves of Zanzibar. As the trade expanded, each close-knit community found themselves increasingly dependent on an incredibly foreign counterpart for survival. This project maps the many compromises, adaptations, and concessions made in the name of profit.

This talk is free and open to the public.

– Saturday, 23 June, 10:00AM : The History and Collections of the MHS 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.

While you’re here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose & Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825.

The library closes early on Saturday, 23 June, at 3:00PM.

– Saturday, 23 June, 4:00PM : Join us for a special Saturday program to celebrate “The All-American Girls: Women in Professional Baseball.” Baseball is not just a beloved pastime for American boys and men. From 19th-century college teams formed at Vassar and Smith and the nationally celebrated Boston Bloomer Girls to the formation of the All American Girls Professional Baseball League when major male talent faced the WWII draft, women players have increasingly found ways to make their mark on the game. Today, more women than ever before are playing baseball at a world-class level, staking a claim on the most nostalgic and patriotic of American sports. This event features a panel discussion moderated by Red Sox historian Gordon Edes, and panelists Maybelle Blair and Shirley Burkovich (All American Girls Professional Baseball League); Donna Mills (Women’s World Cup of Baseball MVP); Marti Sementelli (U.S. Women’s National Baseball Team); and Dr. Kat Williams (Women’s Sports historian at Marshall University). Also, through a partnership with the Red Sox, MHS is offering a limited quanity of tickets for audience members who want to follow the afternoon panel discussion with a 7:15 Red Sox game against the Seattle Mariners. Tickets are available for purchase through our program registration link.

This program is open to the public, registration required with a fee of $20 (no charge for MHS Members and Fellows or EBT cardholders). Reception begins at 3:30PM followed by the panel discussion at 4:00PM.

Posted in This Week @MHS

Barbara Hillard Smith’s Diary, June 1918

By Lindsay Bina, Intern and Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, Reader Services

Today we return to the 1918 diary of Newton teenager Barbara Hillard Smith. You may read our introduction to the diary, and Barbara’s previous entries, here:

 

January | February | March | April

May | June | July | August

September | October | November | December

 

As regular readers of the Beehive know, we are following Barbara throughout 1918 with monthly blog posts that present Barbara’s daily life — going to school, seeing friends, playing basketball, and caring for family members — in the words she wrote a century ago. Here is Barbara’s June, day by day.

 

* * *

SAT. 1                         JUNE

Swimming. May [Fête]. Hot as the deuce

SUN. 2

Went to Winthrop

MON. 3

School. Babies

TUES. 4

School. Babies

WED. 5

School. Babies

THUR. 6

School. Swimming Exhibition

FRI. 7

School. Went up River and to Park.

SAT. 8

Babies. In town with Peg.

SUN. 9

Hung around. Commencement Vespers

MON. 10

School. Babies. Class Night at Lasell

TUES. 11

School. Sick? Mother with Cousin Bert

WED. 12

School. Babies

THUR. 13

School. Babies

FRI. 14

School. Babies

SAT. 15

In Town. Wellesley with Peg. Dance at Spuds

SUN. 16

Church. S. School. Mrs. Moody to dinner

MON. 17

School. Babies

TUES. 18

School. Babies. Got a boil.

WED. 19

School. Riding with Cousin Bert. Peg over Night.

THUR. 20

French Exam. Mother’s Birthday. Headache. Pegs. Almost Sick

FRI. 21

Latin Exam. Tennis at Pegs

SAT. 22

Cooked. Pegs. Party at Posies. Dancing at Garden

SUN. 23

Sunday School. Peg’s over night.

MON. 24

Geometry Exam. Cleaned Closet. Peg’s for eighth grade party.

TUES. 25

In town with Mrs. Dow. Cousin Alice’s for supper. Met Babe

WED. 26

In town to the Dr. Dill. K’s for supper. Study club affair

THUR. 27

DIn town. Worked with Platt.

FRI. 28

Cleaned. Dentist. Dinner with Platt. Saw him off.

SAT. 29

Shampoo. Aunt Mable’s. Said goodbye to Stewarts

SUN. 30

Church. Sunday School. Riding with [Gathaman’s]. Packed.

* * *

If you are interested in viewing the diary in person in our library or have other questions about the collection, please visit the library or contact a member of the library staff for further assistance.

 

 *Please note that the diary transcription is a rough-and-ready version, not an authoritative transcript. Researchers wishing to use the diary in the course of their own work should verify the version found here with the manuscript original. The catalog record for the Barbara Hillard Smith collection may be found here.

 

 

 

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

A Little Free Library @ MHS!

By Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, Reader Services

The next time you are in the neighborhood, we invite you to stop to check out the Little Free Library we have installed to the left of our front steps. One of many such book exchanges in Boston, the Little Free Library maintained by Massachusetts Historical Society staff will be filled with books that are free for the taking! If you take a book, also consider leaving a book in its stead so that another reader may have a chance to enjoy it. 

While you’re pausing to browse the current selection of free books, be sure to check out our upcoming events on the calendar to your left — many of our events are free and open to the public.

Of course, the Massachusetts Historical Society is, itself, a big free library — we welcome researchers into our reading room Monday through Saturday to work with our non-circulating collections of manuscripts, rare print materials, art, artifacts, and photograph collections. More information about planning a visit to work with our collections may be found on our website.

 

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This Week @ MHS

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It is a bit of an odd week ahead with a couple of early library closures. Still, there are plenty of programs to take in here at the Society. This is what’s on tap:

– Monday, 11 June, 12:00PM : Starting the week is a Brown Bag lunch talk with Andrew Rutledge of University of Michigan. “‘We have no need for Virginia Trade’: New England Tobacco in the Atlantic World” examines tobacco’s role in the agriculture, commerce, and political economy of New England. By the 18th century, tobacco figured prominently in the region, and was exported in large quantities to Dutch Suriname and to West African slave traders. Tobacco was a true “Atlantic Commodity,” and, just as in the southern colonies, it drew New England farmers in the to the world of Atlantic slavery. 

This talk is free and open to the public. 

The library closes at 1:30PM on Wednesday, 13 June, to make way for the MHS Fellows Annual Meeting.

– Thursday, 14 June, 6:00PM : Authors Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald will be on-hand to discuss their recent work United Tastes: The Making of the First American Cookbook. Amelia Simmons’ American Cookery (1796) is known as the “first American cookbook”and has attracted an enthusiastic modern audience of historians, food journalists, and general readers. Yet until now American Cookery has not received the sustained scholarly attention it deserves. Stavely and Fitzgerald’s United Tastes fills this gap by providing a detailed examination of the social circumstances and culinary tradition that produced this American classic.

This talk is open to the public, registration required with a fee of $10 (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders). Pre-talk reception begins at 5:30PM, followed by the speaking program at 6:00PM.

– Friday, 15 June, 12:00PM : The second Brown Bag talk to round out the week is with Adam Mestyan of Duke University, and is titled “U. S. Monarchism in the Middle East?: Orientalism, American Travelers, and Arab Rulers.” The origins of the United States are often framed as anti-monarchist, yet Americans entertain a fascination with monarchs and royalty. Is it possible to create a taxonomy of popular Orientalist images of modern Muslim and Arab rulership in the United States? Next to foreign policy considerations and economic interests, this talk searches for the private views of American travelers about modern Muslim and Arab rulers in the Middle East in the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

This talk is free and open to the public. 

The library closes at 3:00PM on Friday, 15 June, for a staff event.

– Saturday, 16 June, 10:00AM : The History and Collections of the MHS 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.

– Saturday, 16 June, 2:00PM : Come in for a special Gallery Talk related to our current exhibition, Entrpreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End. Guest curator and furniture conservator Robert Mussey will lead visitors through the exhibition’s highlights while giving deeper context to the life and work of two extraordinary Massachusetts craftsmen, Isaac Vose and Thomas Seymour.

Posted in This Week @MHS

Massachusetts Historical Review : Its Origins and Legacy

By Katheryn Viens, Research

To most MHS members, the Massachusetts Historical Review is the annual publication that appears in their mailboxes every autumn, with a glossy, colorful cover and intriguing historical content. Few members know its rich history or visualize its exciting prospects for the future. As we typeset the forthcoming issue and develop essays for future volumes, this seems a good time to reflect on the MHR’s heritage and legacy.

In 1859, the members of the MHS decided to launch a new publication. Since 1792, the year after the Society’s founding, members had been “multiplying the copies” of items in the archives by issuing Collections volumes. Now, as the country approached a civil war, Boston was growing dramatically, from a town of fewer than 20,000 in 1790 to a city of almost 180,000. The Society’s collection, too, had ballooned with the 1857 acquisition of the more than 4,600 volumes in the library of Thomas Dowse. The men who made up the Society now represented a wider range of interests, and they decided to apply the best practices of corporate business to the conduct of the MHS.

A new publication would document the Society’s “proceedings” and include an annual report. It would contain transcripts of the lectures that members offered when they gathered for meetings. A commitment to publish these talks could have resulted in a series of dry volumes—but what a roster of historians would appear in the pages of the Proceedings! Over nearly 140 years, until 1998, the deep leather chairs, madeira, and slanting sunlight of the Society’s afternoon meetings yielded the wisdom of Henry Adams, Oscar and Lillian Handlin, Edmund Morgan, and Bernard Bailyn, to name just a handful of the illustrious historians represented in the Proceedings’ pages.

Enter the 1990s. Computers and the internet transformed the way in which the MHS related to the outside world. Alongside our expanding research programs, including fellowships, conferences, and seminars, the Proceedings came to feel constrained. The MHS made the decision to end its publication and invite the wider possibilities of an annual journal that would accept outside submissions and, in its design, serve as an ambassador of the Society’s vibrant mission. The Massachusetts Historical Review was born.

Two decades later, the MHR features scholarship on all historical periods, from across the country and overseas. This takes the form of essays, photo-essays, historical documents, and review articles authored by both eminent scholars and those new to the field. There have been themed issues and a recent special issue on the occasion of the Society’s 225th anniversary, “Massachusetts and the Origins of American Historical Thought.” The forthcoming issue will include essays on the Harlem Renaissance artist Cloyd Lee Boykin, who taught in Boston, colonial Massachusetts Governor Thomas Pownall, and the 1975 Edelin manslaughter trial. Essays demonstrate the influence of Massachusetts across the nation and around the world.

As with the Proceedings, the Research Department acquires and develops the content for the MHR, while the Publications Department handles the copyediting, design, and indexing. Throughout this process, the MHS staff maintains a commitment to scholarly excellence. They send each essay to at least two peer reviewers in a “double-blind” process, and the editors and authors work together to revise and edit the contributions.

Now available online (as are the Proceedings), the MHR has a wider reach than ever before. It takes its place comfortably among a range of professional journals in major research libraries. And it offers a pleasant read in a comfy chair on a quiet afternoon, perhaps alongside a little glass of good madeira.

 

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