by Kate Melchior, MHS, and Michael Ryan

Every year, the MHS awards the Kass Teacher Fellowship to one or more K-12 educators. The is designed to offer K-12 teachers the opportunity to focus on historical research that will support their classroom efforts, discovering new primary sources to use in their classroom and deepening their understanding of history and humanities.

In 2019, Michael Ryan of Pollard Middle School in Needham MA was awarded a Kass Fellowship to pursue research into the Loyalist experience during the Revolutionary War.  Michael spent several months pouring through the MHS archives and creating a new collection of primary sources for teachers to use when teaching the Loyalist experience.  Here we have shared excerpts from Michael’s final report on his experience and his findings at the MHS.

The Experience of New England Loyalists During the Era of the American Revolution
Michael Ryan

In the summer of 2019, I was awarded a Kass Fellowship to conduct research at the Massachusetts Historical Society. My proposed topic of research was the New England loyalist experience during the era of the American Revolution. The time that I spent at the MHS was one of the great experiences of my life.

As an instructor, I knew that I had never successfully integrated the loyalist story into my class narratives. One of my professional objectives is to present a complex, nuanced version of history—rarely can we understand events or people in simplistic terms. However, my own understanding of loyalism was itself superficial so I needed to learn more before I could genuinely attempt to construct meaningful lessons on the subject for my students. This past summer allowed me the opportunity to methodically dig through the incredibly rich archives held by the MHS on the topic. I accumulated a large amount of primary sources that I can use directly in the American History class that I teach in the Needham Public Schools. I am currently curating these documents into a collection that can be used in Needham classrooms.

In the following paragraphs, I briefly summarize several of the archives that I consulted for this project.

Meshech Weare Papers

Meshech Weare was perhaps the most active New Hampshire Patriot leader during the American Revolution. Throughout the war, he served as head of New Hampshire’s committee of safety, a position from which he corresponded with some of the most prominent figures of the era. After perusing Weare’s papers, I chose four different documents that I believe are illustrative of some of the larger themes of the war. The first two, while they do not focus upon loyalism directly, they offer evidence of the  overwhelming amount of responsibilities that committees on the home front were forced to address.

The first is from July 23, 1777, and is a letter from Weare to a Lieutenant Colonel Wentworth. It is alarmist in nature as it tells of a planned British naval attack on “some part of the New England states” and that Wentworth should prepare his men for this. Of course, such an attack never occurred and this is why the letter is invaluable. It reminds the reader that very little about this war was indeed inevitable and various scenarios could have played out, possibly changing the outcome of the war. Leaders like Weare had to be hyper-vigilant against all potential attacks.

In September of 1777, Weare received a letter from an officer in Philadelphia. The topic concerns the recent Congressional resolution that commissioned tickets for a lottery. It makes dire reference to the fact that if this undertaking failed it would “have a most unfavourable impact upon our public affairs…it will wound our public reputation, discourage our Creditors at home and our friends abroad and be argued by our enemies of our weakness.” This document offers evidence that financing was a major concern throughout the war, and that as early as its third year Patriot leaders were greatly concerned about the detrimental effect of a poor public credit.

An undated letter to Weare from the town of Derry’s Committee of Safety addresses the complexity of identifying and punishing potential counterrevolutionaries. A man by the name of Benjamin Hall was imprisoned for desertion from the Continental Army and his alleged pro-British sympathies. Hall was apparently to be released on bail, but the four men on the Derry committee pleaded with Weare to reconsider this action. Weare, as head of the state’s committee of safety, had the executive authority to overrule this decision. In their strongly-worded letter, the Derry group argued that Hall “ought not to be Liberated…as we find he is to the Great Grief and Dissatisfaction of every true friend of America.” Although I could not determine how this matter was resolved, this document helps us understand the Revolution as civil war; neighbor against neighbor and the gray area that existed between people who simply wanted no part of the conflict and those that were called out as Tories.

Finally, on June 22, 1778, Weare sent a letter, under a flag of truce, to the Royal governor of Nova Scotia concerning prison exchange, a topic rarely referenced in textbooks or survey courses. It is important because it addresses one of the many logistical challenges faced by both armies. Once prisoners were taken, how did those in charge locate and administer adequate facilities? The logistical challenges faced by the war’s leaders are usually ignored, yet students tend to be fascinated by this information. Weare was eager to conduct an exchange with his British counterpart, requesting that an American officer by the name of Sherburne return from the meeting with as many American prisoners as he “can conveniently bring home with him.” In return, he promised that the same number of equal ranks” would be returned to the British.

The Israel Williams Papers

Massachusetts native Israel Williams exited the French and Indian War as representative of the brilliance of the imperial relationship. A colonel in the militia, Williams demonstrated great managerial skills in his majesty’s campaign to permanently expel the French from North America. His correspondence from the war portrays an individual who, if his passions had taken him in a different direction, may very well have ended up among the pantheon of local Founding Fathers. However, as his correspondence with Thomas Hutchinson indicated, he would choose the path of loyalty to empire.

These documents I will excerpt for use in my class to illustrate the complexity of choosing sides during the conflict. In 1778 a committee of safety in western Massachusetts charged Williams with a plan to “to obstruct and hinder all Salutary measures which the People universally throughout this Continent have adopted and are adopting to obtain a restoration of their constitutional rights and privilege.” Williams was placed under house arrest and spent over a year in this state of ostracization and ridicule. The documents relating to Williams’s experience are fantastic as they convey a man who honestly believed that he had committed no act of transgression, and that prior to the crisis, had presumably been exalted as a hero in his community. Fascinatingly, Williams did rehabilitate himself and did reintegrate into post-war Massachusetts society. It is important for students to recognize that after the war, not all Loyalists self-exiled or remained that way—former adversaries had to learn to live as neighbors once again.

Mary Robie-Sewall Diary

Box three of the Robie-Sewall papers contains the 1783 diary of teenager Mary Robie, the daughter of Boston merchant exiles living in Nova Scotia. This is apparently the original copy and it is fascinating as it offers a snapshot of loyalist life that is largely unconcerned with either of the great political questions that would have preoccupied her elders at the time: The Treaty of Paris and the manner by which, if indeed at all, her people would reintegrate into the life of their former community of Boston, Massachusetts.

I went through the entire six months of the extant diary and selected excerpts that I believe give a fairly representative view of Mary’s experiences and feelings during her exile. Not surprisingly, Mary writes often of her close relationship with both her family and fellow exiles so her reflections paint a detailed portrait of the daily experiences of  Bostonians living in exile as they anxiously awaited whether they would return “home” and become citizens of this new republic whose cause they had earlier spurned.

Other Loyalist Research

The following research also produced sources and stories about the Massachusetts loyalist experience. I will include selections from each in the booklet that I create for classroom use:

• Winslow Family Papers, Correspondence, 1775. (Boxes 1 and 2.)
• The Charles Ward Apthrop Papers, Correspondence, 1773-1791. (Box 3)
• Boylston Family Papers, Correspondence, 1775. (Box 7)
• King’s Chapel Records, founding through reorganization after the war. (Box 5) Savage Family Papers, 1775-1799. (Boxes 1, 2, and oversized.)
• Richard Frothington Charlestown Papers, 1812-1880. (Box 3)
• Divided Hearts: Massachusetts Loyalists 1765-1790: A Biographical Directory

If you are interested in learning more about the Kass Teacher Fellowship or any of our other programs, please visit the Center for the Teaching of History website or e-mail us at education@masshist.org.  We look forward to hearing from you!

by Florentina Gutierrez, Library Assistant

Browsing through processed archival collections can sometimes lead to unexpected surprises. Recently, I was going through a box of the Channing Family Papers (1685-1956), looking for a particular letter that a patron inquired about. Because I did not have a specific date, only subject matter and year range, it meant looking at almost every document that met those general criteria. Out of the countless letters, a five-page long handwritten newspaper stood out to me.

I have never seen a handwritten newspaper, outside of the context of an elementary school assignment where I was asked to create one. The top of this particular newspaper says “Weekly News: Brattleboro” and was dated August 9th, 1843. Below that, to the left, it also says “Vol. I. Published Weekly at the store of M. Wheeler & Co. [Terms?] one cent.” At first, I thought that perhaps someone in the town of Brattleboro produced handwritten newspapers to distribute throughout the town, which I could only imagine was extremely time consuming. I wondered, how many copies of these were written? And were they written every week?

Actually, a handwritten newspaper is not such a crazy idea, even after the invention of the printing press. There are many examples of handwritten newspapers from the 19th century, some were likely created because of a lack of resources, and others perhaps because they were considered the most appropriate way to communicate. I found some examples at The Handwritten News Project website; the ones referenced there are mainly from North America and date to the 19th century.

Reading through this newspaper, it quickly became apparent that this was not meant as a particularly serious/factual “newspaper” and was likely not one that was distributed to the public. The contents of it are varied, including marriage announcements, short stories, advertisements for goods and services, and lost and found items. Nevertheless, weaved among what appear to be real events in the town are a lot of snippets clearly meant to come off as humorous and witty, and that are overall quirky.

Here are a few lines, transcribed as they were written in the document:

“Miss Ellen Nutt to Mr. William Hut, hope they will Nuts to eat & Huts to live in. -W.”

“Sale at the store of Peter Grimes a wonderful mixture, which will not only make persons sneeze, cough, laugh, & cry at pleasure, but it effects the heart so deeply as to make a man fall in love with the first girl that goes round the corner. -B.

I can bear witness to the efficacy of Peter Grimes medicine, for I never should have been married, if I had not turned the corner. -Ellen Hut.”

“I have got a darned hole in my stocking [Mom?]… I am very glad my son, I shall not have to mend it. -M.”

“Lost a beautiful white cat, with blue spots, & a black tail, anyone who finds it, shall be rewarded with a bite from the cat. -Lizzy.”

“Just published, the life of the remarkable man, who waded across Charles river & was drowned just as he was getting in to the stage on dry land. -Reb.”

“Fire broke out at Melissa Simons’s, it broke out in the toe of her shoe, for she was in the habit of keeping her matches inside of her shoe. -M.”

“I am not as cool as I ought to be, as the boiled cucumber said. -W.”

Almost every section is signed off with an initial. The ones appearing most often were B, M, W. Reading through the Channing Family Paper collection guide, it is likely that those initials refer to Barbara H. Channing (1786-1876) and William Ellery Channing (1817-1901), both the children of Dr. Walter Channing, and to Mary E. Channing Higginson, related to the Channings by marriage and with who Barbara may have been close to as there is remaining correspondence that was sent between them.

While the newspaper is not addressed to anyone in particular, I think it likely was meant as a type of letter to a close relative or friend of the Channings in order to provide them with an update/”gossip” of the town. In a time without texting or social media or even the ease of transportation we currently enjoy, it makes sense that people would find creative ways to communicate with each other while having a little fun.

If you are interested in learning more about handwritten news, you can check out a list of resources put together by The Handwritten News Project here.

by Lila Teeters, University of New Hampshire, and Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the MHS

I came to the Massachusetts Historical Society to conduct legal history. I spend most of my time researching Native American citizenship in the United States, with a particular focus on the lead up to the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act. The cartons awaiting my gaze at MHS belonged to Robert G. Valentine, who served as the commissioner of Indian affairs from 1909 to 1912. This period was critical in the development of policies guiding Native citizenship in the United States, and Valentine’s papers provide an unparalleled look into the ideological underpinnings of federal policies. While I came for legal history, I left with an additional lesson on pedagogy.

People often ask me if I am a teacher or historian first. My master’s degree is in teaching social studies, and I taught high school history for four years before starting my PhD. My answer to their question is usually wonky, as I try explaining that each of those roles encompasses the other. A teacher and historian are one, I say, earning accusations of being sophist. Perhaps it is no coincidence then that some of my favorite archival moments occur when I see my historical actors teaching others about their chosen craft. These sources are usually irrelevant to my primary research, and I tuck them away to be considered later.

As a PhD candidate trying to finish my dissertation, I am particularly drawn to my actors’ advice on writing. The process feels (to use a popular millennial phrase) very “meta,” particularly when the people I write about give advice about the act itself. Composing a person’s history comes with a certain amount of responsibility (a well-worn claim that once again earns me accusations of sophistry), and weighing subjects’ advice feels like a way to honor that responsibility.

Hence my excitement when I came across writing exercises tucked within Valentine’s notes. Valentine taught English and composition classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1896-1902, and his papers contain lecture notes, assignments, and musings on prose and pedagogy. One of the exercises he recommends is about depth: “In order for you to determine the qualities of mind,-wealth, discipline, and understanding, which you possess, it is useful to write a very short sketch of

1. Someone you know,
   1. like
   2. dislike
   3. are indifferent to
2. a view,
   1. familiar
   2. unfamiliar
3. a thought
4. a feeling
5. a machine
6. a process
7. a story
8. an argument
9. history”

He recommended that each sketch be around 200 words.[1] Valentine wanted his students to determine if they had the deep knowledge of a subject to condense its essence down to a 200-word meditation—a written crucible of sorts. Compress to assess.

Valentine is an actor whom I find maddening. While I “know” him only through his writings and his policies as Indian commissioner, I at once like, dislike, and am indifferent to him. My “very short sketch” of him encompasses all three:

Born in 1872, Roger G. Valentine was a civic-minded man directed by principle and prejudice. A son of Massachusetts, a father and husband, Valentine assumed the role of commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1909. While he forswore essentialist racial classification of Native Americans, Valentine held other racist views, claiming that Natives needed to be taught self-respect, self-support, and good citizenship. Many of the policies he promoted operated from these paternalist assumptions. Valentine prized civic engagement and held citizenship and patriotism in the highest regard. As commissioner, he attempted to root out corruption, separate church from state, and solicit feedback from Native people. Yet he assumed one of his most prized possessions—US citizenship—would likewise be prized by all Natives. His administration created “competency commissions,” which assessed the “fitness” of individual Natives to be citizens of the United States. While he acknowledged the harm done by American policies, soldiers, and citizens, he almost never questioned why some Natives did not want to become citizens. A controversy, one that threw Valentine’s integrity into question (he and I believe rather unfairly), prompting his resignation in 1912. A long list of joined organizations and committees show his appetite for civic engagement went unabated until he died in 1916 at the young age of 43.

It is comforting to know that Valentine found writing difficult. His papers are speckled with frustrated marginalia and rabid reworkings. He would most likely quibble with my sentence structure just as I grumble at his passive voice. I like the image: historian and subject, united briefly through our common craft.

[1] “Notes from RGV’s composition class, 1902-1903,” carton 17, folder 21, Robert G. Valentine family papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

by Ashley Williams, Processing Assistant and Library Assistant

The first selection in the lineup is for the love poem enthusiasts in the crowd. This tiny volume published in 1853,  measuring a mere 12 centimeters is titled The Album of Love. It begins with a dedication and an entire page defining, “What is Love?” where the previous owner saw fit to leave a pressed flower. And, though this book be but little, it is fiercely packed with the sonnets and verses of all your favorite love poets, Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Spenser, Eliza Acton,  and John Clare.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Though famous poets are great,  you didn’t come to an archive’s blog to read about published works, did you? Where is the personal tea? Don’t worry. The following transcription comes from a letter from the John Lowell Letters, dated November 30, 1823. In this letter John Lowell Jr. carefully constructs a marriage proposal to his cousin and soon-to-be wife Georgina M.A. Lowell. It’s nice to know this worked out for him because the calculated tone of the request makes it seem that he was apprehensive at best about his chances. There’s even a part in which he instructs her to burn the letter if she doesn’t feel the same way.

Dear Georgina

I venture to address you in this formal manner on a subject nearly connected with my happiness, because I cannot devise any other mode of bringing it before you. It is the offer of myself & the request that you will permit me to ask Uncle Lowells consent to our union. I say nothing of my affection or the desire I have long had to obtain your approbation before that of any other person, because if I have not already persuaded you of these things, protestations would now be useless. This step may appear premature or presumptuous but I hope the near approach of the period when I shall cease to live here & the solitude I feel to settle a question of this sort previously to it’s arrival will excuse me it If it is not in your power to permit me the indulgence of those sentiments I feel towards you, I will thank you to burn this letter & not let it’s reception disturb the harmony of our acquaintance. I declare that no lady shall ever be voluntarily embarrassed by my attentions, when I know them to be unacceptable–

Believe me that whatever your determination may be though I earnestly desire a favorable one. I also wish that it may contribute to your happiness, for the continuance of which I would certainly sacrifice my personal feelings.

I am truly sincerely

Yours

John Lowell J.

This next excerpt is from the Henry W. Bellows Correspondence and is a letter from Henry to his fiancee, Anna Huidekoper Peabody, dated May 27, 1874. It’s particularly short, but may also be some of the sappiest collection of words I’ve ever seen written down. Imagine receiving good morning texts like the letter that Henry sends to Anna:

My dear & only love, your precious note of yesterday came in just after breakfast to feed me with new longings to see you, who are my breath & life! Don’t imagine I ask anything more lovely than every sentence you write. I see you through every loop in the letter & they all have sweet & tender meanings hanging onto their pot-hooks!

Hold on to your pot-hooks because things are about to take a turn. These next two items are not for the faint of heart. If you blush easily, you may want to skip past these.

There is really no getting around the fact that the “love” sonnets in this book are just plain dirty. The love in question is definitely of a more physical nature, and many of the sonnets include references to a personified “Willie” who is usually being abused in some way or another. Crude nature aside, the sonnets do seem to follow the storyline of a relationship or series of relationships.

Did I hear someone in the audience ask about newspaper clippings?

This next letter excerpt happens to be accompanied by just such an artifact! The excerpt comes from the Stone-Jackson Family papers in a letter from Arthur L. Jackson to his wife-to-be Pauline F. Stone dated February 9, 1889. 

I enclose a little clipping that has a slight bearing on the subject and will merely say that I shall most certainly follow out its advice the very first time I see you. Shall I need mistletoe then sweetheart? If so I advise you to trim your hat with it and have all the ceilings in your house and veranda covered with it. If you do I shall kiss you under every single leaf of it. once for every day we have been separated, if only to make up for lost time. Just think how horribly in arrears we are that way now-a-days dearest. It will take just about a lifetime to ever get square again, won’t it dear.

In comparison to The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum, this letter could be construed as tame, but it was still one of the racier correspondences I came across when putting this together as Arthur playfully details his desire to kiss Pauline and under what circumstances.

Now that we’re nearing the end of the post, I thought it would be a good idea to cool us down and cleanse our palates with Some Old Puritan Love Letters.

The particular letter pictured is from John Winthrop to Margaret Tyndall. It opens, “My only beloved spouse, my most sweet friend, & faithful companion of my pilgrimage, the happy & hopeful supply (next Jesus Christ) of my greatest losses, I wish thee a most plentiful increase of all true comfort…” Even with its formal language and regular allusion to biblical verse, this letter still manages to feel poetically intimate and caring. Please note that I did not photograph the entire letter as it was incredibly long. If you would like to see the rest, please stop by the MHS and check it out (figuratively… we aren’t a lending library). 

by Theresa Mitchell , Library Assistant

As someone who is starting her career in the library field, and hoping to start library school in the coming year, I am very interested in how libraries organize information. Paradigms like the Library of Congress Classification not only make the information in our collection easy to navigate, these classification systems are information in-and-of themselves. They trace a lineage of scholars trying to determine the best ways to arrange collections in repositories such as libraries and archives, in accordance with the dominant ideologies of their time.

In the descriptively titled “Four letters to the mayor of Boston regarding waste and inefficiency in the cataloging department of the Boston Public Library” (s.n., 1880), Fredrick B. Perkins penned a series of letters to the mayor of Boston about what he considered to be the malpractice of the cataloging department at the Boston Public Library. His letters, direct and full of wit, call for the mayor to cut the library’s budget as an effort to force them to either decrease staff or decrease the salaries of staff in their cataloging department. He points out some specific examples of their negligence: a card in the card catalogue was labeled “Bomarsund (in India)”, though Bomarsund is in the Balkans (and also a village in the U.K.). Whether or these cataloguers deserved pay cuts and whether or not all Perkins’ claims are true, these series of letters bring up an interesting point: that the navigability of library catalogs is a public concern—even more so now, as public institutions have done more to live up to their mission of serving the public at its broadest.

In the pamphlet “On the construction of catalogues of libraries” (Smithsonian Institution, 1852) written in 1852, prominent librarian Charles C. Jewett—who in his lifetime was the Librarian of the Smithsonian  Institution and the Superintendent of the Boston Public Library—proposed a method called stereotyping to effectively create library catalogs.^[1] In his program all public libraries interested in adhering to this set of rules would send a formatted list of the titles all the books in their collection. This list would then be made into clay plates for printing. His ultimate hope for this was to create an aggregate catalog of all participating libraries, which would eventually include libraries in Europe, moving toward what he termed a “universal” catalog. Of course, this plan is ideologically limited, the scope of his universalism only extending to the North American and European continents. His vision did not come to fruition, though he remains a figure in the library field for his writing about cataloging methods.^[2]

Photo-Bibliography (H. Stevens, 1878), written by bibliographer Henry Stevens in 1878, goes even deeper into the desire for an object that could, in-itself, act as a repository of knowledge. Stevens, an American expatriate living in the United Kingdom, calls for a full bibliography of all English books, and along with this bibliography, a “universal system” for cataloging.^[3] To achieve this, he hopes for a “Central Bibliographical Bureau or Clearing House”. He even lays out the ideal dimensions for titles in such a bibliography. Ultimately, though, he does not imagine his vision coming to fruition, because of the ever expanding nature of libraries: “As there is little hope of any library ever even approaching completeness, there is no apparent progress whatever made towards that universal and harmonious catalogue raisonné which we have so long and so devoutly been praying for”. This hope will continue to permeate at least parts of librarianship and academia. Even a resource we have from 1952, “Indexes and Machines,” by the academic librarian Earl Gregg Swem, is intrigued by some way capturing “total-books”, or all the books  published in English and European languages.

Looking to create something all-encompassing, these sources point to the limiting viewpoints of their creators, and perhaps more generally, the time in which they were created. None of these sources point to any other epistemologies or consider any sort of relativism, such as forms of knowledge-making outside of the book. Rather, they hint at exceptionalism. Universality came to be a stand-in for all that is a part and product of European and American culture, specifically of the educated classes. The decisions made by those who envisioned a specific classificatory system come to be viewed as neutral and arbitrary. Librarians such as A. Brian Deer have realized the importance of creating classification systems that align with the beliefs of their communities and counter hegemonic classificatory schemes. Deer, a member of the Mohawk of Kahnawá:ke community, created the Brian Deer Classification System in the mid-seventies, which worked to prioritize an Indigenous perspective and an Indigenous audience. This system has been adapted and reinterpreted by various libraries in North America.^[4]

Classification systems will never be perfect. Knowing that a total system would at best be a reflection of ideologies of those that created it, the fact no library is “ever even approaching completeness” allows room for growth. As the discourses around knowledge shift to be less conclusive and more inclusive, the ever expanding nature of a collection can come to be less of a burden and more of an opportunity.

If you want to learn more about how we organize our resources, peruse our online catalog, Abigail. And if you are interested in viewing the MHS sources listed in this post, or many of our other resources, please visit our research library, which is free and open to the public!

^[1] Baker, B.B. (1993) Cooperative Cataloging: Past, Present, and Future (5). Psychology Press.

^[2] Jewett, C. C., & Harris, M. H. (1975). The age of Jewett: Charles Coffin Jewett and American librarianship, 1841-1868. Littleton, Colo: Libraries Unlimited.

^[3] Schopieray, C. J. & Hixon, M. Henry Stevens papers (1812-1935). Retrieved from https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/clementsead/umich-wcl-M-228ste?rgn=Collection+Title;view=text#Additional%20Descriptive%20Data

^[4] Doyle, A. M., Lawson, K., & Dupont, S. (2015). Indigenization of knowledge organization at the Xwi7xwa library. Journal of Library and Information Studies, 13(2), 107-134.