by Susan Martin, Processing Archivist & EAD Coordinator

How does the Collections Services department of a manuscript library do its work without the manuscripts? Good question.

As you know, in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, the MHS is closed until further notice, and collecting is temporarily on hold. Essential operations personnel has access to the building, but the rest of the staff has been working remotely for about a month now, including the eleven members of my department, Collections Services.

At first it was hard to imagine what we could realistically accomplish without access to the collections for an extended period of time. After all, most of the work we do requires direct contact with the papers, photographs, and other items we collect. Our department is responsible for their acquisition, organization, description, preservation, conservation, and digitization. Even writing posts for the Beehive means consulting original documents, often in multiple collections. But we’ve learned there are many aspects of our work that can be done from home.

For example, collection guides. These online guides contain detailed descriptions of a collection’s contents and reflect their physical arrangement. Over the last month, Collections Services has been working remotely to encode many of our old paper guides, inventories, and box lists for the MHS website. Several members of our department are contributing to this effort, from simple data entry to revisions, encoding, and review.

We’re very glad to add these legacy guides to the hundreds of others already available. The advantage of having these descriptions online, of course, is that the text is fully indexed and searchable. Researchers will then use these guides to request materials through our automated system.

Another work-from-home project, this one headed by the Collections Services digital team, is the ongoing digitization of some of the papers of Robert Treat Paine. Paine was a prominent lawyer, politician, judge, and signer of the Declaration of Independence. He prosecuted both the Boston Massacre trial and the Shays’ Rebellion trial. His papers include thousands of pages of legal notes on the cases with which he was involved. The notes are voluminous and messy…

So this is a very large undertaking. The digital team has been working on this project for some time, and many pages have already been digitized. You can find them by going to the Robert Treat Paine collection guide and following the “digital content” links. Eventually four of these thick bundles of legal notes will be available online.

The digital team and the MHS Publications department are also working together on a pilot project to transcribe these notes. During our closure, members of Collections Services have been recruited to create the transcriptions. They’re recording the name or title of each case, the town or court in which it was heard, the date, and a few names or keywords where available. Publications calls this process “calendaring.” We’re fortunate to have so many staff members with experience reading old handwriting, because Paine’s is notoriously challenging!

One last project I want to be sure to mention is our brand-new website entitled “Witness to History: What Are Your COVID-19 Experiences?” This site is designed with all of you in mind. We’d love to hear what you’re thinking, feeling, and going through during this momentous time. You may choose to use our web form or just keep your own journal and donate it to us. We welcome photographs, as well. Your contributions will be added to the many other diaries and memoirs in our collections. We hope you’ll consider sharing with us.

It’s been a period of adjustment, but, like many others around the world, the Collections Services department and the MHS as a whole have learned new ways of collaborating. We rely on e-mail, online workspaces, and video conferencing to keep in touch and track workflows. We’ve delegated projects differently and even shared staff between departments.

However, the health and well-being of our community and all other communities around the world are paramount. Take care of yourselves, and we hope to see you soon at 1154 Boylston Street.

By Thomas A. Rider II, University of Wisconsin – Madison, Military Historical Society of Massachusetts Short Term Fellow at the MHS

Tom is currently writing a PhD dissertation on the Continental Army’s evolving approach to petite guerre or partisan warfare during the American War for Independence. The Adams Family Papers at the MHS have provided important insights into a critical aspect of this evolution – the use of frontier riflemen in support of Washington’s army.

In the early stages of the Revolutionary War, no soldiers recruited in the American colonies generated greater anticipation than the frontier riflemen. Armed with the Pennsylvania rifle, a weapon that in the hands of a skilled marksman was far more accurate than the smoothbore muskets most 18th-century soldiers carried, and skilled in the Native-American way of war, the riflemen seemed to promise a valuable augmentation to George Washington’s nascent army besieging Boston. It is not an exaggeration to suggest that even before the Continental Congress authorized the creation of rifle companies from the Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia backcountries that these soldiers took on a mythological status. Congressional delegate John Adams had a role in making these myths and his correspondence offers a unique window into the naive expectations that he and others imagined for the riflemen. His correspondence also shows just how deceptive this mythology could be when the unruly and insubordinate frontiersmen dashed these expectations and instigated innumerable disruptions in Washington’s army.

In the summer of 1775, Adams undoubtedly viewed the riflemen as a godsend. Since the engagements at Lexington and Concord, New England had borne the brunt of the fighting against the British. Adams and other northern representatives in Congress were thus eager for southern troops to both reinforce the provincial army surrounding Boston and to demonstrate inter-colonial support for armed resistance.[1] Adams was undoubtedly thrilled, therefore, to hear southern delegates tell of the exotic frontiersmen and their extraordinary shooting and Indian-fighting exploits.[2] He soon convinced himself that the riflemen possessed all the martial prowess and civic virtue necessary to unite the colonies and defeat the ministerial troops in Boston and made his hopes known in a series of letters back to Massachusetts.[3] To Elbridge Gerry, Adams described the riflemen as “exquisite marksmen,” able “to send sure destruction to great distances.”[4] To James Warren, he lauded the backcountry soldiers as “Men of Property and Family, some of them of independent Fortunes, who go from the purest Motives of Patriotism and Benevolence into this service.”[5] To his wife Abigail, he labeled them “an excellent Species of Light Infantry” and “the most accurate Marksmen in the World.”[6]

Unfortunately, as the riflemen reached the Boston siege lines, they failed to live up to the myths that swilled around them. While the New England regiments had discipline problems of their own, the frontiersmen proved particularly unruly, insubordinate, and even dangerous to the good order of Washington’s developing army. They assumed for themselves a privileged status and refused to perform camp duties. They passed between the lines in defiance of orders to take ineffective pot shots at British sentries. In September, Pennsylvania riflemen staged a veritable mutiny in an effort to break a comrade out of confinement. This mutiny had to be suppressed at bayonet point.[7]

Adams, who had wholeheartedly supported the riflemen, soon received a barrage of letters from New England officers dismayed by the frontiersmen’s conduct. From William Heath he learned that “the Riflemen so much Boasted of … before their arrival, have been Guilty of as many Disorders as any Corps in the Camp and there has been more Desertions to the Enemy from them than from the whole Army Besides, perhaps Double.” Heath tempered his criticism a bit by admitting that there were some good soldiers among the riflemen and that “it would be ungenerous to characterize the Troops of any colony from the conduct of a few Scoundrels.”[8] John Thomas, an experienced veteran of the colonial wars, was less generous. In his opinion, the riflemen were “as Indifferent men as I ever served with, their Privates Mutinous & often Deserting to the Enemy, Unwilling for Duty of any Kind, Exceedingly Vicious, and I think the army here would be as well without as with them.”[9]

Eventually, Washington and his fellow officers got the riflemen under control and developed something of an unwritten doctrine to make use of their unique capabilities. By 1777, Daniel Morgan’s Rifle Corps proved highly effective in reconnaissance and harassment missions against the British in both New Jersey and northern New York.[10] The riflemen, however, never quite lived up to the myths that surrounded them in the summer of 1775 – myths that John Adams helped create.

[1] Among the New England congressional delegation, Adams was hardly alone in his enthusiasm for the riflemen. See, for example, Eliphalet Dyer to Jonathan Trumbull, Sr., June 16, 1775 in Paul H. Smith, ed. Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1774-1789 (Washington, DC: Library of Congress, 1976-2000), 1: 496; John Hancock to Elbridge Gerry, June 18, 1775 in ibid., 507; John Hancock to Joseph Warren, June 18, 1775 in ibid., 508.

[2] For the influence of southern delegates on Adams with regard to the riflemen see John Adams to James Warren, June 27, 1775 in ibid., 545; John Adams to James Warren, July 6, 1775 in ibid., 590.

[3] Historian Charles Royster has suggested that in the Revolution’s early stages, Americans believed that superior “virtue,” “benevolence,” “disinterestedness,” and “native courage” when combined with home-grown tactics, would compensate for deficiencies in military discipline and precision. In his letters, Adams seems to describe the riflemen in this context. See Charles Royster, A Revolutionary People at War: The Continental Army and American Character, 1775-1783 (Chapel Hill, NC: University of North Carolina Press, 1979), 11-12, 22-30, 33-35.

[4] John Adams to Elbridge Gerry, June 18, 1775 in Smith, ed. Letters of Delegates to Congress, 1: 503.

[5] John Adams to James Warren, July 6, 1775 in ibid., 590.

[6] John Adams to Abigail Adams, June 17, 1775 in ibid., 497.

[7] For an excellent account of this mutiny see Jesse Lukens to John Shaw, Jr., in Lindsay Swift, ed. Historical Manuscripts in the Public Library of the City of Boston (Boston: Public Library of the City of Boston, 1900), 1: 23-25. Adams learned of the mutiny in a letter from James Warren. See James Warren to John Adams, September 11, 1775, Adams Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

[8] William Heath to John Adams, October 23, 1775 in ibid.

[9] John Thomas to John Adams, October 24, 1775 in ibid.

[10] For the exploits of Morgan’s Rifle Corps during the 1777 campaigns see Albert Louis Zambone, Daniel Morgan: A Revolutionary Life (Yardley, PA: Westholme Publishing, 2018), 109-155.

By Judith Maas, Library Assistant

“I have to thank you for the copy you have been so kind as to send me of your discourse before the reformed society of Israelites. I am little acquainted with the liturgy of the Jews or their mode of worship but the reformation proposed and explained in the discourse appears entirely reasonable. Nothing is wiser than that all our institutions should keep pace with the advance of time and be improved with improvement of the human mind.”

Thomas Jefferson, Monticello, 6 January 1826

“The honour of a letter from Mr. Jefferson was beyond my most pleasing anticipations….You, Sir, stand as a pillar of light directing the march of our country through the darkness of political bondage, into the cheerful, the tropical morn of political emancipation. To you, therefore, the theme on which I have presumed to touch, possesses its full interest.”

Isaac Harby, Charleston, South Carolina, 14 January 1826[2]

This exchange of letters took place at the dawn of what would become the largest denomination of Judaism in America, the Reform movement. The occasion was the publication of a speech delivered by Harby, a teacher, playwright, and journalist, before Charleston’s Reformed Society of Israelites in November 1825. The published speech, as well as two plays by Harby, are part of the MHS collections.

The Reformed Society was an outgrowth of a group made up of 47 Jewish men who had first gathered in late 1824, with the mission of adapting the liturgy of the city’s Congregation Beth Elohim to the needs and conditions of modern American life. Among other reforms, the group had called for shorter services, the reading of prayers in Hebrew and English, and a weekly sermon conducted in English that would relate the Scriptures to everyday life.

In December 1824, the group submitted a petition to Beth Elohim’s governing board outlining its proposals–these were promptly rejected. In response, the petitioners established the Reformed Society, whose goal was to align the “prevailing system of worship” with the “enlightened state of society.”[3] Harby’s speech served as the keynote address at the organization’s first anniversary event. Once it was ready in pamphlet form, he proudly distributed copies to newspaper publishers and to well-known figures of the day, including, it appears, Jefferson.

On a trip to Charleston a few years ago, I toured Beth Elohim, which was established in 1749, and I remember the tour guide talking about the battling congregants. Finding Harby’s Discourse in the MHS collections has given me a chance to learn more about the synagogue and its history; the earliest beginnings of Reform Judaism in the United States; and Jewish life in colonial and antebellum America.

Jewish settlers began arriving in Charleston in large numbers in the 1740s, many from England or English colonies. During the Revolutionary era, the Jewish population supported the cause of independence, having found greater liberties in their new home than they had experienced in England. In 1790, South Carolina’s constitution formally granted the Jews “the free exercise and enjoyment of religious profession and worship, without discrimination or preference.”[4] By the early nineteenth century, many of Charleston’s Jews were employed as retailers, brokers, and auctioneers. Harby’s father, Solomon, migrated to the city in 1781, from England by way of Jamaica, and worked as an auctioneer.

Born in Charleston in 1788, Harby grew up at a time when the city was a flourishing, cosmopolitan center of trade and a home to theaters, clubs, and learned societies. Harby enjoyed a liberal education, studying Greek, Latin, and French literature at a private academy.  His devotion to literature shaped his career choices. After a stint as a legal apprentice, he became an itinerant man of letters, trying his hand at teaching, journalism, criticism, and playwriting. As both an editorial writer and a literary critic, he celebrated the promise of America, viewing the new nation as a beacon of freedom, and promoting the work of American authors; this optimistic view of the country would be echoed in his Discourse.

By the 1810s and 1820s, Charleston’s preeminence as a port city was on the decline. For Harby, engaging in intellectual pursuits and earning a living came into increasing conflict. It was at this low point that he found a new calling as a reformer of the Jewish liturgy, though his devotion to the cause is puzzling, as he had previously taken little part in the Charleston’s Jewish affairs. Harby and his colleagues were aware of the Jewish reform movements taking place in Europe, but their commitment seems to have been inspired mainly by local circumstances.

Harby’s biographer, Gary Phillip Zola, suggests several reasons for Harby’s involvement, including the emergence in the United States of evangelical societies seeking to convert Jews to Christianity; the appearance in the press of anti-Semitic articles; the fierce debate generated by a bill in Maryland to grant Jews in the state full civil and political equality; and the realization that many Jews in America, himself included, knew little about their religion and were thus unable to withstand attacks on Judaism. Furthermore, in Harby’s view, intolerance and bigotry were vestiges of the old world, with no place in the new.[5]

Written in the florid style characteristic of the era, the Discourse argues for the Society’s desired reforms while affirming its bonds with Jewish beliefs and traditions. Permeating the document is the idea of America’s special destiny as a bastion of freedom and tolerance in contrast with backward Europe: “We, in this free country can worship God in what language and what mode we think proper…. With what pride and pleasure must the happy few who composed our immediate forefathers—the happy few who were sufficiently enlightened to leave oppression, and go in quest of liberty—with what indescribable sensations must these pilgrims of the world have hailed the dawn of freedom as it illumined the western horizon.”[6] I see in the Discourse the desire of an immigrant’s son to achieve a sense of belonging, to be part of a pluralistic America and to honor his Jewish roots.

By 1826, the Society had lost hope in winning over Beth Elohim and made plans to build its own synagogue. In preparation, Harby and two others developed a reform prayer book, the first published in the United States. But within a few years, the Society had dissolved, and many members rejoined Beth Elohim. Harby’s struggles to earn a living continued and, seeking better prospects, he moved to New York, where he died of typhoid fever in 1828.

In the late 1830s, more controversy roiled Beth Elohim. After a fire in 1838 destroyed the synagogue and plans were being made for a new building, a group of congregants asked that “an organ be erected in the synagogue to assist in the vocal part of the service.”[7] The leadership dismissed the idea, arguing that playing the organ during services constituted a violation of the Sabbath. This time, however, the congregation prevailed, and the installation of an organ became the first of a series of reforms, many in keeping with the original proposals of the Reformed Society. The old guard faction went on to found its own congregation, Shearith Israel, or “the Remnant of Israel.”[8] But after enduring the hardships of the Civil War, the two congregations finally decided to merge, and today Beth Elohim describes itself as a “cornerstone of American Reform Jewish practice.”[9]

[1] Isaac Harby, A discourse, delivered in Charleston, (S.C.) on the 21st of Nov. 1825 : before the Reformed Society of Israelites, for promoting true principles of Judaism according to its purity and spirit, on their first anniversary, Charleston, printed by A.E. Miller, 1825, 12.

[2] Quoted in L.C. Moise, Biography of Isaac Harby with an account of the Reformed Society of Israelites of Charleston, S.C., 1824-1833 (Macon: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1931), 95, 97.

[3] Gary Phillip Zola, Isaac Harby of Charleston, 1788-1828: Jewish Reformer and Intellectual (Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1994), 122.

[4] Ibid., 4.

[5] Ibid., 115-119.

[6] Harby, A discourse, 11, 26-27.

[7] Quoted in Michael Feldberg, “Isaac Harby,” My Jewish Learning, accessed April 3, 2020, https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/isaac-harby/.

[8] Ibid.

[9] “Our History,” Kahal Kaddosh Beth Elohim, accessed April 3, 2020, https://www.kkbe.org/ourhistory.

Sources:

“Charleston, South Carolina.” Encyclopedia of Southern Jewish Communities. Accessed April 3, 2020. https://www.isjl.org/south-carolina-charleston-encyclopedia.html.

Feldberg, Michael. “Isaac Harby.” My Jewish Learning.  Accessed April 3, 2020. https://www.myjewishlearning.com/article/isaac-harby/.

Harby, Isaac, 1788-1828

A discourse, delivered in Charleston, (S.C.) on the 21st of Nov. 1825 : before the Reformed Society of Israelites, for promoting true principles of Judaism according to its purity and spirit, on their first anniversary / by Isaac Harby.

Charleston [S.C.] : Printed by A.E. Miller … 1825.

“Our History.” Kahal Kadosh Beth Elohim. Accessed March 4, 2020. https://www.kkbe.org/.

Moise, L. C. Biography of Isaac Harby with an account of the Reformed Society of Israelites of Charleston, S.C., 1824-1833. Macon: Central Conference of American Rabbis, 1931.

Rosengarten, Theodore, and Dale Rosengarten, eds. Portion of the People: Three Hundred Years of Southern Jewish Life. Columbia: University of South Carolina Press, 2002.

Zola, Gary Phillip. Isaac Harby of Charleston, 1788-1828: Jewish Reformer and Intellectual. Tuscaloosa: The University of Alabama Press, 1994.

By Anna Clutterbuck-Cook, Reference Librarian

Since the Massachusetts Historical Society closed its building at 1154 Boylston to staff and the public on 11 March, I have been working from home on a street in Roslindale that runs alongside the Arnold Arboretum. In these days of social distancing and Governor Baker’s stay at home orders, my wife and I have been grateful for our daily morning walks along the Arboretum’s wide, sweeping boulevards. Established in 1872, the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University is a living research collection and also one jewel in the chain known as the Emerald Necklace — a series of green spaces designed by Frederick Law Olmstead in the late 19th century and maintained by the City of Boston for the benefit of residents and visitors alike.

In looking to see what the Massachusetts Historical Society’s collections might hold about the Arnold Arboretum, I found the Report upon the condition and progress of the Botanic Garden and Arboretum during the year ending August 31, 1878… prepared by Charles Sprague Sargent (1841 -1927), the first director of the arboretum, which offers a glimpse into the first decade of the arboretum’s operations. The academic year of 1877-1878 had been a busy one for the Botanic Garden and Arboretum. Among many accomplishments, Sargent noted that “the work of re-arranging the hardy plants in the Garden has been continued,” “the old rockery of the Garden has been entirely rebuilt and replanted,” and “the artificial bog has been enlarged, and entirely remodelled and replanted … with satisfactory results.” Along with the industry of its gardeners, the Arboretum also saw an increase in visitors:

The number of visitors to the Garden is rapidly increasing, and probably twice as many persons have entered its gates during the past year as during any previous twelve months since its establishment.

This enthusiastic reception by general public, however, appeared to be in tension with what Sargent viewed as his primary purpose: to cultivate a premier collection of plants from around the world, each with a suitable habitat. “The difficulties of making a proper plan for laying out the Arboretum have always appeared very great to me,” he groused.

The site, while offering exceptional beauties, perhaps, for a public park, offers exceptional topographical difficulties for the object to which it is to be devoted; namely, a museum, in which as many living specimens as possible are to find their appropriate positions. In such a museum, every thing should be subservient to the collections, and the ease with which these can be reached and studied; and none of those considerations of mere landscape effect, should be allowed to interfere with these essential requirements of a scientific garden, however desirable such effects undoubtedly are.

To aid him in his efforts to meet these dual needs of scientific study and public pleasure, Sargent recommended — likely with prior approval — the engagement of Frederick Law Olmstead for the sum of two thousand dollars to design. “The foremost of landscape architects,” Sargent noted in his report, shortly before raising the question of funds, “he brings to this undertaking the largest experience and the wisest judgement; and I shall be satisfied that the plan he finally offers will be the very best attainable under the circumstances.” Is it just me, or does the very best attainable under the circumstances come with an audible sniff at having to compromise scientific objectives for “mere landscape effect”?

Whether or not Olmstead’s design was a compromise that satisfied Sprague is research for another day. However, it was a compromise that has continued to serve the residents of — and visitors to — Boston across more than a century as we step out for our daily constitutionals and are lucky enough to be surrounded by the trees that Sprague and his staff planted.

Stay safe, and enjoy a walk.

Sprague’s report can be read in full online via the Google Books project.