A Massachusetts Yankee in Queen Charlotte’s Court

By Gwen Fries, Adams Papers

In 1815, when John Quincy Adams began his tenure as U.S. minister at the Court of St. James, King George III had for several years past been declared unfit to rule, and his eldest son was serving in his stead. The Regency Act of 1811 had vested the power of the Crown in the Prince of Wales, but in terms of etiquette—essential to a diplomat—Queen Charlotte was still the one to impress.

On 8 June 1815 Adams contacted the assistant Master of Ceremonies, Robert Chester, to get a refresher on royal protocol and court presentations. Adams was no stranger to court life, but with an indisposed king, his not-quite-widowed queen, nine surviving princes and princesses, and a Prince Regent and his daughter to consider, the protocol was perplexing. “I asked whether it was usual for the foreign Ministers to be presented separately to the Princes of the Royal family,” Adams recorded in his diary, “and when and to whom visits of form were to be paid— He said that after having an Audience of the Queen, and not until then, it would be proper to call at the Residences of all the Princes.” Chester guessed that Charlotte would return to London in the course of a week and would give the Adamses an audience then.

Adams was barred from visiting the other princes’ residences until he had presented himself to the Queen, but he was invited to Carlton House for an audience with the Prince Regent. Chester added that should Adams run into any of the Regent’s brothers at Carlton House, he was permitted to make a personal presentation.

painted portrait
George, the Prince Regent, by Sir Thomas Lawrence. National Portrait Gallery, London

After waiting an hour and a half, Adams was introduced into the Prince’s closet. “He stood alone; and as I approached him, speaking first, said, ‘Mr Adams, I am happy to see you.’” Adams presented him with a letter from the U.S. government. “The Prince took the Letter, and without opening it, delivered it immediately to Lord Castlereagh.” The Prince Regent asked about the elder John Adams as well as John Quincy’s impressions of Ghent. Castlereagh tactfully drew the conversation to a close, and they withdrew from the chamber. Adams was then introduced to the Duke of Clarence—the future William IV—making that two future kings in one levee.

But it was not kings he needed, it was the Queen. Nearly five months later, John Quincy and his wife Louisa were still waiting for an audience. On 26 October, Adams knocked flat with a painful inflammation in his eye, Queen Charlotte finally held a drawing room. Adams had to beg out due to his infirmity.

At the close of 1815 and the start of the new year, John Quincy was still waiting for an audience. On 31 January 1816, Adams heard that Charlotte was in London, “but not for the transaction of business.” His hopes were raised on 1 March when the newspapers announced that the Queen would hold a drawing room within the week. John Quincy immediately reached out to Lord Castlereagh, seeking an introduction for himself and for Louisa to Her Majesty. Castlereagh dashed his hopes, revealing that the announcement was mere gossip. To add insult to injury, later that week John Quincy was passed on the road by Queen Charlotte on her way back from Windsor.

Two weeks later, the happy news finally arrived: “The Queen will hold a Drawing-Room, next Thursday, the 21st. at 2. O’Clock at Buckingham House.” Preparation began immediately.

Early in the morning on 21 March, John Quincy and Louisa traveled to London to dress for their presentation. There was one final hitch. John Quincy discovered his audience was scheduled after the drawing room, meaning he could not attend with his wife. “Mrs: Adams would have been obliged to go alone, would be a stranger there,” Adams recorded in his diary. “I concluded to go with her and wait.”

John Quincy waited downstairs for more than two hours. “While I was there, the Duke and Duchess of York, passed through it, going by a private passage, to the drawing-room, and the Duke of Sussex, and the Duke and Princess Sophia of Gloucester, in coming from it. The Duke of Sussex stopped and spoke to me.” Adams had heard positive things about Sussex and was favorably impressed, even sharing a laugh with the Queen’s sixth son.

woman
Queen Charlotte, by Samuel William Reynolds, after Henry Edridge. National Portrait Gallery, London

Finally Adams’s moment had come. “The Queen was standing about the middle of the Chamber. Just behind her at her right hand stood the Princess Augusta, at her left the Princess Mary—further back several Ladies in waiting, and the Duke of Kent in Military Uniform.” Adams performed his prepared speech. Charlotte asked after John Quincy’s health, and ever the keen botanist, inquired about the climate of the United States. “She asked me whether I was related to the Mr Adams who had been formerly the Minister to this Country, and appeared surprized when I answered that I was his Son,” Adams wrote. “She forgot that I had given her the same answer to the same question twenty years ago; and had apparently no recollection that I had ever been presented to her before.”

The introduction made, Adams could perform his diplomatic duties unhindered. He immediately visited the residences of the Duke of York, the Duke of Cumberland, the Duke of Gloucester, and the Duke of Clarence. He routed his carriage past Kensington Palace so he could also call at the apartments of the Duke of Kent and of the Duke of Sussex.

A few weeks later, on 4 April, John Quincy was able to attend his first drawing room. “The forms of this presentation are different from those of the Circles on the Continent,” Adams noted. “The Queen does not go round the Circle. She takes a stand, before a Sopha— The persons attending the Drawing Room, go in from the adjoining Hall; go up to her and are spoken to her in succession, after which they pass onto the Princesses and Princes who stand at her right hand, each of whom speaks a few words, and then the person files off by another door, and goes down Stairs to go away.”

His first drawing room done, Adams returned to his lodgings, changed out of his fancy clothes, and settled down to something much more to his taste—a stack of Boston newspapers.

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding of the edition is currently provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Packard Humanities Institute.

Shays’ Rebellion: Just Cause, or Just a Nuisance? Part Two

By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate

In Part One of this story,  we discussed John Quincy Adam’s (JQA) diary entry from 1 December 1786, in which he described an altercation along a snowy riverbank between militiamen and a leader of the Regulators, a force of men formed to fight back against the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, as a result of heavy taxes on the financially burdened citizens of Western Massachusetts.

Going back several days in the diary to 23 November 1786, JQA writes about the “insurgents” coming to Cambridge where he is attending Harvard:

Whitney arrived in the evening; he comes from Petersham, in Worcester county, and says the insurgents threaten coming to prevent the setting of the court of common pleas, in this Town, next week.

On 27 November 1786, he writes in a more excited manner:

This evening, just before prayers about 40 horsemen, arrived here under the command of Judge Prescott of Groton, in order to protect the court to-morrow, from the rioters. We hear of nothing, but Shays and Shattuck: two of the most despicable characters in the community, now make themselves of great consequence. There has been in the course of the day fifty different reports flying about, and not a true one among them.

In the days that followed, it is clear this excitement is not JQA’s alone. On 29 January 1786, he reports that:

Lovell, a classmate of mine, is half crazy, at hearing so much news. He wants to be doing something, and is determined by some means or other to fight the insurgents. He says he is no politician, he was made for an active life, but he cannot live in a place, where there is so much news.

It is also clear that JQA has no inclination to join the militia, only the urge to record the news in his diary, which he writes with as much enthusiasm as the dinners, dances, classes, and meetings he’s attending.

The sentiment towards the insurgents is not positive in Cambridge and elsewhere, as is noted in the original diary entry: “The gentlemen, were not molested however in bringing him off; but had every where every assistance given them, that they were in want of, and the apparent good will of every one, wherever they went,” as well as in his classmates wanting to fight the insurgents. On 30 November 1786, JQA reports that two militias moved through the area to try to chase down the insurgents who had turned around when they learned of the militia in Cambridge, and he records his own sentiments on the news:

There seems to be a small spark of patriotism, still extant; it is to be hoped, that it will be fanned, and kindled by danger, but not smothered by sedition.

Job Shattuck, the man who was captured in the diary entry, had an interesting past and had been against the burdensome taxes since 1782. Twice he had been a war hero, first as a soldier in the Seven Years’ War, and then during the Revolutionary War. He was a farmer with a large house and more land than anyone else in Groton. His family, including his wife Sarah who detained a Tory courier during the Revolutionary War, were champions of liberty and wholeheartedly stood behind the Sons of Liberty. Shattuck felt that the taxes were excessive and the same as the taxes imposed without representation by Britain’s parliament. At fifty years old, his age, war experience, and local respect made him a natural leader. He and his Regulators successfully shut down the Concord court in September 1786.

In November 1786, Governor Bowdoin issued a warrant for Shattuck’s arrest, which brings us back again to JQA’s diary and its tale of Shattuck’s capture. During the altercation, his knee was wounded by a sword, and once brought to jail his injury was not tended to for four days. He was held for five months before his petition to be released was granted, but only on account of his still festering wound and his persistent community support. He returned home to Groton. It may be that the rebellion’s last effort in January 1787—when Shattuck was in jail—made Governor Bowdoin more willing to grant clemency.

Shattuck was tried, found guilty, and sentenced to hang, but a pardon from the governor could save his life. Fortunately for Shattuck, John Hancock was reelected governor and postponed the hanging. By July, Shattuck was pardoned. He walked the rest of his life with a crutch and died in 1819 at the age of 83.

However, the rebellion’s story ended much sooner for JQA. By 2 December 1786, he wrote:

The Court adjourned from hence this afternoon, and Cambridge is not at present in danger of being the immediate scene of action. These rebels have for these three months, been the only topic of conversation all over the Commonwealth.

Other resources for further reading on Shays’ Rebellion

Petition from Job Shattucks, Middlesex County Court

Grand Jury Notes, October 1786

Letter from Mary Smith Cranch to Abigail Adams

Letter from Benjamin Hichborn to John Adams

 

 

Looking for Digital Volunteers to Help with Transcriptions!

By Nancy Heywood, Senior Archivist for Digital Initiatives

Can you read cursive? Do you want to time travel to Massachusetts in 1855?

Are you interested in learning more about the Boston area and learning about the lives of past residents?

Maybe you’re curious about the day-to-day activities of an urban missionary in a busy 19th-century city environment?

If you answered yes to any of these questions you might be just the person we’re looking for. We need volunteers to help the MHS test a pilot transcription project running now through 30 June 2022 featuring the journals of Luman Boyden, a Methodist missionary who worked in East Boston in the 1850s.

The collection is significant because it includes names of and details about impoverished, marginalized, and immigrant populations. Boyden’s perspective is the lens into people’s lives and some of his comments are judgmental and harsh. He is zealous, very sure of his own perspective, but does seem to want to help (in the way he thinks is appropriate).  You will have the chance to decide for yourself how empathetic he is as he ministers to people in the East Boston neighborhood.

Many organizations offer this type of transcription crowdsourcing activity. We hope you find it interesting to look closely at some of our manuscript collections and contribute to a long-term goal of improving discoverability–eventually the transcribed manuscript pages will be searchable and more accessible.

MHS’s transcription tool is integrated into the web presentations of selected digitized collections. It’s easy to get started. Visit www.masshist.org/mymhs, create an account, and try your hand at transcribing a document from our collection. The project page for the “Luman Boyden Missionary Journals” includes a dropdown menu that helps you find a page to work on. [See screenshot below.]

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The project page for the “Luman Boyden Missionary Journals”

The workspace for volunteer transcribers includes a text box and a zoomable image of the manuscript page.  [See screenshot below.]

Screenshot, journal entrry
The workspace for volunteer transcribers.

The FAQ page has lots of tips and suggestions.  Questions? You also have the option to send an e-mail to: crowdsourcing@masshist.org.

We would appreciate your help and your feedback!

Quick links:

Digital Volunteers page:  www.masshist.org/mymhs

Projects page: www.masshist.org/mymhs/index.php/projecthub/projects

FAQ page:  www.masshist.org/mymhs/index.php/learn-more

Read a blog post by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist, about the Luman Boyden journals.

Shays’ Rebellion: Just Cause, or Just a Nuisance? Part One

By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate

Last month I wrote a story about swords in the MHS collection and while researching that topic, I came across a compelling diary entry by a 19-year-old John Quincy Adams (JQA) in 1786. He wrote the following on Friday, 1 December 1786:

They proceeded a little further, and saw in the snow the tracks of a man, going from the common road. They suspected them to be his, and followed them. Mr. Sampson Read, first saw him, on the opposite bank of a small river, and immediately cross’d it on the ice; Shattuck then came to a stand, and said to Read: “I know you not; but whoever you are you are a dead man.” Read ascended the bank; a scuffle between them ensued. Read fell over the Bank, and the other, in making a violent push, at him, lost his sword, and fell upon him. He recovered his sword however, and was just about to pierce his antagonist with it, when Dr. Rand of Boston, arrived, and drew the sword from his hand, backwards by the hilt; at the same time Fortescue Vernon aimed at Shattucks arm, but the sword glanced, and wounded him dangerously in the knee, upon which he immediately surrendered himself; but said he should be rescued in half an hour: the gentlemen, were not molested however in bringing him off; but had every where every assistance given them, that they were in want of, and the apparent good will of every one, wherever they went.

The men relaying the tale caught Job Shattuck, who was one of the leaders of some of the preliminary actions leading up to Shays’ Rebellion, in particular, preventing courts from meeting. Reading JQA’s diary entries on the previous days reveal his interest and excitement on hearing this news, with a small bit of reflection on 30 November:

A republic must very frequently be called back to the principles of its government, and so long as it has sufficient virtue for that, its constitution will stand firm.

I didn’t know too much about Shays’ Rebellion, so I did some reading, and here is what I gleaned. After the Revolutionary War ended in 1783, soldiers returned home to Massachusetts where hard currency was scarce, and a barter economy became more popular in the western hills of Massachusetts. Creditors, however, demanded to be paid in hard currency. Soldiers had been paid little, if at all, during the war, and many returned home impecunious. The financial situation was so dire that the only assets for some farmers were their land and their animals. Despite Great Britain’s ban on all trade with the colonies (and John Adams was in London trying to restart that trade during this period)― Massachusetts’s coastal towns were faring much better with their markets based on hard currency. This was the economic situation when Massachusetts started levying land and other taxes to help pay for its war debt and a portion of its foreign debt.

These taxes also had to be paid with hard currency, which was easily accomplished in the coastal towns but presented a heavy burden to the inland communities. Tax collectors began seizing property—usually farm animals—to sell at auction for a fraction of their worth to pay off the tax. Standoffs between tax collectors and citizens began as early as 1782. In 1783, mobs formed to take back the property brought to auction. Dissenters wrote petitions to the state legislature, calling for the state to print and distribute money to reduce the worth of the currency in circulation, but these petitions were denied or ignored. In addition, citizens without land still owed taxes, but could not vote, and thus were not represented in the Massachusetts legislature that was deciding on the tax laws. To these citizens, the circumstances were the same as just before the Revolutionary War. Some citizens even said that life was better under British rule!

In 1785, John Hancock, who did not enforce tax collection where it was a burden, resigned as the first governor of Massachusetts, and James Bowdoin replaced him. Bowdoin aggressively pursued both current and back taxes. In August of 1786, the state legislature adjourned without considering the many petitions sent that year addressing the burdensome taxes. That month, a force of men called Regulators formed to take direct action to force the leaders of the Commonwealth to do something.

The group prevented the courts from meeting in Northampton, Worcester, Great Barrington, Concord, and Taunton but were stopped by militiamen in Springfield. Courts in larger towns and cities were able to meet without conflict but had the protection of militia outside the building for protection. Samuel Adams, a member of the state legislature, drew up a Riot Act, which suspended citizens’ right to habeas corpus, allowing them to be jailed for long periods without being accused of a crime. Adams also proposed that rebels to the republic should be punished by execution.

This is when we return to JQA’s diary entry and what had occurred to cause him to write with such fervor and interest. Come back to this column next week to read part two!

Other resources for further reading on Shays’ Rebellion

Petition from Job Shattucks, Middlesex County Court

Grand Jury Notes, October 1786

Letter from Mary Smith Cranch to Abigail Adams

Letter from Benjamin Hichborn to John Adams

2022-2023 MHS Research Fellows Announced

The MHS is pleased to announce the class of 2022-2023 research fellows. Director of Research Kanisorn Wongsrichanalai remarked, “We are excited to welcome this new class of MHS research fellows to our reading room. These projects represent the latest scholarship on a host of topics from poetry and literature to African American and disability history. These researchers and their projects showcase not just the strengths and versatility of the MHS collections but also the creative ways in which scholars can make use of different types of sources. They will all contribute to a better understanding of both American history and society.” Explore the list of recipients and their projects.

MHS-NEH Long-Term Fellows

  • Nathan Braccio, Post-Doc, Utah State University, “Mapping New England: The Algonquian-English Cartographic Struggle, 1500-1700.” (4 months)
  • Juliane Braun, Assistant Professor, Auburn University, “Translating the Pacific: Nature Writing, Print Culture and Transoceanic Empire.” (4 months)
  • Kathryn Lasdow, Assistant Professor, Suffolk University, “Wharfed Out: Improvement and Inequity on the Early American Urban Waterfront.” (4 months)
  • Christy Pottroff, Assistant Professor, Boston College, “Citizen Technologies: The U.S. Post Office and the Transformation of American Literature.” (4 months)

 

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC)
Fellows Visiting the MHS

  • Alexander David Clayton, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Michigan-Ann Arbor, “The Living Animal: Biopower and Empire in the Atlantic Menagerie, 1760-1890.”
  • Katherine Fein, Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University, “The Garb of Nature: Picturing Nudity, Race, and Ecology in the Nineteenth-Century United States.”
  •  Emily Gates, Ph.D. Candidate, Georgia State University, “Melancholia in Colonial New England and Its Impact on the Early American Novel.”
  • Barry Huff, Associate Professor, Principia College, “Slavery, Suffrage, and Science: Mary Baker Eddy and Biblical Interpretation in Nineteenth-Century New England.”
  • Arthur George Kamya, Ph.D. Candidate, Boston University, “Stranger Unfreedom: Slavery, Slave Trading, and Servitude in Seventeenth-Century Massachusetts.”
  • Eva Landsberg, Graduate Student, Yale University, “The Politics of Sugar in the 18th-Century British Atlantic.”
  • Frances O’Shaughnessy, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington, “Black Revolution on the Sea Islands: Property, Empire, and the Emancipation of Humanity.”
  • Anne Powell, Ph.D. Candidate, College of William and Mary, “The Antinomian Crisis and the Pequot War, 1636-1638.”
  • Jennifer Reiss, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Pennsylvania, “Undone Bodies: Women and Disability in Early America.”
  • Lea Stephenson, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Delaware, “’Wonderful Things’: Egyptomania, Empire, and the Senses, 1870-1922.”
  • Jeffrey Toney, Professor, Kean University, “From Blackface to Black Genius: Celebrating Cultural Inheritance with Students of Color.”

 

Fellows Not Visiting the MHS

  • Sopanit Angsusingha, Ph.D. Candidate, Georgetown University, “The Gospel of Civility: Missionary Encounters, Education, and Gender in Iraq (1890s-1950s).”
  • Isobel Ashby, Graduate Student, University of Wisconsin-Madison, “Battling for Babies? The Changing Face of Pro-Life Activism in the 1990s Northeast and Midwest United States.”
  • David Brown, Associate Professor, Ohio University, “A Chain Unbroken: Cultural Transmission in New England College Student Life, 1880-1925.”
  • Thalia Ertman, Graduate Student, University of California-Los Angeles, “Socialist Feminism and Bodily Autonomy in the United States.”
  • Roxanne Goldberg, Ph.D. Candidate, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, “Selling and Salvaging ‘the Orient’: U.S. Circuits of Islamic Art, 1870–1940.”
  • Karyna Hlyvynska, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Georgia, “Putting the Machine in Motion: How the U.S. Treasury Department Built a Fiscal-Military State.”
  • Yiyun Huang, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Tennessee-Knoxville, “Medicinal Tea: Global Cultural Transfer and A Vast Early America.”
  • Dana Hughes, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California-Santa Barbara, “Tracking the Colonial Revival in Public Memory: Caroline Hazard and her Activism on Two Coasts in the Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth Centuries.”
  • Alexandra Macdonald, Ph.D. Candidate, College of William and Mary, “The Social Life of Time in the Anglo-Atlantic World, 1660-1830.”
  • Lawrence “Trent” MacNamara, Assistant Professor, Texas A&M University, “Open Sky: Higher Places and Higher Meaning in the United States.”
  • Aaron Moulton, Assistant Professor, Stephen F. Austin State University, “A Dominican Dictator in Washington: Rafael Trujillo and the Politics of U.S. Foreign Relations.”
  • Joseph Nevins, Professor Emeritus, Vassar College, “Banana Capital: How the United Fruit Company and Greater Boston Made One Another.”
  • Sarah Pearlman Shapiro, Ph.D. Candidate, Brown University, “Women’s Communities of Care in Revolutionary New England.”
  • Christine Peralta, Assistant Professor, Amherst College, “Insurgent Care: Reimagining the Health Work of Filipina Women, 1870- 1948.”
  • Trysh Travis, Associate Professor, University of Florida, “Feminists on Drugs: A History.”
  • Kayleigh Whitman, Ph.D. Candidate, Vanderbilt University, “Faith in the World Community: Sue Bailey Thurman and Black Women’s World Reconstruction, 1920-1950.”
  • Hekang Yang, Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University, “The Making of Fiscal Empire: Frontier Questions and State Borrowing in China, circa 1876-1916.”

 

Suanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship on the Civil War, Its Origins, and Consequences

  • Paul Polgar, Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi, “An Abolition Peace: Black Rights, the Union Cause, and the Rise of Radical Reconstruction.”

 

Short-Term Fellowships

  • Aabid Allibhai, Ph.D. Candidate, Harvard University, “Belinda Sutton’s World: Slavery, Legal Activism, and Abolition in Revolutionary New England.” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars)
  • Joshua Bartlett, Assistant Professor, Bilkent University, “Arboreal Poetics: The Language, Materiality, and Politics of Trees in American Poetry.” (Mary B. Wright Environmental History Fellowship)
  • Richard Bell, Professor, University of Maryland, “The First Freedom Riders: Streetcars and Street Fights in Jim Crow New York.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
  • Daniel Bottino, Ph.D. Candidate, Rutgers University, “‘By Turff and Twigg’: Oral and Literate Culture in Seventeenth-Century Maine.” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars)
  • Armando Chavez-Rivera, Associate Professor, University of Houston, “Alexander Hill Everett, Richard Robert Madden, and U.S. Influences over Cuba in 1835-45.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
  • Theodore Delwiche, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University, “The Contested Classics: Education in North America, 1635-1800.” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars)
  • Daniel Doherty, Ph.D. Candidate, Durham University, “‘Bleeding Massachusetts’: Anti-Abolitionist and anti-Black Violence in the Antebellum North, 1840-1849.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
  • Andre Fleche, Professor, Castleton University, “The American Civil War and the Shaping of the Western Hemisphere, 1848-1877.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
  • Stephanie Gorton, Independent Scholar, “The Icon and the Idealist: The Two Radical Women Who Brought Choice to America.” (Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)
  • Mercedes Haigler, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Virginia, “Settled Out of Doors: Social Life, Everyday Spaces, and the Development of Partisanship in Philadelphia and Washington City (1790-1832).” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
  • Barry Huff, Associate Professor, Principia College, “Slavery, Suffrage, and Science: Mary Baker Eddy and Nineteenth-Century New England Sermons.” (C. Conrad & Elizabeth H. Wright Fellowship)
  • Betsy Klimasmith, Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston, “Staging Ephemerality: The Theatrics of Sedgwick’s Hope Leslie.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
  • Can Mert Kökerer, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Chicago, “The Participatory Foundations of Democracy in Colonial New England: Institutional Innovation, Political Legitimation, and Popular Domination.” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars)
  • Jeremy Land, Post-Doc, University of Helsinki, “Trans-Imperial Trade and the American Revolution.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
  • Eva Landsburg, Graduate Student, Yale University, “The Politics of Sugar in the 18th-Century British Atlantic.” (Kenneth and Carol Hills Fellowship in Colonial History)
  • Michael Larmann, Graduate Student, University of Montana, “Monuments and Moderation: Daniel Webster and the Commemoration of Compromise in the Age of Disunion, 1853-1865.” (Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship)
  • Jessica Leeper, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Oxford, “The Adams and Johnson Women at Court in Early American European Diplomacy, c.1780-1820.” (Marc Friedlaender Fellowship)
  • Brigitte Lewis, Graduate Student, University of Chicago, “The Legend of Neptune: The Life of Nipton – A History of Slavery, Freedom, Land, and Community in Three Centuries of New England.” (African American Studies Fellowship)
  • Leo Lovemore, Post-Doc, Historic New England, “‘Treasurers of God’s Bounty’: Money, Medicine, and Power in Boston, 1785-1865.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
  • Karah Mitchell, Ph.D. Candidate, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “‘The Call of Kind’: Humanizing the Animal in American Literature, 1830-1918.” (Andrew Oliver Research Fellowship)
  • Jennifer Reiss, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Pennsylvania, “Undone Bodies: Women and Disability in Early America.” (Ruth R. Miller Fellowship)
  • Alison Russell, Graduate Student, University of Massachusetts Amherst, “‘On That Shield’: American Identity and the Constitution in the Early Republic.” (Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship)
  • Meredith Stukey, Ph.D. Candidate, Purdue University, “The Romanovs on a World Stage: Autocracy, Democracy, and Crisis, 1896-1918.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
  • Rachel Trocchio, Assistant Professor, University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, “Thinking the Instant: A New Reading of the Great Awakening.” (Kenneth and Carol Hills Fellowship in Colonial History and W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)
  • Christopher Walton, Ph.D. Candidate, Southern Methodist University, “At Home in War: Religion in the Connecticut River Valley during the American Revolution.” (Military Historical Society of Massachusetts Fellowship)
  • Weiao Xing, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Cambridge, “Puritan Narratives of Encounters in Early Eighteenth-Century New England.” (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)
  • Tian Xu, Post-Doc, Historic New England, “Representing Minorities in the Civil War Era: Lawyers in Black and Chinese Legal Mobilization.” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)
  • Serena Zabin, Professor, Carleton College, “Boston’s Black Refugees.” (Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)
  • Jeanette Zaragoza, Assistant Professor, University of Puerto Rico, “Interpreting a Transatlantic Saga: How Interpreters and Translators Wove The Amistad.” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)