By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate

Every week I spend time reading MHS’s online archives to find quotes, images, and interesting stories for the Society’s social media and e-newsletter. I have gained a general knowledge of US and colonial history that has helped me interpret letters, diary entries and other materials found in archives. At times I’ve become momentarily horrified by what I’m reading, either because I don’t know the background of the author, or the style of writing is confusing. I’d like to share one of my “archival horrors” and my delight with its outcome with you this Halloween. The letter begins emotionally:

Dear Sir,

I Rec’d yours dated July the 21 &c., at the opening of which, I was not a little suprized; to see your sweet Name, affixed at the bottom of the Lines, wrote to me; to tell the truth, I could hardly Keep in my jumping heart, for it skipped like Lambs upon little Hills, but when I cam to understand the weight and solidity of the same, the wings of my Enthusiastick flame dropt off, and I was then so calm and sedate, that I could read with tears in my Eyes for desire of seeing the author of it and the weighty matter of them &c.

Letter from Israel Cheever to Robert Treat Paine, 11 July 1749

Cheever addresses Paine in a loving manner which was normal for his time—men wrote to each other using sweet language intended to convey loving, loyal friendship. But in this letter, the message begins to sound, well, a little…sexy‒ “have not the fashonable People of the world to converse with, nor no sweet Chum to confabulate with upon a Bed of Ease…” True, Cheever could mean no opportunity for a relaxed time together at a club, where cultured and privileged men of the era went to socialize with each other. Before that suggestive passage, he also notes he is in “eremo subobscura” (hidden in the forest), meaning Wrentham, Mass. where he had moved recently for a job.

The next line made me think I was reading a letter between lovers: “But I cant help letting you Know one thing, and that is I have no bosom friends in the Night upon my Lodgings. You may give a very good guesse at wt. I mean.” The line that followed dispelled my suspicions: “But for fear you should be put to trouble (Bed buggs).” I was hopeful for possibly discovering a love letter, and was disappointed when it was not.

The previous lines are not the horror that I promised at the beginning. Here is where my horror started to grow. Cheever writes:

And as for my Brood, they are like to grow, by feeding of them with tender meat. In Number I have had thirty seven, but I have constantly but about 17. How many more are a coming out of the Eggshels I know not, some of these have not yet got them off their Backs.

Several thoughts came to me at once—what did Cheever do for a living? Raise livestock or chickens? If not, had I missed mention of his having children? And so many—37?! And why only 17 of them constantly with him?! And why would the children have eggshells on their backs?

Luckily, the letter’s digital transcription has notes at the end it, making my horror short-lived. The notes indicate that Cheever had taken a teaching position in Wrentham, explaining, to my relief, that his “brood” wasn’t animals or his own offspring but his students! As it was July, many of these students probably worked on their family’s farms, reducing attendance at school. The eggshell comments probably means that he thinks many of his students are very young for the classroom and does not want to guess at how many more students he will later teach.

If you were startled with a bit of horror as I was upon first reading this letter, I hope you’ve enjoyed how it turned out. Happy Halloween!

By Nikhil R., John Winthrop Student Fellow

Every year, the MHS selects one or more high school students as recipients of the John Winthrop Student Fellowship. This award encourages students to make use of the nationally significant collections of the MHS in a research project of their choosing. Applications for the 2023 Student Fellowships will open in December 2022. Learn more and apply! 

This year our John Winthrop Student Fellow is Nikhil R., who attends Acton-Boxborough Regional High School. 

As someone of Indian heritage and interested in researching history, I found the John Winthrop Fellowship to be an opportunity to explore something that I found goes under the radar: the connection between India and America throughout the centuries. From what I had learned previously, that connection was thought of as beginning in the late twentieth century with immigrants, but there is a much more rich history dating back centuries unknown to most people from both continents.  

In summary, my essay analyzes the experiences of Americans in India from the colonial period to the emergence of the United States as a nation in the 18th century and further into the nineteenth century when the nation consolidated its identity on the world stage. I trace these three periods in the joint history of America and India through the life and travel writings of a few key figures. Through the letters of Nathaniel Higginson, the Salem-born man who eventually became Governor of Madras in 1692, I discovered the social and political dealings of a New England based administrator in the colonial era. In the second period, in the aftermath of the American Revolution, there is a great interest in India from a newly formed United States that can be seen in the exploits of American travelers such as Bartholomew Burges. In the nineteenth century there was a further escalation of the ties between India and America that is seen in the story of Calvin Smith, a civil war veteran who traveled to India and worked in the then popular ice trade, sharing his perspectives and experiences of living in India for five years. Finally, in the mid to late 19th century, evangelical America and the Liberal Christian movement spread Christianity to other nations through missions, reaching India. 

The accounts and candid perspectives of these American travelers were available in the MHS in the form of mostly letters, travel writings and memoirs, and I also consulted various books for context and background information. I examined the triangular relationship between India, British colonial rule, and American merchants/travelers. What I discovered was that while Americans adhered to the hierarchies created by the British, they still offered a variety of perspectives, including a few who challenge the stereotypes of Indians. 

To begin my work, I looked through what the MHS library had to offer in order to get a better sense of some resources I could use in my project, to better inform my proposal. I started with the online catalog, ABIGAIL, and found many items of interest, ranging from financial records of American ships that traveled to India to correspondences of missionaries working there. Simply entering the keyword “India” brought hundreds if not thousands of results, so I started with a selection of a few that caught my eye and organized a narrative of what I could research. 

Like many of the student fellows, this was my first time engaged in hands-on archival research. Nonetheless, on my first day, I was greeted by the friendly librarians who showed me the ropes: using the scantrons, submitting reading room requests, and guiding me through the many facets of using the library. While I was in awe of the vast amount of resources available, I slowly began down my list of items, and started with a box of logs from a ship on a trip to India. I opened the folder, and examined the old journal, but to my surprise, it wasn’t what I had expected it to be from reading the catalog. Instead of a gripping story of exotic experiences, I was only met with a description of weather, breezes, and latitude. Feeling somewhat defeated, I finished off the book, but at the end I found a section on how to calculate logarithms and some practice problems, which was very interesting.  

From this, I started to understand the components of academic historical research, including the disappointment of not finding anything after hours of reading, but also the excitement of discovering a hidden gem where I didn’t expect it. As I got deeper into my research, I realized the wide net I had cast over centuries proved too much to refine into a cohesive project, so I seized the opportunity to focus on the people themselves, which ultimately proved more rewarding to me. I learned that it is important to allow your project to morph as you discover new things and change your perspective on the research. Finishing my research paper initially proved to be a monumental task, but sticking through it and completing it gave me pride in my work. Overall, the student fellowship taught me valuable skills like critical thinking and patience, and vastly improved my ability in reading messy handwriting. It’s an incredible experience for a student to learn what it means to be a historian, and reinforced my desire to pursue history further academically.  

By Kathy Griffin, Collections Services Project Transcriber

Since the spring of 2022, we have been promoting a grant-funded, pilot project to enable crowd-sourced online transcription of MHS collections. This project offers a meaningful volunteer experience at the present time and in the future will facilitate research using those collections by people across the globe. I have been involved in this project both as a transcriber and as the principal reviewer/editor of the transcriptions as they are completed by volunteers. Crowdsourcing for transcription is particularly important in the 21st century, when fewer members of the new generation of researchers are able to read cursive writing, and those who can decipher the writing of earlier centuries are a rare commodity. For what use can historical manuscripts be, when no one can understand the written record? This article in The Atlantic, by Drew Gilpin Faust, stabs right into the heart of the matter. Our vast manuscript collections stored in archival repositories across the United States will be useless unless the items are digitized and transcribed for access.  

Online transcription projects which reach across the globe to willing volunteers can bring together those who enjoy both solving handwriting puzzles, and reading the stories of the past. Accurate transcription is probably the most time-consuming aspect of a completed digital project. We have the technology for rapid delivery of digitized documents to a computer screen, but we cannot engage the researcher if they cannot read the documents. On the MHS website, the transcriptions completed during the pilot project are visible to anyone who creates an account and logs in to the MHS Digital Volunteers web page. In the future, the plan is for the transcriptions to be searchable on the MHS website and also visible to people browsing the manuscript collection guides relating to the transcribed pages.  

The primary transcription project of this endeavor was deciphering the diaries of Lumen Boyden, a mid-19th-century Methodist minister employed by the Boston City Missionary Society as a missionary in East Boston for most of the documented time period 1854-1863. He was also employed as the preacher for the Union Chapel in East Boston, and as a representative of the Society for the Prevention of Pauperism, and for several other charitable endeavors. Boyden spent his daily rounds visiting East Boston families of all religions and ethnicities. There is a wealth of information on the every-day life of the poor people of the area, from food consumed, to religious habits, to the scourge of alcoholism among the populace, sickness, medicine, the weather, schooling, amusements, fires, floods, wages, cost of living, religious beliefs and practices, and so forth. The poverty, squalor, disease, and dreadful living conditions that Boyden encountered in East Boston, on a daily basis, rival anything described in Dickensian London. And this is what historical manuscripts really give to us: a snapshot, incomplete at best, but an important glimpse into the lives of those who came before us. Since the journals have already been described in more detail in a previous Beehive post I will not give any further detail of Boyden’s writing.

Went to “Bowkers Block” & called on eleven families & what misery. Rum & ruin go hand in hand. A Mr Judge Roman Catholic very sick with consumption very poor — Called on lame man in another room — In another a woman with a number of children also a sister & family just from Ireland wretchedly poor Husband of the lessee in house of correction Having spent a short time in that den of pollution that hive of iniquity left to breath the pure air of heaven & hastened to Waltham & after tea meeting at B Colby

From my point of view the pilot project has been a great success with only minor technical glitches along the way. I cannot speak to the technical stuff – people who know me will agree that I have a troubled relationship with technology – but I love the editing work and consider transcription to be my truest vocation, next to sorting and arranging 18th and 19th century American manuscript collections. There is nothing like solving a good handwriting mystery to make me feel the sort of satisfaction one hopes to derive from a job well done. We have had a dedicated and hard-working group of volunteers (most of whom we never meet in person!) who have given freely of their own spare time to help us bring these journals of Lumen Boyden to life on the screen. We are so grateful and fortunate to have volunteers who enjoy diving into the work, and who find the same pleasure that I do, in making manuscripts accessible online.

[Note:  Funding from an anonymous organization supported the pilot crowdsourcing project in 2022 featuring the Luman Boyden missionary journals.  Funding from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati supported beta testing of transcription tool in the fall of 2021 featuring two volumes of the John Rowe diaries.]

By Meg Szydlik, Visitor Services Coordinator

Happy October and spooky season! I have always had an interest in the weird and wonderful and of course the MHS is full of those. However, one significant missing piece in the collection, to my thinking at least, is material regarding aliens and extra-terrestrial sightings. Most of the content that the MHS has related to the word “alien” is about the Alien and Sedition acts, passed in 1798 and signed into law by Pres. John Adams. In light of this, I decided to look at what similarities and differences the word “alien” had in 1798 compared to how it is used today.

In 1798, the word alien in the context of the Alien and Sedition Acts meant someone “foreign” to the new United States but the word was not without negative connotations. While the word had other meanings at the time as well, they are all derived from the same sense of othering and otherness. Alien was not a bland, neutral word then and it certainly is not now.

While the prevailing viewpoint today is that the Alien and Sedition Acts were unconstitutional, at the time that was a hotly contested debate. Objectors argued that because they were unconstitutional, the states were not under obligation to follow the laws, a state’s rights argument that definitely would not cause problems in the future. But despite its detractors, there was a lot of support for the laws. One such supporter was Kentucky Senator, Humphrey Marshall, who wrote a poem (below) praising the laws and waxing, well, poetic about the dangers of these non-WASP immigrants and mob rule as opposed to royal rule. Ironic, given that the United States had just gotten rid of a monarchy!  His support of this, and other unpopular Federalist policies, was the end of his senatorial career.

“Aliens: A Patriotic Poem” by Humphry Marshall.

(33) Has France a diplomatic corps,
Dispers’d, and arranged among us?
And has not Britain, on our shore,
Another; that is as dangerous?

(34)

In this, most lies, the difference,
One nicely observes the common form;
‘Tis mob, with Democratic France,
With Royal Britain, ‘tis well born

We can trace many words that we use today back to that same use of the word. Words like “alienated” or terminology like “illegal aliens” (over “undocumented immigrants”) all come from that Middle English origin of alean or alyen, meaning foreign. It is not until the 20th century that the word alien was used to mean “extra-terrestrial” and even longer before it conjures up the image of creepy humanoids you see when you search “alien” today.

In my experience, modern reactions to the word alien often include images of flying saucers and characters from a sci-fi film, not the Democratic-Republicans of 1798. People claim to have had encounters with extra-terrestrial aliens and lived to tell the tale, creating an interesting tension between the 18th century use of the word and the modern one. For my part, I see this shift as making the word even more dehumanizing than it already was. After all, the group I most often use it for are foreigners of the highest degree- not only not American, but not even from Earth! It’s the ultimate foreigners. If I had to guess, the Alien Acts of 1798 probably would have ranked at extra-terrestrial aliens as even lower and less worthy of rights than the Earthlings the Federalists were so nervous about.

I also wanted to share some interesting Boston connections to extra-terrestrial aliens. One website collects people’s stories of alleged alien and UFO sightings and includes a few in the same area as the MHS, including a very close encounter. Interestingly, the North End is packed with sightings, significantly more than any other area of the city. Perhaps you have a guess as to why extra-terrestrial life seems to be such a fan of that area. Regardless, it is clear that aliens of all kinds continue to capture our attention.