by Isabella Dobson, PhD Student at Boston University in History of Art and Architecture

Viewing the miniature mourning portrait of Jane Winthrop is just as much a tactile experience as a visual one. Undoing the tiny clasps and folding open the case reveals an interior lined with satin and velvet and offers a tangible, intimate encounter with the deceased. Jane’s bright coral lips and rosy cheeks suggest youth and alertness, and her only visible blue eye gazes hopefully beyond the frame. However, the satin lining opposite Jane’s portrait adds a bittersweet undertone; a few faded lines of text hand-inked by Jane’s younger brother Robert C. Winthrop read, “My sister/Jane Winthrop/taken after/her death/by/Sarah Goodrich/1819”. Born in 1801, Jane would have only been seventeen when she passed away, making Goodrich’s vivid posthumous likeness particularly heart-wrenching.[1]

In an era before photography, miniature mourning portraits like this one served as precious reminders of deceased loved ones’ image and presence. A greater emphasis on romantic and familial bonds beginning in the late 18^th century made loss harder to bear.[2] Indeed, the day after her death, Jane’s father Thomas Lindall Winthrop writes to his sister to share news of his daughter’s death, mourning “the dissolution of one of the most innocent, purest-minded, and loveliest girls that perhaps ever existed.”[3] Winthrop’s praise of Jane’s virtues conveys his love for her and reveals the grief he feels in her absence. Jane’s portrait mirrors this verbal praise; her white dress and its collar of soft, layered frills suggest the purity and grace her father lauds and whose loss finds the whole family “in great affliction”.[3] In contrast to her youthful countenance, Jane’s hairstyle suggests that she has entered womanhood since her curled bangs and pinned-up bun match the style worn by the thirty-year-old Caroline Hall Parkman in her own miniature portrait.[4]

While Robert, the portrait’s inscriber, was only nine when his sister passed, his later writings bring Jane’s portrait to life. The piano on which Jane rests her hand assumes special significance when considered alongside a memory recounted by Robert in a letter from 1877. Recalling how his “six or seven brothers and sisters used to gather around the piano”, Robert writes that this memory “brings back a family group—of which I am the youngest and now the only survivor—as vividly as I hope one day see it above”.[5] Surely viewing his sister’s portrait, with its miniature piano, would have reminded Robert both of these fond memories and the painful losses that eventually followed.

Crammed into the corner, the piano—where Jane could often be found in life—also echoes the early 19^th-century idea that the process of mourning fulfilled “a fundamental need to imaginatively or tangibly locate the dead in a specific way.”[2]  In the letter to his sister, Thomas Winthrop writes that he believes Jane to be “happy in another and better world”, marking his desire to cognitively pinpoint his deceased daughter.[3] Goodrich, too, positions Jane between this world and the next; even as Jane appears alive and alert, her gaze drifts beyond the piano, symbolically disconnecting her from earthly pastimes like playing music. Though Jane is unreachable in death, her presence remains accessible to her loved ones through Goodrich’s portable, intimate portrait.

[1] Shaw Mayo, The Winthrop Family in America, 218. Jane was born on March 15, 1801, and died February 22, 1819, in Boston.

[2] Jaffee Frank, Love and Loss: American Portrait and Mourning Miniatures, 7.

[3] Winthrop, Thomas Lindall, Letter to sister Jane Stuart, February 23, 1819. It must have been a sort of cruel irony to write to one Jane that another Jane had died.

[4] Massachusetts Historical Society Online Collections page for portrait miniature of Caroline Hall Parkman. The sitter was born in 1794 and the portrait was made ca. 1824.

[5] Winthrop Jr., Robert C., A Memoir of Robert C. Winthrop, 297. Robert had 14 siblings, so to be the lone survivor is a particularly lonely position to occupy.

by Brandon McGrath-Neely, Library Assistant

The holdings of the MHS often tell the authentic stories of real figures such as Revolutionary heroes, 18^th century women laborers, and helmet-wearing air raid survivors. A smaller group of materials deal with more mysterious subjects, like strange voices calling from the waters of Boston in 1634. In these cases, it can be difficult to know what really happened, what was misunderstood, and what was invented. A recent question of these less tangible materials has forced the staff to admit: The MHS has a giant problem.

I should clarify – the problem isn’t giant in scale. The problem is about Giants. Several materials describe these tall, powerful creatures of myth and legend, but they can’t agree on what Giants are like! A brief survey of the Giants of MHS will show how conflicted the archival voices are on this subject.

For some authors, Giants are gargantuan monsters of violence and treachery. Pulling from older British and Biblical mythology, these Giants are the biggest of bullies. An 1817 tale describes Woglog the Giant, who kidnaps children who stay outside past sunset and tries to crack them “as one does a walnut.” In this case, the Giant was used to teach children a lesson: “Little boys should never loiter about in the fields nor even in the streets after dark. […] So must all other little boys and girls, or nobody will love them.”[1] An 1809 retelling of “Jack and the Beanstalk” likewise depicts Giants as murderous evildoers who chant, “Fe, fa, fan, I smell the blood of an Englishman; If he be alive, or if he be dead, I’ll grind his bones to make my bread.”[2] An 1882 version of the same tale complicates the story – in this telling, the Giant killed Jack’s father and then dies trying to kill Jack.[3]

Yet both earlier and later texts feature Giants who are far more caring and gentle. In Jonathan Swift’s 1726 classic political satire, Gulliver’s Travels, Lemuel Gulliver meets a society of Giants after washing up on the island of Brobdingnag. Though they aren’t perfect, these Giants live in a rather simple, peaceful society. The King of the Brobdingnagians disdains politics and prefers agriculture: “[W]hoever could make two ears of corn, or two blades of grass, to grow upon a spot of ground where only one grew before, would deserve better of mankind, and do more essential service to his country, than the whole race of politicians put together.”[4] The men decide that the Giants must be from an ancient civilization of humanity, and that as humans became more obsessed with political maneuvering and deadly technology, they shrank in size.

130 years later, the author Christopher Pearse Cranch also depicted Giants as heartfelt, tender creatures. In The Last of the Huggermuggers, A Giant Story, the protagonist also washes up on an island inhabited by a pair of Giants, Mr. and Mrs. Huggermugger. Though he initially fears them, he quickly discovers that they are gentle, parental figures who love shellfish and their home: “The Huggermuggers were not wicked and blood-thirsty. How different from the monsters one reads about in children’s books!”[5] However, a dastardly dwarf (larger than humans, but smaller than Giants) arranges their magical death, and these two embodiments of a warm and familial past fade away, never to be seen again.

Complicating the matter even further, some authors don’t view Giants as ‘Giants’ at all! In Anne Thackeray’s 1867 retelling of “Jack and the Beanstalk,” the two-headed Giant, Bulcox, is not a towering creature bent on destruction. Instead, it is a married couple in charge of a Victorian-era workhouse, who malnourish and abuse their laborers. Rather than a bone-filled dungeon, the Bulcox’s lair is the unsanitary living quarters: “Truth, naked, alas! covered with dirt and vermin, shuddering with cold, moaning with disease, and heaped and tossed in miserable, uneasy sleep at the bottom of her foul well.” This story’s Giants are not slayed by swords, magic, or axes, but rather by public awareness, the free press, and a clergyman unafraid to help the sick in the hospitals they languish at: ”[A]ll these hundreds of weary years, all these aching limbs, and desolate waifs from stranded homes, this afflicted multitude of past sufferings.”[6]

So what are Giants like, according to the materials in our collection? Well, they’re a lot of things. They’re the reason to stay inside after dark and listen to your parents. They’re the evil in the world, encouraging bravery and heroism to defeat them. They’re embodiments of more simple, peaceful pasts of yesteryear. And they’re social problems, capable of wreaking great destruction under the surface. Like other legendary creatures throughout human history, Giants are imagined and reimagined by communities within distinct contexts. Considering why people in different places, and different times, imagine Giants so differently could reveal much about how those people viewed themselves, the world around them, and their place in it. But that’s much more than can be handled in a blog post—that’s a giant project.

Referenced Works

[1] The History of Tommy Trip, and His Dog Jowler. And of Birds and Beasts. 1817. New Haven: Sidney’s Press. 6-8.

[2] H.A.C. 1809. The History of Mother Twaddle, and the Marvellous Atchievements of Her Son, Jack. Philadelphia: Wm. Charles. 14.

[3] Swinton, William, and George R. Cathcart, eds. 1882. Golden Book of Tales: Holiday Readings in the Legendary Lore of All Nations. New York: Ivison, Blakeman, Taylor, and Company.

[4] Swift, Jonathan. 1809. Travels Into Several Remote Nations of the World. Philadelphia: Mathew Carey. Part 2, Chapter 7.

[5] Cranch, Christopher Pearse. 1889. The Last of the Huggermuggers: A Giant Story. Boston: Lee & Shepard. 39.

[6] Ritchie, Anne Thackeray. 1868. Jack the Giant Killer. Boston: Loring. 10-29.

by Rakashi Chand, Reading Room Supervisor

Reality can seem more unbelievable than fiction, as is this tale of the Lincoln love letters. For years there was speculation about a possible romantic interest between Abraham Lincoln and a woman named Ann Rutledge. The evidence was that Ann died suddenly from illness and Lincoln’s first bout with depression soon ensued, however nothing in the historical record linked the two romantically. That changed in 1928, when Wilma Frances Minor presented Ellery Sedgwick, Editor of the Atlantic Monthly, with an opportunity to publish the story of a lifetime… the love affair of Abraham Lincoln and Ann Rutledge based on manuscript letters in Minor’s possession. 

Minor was a writer and vaudeville actress from California, who was beautiful, charming, and had almost supernatural powers of persuasion. Sedgwick consulted experts and biographers to authenticate the newly discovered letters Minor presented as family heirlooms, passed down from one generation to the next, and at first, they received validation. Sedgwick invited Minor to Boston, and she charmed all the editors at America’s most reputable literary magazine. The first of three “Lincoln the Lover” series was published, captivating the nation, and providing Minor with a handsome payment.

The ‘lost’ Lincoln letters swept the country, compelling Lincoln biographers and historians to dig deeper into the newly discovered romantic side of Abe which seemed too good to be true.

The collection included ten letters written by Lincoln, including three to Ann Rutledge and four to John Calhoun, four letters from Ann Rutledge, including two to Lincoln and several pages from the diary of Matilda Cameron, Ann’s cousin. The provenance of the collection was verified through letters written in various hands, from Frederick W. Hirth of Emporia, Kansas, Minor’s great-uncle, and Minor’s mother, Cora DeBoyer. Sedgwick contacted detective J. B. Armstrong to investigate the case under the supervision of Teresa Fitzpatrick of the Atlantic Monthly staff.

After further speculation, biographers who welcomed the newly found cache of manuscripts noticed discrepancies in style and vocabulary uncharacteristic of the author of the Gettysburg Address. The investigation proved that the letters were forgeries, and the whole affair nothing but an elaborate hoax. The strongest objections to the authenticity of the letters came from the Massachusetts Historical Society’s Editor of Publications, Worthing C. Ford, who wrote to Sedgwick on 24 November 1928, “Have you gone insane, or have I? You are putting over one of the crudest forgeries I have known…”

Scandal! Were these forgeries? Was it a hoax? How had America’s leading literary magazine fallen so completely for a beautiful scam artist and a wishful story?

Minor and her mother confessed to fabricating the letters on 3 July 1929, but with an interesting explanation: Minor claimed that her mother had psychic powers and the spirits of Ann and Abe had urged her to do it… or else the truth about their love would be lost to time. Minor created such a believable and extensive hoax; it simply sends shivers down an archivist’s spine.

“I would die on the gallows that the spirits of Ann and Abe were speaking through my Mother to me, so that my gifts as a writer combined with her gifts as a medium could hand on something worth while to the world.” Page 4 of Wilma Frances Minor’s confession taken by Teresa S. Fitzpatrick on 3 July 1929.

Sedgwick kept the forgeries along with all the correspondence before, during, and after the investigation; including with his staff, with detective Armstrong, with Paul Angle, President of the Lincoln Centennial Association, and many other Lincoln biographers, historians and experts, and finally, with Rumford Press and Little Brown & Co. who were publishing Minor’s book. Also included in the collection is Minor’s book manuscript and the detectives’ reports. The layers of the astonishing affair reveal themselves with each tantalizing page.

Were Minor and DeBoyer simply the vehicle to share a love story that changed the course of American history? Or were Minor and DeBoyer perhaps an incredible team of scam artists who almost succeeded in re-writing history? See for yourself by researching the Ellery Sedgwick Papers housed at the MHS. You can examine the forgeries with your own eyes in the Library at the MHS.

by Maggie Parfitt, Visitor Services Coordinator

Sometimes when we have a quiet afternoon at the MHS I’ll sit and read through our historical newspaper collection. A very historic hobby to keep, and one that turns up a lot of interesting things—like what some of our founding fathers were doing during their non-founding hours. I hope you find this selection of clippings as amusing and interesting as I do!

Paul Revere, silversmith and midnight rider, was also Paul Revere, dentist. Although it seems primarily on the side, as he directed potential patients to meet with him in his Silversmith’s Shop.

And Paul Revere, engraver (though this business of his is more widely remembered.)

You had more options for tooth care in Boston than just Paul Revere: You could visit Daniel Scott at his medicine store at the (very memorable) Sign of the Leopard, where among other services “all Persons who have the Scurvy in their Teeth, which threatens their removal though sound, may have them cleaned without hurting the Enamel, or in the least degree impairing them, and may be supplied with his DENTIUM CONSERVATOR, which is an excellent Powder, the best adapted for preserving the Teeth and Gums, and preventing them from Aching”

John Joy joined his colleagues in selling “a fresh Supply of Druggs & Medicines,” promising “Country Practitioners, Apothecarys, etc. may be suppy’d to great Advantage.” I’m interested in the implied distinction of practice between “country” and “city.”

John Hancock, heir to one of the richest merchant families in Boston, inherited his Uncle Thomas Hancock’s business after his death in 1764. In 1765 it seems he was still balancing accounts and “desires those Persons who are still indebted to the Estate of the late Hon. Thomas Hancock, Eqs: deceased, to be speedy in paying their respective Ballances, to prevent Trouble.”

Even one of Boston’s most prominent merchants was not immune to the backlash against imported British goods. But in 1771 he found it palatable to once again advertise imported goods, while assuring the public that he kept “the most strict Compliance with the Non-Importation Agreement during its Continuance.”

John Hancock continued to balance his identity of merchant with that of revolutionary. Advertisements for his Oration given on the anniversary of what we now know as the Boston Massacre can be found in the same paper where he advertised his goods for sale.

John Hancock was not the only one to face social pressure during the non-importation agreement. Women (or “Ladies”) were often appealed to directly, especially regarding the non-consumption of British tea. I still get a kick out of the line “However coolly some of you may now esteem your Husbands” in the 21^st century.

I also greatly enjoy the advertisements for less-remembered fields of business. Ladies (and Gentlemen) may have sent their children to join Peter Curtis at his new Dancing School. And Gentlemen who wished to learn “The Noble Science of DEFENCE commonly called the BACK-SWORD” may join Donald McAlpine in the Day-Time or Evening.

Thanks for joining me on this quick little jaunt through our Harbottle Dorr newspaper collection—there’s way more where that came from! You can browse the collection yourself here.

Further Resources

Rodwin, Nina. 2019. Dentures, Corpses, and Privies, Paul Revere’s Medical Careers. The Revere House Gazette: 136: 1-4.

“John Hancock.” Massachusetts Historical Society.

by Heather Rockwood, Communications Manager

In 1599, William Shakespeare wrote As You Like It, in which the famous monologue by the character Jacques begins, “All the world’s a stage, and all the men and women merely players.” I didn’t expect that line to play in my head as I looked through MHS’s collection of glass lantern slides belonging to Arthur A. Shurcliff. However, that’s what happened when I came across this image (also shown farther below) of a garden theater, or hedge theater, a kind of theater I hadn’t heard of before, and wanted to learn more about.

According to Katrina Grant who wrote Teatri Vi Verzura: Hedge Theatres in Baroque Lucca, hedge theaters were created in 1652 in the Tuscan province of Lucca, Italy. They rose in response to the prevailing theory of Italian gardens at the time, that the visual display, or spectacle, of artfully designed gardens was live theater. Such gardens were a way to show the public your life, your money, your taste, and your style. Most hedge theaters comprised a raised, half circle of grass, with a stone wall or large hedgerow as the backdrop. This “stage” could have other features, such as fountains, archways, statues, seating, or fishponds. The property owners would invite friends and acquaintances to their hedge theaters for performances of poetry, music, excerpts from plays, or lectures on a variety of subjects; however, opera wasn’t offered, for it needed paid singers, which was not the idea behind these garden theaters—nor was there space for an orchestra.

Hedge theaters later became popular in other places, first in France, then in Germany, and finally, in Great Britain. The image below shows a hedge theater in active use. The bottom of the slide notes that “The Kaiser is an interested spectator.” Although the slide itself isn’t dated, “Kaiser” (emperor) was used in Germany from 1871 through 1918, so we can fairly date this photograph to that time frame. What I love about it is how it captures a hedge theater with an audience present and enjoying the performance.

One thing that Grant noted in her book was the impermanence of hedge theaters: “Such theatres are imitations of permanent structures rendered in impermanent material, and conversely, living performers are frozen in stone or terracotta.” I liked the idea that such theaters were the opposite of traditional theater space, with four walls and a ceiling that have longevity, with generations of actors coming and going. And the impermanence within the design also plays into the current day thought that the Baroque period was one of intense color, decoration, and drama.

With Shakespeare in the Park and other outdoor theatrical performances becoming more popular in the past few decades, perhaps hedge theaters are about to make a related comeback.

Learn more about Arthur A. Shurcliff and the collection of glass lantern slides. Learn more about the current exhibition, Boston Views: Through the Lens of Arthur A. Shurcliff.

by Sally Keil, Secretary, Richard III Society – American Branch, Team leader for The Missing Princes Project in America

In August 2012 the search for the mortal remains of King Richard III, led by Philippa Langley MBE and her “Looking for Richard” project team, came to a successful conclusion when the King’s grave was located under a parking lot in Leicester, England. With this mystery solved, Langley turned her attention to the disappearance of the two sons of King Richard’s elder brother and predecessor, King Edward IV: what happened to the two boys following the coronation of their uncle? The last time they were seen playing on Tower Green was in July 1483. Over the course of that summer they were seen ‘less and less’ until they were no longer seen at all. With no proof whatsoever of their demise, the theory that they were put to death by their uncle calcified and is now taken as fact.

Solving the mystery of the disappearance of the two boys became Langley’s next challenge. She formed The Missing Princes Project (TMPP) and solicited help from researchers around the world to hunt for primary source documents that might offer clues to their whereabouts. To participate in this effort, I formed The Missing Princes Project in America in December 2018. The objective: search the 497 institutions listed in the Directory of Collections in the US and Canada that have Pre-1600 Manuscript Holdings. I reached out to the membership of the Richard III Society-American Branch asking for volunteers; thirty-one people raised their hands. Beginning in December 2018 we scoured 497 US-based libraries, archives and special collections looking very specifically for primary source documents dated between 1483 and 1509. With the outbreak of COVID all searching had to be online.

In querying the Massachusetts Historical Society’s digital archives, I was tremendously excited to find the original manuscript of a financial account book from the court of King Henry VII that was dated within our required timeframe. This manuscript was donated to the MHS in 1905 by the estate of Charles Edward French, a Bostonian businessman. I think it’s fun to learn that a Tudor period court record has been sitting right in our own backyard! However, it is written in Latin with medieval script, and is therefore indecipherable to most people who do not have the necessary paleographic skills. With a generous donation of funds from the Scottish branch of the Richard III Society, Langley commissioned Dr. Shelagh Sneddon of York University to transcribe and translate the account book. While it did not hold any clues to our search for the missing boys, it shines a bright light on the finances of King Henry VII and his court. With the kind agreement of Dr. Sneddon, The Missing Princes Project is pleased to donate a copy of the translation to the MHS. This gift enables MHS to provide students, researchers, and the wider online communities direct access to an original Tudor period manuscript.

A challenge to MHS researchers! As noted above, the estate of Mr. Charles Edward French donated this manuscript to MHS back in 1905. He also donated his diaries. In trying to determine from whom he obtained the account book, I came upon an entry in volume six, reel 2, box 2 page 125, written in the spring of 1864 that reads “I mean to study to collect all the valuable books that I can relative to antiquities, so that I may become a learned antiquarian/”. I have been unable to proceed beyond that. A small research challenge perhaps? It would be wonderful to be able to trace the provenance of the account book.