by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

I’m returning today to one of my favorite collections here at the MHS, the Perry-Clarke additions. One of the reasons I enjoyed processing this collection so much was because of all the fascinating people it introduced me to. One of them was Cora Huidekoper Clarke (1851-1916).

Cora was a botanist and entomologist, as well as a teacher, writer, and amateur photographer. Considering the rarity of historical material documenting the lives of women scientists, I was intrigued. Unfortunately, very few manuscripts created by Cora are extant. The MHS and a few other repositories, including Harvard, hold small collections of her personal papers.

Cora was born in Meadville, Pennsylvania, but lived most of her life in Boston. Due to poor health as a child, she was educated at home until the age of 13, but soon made up for lost time. She began studying horticulture at 18, and one of her teachers was renowned historian and horticulturalist Francis Parkman at the Bussey Institution in Jamaica Plain.

It didn’t take long for Cora to make a name for herself in scientific circles. She was a member of the Massachusetts Horticultural Society as early as 1871. She served as head of the science department of the first correspondence school in the U.S. and on the council of the Boston Society of Natural History; published papers in scientific journals, sometimes illustrated with her own drawings and photographs; led the botany group of the New England Women’s Club for 35 years; and, in 1884, was elected a fellow of the American Association for the Advancement of Science. And this is only a partial list of her activities and accomplishments.

Cora’s specialties included mosses, algae, caddisflies, and gall flies. She was so noted for her success in rearing gall flies that several species have even been named after her. Now, I studied library science, not any of your hard sciences, so it’s all a little beyond me, but I understand enough to be impressed!

Interestingly, even though Cora had the resources to travel widely, her focus tended to be local. In an undated typescript in the collection, she wrote:

I have always been more interested in studying the natural history of a limited and defined area close at hand, than in wandering to new and distant regions. […] In vain my sister tries to coax me abroad; “I have nothing to do in England.” “You can study the flowers.” [“]But I do not begin to know the flowers of New England.” Little Massachusetts holds overflowing riches in her generous hands.

If there’s a theme running through Cora’s writings (at least the ones I’ve seen), it’s the importance of appreciating natural wonders in your own neighborhood, even literally right under your feet. In the same typescript quoted above, she described the beauty of Boston’s urban flora, including plants growing in the Back Bay Fens right next to the MHS.

I particularly like this passage, from a piece by Cora called “Friendly Flowers, or Scraping Acquaintance With Wild Flowers, by a Sub-botanist.”

Plants have this advantage over people, that by studying their parts, we can look them up in a book and ascertain their names, homes, families and peculiarities—have you not often wished that we could do this with people? Perhaps we see the same persons morning after morning passing our house or riding in the same car with us, and becoming interested in them in a friendly way, wish we could look in a book and learn their names, families, homes, occupations? We should doubtless learn things about them quite different from what we imagined must be the case.

By Alexandra Moleski, NHD Program Coordinator

Kwaï! Welcome to National History Day in MA 2025! Here at the Massachusetts Historical Society, the NHD in MA team is getting excited for contest season. In preparation, we have been brainstorming topic ideas that relate to this year’s NHD theme, Rights and Responsibilities, to share with students as they begin their project research. I wanted to use this blog post to highlight some MHS sources that could inspire an NHD project. Choosing your NHD topic is a very personal experience, and with November being Native American Heritage Month, I thought this would be the perfect opportunity to explore sources in the MHS archives related to my own Wabanaki heritage. 

My search for Wabanaki history in the MHS collections led me down many interesting research avenues, but it begins with the 1830 publication Wo̲banaki kimzowi awighigan, which translates to “Wabanaki learning book.” The book is small and fragile–only about the length of my hand with a blank front cover that is flaking and detaching from the binding.

Despite its delicate condition, I was so excited to find this learning book and I immediately had questions about its origins, particularly its creators. It was published by Crocker and Brewster, a Boston-based publishing company that published many educational works throughout the 19th century. But who was the author, P.P. Wzo̲khilain?

At first, it was difficult to find consistent and reliable information about Wzo̲khilain because he was known by many names throughout his life. P.P. Wzo̲khilain is simply how his name was transliterated into the Latin alphabet for publication. While attending school, he would go by Peter Masta, adopting the last name of his stepfather. But his given name was Pial Pol Osunkhirhine, or Peter Paul Osunkhirine. Osunkhirhine was born in 1799 and grew up in the Abenaki community of Odanak, meaning “to/from the village,” which is in present day Québec, Canada.^[1]

The Abenaki traditionally resided in what is now the northeastern United States and parts of Canada. In the late 17th century, displacement and continuous armed conflict between the British, the French, and their respective tribal allies, pushed some Abenaki to migrate to the St. Lawrence river valley and establish communities, including Odanak. And the Abenaki were not alone in seeking refuge at Odanak–the village was historically diverse, with as many as twenty different Indigenous tribal names connected to it at one time or another.^[2] Residents even included European Christian missionaries and other colonists, some of whom had been taken captive by Abenaki in battle, but when faced with the opportunity of freedom, had chosen to remain at Odanak.

Just as there was a variety of people migrating to Odanak, it was not uncommon for people to venture outside the village as well. At age 22, Osunkhirine traveled 300 miles to Hanover, NH to attend Moor’s Indian Charity School, which was then operating as a branch of the more widely known Dartmouth College. At the charity school, Indigenous students were taught the liberal arts, sciences, European agricultural practices, and to read and write in English, but according to the school’s own mission statement, the purpose of Moor’s was “More Especially for instructing them in the Knowledge & Practice of the Protestant Christian Religion.”^[3] Osunkhirine arrived at Moor’s in 1822 but left after a year due to a dispute regarding tuition payment between school administration and the funder of Osunkhirine’s tuition, the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge in the Highlands and Islands and the Foreign Parts of the World (SSPCK). In 1826, the SSPCK continued to pay tuition and Osunkhirhine was able to continue attending Moor’s.

While in Hanover, Osunkhirhine joined the Congregational Church of Christ and converted to the Protestant sect of Christianity. In 1829, he returned to Odanak and founded his own school, known around the village as the Dartmouth school, in which he taught Abenaki youth the English language and European agricultural practices, believing this would lead them out of the poverty that so heavily impacted Odanak. However, as an Abenaki man and a Protestant in a predominantly Roman Catholic region, Osunkhirine’s founding of the Dartmouth school came with many of its own challenges.

The SSPCK refused to provide long-term funding for the school at Odanak, claiming that its sole purpose was to support Moor’s Indian Charity School back in New Hampshire. Osunkhirhine then sought funding from the government of Lower Canada, but his attempts were blocked by a local Catholic priest who did not want Osunkhirhine preaching Protestantism. The priest would wait until the men of Odanak were away hunting to intimidate Indigenous mothers and prevent them from sending their children to the Dartmouth school. In response, Osunkhirhine rallied support from the chiefs at Odanak and once again appealed to the government of Lower Canada for funds to support his school. This time, both Lower Canada and the local Catholic priest agreed to Osunkhirhine’s school and his teaching religion in it, but only if he did not promote any one sect of Christianity above another.

Osunkhirhine was never deterred by the opposition he faced for his Protestant beliefs. In 1835, the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions named Osunkhirhine missionary to the Abenaki. Three years later, Osunkhirhine established the first Protestant church at Odanak. In addition to his 1830 learning book, Osunkhirhine would go on to publish the Ten Commandments, Gospel of Mark, and hymns in his native Abenaki, as well as theological essays in English.

So now we have uncovered a glimpse into the life of Pial Pol Osunkhirhine, author of Wo̲banaki kimzowi awighigan. But when I began looking into the author’s background, I did not expect my research to lead me to even bigger questions and ultimately, a discovery about our understanding–or misunderstanding–of Osunkhirhine’s native tongue…

Wli nanawalmezi!

^[1] Henry L. Masta, “When the Abenaki Came to Dartmouth,” Dartmouth Alumni Magazine 21, no. 5 (1929): 303, https://archive.dartmouthalumnimagazine.com/issue/19290301#!&pid=302.

^[2] Gordon M. Day, The Identity of the Saint Francis Indians (University of Ottawa Press, 1981), 10.

^[3] Colin G. Calloway, The Indian History of an American Institution: Native Americans and Dartmouth (University Press of New England, 2010), 7, https://digitalcommons.dartmouth.edu/dartmouth_press/5/.

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

In honor of Election Day tomorrow, I searched the MHS stacks for material related to elections. Unsurprisingly we have a lot! One collection I discovered tells the fascinating story of Charles N. Richards of Quincy, Massachusetts, who, in November 1864, traveled all the way home from Washington, D.C. to vote for Abraham Lincoln.

Richards had served in the 13th Massachusetts Infantry during the Civil War, but was mustered out after an injury sustained at Antietam. (He was bayoneted in the jaw.) In 1864, he was 23 years old and working in D.C. at the Senate Stationery Room, the department responsible for supplies. He was a fervent Republican and looked forward to casting his first-ever ballot for Lincoln.

Apparently there was some disagreement over his eligibility to vote in his hometown of Quincy because his mother had been living in Dorchester when he came of age. But when the Quincy town clerk sent him the all-clear, Richards started packing. Unfortunately, though many states offered absentee voting, it was only available to active-duty soldiers. So Richards was going to have to cast an in-person ballot in Massachusetts…about 450 miles away.

He set off on 4 November, recording every step of the grueling journey in his diary.

First he tried to catch the 6:39pm train to New York, but couldn’t even get near it because of the crowds. Everyone seemed to be heading north for the election. Richards eventually boarded the 9:30 train, but at Baltimore, he was told his car would be re-routed back to Washington. He had to get out and walk to the President Street Depot, but just missed the train there.

Two or three hours later, he caught a 2:30am cattle car to Philadelphia. For part of the ride, he sat on a pine board with nothing to lean his back against, and the rest he spent on the crowded floor of a passenger car. The train reached Philadelphia in the wee hours of the morning in the middle of a snow and hail storm. Richards hopped on a streetcar to Kensington Depot (changing three times) and arrived in time to catch the 4:00am train to New York.

He ferried into New York at 11:30pm, quickly devoured a meal—his first since leaving Washington—and crashed at a hotel for the night. He was so exhausted that he slept through a fire in one of the other rooms!

The next day was Sunday. Richards had a steamboat ticket, but there were no boats leaving until Monday evening. Ever resourceful, he made friends with a hospital steward, who finagled him a spot in his car on the 5pm train to Boston. The steward was escorting a number of wounded soldiers home to vote. When asked who they were voting for, they replied that “they voted the same way they fought.”

After changing trains in Boston, Richards finally reached Quincy at 8:30am on 7 November. His trip had taken a total of 59 hours. Every step of the way, passengers and passersby had discussed, argued, cheered, and nearly brawled about the candidates.

Unfortunately, it turned out the question of Richards’s eligibility was unresolved. Contrary to what he’d heard, the town selectmen were still divided on the issue, and the canvassing committee advised him to play it safe and not vote. Richards took their advice, but was disappointed.

It was really a severe blow to me. It was with great reluctance that I gave up the chance to cast my first vote for such a cause as the Union & such a man as Abraham Lincoln. […] I knew no other home [but Quincy], nor never had, nor never wished to, and now to be deprived of the privileges of a citizen, and cut off from the place I loved & labored for was mortifying in the extreme to me.

In fact, Lincoln won the town of Quincy, surprising his supporters and detractors alike. On his return to Washington, D.C., Richards learned the “glorious” news that Lincoln had carried the day and that “thanks to a kind Providence, the Election passed off in quietude & in order.” He fell asleep “with a light heart.”