Mapping the Liquor License Petitions of the MHS

by CJ Haggard, Library Assistant

The Massachusetts Historical Society holds a remarkable set of liquor license petitions from eighteenth-century Boston. The petitioners wrote to the Boston Selectmen and the Court of General Sessions of the Peace for Suffolk County in the hope of obtaining a license to retail liquor or keep a tavern. Of the petitions, sixteen are written by men and nine by women, with each detailing the particular circumstances and requests of the petitioners. The petitioners give the reasons they must obtain a license, describe how neighbors and friends are willing to help them get started, and ask the Selectmen and the Justices to look on their situations with compassion. Most interestingly to me, however, is that most petitioners specified the location of their proposed tavern or shop, whether it was a rented venue or their own house.

While looking through these petitions, I had the idea to map each location to identify patterns and see their modern-day position. Using the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center’s digital 1769 map of Boston with a modern overlay, I successfully mapped the locations of most of the proposed liquor-selling locations in the petitions held by the MHS. You can view them on Google Maps or on the map below.

An eighteenth century print map of Boston, Massachusetts titled “A New Plan of ye Great Town of Boston in New England in America With the many Additionall Buildings &New Streets to the Year 1769” with modern digital additions. Nineteen blue dots with unique letters mark the map at specific locations. A rectangular map key sits on the left hand side of the maps, which reads: “A - Rebekah Badger, B - Moses Bennet (not located) “Opp. to John Tudor Esq.,” C - Joseph Blake (not located), D - Edward Blanchard, E - Richard Bradford, F - Samuel Breeden, G - Ann Britt, H - Jane Cazneau, I - Sarah Checkley, J - Joseph Coolidge, K - Joseph Goldthwait, L - Thomas Hubbart, M - Joseph Ingersol, N - Andrew Johonnot, O - Rachel Masters, P - Margaret More (not located), Q - Elizabeth Pittson, R - Mary Rose, S - John Stebbins, T - Jonathan Tarbox, U - Hezekiah Usher, V - William Vernon (not located) “at the Distill house lately improved by Capt. Benjamin Hommott, situated at the North port of Boston,” W - Mary Vinal (not located), X - Samuel Webb (not located) “the North part of the Town opposite John Langdons the Tallow Chandler,” Y - James J. Wheeler
A map of Boston from 1769 with the location of the petitions in the MHS collection marked.
Historic map from the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center; additions by CJ Haggard.

The map I made reveals that these institutions were spread out around colonial Boston, ranging from the North End to Boston Neck. The locations are not exact, as I often had little to go off of other than a street name or nearby landmark. A few petitions are also missing from the map, as they either did not give a location or I was not able to figure out where they were based on the directions provided. These petitions are noted as such in the key.

I also enjoy looking at the map and seeing what stands there today. For example: Joseph Goldthwait’s house, where he kept a tavern “for the Accomodation of Gentlemen from the Country,” would have been remarkably close to the modern-day location of Bova’s Bakery, a favorite of mine. Although it is unclear exactly where his house stood in 1767, he describes his situation as being “in back Street leading to Charlestown Ferry.” The end of Back Street (now Salem Street) closest to the Charlestown Ferry is exactly where Bova’s is today.

Three images of handwritten manuscript documents. One document is the petition of Joseph Goldthwait, signed on Boston Aug. 12. 1767. Another document reads "We the Subscribers recommend the within Petitioner as a person of sober Life and Conversation suitably qualified and provided for the exercise of the employment of an Inholder." It is signed by Joseph Jackson, John Hancock, Wm. Phillips, Timo. Newell, and John Rowe. The third document is a closeup of text that reads: "Jos. Goldthwaits Peto. Allow'd."
Images of the petition of Joseph Goldthwait regarding his tavern on Back Street.
Photos by CJ Haggard.

The Admiral Vernon Tavern, or the Vernon’s Head Tavern, also has a modern equivalent. Thomas Hubbart’s 1764 petition describes the tavern as being on King Street, now State Street, which led from the Old State House down to Long Wharf. In The Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston, Annie Haven Thwing goes into more detail about the tavern’s location, stating it “was on the northeast corner of Merchants Row.” Merchant’s Row still exists today by Faneuil Hall. Even more excitingly, the lot at the northeast corner of Merchant’s Row is a modern-day bar called Clarke’s at Faneuil Hall, mirroring its colonial use. Although the Admiral Vernon Tavern is no more, one only needs to visit Clarke’s to walk in the footsteps of Thomas Hubbart himself.

I hope my map sparks some interest in these incredible petitions in our collection. The peek into colonial Boston they provide is fascinating, and I encourage anyone interested to visit the MHS and learn more.

Further Reading: On our library catalog ABIGAIL, you can view listings for Joseph Goldthwait’s petition and Thomas Hubbart’s petition. If you would like to view the listings for other petitions, you can click on the “Taverns (Inns) Massachusetts Boston” subject heading attached to both Goldthwait’s and Hubbart’s listings. All petitions appear in our holdings of Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts from 1764 to 1773.

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Cranberries, Railroads, and an Early FAQ

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

When Ellis Dexter Atwood died in 1950, 1,500 people attended his funeral. What made him so beloved? One reason was the Edaville Railroad in South Carver, Massachusetts.

Black and white photograph of a white man with short gray hair and glasses, dressed in a suit and tie. A caption at the bottom reads: “Ellis D. Atwood.”
Picture of Ellis D. Atwood, from the Edaville Family Theme Park website

The story of Edaville began in 1941 when Atwood, one of the country’s leading cranberry growers, purchased historic railroad cars, tracks, and equipment from a defunct Maine railway. Atwood knew these narrow-gauge cars would be ideal for working his cranberry bogs. By 1947, he had transferred this equipment to his 1,800-acre estate in South Carver and built 5.5 miles of track for transporting supplies in and cranberries out. He also offered free rides to friends, and these rides soon became a popular weekend tourist attraction. Just three years later over 2,000 people a day were visiting Edaville.

Black and white photograph of a crowd of people standing outside next to a train pulling into a station. The train engine pulls several cars, and smoke billows out of its chimney. Behind the train and at the left of the picture are fields, trees, and farm buildings. At the right is a small station building and a railroad signal on a pole.
Visitors at Edaville, from The Baltimore & Ohio Magazine, November 1950

Railroad enthusiasts were, even then, fascinated by these vintage narrow-gauge railroads, which at two feet wide were less than half the standard. Three months after Edaville opened, one such enthusiast named Martin Schmidt wrote Atwood for more information, and Atwood sent him some mimeographed promotional literature on the history of narrow-gauge railroads and Edaville in particular. Those papers are here at the MHS.

This unassuming collection turned out to be a lot of fun to research. I found some terrific contemporary write-ups on Edaville in Popular Mechanics (1949) and The Baltimore & Ohio Magazine (1950).

Black and white photograph of workers in a field with a train passing behind them. In the foreground, two kneeling workers are bending over and holding onto wooden crates. Two other workers stand behind them and watch. The train in the background has smoke billowing out of its chimney and the word “Edaville” written on its side.
Cranberry harvesting at Edaville, from Popular Mechanics, June 1949

Railfans will find a lot of detail in this small collection to interest them, but my main takeaway is that Atwood was funny! I love to find humor in historical manuscripts, which can sometimes feel dry and inaccessible. The collection includes a hilarious proto FAQ written by Atwood. Among the usual questions about hours and directions, we also find these:

How can a young fellow start a cranberry bog of his own if he has no money?

Ans[wer]. Get on the good side of your rich aunt or better still, marry a wealthy girl. If you can’t do either, forget about the whole thing for the present.

Why did you name it Edaville?

Ans. Well, E.D.A. are my initials and we had to call it something.

Why don’t you run your trains according to the time table?

Ans. Well, we try to, but what do you care? The road doesn’t go anywhere and besides, the time table is a souvenir.

Why don’t you run your trains later in the day?

Ans. Well, I suppose our employees are more or less human and they get tired at the end of the day.

Why did you by [sic] this junk?

Ans. I haven’t had time to figure out a reason yet.

Sadly, Ellis D. Atwood died at the age of 61 from a boiler explosion at the Edaville screen house. While he and his wife Elthea left no children, they clearly left a lot of happy memories, and visitors reported that Edaville drivers always blew their train whistles twice when passing near the spot where he’s buried.

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Clara E. Currier’s Diary, February 1925

by Hannah Elder, Associate Reference Librarian for Rights & Reproductions 

Today, we return to the transcription of Clara E. Currier’s 1925 diary. Currier was a working-class woman who lived in or near Haverhill, MA. Her diary records her daily activities—from fiber arts to paid employment to observations of the natural world—providing insight into daily life a century ago. You can find entries for January in a past blog post. 

February ushers in a series of dull days, which Clara fills with work, her fiber crafts, and entertainments with friends. She observes more cosmological and geological events and weathers a few storms. Clara starts taking home paychecks from her work and records her pay for the week on Thursdays.

pussywillows
Pussywillows. Image courtesy of Susan Drury via Wikimedia Commons.

Feb. 1, Sun. Fair and warmer, went to church and S.S, went up to Stephen’s for the afternoon, Charley and Delia came up after supper.

Feb. 2, Mon. Snow, wrote letters.

Feb. 3, Tues. Dull, went to Grange

Feb. 4, Wed. Fair, went over to see Blanche, crocheted.

Feb. 5, Thurs. [$]19 Fair, crocheted.

Feb. 6, Fri. Fair, went up town and cooked.

Feb 7, Sat. Fair and warmer, went to Haverhill about glasses and over home, had a sleighride.

Feb. 8, Sun. Fair and warm, went out skiing, saw a partial eclipse of the moon on the full, William brought me back. Wrote to Mrs. Muller.

Feb. 9, Mon. Dull with fog at night, went to class meeting, crocheted.

Feb. 10, Tues. Foggy, Blache came over.

Feb. 11, Wed. Foggy and rain, went over to Dennis’s and heard some fine music on the radio, crocheted.

Feb. 12, Thurs. [$]19. Foggy, knit and crocheted.

Feb. 13, Fri. Fair, went to the Swanee River Quartet concert (colored) at the Methodist Church with Sizzie and Blanche.

Feb. 14, Sat. Fair, washed and cooked, went uptown.

Feb. 15, Sun. Rain, went up to Delia’s for afternoon and evening with Sizzie.

Feb. 16, Mon. Fair, wrote letters and cooked.

Feb. 17, Tues. Dull, went to Grange.

Feb. 18, Wed. Fair, went to Legion play, “The Village School.[”]

Feb. 19, Thurs. [$]19 Fair, worked until six o’clock.

Feb. 20, Fri. Fair, worked until six then went up to Stephen’s.

Feb. 21, Sat. Fair, worked until 4 o’clock then went up home, Charles and Mabel came after me.

Feb. 22, Sun. Fair and springlike, went out after pussy willows, William and Mary brought me back.

Feb. 23, Mon. Dull and rainy, worked all day until six, went to class meeting.

Feb. 24, Tues. Dull, then cleared, worked until six, went up town at noon.

Feb. 25, Wed. Dull, worked until six, knit.

Feb. 26, Thurs. [$]20.90 Rain hail, snow, and cleared out at night, very cold and windy, waited on table at men’s club banquet, had Rev. Mr. Lindsay to speak.

Feb. 27, Fri. Fair and cold, worked until six, heard radio at Mrs. Dennis’s.

Feb. 28, Sat. Fair, worked until four o’clock, went up town, had an earthquake shock at 9.30 P.M shoke the house.

If you are interested in viewing the diary in person in our library or have other questions about the collection, please visit the library or contact a member of the library staff.

*Please note that this diary transcription is a rough-and-ready version, not an authoritative transcript. Researchers wishing to use the diary in the course of their own work should verify the version found here with the manuscript original.

This line-a-day blog series is inspired by and in honor of MHS reference librarian Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook (1981–2023), whose entertaining and enlightening line-a-day blog series ran from 2015 to 2019. Her generous, humane, and creative approach to both history and librarianship continues to influence the work of the MHS library.

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Women’s March Photographs and Narratives Collection now publicly available

By Nancy Heywood, Lead Archivist for Digital and Web Initiatives

In 2017, MHS undertook a collecting initiative with an open call for donations of images and accounts relating to the Women’s March for America, a series of protest marches held around the world following the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  MHS received digital files—images, narratives, and screenshots of tweets—from about a dozen donors. 

Dense crowd of people is depicted standing on Boston Common. The people in the image all face to the right as if listening to a speaker. One person holds a sign.
Boston Women’s March Participants, photograph donated by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook
Photograph primarily depicts a sign held up by a protester in a crowd of people. The sign features a woman’s symbol with an equals sign. Brick and sandstone buildings are in the background.
Boston Women’s March Participants, photograph donated by Anna Clutterbuck-Cook

Staff processed, described, and made backup copies of the digital files and donation forms, but the files and metadata remained on staff-accessible parts of the MHS network. The MHS did not have an easy way to make this entire collection accessible to researchers at the time. Today, the digital files comprising the Women’s March Photographs and Narratives collection are fully accessible to the public through the new MHS Digital Archive.  You can also find links to this collection from our library catalog.

Screenshot from the MHS Digital Archive showing Boston Women’s March participants image 06. A column of metadata is on the left. The image depicts a large crowd of people standing close to each other, two people are holding signs. A woman on the left appears to be looking at her cell phone. A woman in the middle of the photograph is looking to the left at various people and she is carrying an infant in a colorful tie-dye sling.
Boston Women’s March Participants, photograph donated by Alicia Cornwell

The ability to view the materials of the Women’s March collection is just one piece of the MHS Digital Archive. However, there is much more happening behind the scenes!

The MHS Digital Archive is the front-end access portal to MHS’s digital preservation system (Preservica).  The backend of the system allows MHS to:

  • organize and describe content
  • securely store content in the cloud with backups
  • monitor files for damage and replace them with an undamaged copy if damage is detected. (This means the system tracks the integrity of files and stores multiple copies of files. If the 0s and 1s of a file have changed, the damaged file can be replaced.)
  • ensure files are readable without needing the original application by saving them in preservation formats; for example, migrating old Word Perfect files to PDFs

MHS has been collecting, preserving and making accessible historically significant materials for over 230 years and with the rollout of the digital preservation system, we are now well-positioned to handle new accessions comprised of hybrid collections (physical and digital) or digital only. We will also be able to efficiently manage any future collecting initiative with an open call for donations of digital files and make them accessible.

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What’s in the MHS Digital Archive? Explore Some Examples!  

By Nancy Heywood, Lead Archivist for Digital and Web Initiatives

MHS recently launched the MHS Digital Archive, a system that preserves and provides access to born-digital files and reformatted audiovisual material. Our last blog post provides an overview of the Digital Archive and how to search its contents. This post shares some specific examples for adventurous readers to explore!

MHS’s digital preservation system is a multi-faceted tool that allows us to responsibly ingest (accept), describe, manage, migrate, monitor, and make digital files accessible.  The availability of reformatted audiovisual files via the MHS Digital Archive is especially significant because we don’t have any other way to make audio tapes; cassettes; and VHS, beta, and 16mm films accessible to researchers.   

Video about the history of Suffolk Downs

Item: This stand-alone digital video created in 2023, Suffolk Downs: Race Through Time, focuses on the history of the East Boston racetrack and legalized betting and horseracing in Massachusetts.

Example of a digital video: When MHS accepted this digital video, we knew we would be storing the file and the metadata in our digital preservation system and making it available via the MHS Digital Archive.

Explore in the MHS Digital Archive or start with the catalog record in ABIGAIL and follow the link. 

Screenshot from the MHS Digital Archive of Suffolk Downs: race through time showing metadata on the left, an embedded video player in the middle with a still image of horses on a racetrack, and a transcription of the narration on the right.
Screenshot from the MHS Digital Archive record for Suffolk Downs: Race Through Time

Spiritualist session recordings from the Leslie Shah Qualls papers

Collection: Leslie Shah Qualls (1903-1989) was a spiritualist who conducted psychic readings and mediumship.  Her papers mainly consist of her spiritual writings but also contain audio recordings of spiritualist sessions she led. 

Example of reformatted audio tapes: The original open reel audio tapes (nine audio tapes, seven with content on both sides) were converted to 16 digital files to provide access to the content. These tapes were in poor condition and required reformatting to preserve the information on them. Even if the tapes were in better condition, archival repositories don’t generally make original AV materials available in reading rooms because of the significant logistics of providing playback equipment for old formats to researchers, as well as the risk of damage or deterioration to the originals during repeated playbacks.

Explore in the MHS Digital Archive or examine the guide to the full collection and follow a link to a specific audio file.

To the left, a circular open reel audio tape. To the right, a screenshot from the MHS Digital Archive for Spiritualist session recordings, showing metadata on the top of the image with icons of speakers (signifying sound files) below the metadata. There are 9 icons because there are links to 9 sound files.
To the left, one of the original audio tapes that has been reformatted and made accessible in the MHS Digital Archive, to the right

Massachusetts Moderators Association records

Collection: The Massachusetts Moderators Association was founded in 1957 and provides resources and collaboration opportunities to town moderators.  The collection was donated in 2023 and is comprised of both physical and digital files.

Example of born-digital files: The digital materials within the Massachusetts Moderators Association were created as electronic documents in formats such as PDF and open-doc spreadsheets. These files include meeting minutes, lists, and digital files relating to various handbooks to help those leading town meeting sessions.

Explore in the MHS Digital Archive or read the guide to the full collection and follow the links to the digital files.

Two screenshots from the MHS Digital Archive relating to the Massachusetts Moderators Association records. One screenshot shows a folder grouping digital files which are represented a as a row of squares. One square incudes an arrow pointing to a second screenshot that shows the web presentation of a PDF document with metadata on the left and the page viewer on the right.
Screenshots depicting Massachusetts Moderators digital files. To the right, one folder groups multiple files, which can be opened to view the document (to the left, showing a presentation of a PDF file).

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