By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate

John Quincy Adams retired from public life when he lost the 1828 presidential election to Andrew Jackson. However, he was not retired for long. In 1830, he ran for and was elected to a seat in the House of Representatives for Massachusetts. He served in this role, being elected to office nine consecutive times, until his death in 1848.

Adams had always exhibited a deep interest in astronomy, as I’ve written about here. In 1843, at the age of 76 and while serving as a congressman, he embarked on a journey to Cincinnati to lay the cornerstone of the Cincinnati Observatory. This observatory was built through the efforts of professor Ormsby McKnight Mitchel, who personally solicited donations for a month and a half, raising $7,500, enough to buy a telescope.

Adams recorded his travels in a daily diary, as he had been doing since he was a child, and he made an interesting entry on 1 November 1843—a list of locations with a number next to each. Perhaps those numbers indicated the number of days since he began his trip?

“1. IV:30. Wednesday— From

If numbers meant days, then Adams had been traveling for the better part of a year! Between the above diary entry on 1 November, and his arrival in Cincinnati on Wednesday, 8 November 1843, he writes of having a cold with “head ache, feverish chills, hoarseness, and a sore throat and my tussis senilis in full force.” Tussis senilis was the name for a severe, chronic cough, but he also named one of his ailments as catarrh, or a buildup of mucus in the throat. His diary goes on to mention waking up several times during the night, something he records often on the later leg of his journey.

He also describes the other passengers with “fascinating manners (which) substitutes for beauty,” and the layout of the canal packet boat Rob-Roy used to convey him from Akron, up the Ohio Canal to Portsmouth, Ohio, then by land carriage to Cincinnati, with several stops on the snowy seven-day trip.

At each stop on his journey, Adams was met with a throng of people expecting him to make speeches, kiss cheeks, shake hands, dine, play cards, and generally be affable. He seemed not to mind this but rather to enjoy it in his irreverent way. In Portsmouth, a delegate from the Cincinnati Astronomical Society, Mr. William Green, joined Adams and accompanied him for the rest of his trip to Cincinnati. However, Adams’s mood wears thin within just a few days, “The activity and unceang (unceasing) attentions of this gentleman since he joined us, have alleviated much my anxiety; but my catarrh, and excessive kindness drive me to despair.”

Finally arriving in Cincinnati, Adams was ushered into a barouche, a type of open carriage. A welcoming crowd followed the carriage to a resident’s house, where the mayor made a welcoming speech and the crowd cheered Adams. However, after so many days traveling and feeling too ill to sleep properly, Adams confessed to his diary, “My answer was flat, stale and unprofitable, without a spark of eloquence or a flash of oratory—confused—incoherent—muddy, and yet received with new shouts of welcome.”

The next day was the day of the stone laying for the Cincinnati Observatory. Adams had been working on his address during his travels but notes in his diary his difficulty writing it because of the cramped conditions, the weather, his cold, and the company around him. Nevertheless, he finished the address before breakfast the morning of the stone laying. To get to the observatory, another barouche was set up to include the mayor and the president of the Astronomical Society. The procession also included carriages with other important Cincinnatians, a military escort, a band, and a crowd of supporters to walk beside the carriages. Then it started to rain. The cover of the barouche had to be lifted to protect the dignitaries from the rain, and in effect it “exclude(d) the sight of me from the people and of the people from me.” But the procession continued:

“The procession marched round sundry streets, the rain increasing till it poured down in torrents. Yet the throng in the Streets seemed not at all to diminish—It looked like a sea of mud—The ascent of the hill was steep and slippery for the horses, and not without difficulty attained—The summit of the hill was a circular plain of which the corner stone was the centre. At the circumference, a stage was erected from which my discourse was to have been delivered; but the whole plain was covered with an auditory of Umbrella’s instead of faces.”

Cincinnati Thursday 9. November 1843.

Adams laid the cornerstone and read his address, which received three “hearty cheers.” Afterward, the crowd dispersed. The discourse portion of the event was postponed to the following day and held inside a chapel. That evening, Adams attended a temperance tea party in a house that had formerly been a theater.

On his third day in Cincinnati, Adams gave a speech for nearly “two hours, without a symptom of impatience or inattention of the Auditory.” Afterward, the city named the hill upon which the observatory stands “Mount Adams.” Adams then shook hands with every member of the Astronomical Society, as well as anyone in the crowd who wished to shake his hand. He then retired to his accommodations and talked to numerous visitors bearing invitations. In the evening, he went to a theatrical comedy and then a ball. “The Ball was splendid—the banquet sumptuous and temperate and the company genteel and lovely— Thus closes, blessed be God one memorable day of my life.”  

By Susanna Sigler, Library Assistant

One of my first directives when I started at the MHS as a library assistant back in May was to begin to familiarize myself with using the ABIGAIL interface. This is how I found myself searching for materials on topics of interest to me, including the (admittedly very broad) topic of WWII.

I found in ABIGAIL that the MHS holds many collections related at least in some way to WWII — although it is a small fraction of the larger holdings — and is currently working to acquire more. Somewhat randomly, I picked the papers of Cambridge resident Frank T. Crawley to investigate further.

The record in ABIGAIL explains that these letters were largely to Frank’s fiancée Christine, and that they cover a variety of subjects, many related to his time stationed in the Panama Canal Zone with the U.S. Marine Corps. The memory of WWII in the United States today has ascended to a status that is almost beyond reproach, a kind of veneration expressed in severe memorials and Serious Dramas. I was interested in the experiences of Frank, who like many Americans serving in the war, did not see combat.

One topic in particular also caught my eye — “his love for her.” I was intrigued by what that might look like. Real WWII love letters, the stuff of movies. Some special, more pure kind of devotion that people insist does not exist today.

Having taken a dive into the beginnings of this collection of correspondence, I feel confident in reporting that couples in the 1940s were very much the same as they are today, differences in slang notwithstanding. “Swell” and “grand” are common adjectives, “gee” is peppered throughout, his nicknames for her are a carousel of darlings, honeys, and sweethearts. His proclamations are often and strong, that he misses her, that he loves her, that her happiness means everything to him and that he wishes the war were over so that they could be together.

Your love keeps me going and keeps my heart warm. Darling you’re so sweet and thoughtful and I’ll never stop loving you no matter where I am or who I am. 

Additionally, a member of Frank’s family or from Christine’s makes their way into the mix. There is a whirlwind of a letter from Frank’s sister-in-law Marie, who, in her update to Frank, had become an American citizen, obtained her driver’s license, and was on her way to becoming a 2^nd Lieutenant in the Red Cross Motor Corps, all in quick succession.

Frank and Christine marry on June 6^th, 1943, one year prior to D-Day. On their anniversary, Frank sends a telegram, as well as a letter. About D-Day he writes,

Darling it looked like General Eisenhower waited for your big day to put on his show and from the radio reports it is going along quite successful and I hope and pray that Germany will be knocked out in a hurry. We are all so darn sick of this war and the sooner it ends the better. 

Though the vast majority of the letters are from Frank, there are scattered replies from Christine in which she returns his sentiments, thanking him for his latest “sugar report,” and updates him on events back home.

Honey, you wrote that you had seen the Andrew Sisters in “Always a Bridesmaid.” Jo & I saw that Monday night, a few days after you did. You seem to see the same pictures we have playing at the local theatres. It’s fun hearing we’ve seen the same pictures at almost the same time. Somehow, it feels as if we had seen them together. — almost.  

There are many passages that are similarly moving, so much so that it only really hit me about halfway through the second box of letters that that was what I was reading — someone’s personal correspondence. These were words that presumably Frank didn’t think anyone besides Christine, and possibly her family, would ever see (well, besides the censor).

In some ways it feels even more like an intrusion due to the letters’ relative recency. Frank and Christine were about the same age during the war as my grandparents. Their letters feel more personal than looking at business papers, or those of a noted head of state. These are Frank and Chris, who love movies and baseball and talk about how desperate they are to see each other on the rare weekends he’s allowed during training. Even the fact that I’m casually referring to them by their first names and nicknames, these people I’ve never met, feels like something that really only happens in an archive.

Ultimately, this collection helped me continue with what I set out to do — familiarize myself with the MHS catalog and the reading room handling guidelines. It also fueled my interest in exploring more collections related to WWII, and to start compiling information for a potential subject guide that researchers could use. But it also made me pause, and remember the intense personal nature of manuscript collections — all manuscript collections — and just how a person’s life, and their most intimate relationships, can become “history.”

Citations

Christine Panariello Crawley to Frank T. Crawley, 10 March 1944, Frank T. Crawley Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Frank T. Crawley to Christine Panariello Crawley, 13 February 1943, Frank T. Crawley Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Frank T. Crawley to Christine Panariello Crawley, 7 June 1944, Frank T. Crawley Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society. “Research Starters: US Military by the Numbers.” The National WWII Museum. Accessed August 5, 2022. https://www.nationalww2museum.org/students-teachers/student-resources/research-starters/research-starters-us-military-numbers

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

The job of processing the MHS’s terrific collections falls to members of the Collections Services department. Processing archivists like me are responsible for arranging and describing collections in the best and clearest way possible for our researchers, be they scholars, teachers, students, authors, genealogists, members of the general public, or MHS staff.

Not only are collections cataloged in our online catalog ABIGAIL, but many of our manuscript, photograph, graphics, and artifact collections are further described in online guides. The guides contain more detailed historical and contextual information and allow researchers to zero in on the specific material they’re looking for. But these guides are not static. They’re frequently revised, and new guides are posted on a regular basis.

I’d like to take this opportunity to highlight a few of the guides that have been added to our website recently.

The Kimball-Griswold family papers consist of papers of Unitarian clergyman John C. Kimball, his wife Emily, their adopted daughter Grace, and other family members. Rev. Kimball was a Civil War chaplain and a social activist for temperance, abolitionism, women’s suffrage, and workers’ rights. Emily Kimball was a teacher, school administrator, and women’s rights advocate. John’s brother Joseph served in the Civil War as an officer in the 37th and 116th U.S. Colored Infantry Regiments and took part in 37 battles.

The Heath-Doliber-Hedge-Hammond family papers contain papers of four interrelated families, including a large number of diaries kept by several different women. Correspondence of Charles H. Heath covers his travels to California, Jamaica, Italy, Greece, Nicaragua, and Mexico in the mid-19th century. And one interesting journal describes the “water cure” at a hydropathic institution in Brattleboro, Vermont.

And last but certainly not least, the Garrison family papers consist of papers of noted abolitionist William Lloyd Garrison and several members of his family, particularly his son George T. Garrison. George worked in various professions all over the country and during the Civil War served as an officer in the 55th Massachusetts Infantry, a Black regiment. The collection includes 50 years of his diaries. John Ritchie, whose papers also form part of the collection, was a Garrison family friend and officer of another Black regiment, the 54th Massachusetts Infantry.

These are just three of the most recent collections now available for research at the MHS. You’ll find guides to hundreds of other collections of manuscripts, photographs, and other materials at our website.

I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention here the contributions of our crack digital team that works diligently to provide digital access to MHS material. For examples of the work they do, see the recently digitized papers of the Indian Industries League, diaries of Charles Edward French and John Rowe, and 17th-century sermon notes by Robert Keayne. To see more digitized collections, look for the blue “Digital Content” label.

By Evan McDonagh, Library Assistant

Visitors to the MHS will not be surprised to learn that the Society holds an extensive records collection on early American history. On paper and film alone, the Society houses more than fourteen million pages of manuscripts, approximately 120,000 images, more than 10,000 broadsides, and over 2,500 maps among a plethora of books and other items.[1] However, the MHS also possesses a wide range of unconventional American artifacts, many of which receive less visibility than the more prominent paper records. The Society’s numismatic holdings provide one such example.

As defined by Meriam-Webster dictionary, numismatics refers to “the study or collection of coins, tokens, and paper money and sometimes related objects (such as medals).” The Society holds a plethora of coins, tokens, and medals, with medals’ being of particular interest.

Beginning shortly after the end of the Revolutionary War, the production of medals and tokens bearing the likenesses of prominent heroes and political figures cemented and reinforced the developing American mythos. Likewise, collecting these special coins, tokens, and medals became a means of demonstrating individual patriotism and of flexing one’s status and means.

Patriotic artisans found a popular subject in the Revolutionary War hero Gilbert du Motier, Marquis de Lafayette. Born on 6 September 1757 in Chavaniac, France as the orphaned son of a French aristocratic family, Lafayette traveled to the rebelling American colonies in July 1777 to obtain glory as a revolutionary fighter. Despite his lack of experience, the young soldier quickly won the friendship of George Washington. Lafayette earned distinction and fame for his actions at the Battle of the Brandywine in 1777, Barren Hill in 1778, and his successful campaigns against British commanders Benedict Arnold and Lord Charles Cornwallis in 1781.

By the war’s end, Lafayette had attained nationwide fame, so much so that several states named him an honorary citizen during a 1784 visit. Lafayette’s youth and reputation marked him as an ideal figurehead and symbol for Revolutionary War medals and tokens.[2]

In the present day, the MHS has the good fortune to hold a number of Lafayette medals dating from the Revolutionary War to the late 19th century. Many of these medals come from the collection of William Sumner Appleton, Sr., a wealthy Boston resident in the late 19th century. Appleton specialized in the preservation of historic homes, but American coins and medals ranked high among his other interests. Upon Appleton’s death, his estate split up his numismatic collection, and though it sold a majority of the coins, the “Americana” part of the collection – U.S. colonial and federal coins and U.S. and personal medals – found its way to the MHS in 1905. Other Lafayette medals entered the collection in the following decades.

The Lafayette medal collection showcases a method by which Americans have left their history and mythos to the future. Even during the 19th and 20th centuries, the production of new Lafayette medals saw the celebration of the general and of American patriotism go hand in hand. This 1934 Lafayette medal (above), produced by the American Friends of Lafayette to celebrate the centenary of the general’s death, demonstrates this dichotomy. Lafayette walks past a pillar labeled “America’s Adopted Son,” a reflection of Lafayette’s French roots and the mythos of the great American melting pot. Meanwhile, the depiction of the sword and olive branch, of war and peace, reflects the symbology present on the Great Seal of the United States.[3]

The Lafayette medals serve as a portable, collectible reminder of the American experiment. Their inclusion in the Society’s collection alongside other numismatic items and artifacts speak to the plethora of ways in which Americans have chosen to remember and to commemorate their history.

[1] Massachusetts Historical Society. “Our Collections.” Accessed July 27, 2022. https://www.masshist.org/collections/our-collections.

[2] Leepson, Marc. “Marquis de Lafayette.” Britannica. Accessed July 27, 2022. https://www.britannica.com/biography/Marquis-de-Lafayette.

[3] National Museum of American Diplomacy. “The Great Seal.” Accessed July 29, 2022. https://diplomacy.state.gov/exhibits/explore-online-exhibits/the-great-seal/.

By Jenna Colozza, Library Assistant

MHS Digital Volunteers who have tried their hand at transcribing historical documents with the MHS’s new crowdsourcing portal may already be familiar with the efforts of missionary Luman Boyden to bring aid and religious piety to struggling families in 19th-century Boston. Volunteers as well as readers of Laura Wulf’s blog post on Boyden’s journals will recognize both a genuine desire to help and a tone of judgment and disapproval toward the disenfranchised families.

Missionary societies hoped to bring reform to the poor of Boston through various kinds of projects, and nowhere is the mixture of sympathy and judgment more potent than in the reports of the Penitent Females’ Refuge Society. Boyden’s tone of disapproval sounds mild in comparison to that reserved for women who found themselves selling sex in the city.

The Boston Female Society for Missionary Purposes (later known as the Bethesda Society) was formed in 1800 by a group of women from Baptist and Congregational churches in the area. By 1819, a coterie of the women’s mission evidently saw it as their duty to extend “the purifying light of Revelation into the darkened and vicious places in our own city,” provided there were missionaries willing to place themselves in these “highways of sin” to minister to the “wretched outcasts” there.

Thus the Penitent Females’ Refuge was established, governed by a group of men, and supervised and run by female volunteers. The women’s missionary group became the “Ladies’ Auxiliary” to the Refuge. The goal of the Refuge was to mitigate prostitution and poverty among women in Boston.

It was decided that women could never be truly penitent and receptive to reform while residing in “abodes of iniquity” and was therefore determined necessary to remove them from their environment and their social contacts. A house was established for the women to stay, where they were provided basic education, ministered to in weekly Bible classes, taught practical skills such as sewing, and placed in housework positions.

The MHS holds copies of the Refuge’s annual reports from 1821-1908 as well as other pamphlets the Society printed promoting its good works to the public. Public promotion was not always easy. As the Society points out in an appeal to the public published in 1839:

The inherent difficulty of conducting a charity of this description, and the various embarrassments which must ever impede the best directed efforts, it is believed, are not duly estimated by the public in making up a judgment in reference to the beneficial results to be expected from such an institution as the Refuge; while, at the same time, these difficulties and embarrassments present the strongest claims upon benevolent interposition in behalf of the peculiarly debased, forlorn, and miserable class, to whom the door of every other refuge is effectually closed.

Nevertheless, the Society attempted to justify its existence by sharing success stories of women who had passed through its doors. The 1826 report relays the stories of current inmates at the time and the ways in which the Refuge improved their circumstances. Censorship and social mores prevented the Society from sharing too many prurient details of the women’s lives, lending to the reports a more suggestive vocabulary that sounds rather Victorian and overwrought to our modern ears.

Of one young woman, admitted four and a half years previously at the age of 17, it was reported:

A child of parents addicted to intemperance, she had neither precept nor example to restrain her from wandering into the paths of sinful indulgence. … Her temper is somewhat ungovernable, which has occasioned a difficulty in finding a suitable place for her out of the house. She has been at service about 10 months during the 4 ½ years, and is very faithful in the performance of her tasks. … To keep out of the vortex of vicious example, a young female, whose age and temper expose her to fall into the worst excesses, is surely a duty of Christians and of moral men.

Of another, a young woman from Maine, it was written:

No care appears to have been taken of her morals, and at the age of 14, her character was ruined. Despised and driven from her connexions, … she wandered to this city, where she entered on a full career of wickedness which brought her several times into the House of Correction, at the age of nineteen. … She was received here in November, 1824, and since her residence in the house, her disposition, which was naturally headstrong and passionate, has undergone a sensible revolution. … She has for some months given evidence of having experienced the grace of God upon her heart, and spares no pains to excite the attention of others to the concerns of their own souls. Is this a character, whom any father or mother would bid us let remain in the highway?

Despite referring to them as “inmates,” reformers at the Refuge expressed the goal to “govern the inmates as children in the best managed families are governed,” reasoning that “to throw around them the influence of kindness has the happiest effect in exciting their love and gratitude, and securing their respect and obedience.” Nonetheless, the Refuge reported the “elopement” of multiple women each year.

Similar organizations existed in New England as well as in other American cities, such as the New England Female Moral Reform Society in Boston and the Magdalen Societies of New York and Philadelphia. Treatment of women at similar societies in other cities seems to have varied. The Magdalen Society in Philadelphia, for instance, apparently found it necessary to build a large fence to prevent the escape of women who decided they didn’t want their help.

The New York Magdalen Society permitted only white women as the subjects of its benefaction; whether this was the case for the Penitent Females’ Refuge is not explicitly stated in its reports. Such organizations often admitted only young women who had recently found themselves among “vice and misery,” reasoning that they would be more amenable to reform. However, the Refuge reported women as old as about forty among its inmates.

Many scholars agree that 19th-century ideas about female sexuality were structured around a “Madonna/whore” complex wherein women were deemed either pure or debased. Only men, it was claimed, experienced sexual desire and enjoyment. Sexual feelings and activities were directed toward sex workers in order to preserve the perceived purity of wives and the family.

In one sense, the Penitent Females’ Refuge and similar organizations were radical in their assertion that prostitution was far from a necessary evil, that it was often a result of economic disenfranchisement, and that women who made their living with sex work could find themselves in more conventional livelihoods. On the other hand, the idea that women needed to be saved and their behavior controlled clearly played into these restrictive ideals.

Despite their deeply gloomy, judgmental tone, such sources may provide valuable insights into 19th-century attitudes about female sexuality as well as the daily lives and experiences of poor and working-class women.

Sources
Bethesda Society (Boston, Mass.). Annual reports of the Penitent Females’ Refuge Society and the Bethesda Society, 1821-1908. Boston, Mass.: Penitent Female’s Refuge.

New York Magdalen Society. First annual report of the executive committee of the New-York Magdalen Society. New York: Printed by John T. West & Co., 1831.

Ruggles, Steven. “Fallen Women: The Inmates of the Magdalen Society Asylum of Philadelphia, 1836-1908.” Journal of Social History 16.3 (Spring 1983): 65-82. https://users.pop.umn.edu/~ruggles/Articles/fallenwomen.pdf

Further Reading
Davis, Robert. “‘The men will not do it’: 19th Century Sex Work and Reform.” Lady Science. April 18, 2019. https://www.ladyscience.com/19thcentury-sex-work-and-reform/no55

Hobson, Barbara Meil. Uneasy Virtue: The Politics of Prostitution and the American Reform Tradition. New York: Basic Book, Inc., 1987.

Roberts, Nickie. Whores in History: Prostitution in Western Society. London: Harper Collins, 1992.

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

Many historians have written about the mob attack on William Lloyd Garrison on 21 October 1835. But some details of the infamous event—the attempted lynching of one of America’s most prominent abolitionists, right in the heart of Boston—were hotly contested by eyewitnesses.

A letter by John Hill Thorndike, written 34 years later, paints a vivid picture of what happened that day and shines a light on one important figure in the story, the mayor of Boston, Theodore Lyman.

On the afternoon of 21 October 1835, Thorndike, a young lawyer, was walking to his office on State Street when he heard a commotion and went over to investigate. A meeting of the Female Anti-Slavery Society, featuring Garrison, had been overrun by angry pro-slavery rioters who gathered outside the building, tore down the sign, and demanded Garrison show himself. Garrison tried to escape out a back door but was seized by the mob, and what Thorndike saw next was chilling: “There was a rush of some dozen men close together […] and in their midst a bare headed man with a rope round his neck.” This man was Garrison.

Garrison was saved through the intervention of Mayor Lyman and others, who rushed him into the Old State House. (The very site, coincidentally, of the Boston Massacre 65 years earlier.) In his letter, Thorndike described Lyman’s declaration to the rioters from the entrance of the building: “You can come no further, and any man who passes here will have to pass over my dead body.” Later, from a second-story window, he “ask[ed] them as good citizens to disperse, which they did.”

The fact of Lyman’s intercession is undisputed. But not all bystanders saw it the same way.

Wendell Phillips also witnessed the attack and was equally horrified at what he saw. However, his interpretation of Lyman’s role was less generous than Thorndike’s. In a 1869 lecture, he characterized the mayor not as demanding peace, but as pleading for it, “metaphorically speaking, on his knees to the mob.”

Mayor Lyman died in 1849, but his son took up his cause. He wrote an angry letter to the Boston Daily Advertiser arguing that his father would never have behaved that way and accusing Phillips of defaming a dead man. Phillips’ fiery reply was also published in the Advertiser:

[Theodore Lyman, Jr.] was in his cradle that day. I was in Washington Street. I saw his father beg and sue; I heard him beseech and entreat that mob to disperse and preserve order. He never once commanded or sought to control it. […] I saw him consent, if not assist, at tearing down the antislavery sign and throwing it to the mob, to propitiate its rage. The city was mine as well as his, and I hung my head, ashamed of it and him.

[…]

Twenty years ago I said, “The time will come when sons will deem it unkind and unchristian to remind the world of acts their fathers take pride in.” That hour has come.

It was, in fact, this account in the Advertiser that prompted Thorndike to write the letter quoted above, addressed to Lyman’s son. (For more details of the dispute, see Papers Related to the Garrison Mob, edited by Theodore Lyman III and published in 1870.)

It’s true that Mayor Lyman was no friend of abolitionists. But it wasn’t just his tone that Phillips took issue with. He criticized Lyman for breaking up the meeting of the Female Anti-Slavery Society and ordering its members, who were legally assembled, to disperse. The mayor also arrested Garrison for disturbing the peace and none of the rioters, though he claimed it was for Garrison’s safety and the abolitionist was released the following day.

The details of Phillips’ story were corroborated by William Lloyd Garrison himself, in an article called “Triumph of Mobocracy in Boston,” published in his Liberator newspaper shortly after the attack. A copy of this article is included as an appendix in Selections from the Writings and Speeches of William Lloyd Garrison (Boston: R. F. Wallcut, 1852).

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

Last spring, the Massachusetts Historical Society acquired a prescription recipe book kept by Charles Lyman Hubbell from 1880 to 1888. In this book, Dr. Hubbell, a physician of Williamstown, Mass. and Troy, N.Y., recorded his own recipes for prescriptions, as well as those he learned from other doctors and medical journals. It’s a very interesting (and sometimes amusing) window into late 19th-century medical history.

Here you’ll find treatments for a wide variety of conditions, organized alphabetically, including acne, anemia, angina pectoris, asthma, bronchitis, cancerous ulcers, catarrh, constipation, consumption, cough, diabetes, diarrhea, diphtheria, dysmenorrhea, dyspepsia, eczema, emphysema, epilepsy, gonorrhea, hair loss, hay fever, headache, heart disease, hernia, itching, neuralgia, night sweats, psoriasis, rheumatism, sciatica, skin disease, tape worm, toothache, and uterine disease.

I have a few favorites. If I look under “F,” for example, I find that the cure for “Feet – Fetid smelling” involves “a solution of Chloral in alcohol and water applied several times a day” or an “application of equal parts Belladonna ointment and glycerine.” One heading that was unfamiliar to me was “Chelsea pensioner,” which Hubbard apparently used as a euphemism for hemorrhoids. And I was intrigued by the page that seems to describe a treatment for “insanity […] cerebral inability & hysterical affection,” though the handwriting is difficult to make out.

Then there’s this:

The heading on this page made me do a double take. It reads: “Nervous, exhausted & irritable females. Hysterical headache, insomnia &c.” What, you ask, is Hubbell’s remedy? Well, I tried to make sense of the medical abbreviations and apothecarial symbols, but only got as far as: one ounce of calcium bromide mixed with four ounces of…something else. Whatever it is, I’m willing to bet it doesn’t cure this particular “condition”!

I was curious to know more about Hubbell, and I found a smattering of biographical details in published histories of his family, his wife’s family, and Rensselaer County, New York. He was born in 1827, the sixth of seven children of Louisa and Lyman Hubbell. He graduated from Williams College in 1846 and Berkshire Medical College in 1848. In 1852, he married Juliette Bulkeley (or Bulkley), with whom he had six children. And during the Civil War, he served as a surgeon for the Black Horse Cavalry and the 12th New York Infantry.

When he started recording the recipes in this volume, he was in his fifties and had been a practicing physician for decades, as well as a member of numerous medical societies. But he also had other interests. Appearing among the medical recipes are recipes for pickled cabbage, sausage, fertilizer, and harness polish (he was interested in horse racing and breeding).

I uncovered just one other story about Hubbell in my research: the sad circumstances of his death in 1890. According to correspondence digitized and made available at the Sibley Watson Digital Archive, Hubbell died unexpectedly the day before his daughter’s wedding. That archive includes a newspaper obituary of Hubbell and a letter by Elizabeth Sibley of Rochester, N.Y., the second page of which reads:

I have nothing of special interest to write, except that just as the marriage ceremony of Elbridge Adams and Miss Hubbell was to take place, the guests all arrived and everything in readiness, Dr. Hubbell went to his room, threw himself on his bed, and died, before anything could be done for him with heart disease. The marriage took place, only a very few friends present.

Was it not terrible? I can think of nothing more dreadful that could have happened, unless the Bride or groom had been taken.

Charles Lyman Hubbell was 63 years old. He’s buried with his wife at Oakwood Cemetery in Troy, N.Y.

By Heather Rockwood, Communications Associate

On 23 October 1775, Samuel Osgood, a militia leader who fought at the Battle of Lexington and Concord, wrote to John Adams with a military update. In one paragraph he mentions:

“The famous Waters Machine from Connecticutt is every Day expected in Camp. It must unavoidably be a clumsy Business as its Weight is about a Tun. I wish it might succeed [and] the Ships be blown up beyond the Attraction of the Earth for it is the only Way or Chance they have of reaching St. Peters Gate.”

What Osgood is referring to as the “famous Waters Machine” was the first submarine with recorded use in battle. It was built in Connecticut and used in New York Harbor against the British Navy and was called the Turtle because of the way it looked. The submarine was designed for a single occupant and would be positioned just below the water’s surface, with a pipe leading to fresh air. When the operator wanted to submerge, he would close the pipe and let the interior’s cavity fill with water, leaving enough space at the top to breathe for a few minutes. Propellers would move the submarine back to the water’s surface. Replicas of the Turtle can be seen in a few museums around the world; one is at the Connecticut River Museum.

The Turtle’s design was the work of two men—David Bushnell, who had graduated Yale College in 1775, and Isaac Doolittle, a clockmaker. While at Yale, Bushnell proved that gunpowder could be ignited and exploded underwater, and he used this knowledge to design underwater mines and torpedoes. With Doolittle, he designed a mechanically triggered time bomb and the first propeller. Combining these designs together, he and Doolittle created and built the Turtle.

Although the original idea was to use the Turtle to force the British out of Boston Harbor, the machine took too long to build, and the British had already evacuated Boston for Canada. Once the Turtle was built and undergoing tests in Connecticut, George Washington and Benjamin Franklin both heard about it, and Franklin was able to tour it. Sergeant Ezra Lee of the Continental Army spent two weeks learning to operate it proficiently. It was then time to deploy it against the British.

By that time the British Navy was occupying New York Harbor. On 6 September 1776, Sergeant Lee deployed the Turtle to attack the HMS Eagle, commanded by Admiral Howe, a move that might have delivered a decisive blow to the British Navy. The plan was to launch the Turtle at night and get as close to the HMS Eagle as possible, then submerge the submarine to go under the ship and attach a bomb to its underside by use of a hand auger. However, once Lee was under the ship, his auger hit metal, not wood as planned, and the bomb would not attach. As dawn approached, he abandoned the mission, and although the submarine had worked, the mission failed.

The Turtle was used in two more missions, both of which also failed, and then was lost during the Battle of Fort Lee in New Jersey, when the British sunk the sloop transporting it. Although the Turtle’s missions failed and the submarine was lost, it marked the beginning of an age of innovation in the newly formed United States at a time when the former colonists were eager to find a new identity.