By LJ Woolcock, Library Assistant

We’re getting close to a year since the pandemic set in here in the US, which I think we can all safely say, no one could have imagined when things first started closing down in 2020. While sourdough definitely stole the show as America’s new hobby, my colleagues and I at the MHS library know there’s also a wave of new historians who have been using their time in quarantine to dive into research. At the same time, most historical institutions, libraries, and archives remain shuttered. As a library assistant, one of the most difficult things I have to do on a regular basis is tell patrons that they’re going to have to wait or request reproductions of the materials they’re interested in using.

So, how can you carry on with historical research when many archival collections are inaccessible and libraries are closed?

I’d like to offer some of the sources that I regularly turn to–both in helping patrons as well as with my own research–when I am not able to access unique archival collections.

Print Materials

Books, pamphlets, advertisements, broadsides, and other printed materials often are unappreciated when it comes to historical research. They’re not given the same value as manuscript collections because they are not unique documents. They also lack the “numen” that archives hold for people: that sense that you’re touching history, making a direct physical connection with the past. However, printed materials contain a wealth of information and ought not to be overlooked.

A fantastic example is city directories. They are incredible tools for identifying regular people living in the city in the past. If you’re looking for someone specific, they list names, addresses, and professions, which you can then use to try to find further sources on an individual. On a broader scale, they also give a bird’s eye view of who was living in the city, where they lived, and what they did for a living. They allow you to form a textual map of a street, neighborhood, or the city as a whole.

The MHS holds physical copies of Boston city directories from the first publication of the Boston Directory in 1789, into the 20th century:

But many have also been digitized and can be accessed for free on HathiTrust and the Internet Archive.

This is just one example. If a printed book is in the public domain (in general, works published before 1926 or were released more than 95 years ago), there’s a chance that it’s been digitized. For example, if you’re interested in the history of Black activism or Boston’s Black community, David Walker’s Appeal in Four Articles, one of the only published works in U.S. literature to openly encourage to Black people to resist slavery and other forms of white oppression, is available in full on Google Books. Walker self-published his Appeal from Boston’s Beacon Hill neighborhood, and thousands of copies travelled to Black readers across the US.

Working with print materials may not provide the same experience of tracing the pen strokes of the past like archival documents, but it does emphasize how history is something that’s built—that you have to take many scattered pieces to construct an image of what the past looked like.

Published Archival Documents/Edited Editions

Two resources we often use at the MHS are our publications Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society and Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society. These publications, documenting new acquisitions and meetings of the Society, hold unexpected treasures. They’re filled with full transcriptions or edited editions of documents that would be otherwise inaccessible outside of our reading room.

If you find a collection or source in our catalog, check the form “Additional Forms available.” If it has been published in either Collections or Proceedings, it will most likely be indicated there with the series, volume, and page number.

Many collections of archival documents that were edited and published in the 19th century are now in the public domain, and many have been digitized and made available online as well. Some editions that I’ve used during the pandemic include the early colonial Records for the Town of Boston (colorfully titled “Second Report of the Record Commissioners of the City of Boston”—there are many subsequent reports that publish town records into the 18th century), the digitized volumes of Massachusetts Town Vital Records to 1850, and Massachusetts Soldiers and Sailors of the Revolutionary War.

Modern edited editions, such as the digital edition of the Adams Papers, are also easily accessible during the pandemic.

Digitized Archival Collections

Of course, these are the current gold of pandemic researchers. I can’t tell you how many times I’ve heard, “If only more had been digitized!”

Many of the MHS’ digitized collections live in our online collection guides. If you see a collection guide with a blue “Digitized Content,” you can click through to see what materials are available online.

Objects, art, and some additional archival sources are accessible through on our online Collection Highlights and Online Resources. There are also digitized collections in more unexpected places; for example, the papers of Mary Hartford, a member of Boston’s free black community in the 18th and 19th centuries, can be found in one of our past digital exhibits, “African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts,” along with materials from many other collections that otherwise haven’t been digitized.

Consult a Librarian

If you’re not sure where to start or how to identify sources that might speak to a topic, you can always email librarians and archivists to ask for help. The MHS library has its contact information here, including our live chat service.

Keep a “for-later” List

Something that I do while conducting my own research, is to keep a document where I save citations of documents, collections, digital history resources, secondary books, and other things related to my topic that are relevant, along with the place I found them. Anything that you think you may want to remember, or check out in the future related to your research can be thrown inside.

I’ve always found it to be a helpful tool, but during the pandemic it’s been especially essential. If you’re only able to access books from your library using a to-go service, you can look at their footnotes and keep a record of what sources you might want to Google. You never know what might be available online; but even if it’s not possible to access those documents now, you’ll have a record of what you’re interested in and where they are.

Keeping a list also provides you with an intellectual history of your own curiosity: you’ll be able to see what in a particular article sparked your interest, and any new paths you may want to explore. And, I guarantee you—no matter how awesome it sounds right now, you will not remember the name of that collection, or the date of that one letter, later on. I can’t tell you how many times my list has saved me from pandemic brain-fog forgetfulness.

Hopefully this provides some new paths for pandemic historians out there. Suggestions like these may not be able to take the place of archival research, but they do provide us some way into our questions. Limits frustrate us, but they also foster creativity—we learn to think in unexpected ways, and create connection that previously might have gone unexplored.

Works Cited

The David Walker Memorial Project. “David Walker’s Appeal.” David Walker Memorial Project, http://www.davidwalkermemorial.org/appeal (accessed 1 March 2021).

By Rakashi Chand, Senior Library Assistant

With COVID-19 precautions in mind, my husband and I attempted to provide our children with a wholesome school vacation experience by going on a road trip.

We were tested before and after our road trip, wore masks whenever we existed the car, and avoided crowds. We did stop to stay overnight in hotel rooms that we sanitized ourselves with an array of cleaning products packed into the car. We decided this would be the best we could do in the midst of a pandemic. So we drove, and drove, and drove…

Eventually we made it from Boston’s subzero temperatures to northern Florida in what had at times seemed like an impossible mission.

We ended up in the old city of St. Augustine and were pleasantly surprised by the cultural influences that had shaped the small city over the centuries. As we drove, we passed the old Castillo de San Marcos dating from 1672 which proudly boasted to be the oldest masonry fortification in the continental United States.  And here, I had to stop. I needed to get out and look at the Castillo.

“Fort Marion,” I uttered as my children and husband watched me walk towards it.

Images flooded my head as I approached the walls of the old fort. This was not a place that I ever thought I would visit. Yet there I was on an unplanned road trip with no destination. Colors, faces, images, and pictographs poignantly came to life in front of me as I thought of a collection housed at the MHS that has always touched my heart, the Book of Sketches Made at Fort Marion, St. Augustine, Fla., 1877.

Members of the Cheyenne, Kiowa, Arapaho, and Comanche Nations were imprisoned during the Red River War of 1874-1875 and forced to walk over a thousand miles from their homelands to an internment camp at Fort Marion. There, Lieut. Richard H. Pratt lead an experimental program to force prisoners to ‘integrate’, by dressing them in military uniforms, teaching them to read and write, farm, or do carpentry, and converting them to Christianity. A 24 year-old Cheyenne warrior named Bear’s Heart (“Nockkoist”) was among the prisoners. While at Fort Marion, he became an accomplished artist. The prisoners were given blank books or ledgers, pens, and colored pencils and used this new medium as they would have in the traditional practice of decorating hides with depictions of life on the plains. Often referred to as Ledger Art, the most striking of these drawings is a possible depiction of the Sand Creek Massacre by Bear’s Heart, uniquely portraying the massacre from an Indigenous point of view. His art is beautifully melancholy as it captures and preserves the way of life he left behind. Bear’s Heart documented the prisoners’ long and arduous journey to Florida through his art. After release from Imprisonment, he went on to be a spokesperson for Lieut. Pratt’s education program. Over 100 of Bear Heart’s drawings survive, and the MHS is fortunate to have seven of his pieces. Learn more.

Another name that came to mind was Howling Wolf or Ho-na-nist-to, a Cheyenne warrior who was appointed sergeant of the guards at Fort Marion. When he was released in the spring of 1878, he intended to remain in the east to continue his education but his eyesight was failing. He came to Boston for eye surgery. It was unsuccessful so he rejoined his people on a reservation. There he was struck by the poverty he witnessed. He began speaking out for Indigenous Rights and against the encroachment of Anglo-American culture including the implementation of the Dawes Act in 1887.

When Howling Wolf left Fort Marion, he drew a pictographic map of his journey from Fort Marion to Savannah, GA and beyond on a postcard that he sent to his father. Both the pictogram postcard and a translation of the pictogram by historian Francis Parkman are in the Book of Sketches Made at Fort Marion. I thought of what it must have meant to finally leave Fort Marion and felt honored that I was going to follow in Howling Wolf’s footsteps (Though I had the unfair advantage of a car!).  Luckily, the pictogram had been tucked into the Sketchbook so it could live on.

The art from the sketchbook is a vivid and beautiful memorial to the lives that the artists once lived, before Fort Marion. Hunting Buffalo by Making Medicine is one beautiful example. The collection is fully digitized to explore at home. Within the walls of Fort Marion, many people dreamt of the lives they lived before and through this collection of Sketches we can view some of those moments through their eyes. And, if you are willing to drive, you can even touch the very walls that held so many prisoners surrounded by the beating ocean and wind swept palm trees.

See Howling Wolf’s pictogram to his father Minimic: MHS Collections Online: Howling Wolf’s pictogram to his father Minimic (masshist.org).

See Francis Parkman’s translation of Howling Wolf’s pictogram: MHS Collections Online: Francis Parkman’s translation of Howling Wolf’s pictogram (masshist.org).

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

This is the first installment of a series on the diary of William Logan Rodman. Stay tuned to the Beehive for more.

About a year ago, the MHS acquired a very interesting diary kept by William Logan Rodman of New Bedford, Mass. Though it covers only a year and a half of Rodman’s life, it’s full of terrific anecdotes, descriptions, and hot takes on current events leading up to and including the first year of the Civil War.

If he sounds familiar to you, that may be because of his grandfather Samuel Rodman (1753-1835), a very prosperous merchant who made his name in the whaling centers of Nantucket and New Bedford. Samuel married Elizabeth Rotch, and several other Rodmans also married into that family, interweaving the two powerful New England whaling dynasties. William’s maternal grandfather, meanwhile, was Thomas Morgan, a prominent merchant of Philadelphia.

Members of the Rodman, Rotch, and Morgan families were also practicing Quakers and fervent opponents of slavery.

In October 1860, when he began his diary, William Rodman had a comfortable life. He was 38 years old, unmarried, living in New Bedford, and “participat[ing] moderately in business,” as his Harvard biography puts it. But his life would change dramatically in the coming months, and it all began with the momentous election of Abraham Lincoln on 6 November.

Southern backlash to the election was fierce, but Rodman was initially sanguine about it, writing the day after, “I have no fears of Secession or Revolution. The South will bluster & Resolve but […] all will be quiet.” And a few days later: “They will have to submit to the will of the majority viz the Union or go to everlasting smash out of it.” He dismissed what he called “Southern secession nonsense” in the newspapers.

James Buchanan was now a lame-duck president. Rodman hated him, and he did not mince words. He called the administration “corrupt and degraded” and the man himself “the meanest & vilest of the American Presidents,” lacking “a vertebral column.” He rarely even referred to Buchanan by name, preferring epithets such as “the Old Public Functionary,” “an inefficient old fool,” and even “Mrs. Buchanan,” probably a not-so-veiled reference to rumors about the bachelor president’s sexuality.

Buchanan’s political positions were abhorrent to opponents of slavery like Rodman. Buchanan had intervened in the deliberations of the U.S. Supreme Court in Dred Scott, pressuring justices to rule against Scott and deny citizenship to Black people. He supported the Fugitive Slave Law requiring free states to return enslaved people to their enslavers and argued for a federal law protecting slavery in the territories. And he used his 1860 State of the Union address to pre-emptively blame the Northern states for Southern secession (emphasis mine):

The long-continued and intemperate interference of the Northern people with the question of slavery in the Southern States has at length produced its natural effects. The different sections of the Union are now arrayed against each other, and the time has arrived, so much dreaded by the Father of his Country, when hostile geographical parties have been formed.

I have long foreseen and often forewarned my countrymen of the now impending danger. This does not proceed solely from the claim on the part of Congress or the Territorial legislatures to exclude slavery from the Territories, nor from the efforts of different States to defeat the execution of the fugitive-slave law. All or any of these evils might have been endured by the South without danger to the Union (as others have been) in the hope that time and reflection might apply the remedy. The immediate peril arises not so much from these causes as from the fact that the incessant and violent agitation of the slavery question throughout the North for the last quarter of a century has at length produced its malign influence on the slaves and inspired them with vague notions of freedom. Hence a sense of security no longer exists around the family altar. This feeling of peace at home has given place to apprehensions of servile insurrections. Many a matron throughout the South retires at night in dread of what may befall herself and children before the morning. Should this apprehension of domestic danger, whether real or imaginary, extend and intensify itself until it shall pervade the masses of the Southern people, then disunion will become inevitable. […]

How easy would it be for the American people to settle the slavery question forever and to restore peace and harmony to this distracted country! They, and they alone, can do it. All that is necessary to accomplish the object, and all for which the slave States have ever contended, is to be let alone and permitted to manage their domestic institutions in their own way.

Historians have consistently ranked Buchanan at or near the bottom in lists of U.S. presidents. One 2015 biography is even called The Worst President: The Story of James Buchanan.

At the beginning of December, still three months away from Lincoln’s inauguration, Rodman was beginning to sound a little less sure of himself on the question of secession. He wrote, “I cannot feel that this great confederacy is to be destroyed just yet and I dont like to contemplate the fearful ruin that must overtake the South if they pursue their mad schemes.”

Sure enough, on 20 December 1860, South Carolina became the first of eleven states to dissolve its ties with the Union. Rodman had not wanted to see it happen, but now that it was underway, he recorded his feelings in his diary:

Some of our citizens talk blood and warfare, but this is easy talking far away from the probable scenes of danger. I hope we may have peace without blood but if not why my first wish is for wiping Charleston off the face of creation.

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

This is the final installment of a five-part series on the Jarrett family letters at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Click here to read Part I, Part II, Part III, and Part IV.

In this post, I conclude the story of Julia Jarrett and her son Homer, as documented in the Jarrett family letters here at the MHS. Julia had been born into slavery in the 1850s, and in 1909 was living with members of her sprawling family on a farm in Shiloh, Ga. Homer, after years of peripatetic wandering through the Midwest and Northeast, had settled here in Boston, where he would apparently spend the rest of his life. Below is a complete transcription of the fifth and final letter of the collection.

Shiloh. Ga.

Oct. 11 1909

Mr Homer C Jarrett.

My dear son

I wrote you some time but no ancer have I received. Why have you not ancered my letter. If you are sick write and let me know. I have been looking for a letter some time.

I received a letter from Claud. He said a Change had taken place with him. It he said made him cry and made him do things that he never did before. I was so glad I didnt know what to do. The children got the letter out of the box and carried it to the field and I went out thair and they read it to me and I couldent help from shouting and crying and rejoicing.

All at home is well at present. I have been sick for two weeks. I went to see Sister Jane Hawkins. Yesterday Sister Sallie went with me. Sister Jane has been sick but she is better now. Grandpa is well and is try to work as usial.

Homer you must be a good boy and try to prey. I preys mighty for you all and the Lord has give me Claud. He is fix up all right and I trust you is all ready fit meat for the Lord. I trust that I will see you once more in life but if I never see you in life hope to meet you where parten [parting] is no more.

All at home sends love to you. All the children sends their best regards to you. Cora and family is well. Wilson and family is well. The drouth [drought] cut the cotton crops off. We has picked out two bales of cotton but we dont know how many bales we will get. Hasent geathered corn yet.

I remain yours Mother

Julia Jarrett.

This letter was written more than two years after the last. I don’t know whether any correspondence was exchanged in the interim (if so, it may be found in the Homer C. Jarrett letters at the University of Georgia), but Julia’s concern for her son is palpable and touching. She was anxious at not hearing from him and worried not just about his physical, but also his spiritual well-being. Overjoyed at his brother Claud’s new-found commitment to religion, she urged Homer to follow his example and “be a good boy.”

The envelope is addressed to Homer at what looks like #410 A. Col” Ave., which may have been Colonial or Columbus Avenue. He had traveled north at the cusp of the Great Migration, which historians describe as taking place in two waves between 1910 to 1970. Homer would be followed by millions of other African Americans seeking opportunity and escaping Jim Crow. According to National Park Service data, the Black population of Boston, which grew less than that of other Northern cities, still nearly doubled between 1900 and 1930.

Unfortunately I couldn’t find any more information about Julia than I’ve shared in this and previous posts. Homer Clifford Jarrett worked in real estate in Boston and died unmarried in 1959 at the age of 76 or 77. Some of his siblings lived into the 1960s and ‘70s, and amazingly little sister Lizzie lived all the way to 1988. To think that a woman who lived long enough to watch the 1988 Winter Olympics on TV had had a mother born enslaved is to see how few generations removed from slavery we are today.

By Matthew Ahern, Library Assistant

In 1878, the future of the US currency was on the minds of many American citizens. With America in the middle of an economic depression contributing to anxieties around American monetary policies that had existed since the Civil War, the Greenback party had made considerable gains. Greenbackers saw money not restricted by bullion as being inherently helpful to the lower classes during this economic depression, while traditionally minded gold standard supporters feared what Greenback policy would do to the confidence in the American dollar, both domestically and abroad. In 1878, Massachusetts would be confronted by this debate when ardent Greenbacker Benjamin Butler’s was pitted against businessman Thomas Talbot in the gubernatorial election that year. In a contest that mixed personal reputation with monetary policy, it would be Talbot’s “Honest Money, Honest Men”[1] pitch that would win the day.

During the summer of 1878, Civil War General, and disillusioned ex-Republican congressmen, Benjamin F. Butler found himself as the conductor of a populist movement on a Greenback platform that ultimately led to him receiving the Democratic nomination for Governor. Almost as if in response to Butler and his followers, the Republican party nominated the mild-mannered mill owner Thomas Talbot. A former acting Governor of Massachusetts, Talbot supported the gold standard and took a far more moderate stance to both business and labor reform. This election, with these two contrasting figures would be just as much about personality and personal history as it was about policy.

Talbot grew up in poverty, receiving only a partial education, and working primarily as a mill worker when he was younger. Eventually he established the modestly sized Talbot Mills in Billerica and had quickly earned himself a strong reputation paying his employees high wages with fair treatment during a time when mill workers were often treated poorly. By the 1850s, he had entered local Republican politics, and was eventually tapped to be Gov. Washburn’s running-mate in his successful 1874 ticket. Only a few months later, Talbot would find himself serving as the acting Governor after Washburn’s electoral victory for the late Charles Sumner’s seat in the US Senate. Though he was generally well liked during his time in office, Talbot destroyed his chances at winning re-election when he vetoed a liquor reform bill due to his temperance convictions (A stance that would be his political Achilles heel). Still a strong voice in the party, he would need to wait until 1878 to get another shot at the office of Governor.[2]

Butler lived a rather different life. Growing up in a family with some means, Butler benefited from an education from Philips Exeter and Colby College. Setting up a legal practice in Lowell, he engaged in speculation and would become a majority stakeholder in the Middlesex Company, a large mill in the city. Entering politics around the same time as Talbot, Butler was originally a Democrat, and first switched party affiliations to the Republican party during the Civil War. As a Major-General for the Union, he was known as an abysmal battlefield commander, but effective administrator. Post-war, he would serve in the US Congress as a Republican, though eventually growing frustrated the Republican platform’s lack of populist policies he had come to favor. Butler switched his party affiliation once more the Greenback Party, and he would carry with him the majority of Democratic party support within the state.

Talbot and his supporters understood that his reputation would be the key to both challenging Butler and adding validity to his more moderate platform. The Talbot Mills had a strong reputation amongst workers, while Butler’s Middlesex Company did not. Talbot was a loyal party-man while Butler had a history of switching affiliations. Talbot also sought no higher office and disliked public ceremony, while many guessed (and rightly so) that Butler, who thrived in the spotlight, would use the Governorship as a step towards the Presidency. Furthermore, he was aided by rising Republican politician Gen. James A. Garfield, who delivered a speech at Faneuil Hall and lampooned Butler’s monetary policy.[3]

Political attacks continued to rage, with Talbot cast as part of the Republican oligarchy currently in power and Butler labeled a demagogue. Despite Butler’s attempts to soften controversial aspects of his history, he was not able to escape the perception of him as a leader of the “Repudiationists, Greenbackers, and Communists” trying to wrestle for power in the state.[4]

In the end, turnout would be massive, with Butler receiving more votes than any other defeated candidate previously, though he was still beaten handily by Talbot 53% to 43%.[5] Voters appeared to have seen the merit in Talbot’s campaign pitch of “Honest Money, Honest Men” over a controversial and radical Butler. Butler would go on to achieve electoral victory in 1882 and launch his bid for the Presidency in his unsuccessful campaign of 1884. As for Talbot, his term in office was characterized by incremental labor and prison reforms, as well as the implementing of the first piece of limited women’s suffrage in the state. Refusing a run for reelection, Talbot became largely a footnote in Massachusetts’s political history, but the campaign he ran in 1878 demonstrated reputation can matter just as much, if not more, than a politician’s policy platform.

[1] “Regular Republican ticket : honest money, honest men.” Rockwell and Churchill, Printer. Boston Athenaeum Collections.

[2] Thomas Talbot: A memorial. Privately printed, 1886. MHS Collections.

[3] Endicott’s letter : Garfield’s speech on honest money : delivered at Faneuil Hall, Boston, Sept. 10, 1878. MHS Collections.

[4] “Address of the Massachusetts Republican State Committee, 1878.” MHS Collections.

[5] “1878 Massachusetts Gubernatorial Election” Congressional Quarterly Guide to U S Elections, second edition.

By Amy Watson, NEH Fellow, University of Alabama at Birmingham

At four o’clock in the morning on 3 July 1745, Boston’s residents awoke to the firing of guns, the beating of drums, and the ringing of bells. The bleary-eyed Bostonians’ alarm soon turned to delight when they learned the cause of the commotion: New England troops had captured the town of Louisbourg, a French colonial port on the island of Île Royale (in what is now Nova Scotia). For the entirety of the day, Bostonians “laid aside all thoughts of business” to celebrate the victory, participating in a city-wide block party that included fireworks, songs, and “plenty of good liquor.” As one eyewitness wrote, “never before, upon any occasion, was observed so universal and unaffected a joy.”[1]

I began my research at the Massachusetts Historical Society with questions about this victory and the celebrations it sparked. Why had New Englanders volunteered to fight the French at Louisbourg? Why were Boston’s residents so thrilled about winning a fishing port on the frigid waters of the Gulf of St. Lawrence? What did they hope to get out of it?

I knew that I would be able to find these answers at the MHS, which has the best collection in America on the Louisbourg expedition, including accounts of military leaders, politicians, and New England soldiers.[2] But my favorite find at the MHS was a simple printed ballad that circulated in Boston immediately following the victory. Entitled “New England Bravery,” this broadsheet describes New England’s capture of Louisbourg in verses to be sung to the tune of the old English song “Chivey Chace.” This ballad gave me not only a glimpse into the raucous celebrations that took place on Boston’s streets in July 1745, but also insight into what Louisbourg represented to the ordinary shopkeepers, merchants, and laborers who sang of its conquest. [Figure 1]

“New England Bravery,” shows the real antipathy that New Englanders held towards their French neighbors in North America. In the ballad’s description of the siege itself, there is the normal lighthearted banter between French and New England soldiers: “Jack Frenchman, cries, you English dogs/ come, here’s a pretty Wench.” But the tone turned serious once the New Englanders successfully captured the port, and decided what to do with their defeated foes: “They all are to be sent to France,/ with all the Islanders,/ Which needs must ease our Countrymen/of many Cares and Fears.” The ballad is therefore advocating for the expulsion of the French-speaking inhabitants of Île Royale, a people whose families had lived in the region for more than a century. [Figure Two]

Why did New Englanders want these French islanders gone so badly? The first motive was commercial: Louisbourg provided access to the cod fisheries of the North Atlantic, a lucrative trade which many Massachusetts colonists hoped to capture for themselves. More pressing, however, were the colonists’ geopolitical concerns. There was a growing political movement on both sides of the British Atlantic in the 1740s to take a more militant stance towards France in order to protect and expand Britain’s imperial hegemony in America.[3]  Île Royale was key to this program: British control of Louisbourg could choke off French shipping to Canada, making it too costly for France to continue its colonial operations in the region. As Massachusetts Governor William Shirley wrote, the conquest of Louisbourg was the first, essential step “to drive the French wholly off the North American continent.”[4] The anonymous writer of “New England Bravery” evidently agreed with Shirley’s aims, and many of the ordinary Bostonians who sang the ballad no doubt did as well.

More than a thousand inhabitants of Île Royale would be deported to France in the months following the conquest of Louisbourg, though some would return home briefly in peacetime, only to be expelled again during the Seven Years War. Ultimately, more than ten thousand French-speaking inhabitants of the greater Acadian region would be forced from their homes in the 1750s-60s, a violent undertaking that historian John Mack Faragher has described as an American example of “state-sponsored ethnic cleansing.”[5] Not all New Englanders supported this cruelty. However, “New England Bravery” suggests that in 1745 there were Bostonians in favor of a forced French expulsion singing out in the streets.

[1] Pennsylvania Gazette, 18 July 1745

[2] See William Pepperrell Papers, William Shirley Papers, and William Clarke Journal in Dolbeare Family Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

[3] For more on this political movement, see Steve Pincus and Amy Watson, “Patriotism after the Hanoverian Succession,” in The Hanoverian Succession in Great Britain and its Empire, eds. Brent Sirota and Allan MacInnes (Woodbridge, UK: Boydell, 2019), 155-174.

[4] William Shirley to Lords Commissioners of Admiralty, 10 July 1745, The National Archives of the UK, ADM 1-3817

[5] John Mack Faragher, A Great and Noble Scheme (New York: Norton, 2005), 473

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

This is the fourth installment of a five-part series on the Jarrett family letters at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Click here to read Part I, Part II, and Part III.

Today we return to the story of the Jarretts, a farming family in the small town of Shiloh, Georgia. The Jarrett collection at the Massachusetts Historical Society consists of five letters to Homer Clifford Jarrett (1882-1959) from family members, primarily his mother Julia. The fourth letter was written on 17 July 1907. Below is a complete transcription. As before, I’ll retain misspellings but add sentence and paragraph breaks for readability.

Shiloh Ga.
July. 17, 1907

Mr. Homer C. Jarrett.

Dear son

I received your letter some time ago. This leaves the family well. Hope when this reach it will find you the same. I just received a letter from Claud. It stated that he was well.

People are slow on crops. We just started back to hoeing the second time Monday. The cotton is looking fine. Corn crop is slow. It is not going to be much corn made this year down here.

I dont think we all went to the district meeting last Saturday and Sunday at Shiloh Ga. It was helt at the A.M.E. Church. It was nice times up thair. On Sunday Shack Barney and Shurn Copeland got in fuss. They shot at one and other. Shurn shot at Shack 3 times. Shack shot at Shurn 2 times. But not one got hurt. Shurn is under a hundred dollar [barn]. They hasent got Shack yet but say they is going to have him.

Homer you must be a good boy and try to prey. The people is got to be so bad nowadays. I hope you will be successfull in your new home and luck well. Grandpa is well and sends his best regards to you often speakes of you. Lizzie sends love to you and many sweet kisses. Charlie eyes is something better. He is plowing evey day. Generous is gone back to cooking again. He is not at home now. Sister Cora and family is well. Brother Wilson and family is well.

I hasent got any ink this time. I will try to get some the next time I write you.

So good bye

Your mother
Julia Jarrett

We’ve met most of the family before. Homer’s brother Claud and sister Lizzie have figured prominently in our series so far, and Grandpa, Charlie, and Wilson have made appearances. Cora, another sister, was married to a man named Levi Whitehead, according to online genealogical sources. I don’t know who Generous was, but it’s a great name!

The handwriting of this letter differs from that of the first three. I believe Claud had previously transcribed for his mother, but since he was away, someone else took over the job. I can only guess who the new transcriber was, but I wonder if it might have been Julia’s young daughter Lizzie. We know she was (or at least had been) in school, and in July 1907 she would have been nine years old.

I hit a number of frustrating dead ends researching the details of this letter. I couldn’t find an African Methodist Episcopal church in Shiloh, but it may have closed, moved, merged with another church, or changed denominations. Today, there are more than 500 AME churches in Georgia alone. I also didn’t locate any contemporary accounts of the confrontation between the two men, Shack Barney and Shurn Copeland, and I couldn’t confirm the meaning of “barn” (or “barm”) in this context. I assume it meant bail or a fine.

But details aside, this letter touches on several interesting themes, particularly the precariousness of the Jarretts’ income from their cotton and corn crops. We also see Julia’s concern for her son Homer, so far away from home—concern not just for his physical, but also his moral well-being.

One thing I like about this collection and other family letters I’ve seen at the MHS is that they really give us a sense of how people talked to each other in their everyday lives. This is something that doesn’t come through as strongly in formal correspondence. Phonetic spellings tell us how Julia pronounced certain words: “helt,” for example. It’s almost as if we can hear her voice. I also love the expression “luck well” instead of “have good luck.”

Homer had been moving steadily northward over the course of the previous two years. By 1907, he had reached New England, and this letter is addressed to him at Farragut House, a resort hotel in Rye Beach, N.H., where Homer was presumably working. Farragut House, according to the 1907 publication New England Vacation Resorts (p. 67), was the largest and priciest hotel at Rye Beach, accommodating 300 guests and costing $5.00 a night. The building has since been torn down, but you can find picture postcards of it online.

In my next post, I’ll be concluding the story of the Jarrett family. I hope you’ll join me!