by Neal Millikan, Series Editor for Digital Editions
Transcriptions of more than 700 pages of John Quincy Adams’s diary have just been added to the John Quincy Adams Digital Diary, a born-digital edition of the Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The new material spans the period January 1789 through August 1801 and chronicle Adams’s experiences as a law student in Newburyport, a young lawyer in Boston, and a diplomat in the Netherlands and Prussia.
“My present situation is not over eligible: how to improve it is the subject which most employs my mind,” Adams wrote on 7 April 1791. “I have much leisure upon my hands, and my own improvement seems to be the proper object of my pursuit,” although he questioned his own “egotism” as he tried and failed to faithfully keep his journal. Adams had completed his legal studies under Theophilus Parsons in Newburyport the previous July and was been admitted to the Massachusetts Bar. Choosing to establish his office in Boston, the 23-year-old struggled to gain ground professionally even as he began to find his political voice.
In the summer of 1791 Adams responded to Thomas Paine’s Rights of Man with a series of articles under the pseudonym “Publicola.” The following year brought pieces by “Menander” opposing the state anti-theater ordinance, and in late 1793 and early 1794 he earned recognition for his “Columbus” and “Barneveld” series, commenting on the behavior of the Antoine Charbonnet Duplaine, the French consul at Boston, and Edmond Genet, the French minister to the United States.
Thomas Boylston Adams by Mr. Parker, 1795
These activities found favor in Federalist circles. In May 1794 President George Washington nominated John Quincy Adams as minister resident to the Netherlands. It was the first of four diplomatic postings Adams held. He and his youngest brother, Thomas Boylston Adams, who served as JQA’s secretary, arrived at The Hague in late October. During an errand to London in 1795, John Quincy met Louisa Catherine Johnson, the daughter of U.S. consul Joshua Johnson and Catherine Nuth Johnson. After more than a year’s courtship, the couple married in London on 26 July 1797 and soon departed for John Quincy’s new diplomatic post at Berlin, where the minister successfully negotiated a new Prussian-American Treaty of Amity and Commerce in 1799. Neither John Quincy nor Louisa relished the demands of court life with its lavish social engagements. Louisa’s frequent ill health during these years weighed on John Quincy, and he noted his feelings in his diary. After Louisa had several miscarriages, she gave birth to their first son, George Washington Adams in April 1801, shortly before John Quincy received his recall and the family returned to the United States.
Louisa Catherine Johnson, circa 1792
For more on John Quincy Adams’s life during these years, read the headnotes for his early legal career and early diplomatic career, or, navigate to the entries to begin reading his diary. The addition of material for the 1789–1801 period joins existing transcriptions of Adams’s diary for his years as secretary of state (1817–1825) and president (1825–1829) and brings the total number of transcriptions freely available on the MHS website to nearly 4,000 pages. Thanks to MHS web developer, Bill Beck, the John Quincy Adams Digital Diary also now includes side-by-side viewing capability. By choosing the “transcription + image” dual mode, users can view the transcription alongside the manuscript image; or, they can still view the transcription alone. This dual-mode option appears at the top of each entry. Check it out! And let us know what you think. The tool is still in its beta phase, and we welcome user feedback. You can reach us at adamspapers@masshist.org.
The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding for the John Quincy Adams Digital Diary is provided by the Amelia Peabody Charitable Fund. Harvard University Press and a number of private donors also contributed critical support.
by Yiyun Huang, Andrew W. Mellon Fellow, University of Tennessee, Knoxville
Dr. Thomas Young (1731-1777) was an important member of the Sons of Liberty and a family physician of John Adams. Although he did not participate in the destruction of tea on December 16, 1773, he played a crucial role in rallying against the consumption of tea. Young wrote an essay highlighting the medicinal risks of drinking tea which appeared in the Boston Evening Post in October, 1773. He aimed to make the case that tea was really a slow poison. One of his methods was to present some extraordinary cases: a farmer’s wife from his hometown “lost the use of her limbs” because of continuously drinking strong tea for four years.[1] But there is something else from this essay that is really fascinating.
Dr. Young’s essay reveals a variety of conduits through which colonial American intellectuals could learn about exotic botanicals such as tea. First, they could read the works of the Jesuit missionaries and other Europeans who had traveled to East Asia. To prove his argument that tea was a slow poison, Dr. Young wanted to know what the Chinese had to say about tea’s medicinal properties. So, he turned to Jean Baptiste Du Halde’s The General History of China (Description de la Chine) and Engelbert Kaempfer’s Amœnitates Exoticæ (Exotic Pleasures) for answers. The MHS has a printed copy of the third edition of The General History of China, which included detailed descriptions of the botanical and medicinal properties of tea. Du Halde based these descriptions on the French missionaries’ translation of Chinese materia medica texts and their observations of the cultivation and production of tea in Fujian province.[2]
Engelbert Kaempfer’s work was another source of information for Dr. Young to learn about tea. Kaempfer (1651-1716) did not set foot in China but had stayed in Batavia and Nagasaki as a physician for the Dutch East India Company in the late 17th century. He provided a lengthy description of tea’s cultivation, preparation, preservation, and medicinal effects in Amœnitates.[3] He took advantage of the knowledge compiled by his predecessors, Chinese expat physicians in Japan, and texts exported to the port of Nagasaki by Chinese merchants. Both Du Halde and Kaempfer’s works provided a balanced description of tea’s health benefits and risks. However, Dr. Young focused on what the two authors said about tea’s medicinal vices, i.e. that it contained corrosive qualities.
The works of the armchair British and continental European physicians also provided ammunition for Dr. Young in denouncing tea. He cited the works of Thomas Short (1690-1772) and Samuel Auguste Tissot (1728-1797) to argue that long-time consumption of tea had negative impact on the health of the entire European population. Tissot’s Advice to the people in general, with regard to their health (1771) is in the MHS collections. Both Short and Tissot did acknowledge that tea could render some people ill, but throwing harsh criticism at tea was not their original intention. Instead, they were interested in determining the medicinal properties of tea by situating it within the Galenic framework and conducting new experiments. Short, for example, wanted to use a series of chemical experiments to determine if tea really had the health benefits as claimed by many. He concluded that green tea could cure such bodily disorders as lethargy and headache as it diluted “a thick blood.” He did claim that the Chinese adulterated tea with other ingredients, but these adulterations did not pose serious health risks.[4] Again, Dr. Young ignored Short’s praises of tea but took only the negative side into account.
Dr. Young’s essay was more of a political treatise which aimed to dissuade common people from consuming tea than a scientific study. He took advantage of the global sources available and chose to highlight what these authors said about the negative effects of tea drinking, while ignoring their praises of tea’s health benefits.
[1] Thomas Young, “Messirs Fleets,” Boston Evening Post, October 25, 1773.
[2] Jean Baptiste Du Halde, The General History of China (London: 1734).
[3] Engelbert Kaempfer, Exotic Pleasures: Fascicle III: Curious Scientific and Medical Observations. Trans. and intro. Robert W. Carrubba (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 1998), 141-169. For the original see Kaempfer, Amœnitates Exoticæ (Lemgo, 1712), 605-631.
[4] Thomas Short, A Dissertation upon Tea (London: 1730), 43-59.
It’s National Novel Writing Month, and particularly in this year of plague, thousands of writers across the country (myself included) are spending their free minutes at their computer or holding a pen, scribbling to reach a goal of 50,000 new words of a creative work. It’s a daunting task. Especially with our souls being bombarded on all sides by what’s going on in the rest of the world, it’s doubly hard to quiet the anxiety and assert your creative voice. To inspire us all, here’s an extraordinary object from the MHS collections.
One of the most precious objects in our collections is Phillis Wheatley’s desk. Wheatley was the first African woman to publish a book in North America: Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral, in 1773.
Phillis Wheatley’s writing desk, Charlestown, Mass., circa 1760.
After being stolen from her home in West Africa and enduring the months-long, deadly journey of the Middle Passage, Wheatley was brought to Boston, where she was sold to John Wheatley, a Boston merchant and tailor. She learned to read and write English, and to read Greek and Latin. She began writing poetry, translating her complex struggles into verse.
It’s essential to remember that although Wheatley was an extraordinary woman, she wasn’t “fortunate.” Even though her enslavers supported her education and literary efforts, she was still enslaved. The Wheatleys exploited her labor and her literary talents: they showed her off to friends, and didn’t free her until after she published her book in 1773. She was constantly questioned, actually having to defend that she wrote her poems in court in 1772 to a panel of Massachusetts’ most prominent politicians and slaveholders, who couldn’t conceive that an African woman could write so beautifully.
One of the things that I love most about objects is how they give us the chance to physically connect with history. When I stand in front of Wheatley’s desk, I am in awe that I stand so close to the place where her work took flight. I am able to connect with the history of Black struggle and oppression in the Americas in a different way than reading about the history of slavery. In a time when Africans and African Americans were sold and treated as property, it must have been so powerful for Wheatley to have this piece of furniture—a physical manifestation of the freedom she had eked out for herself, and a place where her mind could roam free. The desk itself is simple, yet so beautiful. I love its distinctive clawed feet, balancing gracefully on wooden balls.
Detail of Phillis Wheatley’s writing desk, Charlestown, Mass., circa 1760.
Being in the presence of a historical object encourages us to walk with a person from another time. Approaching a desk is a familiar experience for all writers. When I go to sit at my own desk to work, I feel a complex mix of emotions: fear, that my writing won’t be good; excitement, to discover what happens next in my story; joy, that I get to play with words and create something out of nothing.
Approaching Wheatley’s desk in the MHS, I wonder how she felt when she went to write each day. Relief, that she was walking towards one of the few places she could be entirely herself? Was her mind already so wrapped up in words that she rushed to it, eager to write something down? How did she cope with her fears, her doubts?
Yet Wheatley and I stand in entirely different positions: as a white queer person, I did not have to face the horrors of the Middle Passage or enslavement. The privilege afforded to me by my skin means I live in comfort, without fearing for my life or facing the economic and social inequalities that African Americans do. My world was built on Wheatley’s back, and on the backs of so many others who didn’t get a chance to write their books, because they were robbed of their lives, their chance at an education, their freedom. I have to grapple with that, too.
It reminds me of the words of the lesbian poet Audre Lorde, who said, “Our white fathers told us: I think, therefore I am. The Black mother within each of us—the poet—whispers in our dreams: I feel, therefore I can be free (“Poetry is not a luxury,” 38).” When I read this quote, I always think of Wheatley: a woman who wrote herself free; a mother who died trying to stave off the poverty she endured in the later part of her life, because the white supremacy of the new United States continued to press her. Still, she wrote. She felt, and wrote, and made beauty out of suffering.
After Wheatley’s sudden death in 1784, from an illness she contracted while out working trying to support herself and her infant child while her husband was imprisoned, the desk was sold at auction. It is a chilling full circle. Her child died soon after her own death, also from illness.
The power of Wheatley’s life and perseverance have long outlived the systems of oppression that shaped her world, and they continue to be a guiding light. I hope Wheatley’s desk gives us all strength as we try to get words on the page, and makes us brave enough to tell more honest and diverse stories.
Whether you’re writing a novel, short story, poetry, screenplay, video game, fan fiction, or non-fiction (perhaps even a history?) I wish you the best of luck. Keep heading to your desk (or wherever you write) each day. Get words on the page. Try not to turn down the voices in your head telling you to stop. Because as Audre Lorde said: “…there are no new ideas. There are only new ways of making them felt—of examining what those ideas feel like being lived on Sunday morning at 7 a.m., after brunch, during wild love, making war, giving birth, mourning our dead—while we suffer the old longings, battle the old warnings and fears of being silent and impotent and alone, while we taste new possibilities and strengths.” (“Poetry is Not a Luxury,” 39)
Works Cited
Lorde, Audre. “Poetry is Not a Luxury,” Sister Outsider: Essays and Speeches (Berkeley: Crossing Press, 1984), 36-40.
If you’re interested in reading more on Phillis Wheatley, check out the following books:
Vincent Carretta, Phillis Wheatley: Biography of a Genius in Bondage (Athens: University of Georgia Press, 2011).
Richard Kigel, Heav’nly Tidings from the Afric Muse: The Grace and Genius of Phillis Wheatley, (St. Paul, MN: Paragon House, 2017).
Henry Louis Gates, Jr., The Trials of Phillis Wheatley: America’s First Black Poet and Her Encounters with the Founding Fathers (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2003).
Darlene Clark Hine and Kathleen Thompson, A Shining Thread of Hope: The History of Black Women in America (New York: Penguin Books, 1998).
Saturday, 14 November, is Diwali, India’s biggest holiday which is celebrated by over a billion people across the globe. In honor of Diwali we would like to share a selection of letters housed at the MHS that showcase the historic relationship between the people of Boston and India. Before the United States became an independent nation, ships from Boston and Salem Harbor would depart on a regular basis for India to bring back much needed goods like spices, fabric, dyes, and other commodities. This regular and constant contact created an influential exchange of culture, philosophy, religion, and fashion. If you have ever worn a cummerbund, calico, bandana, or said ‘namaste’ or ‘brahmin,’ then you too are a part of that cultural exchange.
The cultural exchange between the two nations is found in letters, travel logs, ships logs, journals and souvenirs. Bostonians went to India for various reasons ranging from commerce to curiosity. They often wrote letters back home to loved ones.
Our first example is a letter dated 22 February 1855 from John Eliot Parkman. He wrote about his travels and excitement:
Calcutta February 22nd 1855
“My dear Mother,
“…We have been living there now about a fortnight and like it better and better everyday. The house is about 3 minutes from town, almost on the banks of the river, and in the pleasantest place near Calcutta, we have a large garden and a tank in it almost as large as the Frog Pond, and beside these advantages two dogs and a billiard table. there is one drawback however to a new comes in the shape of jackals who drift about to the house every night and gangs above 50 and howl like so many rampant Devils- , it is unnecessary to add that I slept but little the first three nights but I have since got used to them.
Mr Bullard who has just come down from up country is living with us but goes to Paris by the steamer, he has told me such stories about Delhi, Agra and half a dozen other places that I am well-nigh crazed and probably shall remain in that condition till my turns come to travel. (!)…”
John Eliot Parkman to his mother, 22 February 22 1855
Boston’s most lucrative trade with India was ice. Ships full of ice cut from the ponds of Massachusetts would sail across the globe to ice houses in Bombay and Calcutta. Frederic Tudor of Boston, known as “the Ice King,’ became very wealthy due to the ice trade. Calvin W. Smith, an agent of the Tudor Ice House, sent many letters home to family and friends in Boston. On 2 September 1865 Calvin Smith wrote to his mother marveling at a nature preserve:
“A few days before he left Captain F (Freeman) and myself went out to see the nature “Institute for Animals” and a sight it was. There were cows, buffalo, deer, horses, mules, monkeys, sheep, goats, In fact every kind of an animal that came to be thought of except a pig.” Smith goes on to wonder if he would ever see such a place back home in Boston.
In a 24 September 1887 letter to Mrs. Andrews, Pandita Ramabai indicates that she will stop in Boston on route to Manchester NH, as part of a national tour. A group of Bostonians formed the American Ramabai Association, to support the work of Pundita Ramabai as she sought to create a home and school for child widows in India. Ramabai writes:
Sept. 24, 1887
“My dear mrs. Andrews I write this to tell you that I shall be in Boston on 29th of this month for two hours on my way to Manchester New Hampshire I shall arrive in Boston buy a way of Taunton from Newport at 10 in the morning on 29th, and then shall have to wait nearly two hours in the city before I leave for Manchester I shall have to and to go the Boston and Lowell Railroad Station if you have nothing particularly to attend to I should very much like to meet you and have a little talk about our work will you come and meet me at the station where trains from Newport come in if I do not see you there I shall understand that you are too busy and cannot see me hoping that you are very well.
I am affectionately yours,
Ramabai”
These are just a few examples of the cultural exchange through the centuries between India and Massachusetts found at the MHS. In our ongoing relationship our cultures continue to grow and learn from one another. We know that Bostonians may have experienced Diwali in India in centuries past, and we look forward to celebrating Diwali in Boston for centuries to come.
This is the third installment of a five-part series on the Jarrett family letters at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Click here to read Part I and Part II.
I’m really enjoying learning about the Jarrett family of Shiloh, Ga., and I hope you are, too. I’ll continue now with the third letter in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s small Jarrett family collection, another long one from Julia Jarrett to her son Homer. Below is a complete transcription. As I’ve done before, I’ll retain misspellings but add sentence and paragraph breaks for readability.
Letter from Julia Jarrett to Homer Jarrett, 7 June 1906
Shiloh. Harris Co. Ga. R.F.D. #2 Box 37
June 7th 1906.
Mr. Homer C. Jarrett
My Dear son
Both letters has ben received, one yesterday and the other wk. before last. They both found each and every one well at home and doing ditto. The reason why we havent wrote before now or answered your letter, we were trying to get the detail of a terrible shooting scrape took place between the white peoples last wk. in Chipley, Ga. Honarable Hoke Smith to the White P. a great orator of this State so said to be was to speake there but never spoke. Instead of speaking a dispute arrived between the Stable mens of that place and the Earven boys of Hamilton. Two men and one collard woman were killed and severel others were wounded. In a few minutes 60 sixty or 75 seventy five shots were made in session one after another. It was said to be dreadfull times there for a few minutes. Dont know if any of the wounded ones are dead or not.
I forgot to tell you in my last letter a few wks. a go Sarand Dowdle old man Barlow Pollard’s daughter had a fit and fell in the fire and burnt both feet. Burnt one [off] and the other cooked. Died day before yesterday. Burried yesterday at 11 OClock.
Uncle John J. Will come home a few days ago. He give Uncle John $60, dollars sixty dollars and a $30,00 thirty dollars suit of Clothes and give little sis $5,00 five dollars, and give little buddie $6,00 dollars six dollars and a rifle and give Cousin Jimmie $10,00 ten dollars give Maxcie and Oler $2,50 two dollars and fifty cents a piece. He come and none of us didnt get to see him. Stayed two nights and one day. When we hard it he had come and gone.
Now the girls you ask of. I cant tell you anything of Miss Imogene Biggs now but in a few Sundays I can tell you all you want to hear of her. You just aught to be here now. Brother Wilson & Charlie both have new top Buggies just broght in about three 3 wks. ago and I am just rideing girls on every hand. We are going to visit Powels Church as soon as we catch up with our works and if she Miss Imogene be there Charlie say he is going to burn her up.
Our Teacher is not a sister to Anna M. Williams. This Willie Williams is the daughter of Henry Williams of Hamilton Ga.
I shall if nothing happen write you a long letter telling you of all the girls and everything at home in short.
Respectfully yours mother
Julia Jarrett.
The Jarretts certainly lived in tumultuous times! I’ll start, as Julia does, with the “terrible shooting scrape.” Hoke Smith (1855-1931), a Georgia lawyer and former editor of the Atlanta Journal, was campaigning to be the Democratic nominee for governor. He was slated to give a speech in Chipley (now called Pine Mountain), a town about eleven miles west of Shiloh, but the event was rocked by a violent confrontation between two local men. I found details of the shooting in one of the historic newspapers digitized and presented online as part of the Library of Congress “Chronicling America” project. Here’s an image of the article with a transcription.
Clipping from the Ocala Evening Star, 24 May 1906
KILLED FOR FIFTEEN CENTS
Hoke Smith Witnessed a Tragedy at Chipley, Ga.
Columbus, Ga., May 24.—An Enquirer Sun special from Chipley, Ga., says that an outdoor political meeting addressed by Hoke Smith, candidate for governor, was broken up there yesterday afternoon by a pistol duel in the edge of the crowd, in which Joe Hastey, a farmer, was shot and killed by a man named Irvin.
Irvin was then pursued by several persons in the crowd, whose identity is unknown, and fell, shot to death, after running about three blocks.
It is reported that bad feeling had prevailed between the men for some time on account of an indebtedness of 15 cents, and that when they met today at the meeting the quarrel was renewed.
Tfforts [sic] to quiet the men were unavailing and the shooting began.
Two persons in the crowd were slightly wounded by the flying bullets.
The man named Irvin who died that day (incidentally the day before his 23rd birthday) was Virgil H. Irvin. His tombstone reads: “Gone but not forgotten.” The man Irvin killed was 34-year-old Joseph Walter Hastey. I couldn’t identify any other individuals shot and/or killed in the incident, including the Black woman mentioned by Julia Jarrett.
Unfortunately, as it so often does, the cycle of violence continued. On 10 June 1906, a man named Theophilus Theodore Murrah, who served on the governor’s staff, was also shot and killed in Chipley. The Atlanta Georgianreported that the murder was committed by Abb (or Ab) Hastey as retaliation for his brother Joe’s death, but I couldn’t determine what, if anything, Murrah had to do with it. Another Georgia newspaper summed up local sentiment: “The series of tragedies has greatly stirred the Chipley community.”
Hoke Smith went on to win the gubernatorial nomination and the office, though he didn’t serve for long. The online New Georgia Encyclopedia has a good article about Smith that touches on some of his efforts to disenfranchise Black Georgians with Jim Crow tactics. As governor, he would sign an act to add a literacy test and grandfather clause to the state’s constitution. This amendment stood until the passage of the Voting Rights Act of 1965.
Julia continued her letter with another horrifying piece of local news, the death of a woman from fire, but the rest of the content is fairly mundane. Most of the handwriting matches that of the previous twoletters, which I’m fairly confident means her son Claud transcribed it for her. (The passage about Imogene Biggs seems to be in his own voice.) However, a few sentences in the middle were written by someone else, possibly another of Julia’s children. The next two letters in the collection are written in this second hand, which you’ll see in upcoming posts.
As I mentioned in my last installment, Homer C. Jarrett moved around a lot. This letter was originally addressed to him at Chestnut Street in St. Louis, Missouri, then forwarded to the Algoma Club, 176 Congress Street, Detroit, Michigan. He eventually settled in Boston, Mass., but he hadn’t arrived here yet. Stay tuned for more.
November is National Aviation History month, and the MHS is the perfect place to commemorate with our many collection items surrounding the history of flight! While we’ve been stuck on the ground for much of this year, take a look back and see how the history of aviation changed our country and the rest of the world.
Previously featured as one of our ‘Objects of the Month’ on the 100th anniversary of the first flight in 2003 was a series of letters regarding the successful venture into the skies. These letters are housed in the MHS’s Godfrey Lowell Cabot collection, and include correspondence with the civil engineer Octave Chanute, who served as an advisor to Orville and Wilbur Wright. These letters describe the technical properties of the plane and the details of the four short flights that the “Flyer” was able to make in December 1903. You can read more about the MHS records of the first flight and sources for further research here.
Also included in the Godfrey Lowell Cabot collection are photographs of some of the Wright brothers’ first experiments with flight. These images in particular were taken by the previously mentioned Octave Chanute, and besides the Wright brothers’ own photographs these images are the only other known photographic records of the flight experiments. Massachusetts natives Godfrey Lowell Cabot and his brother Samuel were both avid aviation pioneers and did much for the advancement of aviation. Their incredible family history and influence is described in greater detail here.
Photographs by Octave Chanute, October 1903.
Another interesting piece of aviation history from our collections is this barograph record of a flight circa early 1915 most likely made by Frazier Curtis at a French aviation school at Pau.
Barograph record of a flight, early 1915. Handwritten caption: “Undated barograph record. Probably Pau.”
This piece of data reports the height and endurance of a flight which was used to approve pilots at Pau for active duty. This piece was also previously featured as one of our ‘Objects of the Month’, and its full description can be found here. Notably, Frazier Curtis spent much of his life working to form a flying corps of American pilots, rather than volunteering as individuals, in British and French armies. Before his death in 1940, this barographic record was added into a scrapbook of letters, photographs, newspaper clippings and magazine articles that, “documented his unsuccessful efforts to fly for Britain or France, and his small but important role in founding the Lafayette Escadrille/Flying Corps and promoting aviation training and military preparedness at home.”
by Mia Levenson, Tufts University, Andrew W. Mellon Research Fellow
John Van Surly DeGrasse’s medical account book
By the serendipitous combination of the pandemic’s limitations and a mislabeled folder, I found myself with scans of John Van Surly DeGrasse’s medical account book, located in the DeGrasse-Howard papers. At first glance, a medical account book seemed like an opaque collection of names, services, and charges. However, I found his records to be filled with nuggets of information about how medicine plays a role in people’s lives, both patient and physician. Through a careful excavation process using census data and city directories, I was able to find bits and pieces about the ways in which one of the first African American physicians educated in the United States served his community.
There has been little written on DeGrasse and his life, but what we do know is that alongside another student of color, he was one of the first Black graduates of the Maine Medical School at Bowdoin College in 1849. DeGrasse practiced in Europe and New York City before coming to Boston in 1852. Two years later, he became a member of the Massachusetts Medical Society and was the first Black physician to be admitted into a medical society anywhere in the nation. His medical account book, which records his services rendered from 1852 to 1857, offers fascinating insight about his practice as the first Black physician in Boston from the very beginning through the contentious years before the Civil War.
While DeGrasse’s account book notes the monotony of his day-to-day work – most of the entries are simply charges for “visit and prescription” – there are also references to the kinds of treatments he would administer. Bloodletting, for example, was a common practice in nineteenth century medicine and DeGrasse similarly used cupping and leeches on several patients. DeGrasse also inoculated many of his patients, particularly in 1854, which corresponds with a massive smallpox epidemic that year. In the mid-nineteenth century, vaccination was a contentious debate, so it is notable that DeGrasse not only believed in its efficacy but administered vaccines to the marginalized communities he served.
While only a few diagnoses are included in his records, what DeGrasse chose to include provides insight into the kinds of diseases he encountered. One John Henry Garrison passed away during a minor cholera outbreak in 1854. Two of DeGrasse’s patients, Mr. H and Lloyd McCabe, were treated for venereal disease. It is unclear why their diagnosis was remarked upon while others were not. Perhaps it noted a potentially chronic issue. Or maybe it explained why they were charged significantly more for their treatment (for instance, for McCabe, DeGrasse charged him $15 for a visit and prescription rather than the usual $1).
Genealogical research gives a closer look into the communities DeGrasse served.[1] Operating out of Poplar Street, he primarily treated patients living in the Fifth and Sixth Wards, a once historically Black neighborhood that is now known as Beacon Hill and the West End, respectively. DeGrasse began his practice treating mainly his in-laws, the well-known Howard family. Interestingly, he treated his wife’s nephew, Edwin Clarence Howard, who would later go on to be Harvard Medical School’s first Black graduate. Peter Baldwin also appears in DeGrasse’s records as one of his first non-relative patients. A noted abolitionist, his daughter, Maria Louise Baldwin, would become a leader of Black education in Cambridge. DeGrasse’s records thus reveals how he served an emerging African American middle class in Boston that was intricately linked to nineteenth-century activism.
Among DeGrasse’s patient base were also a number of African Americans who were born in slave states. One such patient, Benjamin C. Gregory, who was a regular of DeGrasse’s, was born in North Carolina. Historians can only imagine what it must have meant for a formerly enslaved person—whose experiences with physicians were exclusive to plantation doctors who viewed them as chattel rather than people—to be treated by a Black physician.
DeGrasse did not only serve Boston’s African American community. While census data does not always provide information on race, he had multiple patients who were born in Ireland, like William Mellen and Ellen Marshall. While a contemporary physician of color, James McCune Smith in New York City, has been noted as having a multi-racial patient base, it has yet to be acknowledged that DeGrasse had one as well.[2] During his time as an assistant surgeon in the Union Army, DeGrasse continued to serve both white and Black soldiers. After the War, he returned to Boston and continued with his medical practice until his death in 1868.[3]
As historians continue to pan for golden flakes of information about nineteenth-century life, DeGrasse’s medical account book gives small but marvelous glints of one of the nation’s first Black physicians. His medical practice, the illnesses he encountered, and the communities he served offer glimpses into how DeGrasse’s groundbreaking work fit into the constellation of Boston society. His records have been a wonderful reminder for me that the archive is filled with these treasures if only we pause to look.
[1] All genealogical research was done using the 1850 and 1860 U.S. Federal Census and the 1855 Massachusetts State Census, all accessed via AncestryLibrary.com
[2] John Stauffer, The Black Hearts of Men, (Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 2002), 66.
[3] Franklin A. Dorman, Twenty Families of Color in Massachusetts: 1742-1998, (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical Society, 1998), 155-7.
This October, current events dictate that we must keep our tricks and treats indoors. Fortunately, working at the MHS provides more opportunities to get scared than one might think. Read on for some short glimpses into the more macabre side of the MHS and its collections.
Close Encounters of the Winthropian Kind
Detail: John Winthrop, Governor of Massachusetts. Miniature portrait, oil on porcelain attributed to Paul Moschowitz, [19–].John Winthrop’s journal has long served as a cornerstone of Massachusetts historical scholarship. In it he diligently recorded the events of his life, along with the trials and tribulations of the people of the Massachusetts Bay Colony during the first 19 years of its existence. These stories run the gamut between the mundane and the fantastic and even include accounts of the paranormal—for example, two of the earliest recorded UFO sightings. The first, which occurred in 1639, was relayed to Winthrop by “sober, discreet man” James Everell and two others. It describes a strange light in the sky above the Muddy River:
“When it stood still, it flamed up, and was about three yards square; when it ran, it was contracted into the figure of a swine: it ran as swift as an arrow towards Charlton, and so up and down about two or three hours.”
The three men, who were in a boat at the time, had been paddling downstream when they saw the strange light. After it vanished, they inexplicably found themselves “carried quite back against the tide to the place they came from.” The second event occurred a few years later, in 1644, when three men approaching Boston in a boat at night saw two lights rise from the water, coalesce into the form of a human figure, and walk south. A week later, the lights returned:
“Sometimes they shot out flames and sometimes sparkles… About the same time a voice was heard upon the water between Boston and Dorchester, calling out in a most dreadful manner, boy, boy, come away, come away: and it suddenly shifted from one place to another a great distance, about twenty times.”
Winthrop offers no explanation of the first account, but of the second he postulates that the disembodied voice is that of a man involved in the explosion of a ship in that same area of the bay. Before he died, the man “professed himself to have skill in necromancy.” After the ship burned, his body was the only one that was not recovered.
Another Creepy-Crawly Diary Entry
John Quincy Adams’ lifelong diary is similarly touted as an invaluable account of life in early America as part of a prodigal family. JQA covers a wide range of topics with a uniquely vivid voice. This description of a spider’s nest in his bed is positively shiver-inducing:
“IV: I passed the night without closing my eyes, under a perpetual irritation of the skin over my face and almost every part of the body, which I supposed to be the effect of what is called prickly heat— But on changing my linen this morning I discovered it was caused by a nest of Spiders just from the egg-shell, so small that most of them were perceptible only by their motion. It was like the continual titillation of a feather passing over the skin at a thousand places at once— It was a night of exquisite torture without pain— My linen and body were covered with them. I immediately stripped, changed all the clothes I had been wearing, and took a warm bath at Burnside’s. How this horrible creeping Nation got upon me, I could not exactly ascertain— They had already produced a cutaneous inflammation, and almost an eruption in various places…”
Portrait of a Serial Killer
Detail: Thomas W. Piper scrapbook, 1875-1876. Compiled by Walter L. Sawyer.
On 7 May 1876, Thomas W. Piper, the well-respected sexton of Boston’s Warren Avenue Baptist Church, confessed to the murder of 5 year-old Mabel Young in the belfry of his church. Under the pressure of two days’ worth of intense questioning, Piper also confessed to several cases of arson as well as two earlier crimes; the assault of prostitute Mary Tyner with a blunt object, and the murder of domestic servant Bridget Landregan. Known for his high level of literacy and his trademark flowing black cloak, Piper was spotted fleeing the scene of Mabel Young’s murder by a man identified in the case notes as “Glover.” Later on, when Glover heard the news of the murdered girl, he connected the two events and took the information to the police. Throughout the trial and confession, Piper retained an air of detached apathy, only becoming nervous once he was convicted. He was hanged for his crimes on 26 March, 1876.
Walter L. Sawyer, one of the witnesses to the trial, compiled a scrapbook of drawings, photographs, and newspaper accounts immortalizing the man who would come to be known as the “Boston Belfry Murderer.”
Poor Rebeccah
There’s no scary story behind this item, but several MHS-ers insisted that she belongs on this list. In fact, her provenance is quite idyllic. “Rebeccah Codman Butterfield” is a doll, likely made by a member of the Codman family, part of the Transcendentalist community Brook Farm of West Roxbury, Massachusetts. A note pinned to her petticoat, penned by her donor’s mother, reads:
“My name is Rebeccah Codman Butterfield. I was born in 1841. My mother made me and I was the darling of the Brook Farmers & their children. Brook Farm was called The Transcendentalists. I grew up with the Alcotts, George Ripley, John S [Dwight], Margaret Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, Henry Thoreau, William Ellery Channing, Elizabeth Peabody & Nathaniel Hawthorne–no wonder I look a bit cracked! I was the doll for all the Butterfield children & a beloved member of that brilliant colony.”
How sweet! One of our Reference staff, also a member of the group who suggested Rebeccah for this list, fondly remembers retrieving artifacts under her watchful eye while she was living in the stacks.
Detail of doll belonging to members of the Codman and Butterfield families
Hallowed Halls
The MHS’ vast archival collections notwithstanding, our building at 1154 Boylston Street has weathered its fair share of history. Although this is the society’s seventh location since its founding in 1791, we have resided in the current space for over 120 years. A large addition was built onto the MHS in 1970, expanding the office and collection storage space by filling in the middle of the original, L-shaped building. As many in the archives field can attest, old buildings packed with decades of personal papers carry with them an innate weight—a sense of presence. Below, MHS employees recount unexplainable occurrences within our building.
Independently of one another, two MHS veterans mentioned the clear sound of footsteps from the stacks. One recalled conversations with past Operations staff, who swore they heard “measure footsteps back and forth” while they cleaned the building after hours. The other described how the wooden floors (now concrete) used to creak and groan near the areas where the new addition connected to the original building. The footsteps, he said, sounded like an echo of his own as he walked the aisles. He wondered if the sound could be attributed to the previous owners of our various collections, trailing behind the remnants of their legacies. Or perhaps, after nearly 230 years, MHS founder Jeremy Belknap still felt the need to act as steward to his treasured collection.
Stories like this tend to pile up when speaking to Operations staff and other employees who often find themselves in the building at night. Several people remember an event in the early 2000s, when an arm of the crystal chandelier hanging in the lobby crashed to the floor in the dead of night. The CCTV camera footage from just before the arm fell showed the chandelier swinging back and forth as if pushed by an unseen force—the only movement in a completely dark, silent room. When asked, the Art and Artifact Curator had a perfectly sound explanation; after a faulty repair job, “the weight of the crystal beyond the pin and cement join proved too heavy and failed and slowly separated from the end plugged into the chandelier base. The shifting weight was enough that the finely balanced chandelier to start swinging and when the arm fully separated and fell, that made the swinging wider.” As to what caused the arm to separate on that day specifically, there is no answer.
Book stacks
The other group that probably deals with the bulk of experiences like this is the Reference staff—in other words, the ones who most frequently delve into the stacks. Anyone who has spent time in library stacks can attest to their eeriness. Cold air and row after row of floor-to-ceiling shelving, interspersed with portraits, busts, and mannequins, greet anyone stepping into the MHS stacks. One Reference staff member remembers working one winter, during which she spent long hours completely alone in the stacks:
“For the most part it was just eerie. Being superstitious means I have always kind of viewed the collections as alive to a certain extent, and I just try to treat them with as much respect as possible. Several times while in the stacks I would hear random sounds—sometimes wall tapping or sometimes banging sounds. I recall one time I’d gotten particularly on edge, and I said out loud, “Unless you’re going to come out here and help me with this, give it a rest.” Nothing came out to help, but the noise subsided for a while. And I’m sure I don’t have to tell you about the intense feeling of unease I would get every time I was close to that rocking bassinet. One time I thought I saw it moving. That thing has always given me the creeps. Otherwise not much happened, just a mixture of eerie silence and varied clanging sounds.”
The staff member quoted above would often talk with another staff member about that cradle, but research into it has yielded overwhelmingly normal results. However, the former staff member remembers another encounter:
On a dark, rainy Saturday, she received a paging request from one of the few researchers in the building that day. The requested pamphlet described the 1850s construction of the Hoosac Tunnel, a project so fraught with accidents that the tunnel was nicknamed the “Bloody Pit.” Over the course of the 20+ year construction, a total of 196 workers died in explosions, cave-ins and floods. Haunted by the surprising content of the volume, the staff member ventured to find the pamphlet, tucked with others like it at the very end of a row of rolling high-density shelves. She wheeled the shelves apart, slipped between them, and followed the call numbers to the back wall. There, on an envelope—“The Hoosac Tunnel Disaster.” In spite of herself, she stopped to scan the shelf, choosing another volume and opening it to read a few pages. Accounts of cave-ins and suffocating workers nearly distracted her from the moving shelf behind her, closing by itself due to uneven flooring, until it had nearly crushed her. The uneven flooring argument makes sense, of course, but this was first time the shelves had done this in her several months of work.
Wishing everyone a safe and happy Halloween!
References
John Winthrop’s Journal, “History of New England,” 1630-1649. Pg. 154, 294.
As the cold winter months are rapidly approaching, I have found myself with the desire to knit all things warm and cozy. And luckily there is a booklet in the collections of the MHS to assist me on this endeavor. “Comforts for the Men” was published in 1917 by Columbia Yarns and provided patterns for garments suggested by the American Red Cross and the British Relief Committee. The booklet gives instructions for the garments, and of course, suggestions for which Columbia brand needles and yarn you should purchase to knit them.
Comforts for the Men, Published by Columbia Yarns, 1917. Collection of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
This type of booklet was common during World War I. There was a large demand for socks and other knitted items for soldiers overseas, leading the American Red Cross to publish patterns for garments and encourage citizens to “knit their bit”. The Red Cross provided knitting materials as well, so long as leftover yarn was returned to prevent any wool from being wasted.[i] Yarn companies used this as a chance to advertise their own products and published their own books with patterns for similar garments. Knitting became a popular pastime in the United States, many people hosted knitting parties and clubs for their communities. The popularity of knitting likely emerged because it gave Americans a hobby that contributed to the war effort and connected them with others affected by the ongoing war.
Our boys need sox – knit your bit American Red Cross. United States, [NY: American Lithographic Co., between 1914 and 1918] Photograph. https://www.loc.gov/item/00652152/.Making a garment from this book was a bit of a challenge due to the vast differences in how knitting patterns are described today. In this pattern book, the yarn suggestions are from Columbia Yarns, which no longer exists. Also, the language for describing how thick the yarn should be in the early 20th century was not universal. And, needle sizes were not universal either. There is no suggested gauge or final sizing details, most old patterns did not provide this information. If the gauge was given, it would be easier to figure out what yarn and needles to use but that is not possible. All of this to say, I was going to have to wing it for this pattern.
Because I had to knit this without any concrete information on gauge, final sizing, or yarn, I decided it would be best to pick something simple. While I always enjoy a knitting challenge, considering the lack of information on materials and the vague directions, I was positive any attempt would yield disastrous results. I decided to try out the knitted wristlets. These wristlets are a ribbed rectangle sewn up the side with some space left for the wearer’s thumb.
Page 34 of Comforts for the Men.
The directions for the wristlets call for a No. 4 celloid or bone knitting needle and Columbia Worsted Knitting Yarn. The material that the needle is made of is important because the diameter of bone and plastic needles used to increase as the number increased, while steel needles got smaller as the number increased. I checked a few different resources about old knitting needle sizing, and most agreed that a No. 4 knitting celloid or bone needle would equal about a US 4 today. The name of the yarn suggested that it is a worsted weight. I decided to use some leftover worsted weight wool yarn from a previous garment I made. I thought it would be fitting to use up some scrap yarns for this project, using up every bit of good wool was of the utmost importance during the wartime years.
Wristlet prior to being sewn up
As per the instructions, I cast on 50 stitches. After knitting a few rows, I realized that these were going to end up far too wide for my hands. These wristlets were probably designed for someone with larger hands, but even with that in mind they seemed pretty big. It is possible they were ending up wide because of the thickness of the yarn I was using; the suggested yarn in the original pattern may have been lighter than modern than worsted weight yarn. This would make sense because a US 4 needle for worsted weight yarn is a smaller needle size than what most modern patterns would suggest. I tried again and reduced the stitch count to 40, and they ended up fitting really well. I worked on these over about three days but it only took a few hours all together to make. While these wristlets are not perfectly accurate to the pattern considering the materials and changes I made, I learned a lot making them. Also I think amateur knitters like me would have put their own creative spins on these patterns back in 1917 as well. I think this is a great project for any knitter looking to add a bit of historical inspiration into your crafting, and I highly recommend trying out old patterns and seeing what comes of it.
Finished product
[i] Lovick, E., Brodnicki, J., Loven, P., & Doyle, E. (2014). Knitting in WW1. In Centenary stitches: Telling the story of one WW1 family through vintage knitting and crochet (pp. 9-11). Orkney, Scotland: Northern Lace Press.
This is the second installment of a five-part series on the Jarrett family letters at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Click here to read Part I.
Three weeks ago, I introduced you to the Jarretts, a Black family living in Shiloh, Ga. during the first decade of the twentieth century. The MHS holds a small collection of five letters from members of the family to Homer C. Jarrett (1882-1959). The first letter, which I discussed in my last post, was written by Homer’s brother Claud. The second came from his mother Julia.
Letter from Julia Jarrett to her son Homer, 28 Dec. 1905
Running to eight pages, this letter is the longest in the collection, and I think you’ll see why. The Jarretts had had a very eventful Christmas. Below is a complete transcription. I will retain misspellings but add sentence and paragraph breaks for readability.
Shiloh. Harris Co. Ga.
R.F.D. #2 Box 37 –
Dec. 28.- 1905.
Mr. Homer Jarrett
Muskingum St. Indianapolis I.
My Dear son
Yours has ben durely received and contents noted. Glad to hear from you and to know that you are well and hope you remains ditto. We are all well at present and have had a good time and a bad time to. I received your Xmas give O.K. It was just as niece and sweet as it could be and I also received yours regeristered letter and contents therein $20 Twenty dollars and for this I send you many thanks. Thank that I cannot express to you as I wish to.
Each one and all sends their love and best rgards to you. Santa Claus come to see me this time brought me a niece parlor water set and a pretty glass pitcher. He or she would have brought more but the boys got in fuss there in Shiloh on Christmas Eve. I Charlie & Wilson had to do around and sturabout to settle it. The way it was Robbert Amos and Grandpa. Robert was drinking about half drunk and Grandpa was the same. He & Robert met bhind Fullers store. Chas & Fletcher J. was already around there and from one word to another Robert grasp Grandpa stick and bgin to shake him and snatch him and jeck him about and cursed him once a twice and the boys spoke to him and he didnt pay any attention to them and Claud come up and spoke to him. He asked Claud who was he talking to. Claud told him he was talking to him and from one word to another he snatched out his knife at Claud and cursed him. Chas and Fletcher grab him and made Claud go away from around there. He did so and after awhile Claud seen him agin and begin to talk with him about it and begin to curse him and catched him in the collar and draw his knife on him. He grasp his arm and snatched alooce from him. Robert grasped a rock in one hand and knife in the other and told him goddam you Ill kill you and started towards him. Claud jumped and grab him and aim to shoot him. He knocked the pistol down and one ball went in the ground by his foot. He grab Robert and snatched him and shot him through the wright side across his back about a inch deep and set him afire. He staggard backwards holding his side saying you have don shot and killed me. I am dying. I am dying. Dont shoot me any more. In that time since Chas & Feck Hawkins & [Square] J. among them made him go on out of Shiloh and afterwards John McDaniel threw a gun on Chas J. and arrested him for curseing and thought he had a Pistol consealed but he did not have no pistol at all.
Aunt Jane & uncle Hawkins is here now sends there best regards to you and says you must write to them. They are well and spent one day with me in the Christmas. Aunt Sallah say thats all wright you didnt send her any santa Claus but she hope [eate] that you did send.
Homer I wish I could send you a SantClaus that I thought you needed. I enjoyed the last of the Xmas very well I but the first to or three days I was barthered up so I couldnt enjoy the Xmas no way I could do. The boys spent the Christmas every where through the settlement.
Close for this time. I will ans yours other letter now in short.
Bye bye yours mother
Julia Jarrett
Eagle-eyed readers of the Beehive may notice, from the image above, that the handwriting of this letter matches that of the last. I assume this means the letter was dictated by Julia but written by Claud. Other letters indicate Julia’s children read correspondence aloud to her. Born into slavery in the 1850s, it’s likely she had never been taught to read or write.
The story told by Julia is a little hard to follow without knowing the identities of all the people involved. “Grandpa” was probably her father Benjamin Jarrett, who was still alive in 1905 but would have been about 90 years old, according to online genealogies. Benjamin and another man, Robert Amos, had both been drinking and got into an argument that turned physical, whereupon Julia’s sons—Charles, Fletcher, and Claud—stepped in to defend their grandfather. The argument escalated as weapons were drawn, culminating in Claud shooting Robert with a pistol.
We don’t get much detail from Julia about the aftermath of the incident, and the sequence of events is unclear to me. It seems Robert Amos survived and was run out of Shiloh. The law descended on the Jarretts in the person of John McDaniel, but it was Claud’s brother Charles who was arrested. Unfortunately, the money spent to “settle” the dust-up meant a meager Christmas for the family.
One of the things I enjoy about doing deep dives into individual items like this is the chance to follow leads and just see where they take me. Here are a few details I turned up:
The initials “R.F.D.” at the head of the letter refer to “rural free delivery,” a postal service for residents living in remote locations. Rural free delivery was still in its infancy at this time, its first routes only a few years old.
Young Homer moved around a lot (in fact, each of the five letters in the collection is written to him at a different location), but he eventually settled in Boston. Most historians put the starting date of the Great Migration, in which millions of Black southerners settled in northern cities, a little later than 1905, but I think it’s fair to call Homer an early part of this wave. This letter is addressed to Homer at Indianapolis, specifically 412 Muskingum Street. There’s a parking lot there now, but what about 115 years ago? I uncovered references to rooms for rent at this address in the Indianapolis Recorder, a long-running African American newspaper.
Historical currency converters online tell me $20 in 1905 would be something in the neighborhood of $600 today!
“Aunt Jane” was Janie Jarrett Hawkins (1858-1916), wife of J. G. Hawkins and Julia’s younger sister. She is buried at the Bethel C.M.E. Church Cemetery in Harris County, Georgia.
Stay tuned to the Beehive to hear more about the Jarrett family!
