by Kate Melchior, MHS, and Michael Ryan

Every year, the MHS awards the Kass Teacher Fellowship to one or more K-12 educators. The is designed to offer K-12 teachers the opportunity to focus on historical research that will support their classroom efforts, discovering new primary sources to use in their classroom and deepening their understanding of history and humanities.

In 2019, Michael Ryan of Pollard Middle School in Needham MA was awarded a Kass Fellowship to pursue research into the Loyalist experience during the Revolutionary War.  Michael spent several months pouring through the MHS archives and creating a new collection of primary sources for teachers to use when teaching the Loyalist experience.  Here we have shared excerpts from Michael’s final report on his experience and his findings at the MHS.

The Experience of New England Loyalists During the Era of the American Revolution
Michael Ryan

 

In the summer of 2019, I was awarded a Kass Fellowship to conduct research at the Massachusetts Historical Society. My proposed topic of research was the New England loyalist experience during the era of the American Revolution. The time that I spent at the MHS was one of the great experiences of my life.

As an instructor, I knew that I had never successfully integrated the loyalist story into my class narratives. One of my professional objectives is to present a complex, nuanced version of history—rarely can we understand events or people in simplistic terms. However, my own understanding of loyalism was itself superficial so I needed to learn more before I could genuinely attempt to construct meaningful lessons on the subject for my students. This past summer allowed me the opportunity to methodically dig through the incredibly rich archives held by the MHS on the topic. I accumulated a large amount of primary sources that I can use directly in the American History class that I teach in the Needham Public Schools. I am currently curating these documents into a collection that can be used in Needham classrooms.

In the following paragraphs, I briefly summarize several of the archives that I consulted for this project.

Meshech Weare Papers

Meshech Weare was perhaps the most active New Hampshire Patriot leader during the American Revolution. Throughout the war, he served as head of New Hampshire’s committee of safety, a position from which he corresponded with some of the most prominent figures of the era. After perusing Weare’s papers, I chose four different documents that I believe are illustrative of some of the larger themes of the war. The first two, while they do not focus upon loyalism directly, they offer evidence of the  overwhelming amount of responsibilities that committees on the home front were forced to address.

The first is from July 23, 1777, and is a letter from Weare to a Lieutenant Colonel Wentworth. It is alarmist in nature as it tells of a planned British naval attack on “some part of the New England states” and that Wentworth should prepare his men for this. Of course, such an attack never occurred and this is why the letter is invaluable. It reminds the reader that very little about this war was indeed inevitable and various scenarios could have played out, possibly changing the outcome of the war. Leaders like Weare had to be hyper-vigilant against all potential attacks.

In September of 1777, Weare received a letter from an officer in Philadelphia. The topic concerns the recent Congressional resolution that commissioned tickets for a lottery. It makes dire reference to the fact that if this undertaking failed it would “have a most unfavourable impact upon our public affairs…it will wound our public reputation, discourage our Creditors at home and our friends abroad and be argued by our enemies of our weakness.” This document offers evidence that financing was a major concern throughout the war, and that as early as its third year Patriot leaders were greatly concerned about the detrimental effect of a poor public credit.

An undated letter to Weare from the town of Derry’s Committee of Safety addresses the complexity of identifying and punishing potential counterrevolutionaries. A man by the name of Benjamin Hall was imprisoned for desertion from the Continental Army and his alleged pro-British sympathies. Hall was apparently to be released on bail, but the four men on the Derry committee pleaded with Weare to reconsider this action. Weare, as head of the state’s committee of safety, had the executive authority to overrule this decision. In their strongly-worded letter, the Derry group argued that Hall “ought not to be Liberated…as we find he is to the Great Grief and Dissatisfaction of every true friend of America.” Although I could not determine how this matter was resolved, this document helps us understand the Revolution as civil war; neighbor against neighbor and the gray area that existed between people who simply wanted no part of the conflict and those that were called out as Tories.

Finally, on June 22, 1778, Weare sent a letter, under a flag of truce, to the Royal governor of Nova Scotia concerning prison exchange, a topic rarely referenced in textbooks or survey courses. It is important because it addresses one of the many logistical challenges faced by both armies. Once prisoners were taken, how did those in charge locate and administer adequate facilities? The logistical challenges faced by the war’s leaders are usually ignored, yet students tend to be fascinated by this information. Weare was eager to conduct an exchange with his British counterpart, requesting that an American officer by the name of Sherburne return from the meeting with as many American prisoners as he “can conveniently bring home with him.” In return, he promised that the same number of equal ranks” would be returned to the British.

The Israel Williams Papers

Massachusetts native Israel Williams exited the French and Indian War as representative of the brilliance of the imperial relationship. A colonel in the militia, Williams demonstrated great managerial skills in his majesty’s campaign to permanently expel the French from North America. His correspondence from the war portrays an individual who, if his passions had taken him in a different direction, may very well have ended up among the pantheon of local Founding Fathers. However, as his correspondence with Thomas Hutchinson indicated, he would choose the path of loyalty to empire.

These documents I will excerpt for use in my class to illustrate the complexity of choosing sides during the conflict. In 1778 a committee of safety in western Massachusetts charged Williams with a plan to “to obstruct and hinder all Salutary measures which the People universally throughout this Continent have adopted and are adopting to obtain a restoration of their constitutional rights and privilege.” Williams was placed under house arrest and spent over a year in this state of ostracization and ridicule. The documents relating to Williams’s experience are fantastic as they convey a man who honestly believed that he had committed no act of transgression, and that prior to the crisis, had presumably been exalted as a hero in his community. Fascinatingly, Williams did rehabilitate himself and did reintegrate into post-war Massachusetts society. It is important for students to recognize that after the war, not all Loyalists self-exiled or remained that way—former adversaries had to learn to live as neighbors once again.

Mary Robie-Sewall Diary

Box three of the Robie-Sewall papers contains the 1783 diary of teenager Mary Robie, the daughter of Boston merchant exiles living in Nova Scotia. This is apparently the original copy and it is fascinating as it offers a snapshot of loyalist life that is largely unconcerned with either of the great political questions that would have preoccupied her elders at the time: The Treaty of Paris and the manner by which, if indeed at all, her people would reintegrate into the life of their former community of Boston, Massachusetts.

I went through the entire six months of the extant diary and selected excerpts that I believe give a fairly representative view of Mary’s experiences and feelings during her exile. Not surprisingly, Mary writes often of her close relationship with both her family and fellow exiles so her reflections paint a detailed portrait of the daily experiences of  Bostonians living in exile as they anxiously awaited whether they would return “home” and become citizens of this new republic whose cause they had earlier spurned.

Other Loyalist Research

The following research also produced sources and stories about the Massachusetts loyalist experience. I will include selections from each in the booklet that I create for classroom use:

• Winslow Family Papers, Correspondence, 1775. (Boxes 1 and 2.)
• The Charles Ward Apthrop Papers, Correspondence, 1773-1791. (Box 3)
• Boylston Family Papers, Correspondence, 1775. (Box 7)
• King’s Chapel Records, founding through reorganization after the war. (Box 5) Savage Family Papers, 1775-1799. (Boxes 1, 2, and oversized.)
• Richard Frothington Charlestown Papers, 1812-1880. (Box 3)
• Divided Hearts: Massachusetts Loyalists 1765-1790: A Biographical Directory

 

If you are interested in learning more about the Kass Teacher Fellowship or any of our other programs, please visit the Center for the Teaching of History website or e-mail us at education@masshist.org.  We look forward to hearing from you!

by Florentina Gutierrez, Library Assistant

Browsing through processed archival collections can sometimes lead to unexpected surprises. Recently, I was going through a box of the Channing Family Papers (1685-1956), looking for a particular letter that a patron inquired about. Because I did not have a specific date, only subject matter and year range, it meant looking at almost every document that met those general criteria. Out of the countless letters, a five-page long handwritten newspaper stood out to me.

I have never seen a handwritten newspaper, outside of the context of an elementary school assignment where I was asked to create one. The top of this particular newspaper says “Weekly News: Brattleboro” and was dated August 9th, 1843. Below that, to the left, it also says “Vol. I. Published Weekly at the store of M. Wheeler & Co. [Terms?] one cent.” At first, I thought that perhaps someone in the town of Brattleboro produced handwritten newspapers to distribute throughout the town, which I could only imagine was extremely time consuming. I wondered, how many copies of these were written? And were they written every week?

Actually, a handwritten newspaper is not such a crazy idea, even after the invention of the printing press. There are many examples of handwritten newspapers from the 19th century, some were likely created because of a lack of resources, and others perhaps because they were considered the most appropriate way to communicate. I found some examples at The Handwritten News Project website; the ones referenced there are mainly from North America and date to the 19th century.

Reading through this newspaper, it quickly became apparent that this was not meant as a particularly serious/factual “newspaper” and was likely not one that was distributed to the public. The contents of it are varied, including marriage announcements, short stories, advertisements for goods and services, and lost and found items. Nevertheless, weaved among what appear to be real events in the town are a lot of snippets clearly meant to come off as humorous and witty, and that are overall quirky.

Here are a few lines, transcribed as they were written in the document:

“Miss Ellen Nutt to Mr. William Hut, hope they will Nuts to eat & Huts to live in. -W.”

“Sale at the store of Peter Grimes a wonderful mixture, which will not only make persons sneeze, cough, laugh, & cry at pleasure, but it effects the heart so deeply as to make a man fall in love with the first girl that goes round the corner. -B.

I can bear witness to the efficacy of Peter Grimes medicine, for I never should have been married, if I had not turned the corner. -Ellen Hut.”

“I have got a darned hole in my stocking [Mom?]… I am very glad my son, I shall not have to mend it. -M.”

“Lost a beautiful white cat, with blue spots, & a black tail, anyone who finds it, shall be rewarded with a bite from the cat. -Lizzy.”

“Just published, the life of the remarkable man, who waded across Charles river & was drowned just as he was getting in to the stage on dry land. -Reb.”

“Fire broke out at Melissa Simons’s, it broke out in the toe of her shoe, for she was in the habit of keeping her matches inside of her shoe. -M.”

“I am not as cool as I ought to be, as the boiled cucumber said. -W.”

Almost every section is signed off with an initial. The ones appearing most often were B, M, W. Reading through the Channing Family Paper collection guide, it is likely that those initials refer to Barbara H. Channing (1786-1876) and William Ellery Channing (1817-1901), both the children of Dr. Walter Channing, and to Mary E. Channing Higginson, related to the Channings by marriage and with who Barbara may have been close to as there is remaining correspondence that was sent between them.

While the newspaper is not addressed to anyone in particular, I think it likely was meant as a type of letter to a close relative or friend of the Channings in order to provide them with an update/”gossip” of the town. In a time without texting or social media or even the ease of transportation we currently enjoy, it makes sense that people would find creative ways to communicate with each other while having a little fun.

If you are interested in learning more about handwritten news, you can check out a list of resources put together by The Handwritten News Project here.

by Lila Teeters, University of New Hampshire, and Andrew W. Mellon Fellow at the MHS

I came to the Massachusetts Historical Society to conduct legal history. I spend most of my time researching Native American citizenship in the United States, with a particular focus on the lead up to the 1924 Indian Citizenship Act. The cartons awaiting my gaze at MHS belonged to Robert G. Valentine, who served as the commissioner of Indian affairs from 1909 to 1912. This period was critical in the development of policies guiding Native citizenship in the United States, and Valentine’s papers provide an unparalleled look into the ideological underpinnings of federal policies. While I came for legal history, I left with an additional lesson on pedagogy.

People often ask me if I am a teacher or historian first. My master’s degree is in teaching social studies, and I taught high school history for four years before starting my PhD. My answer to their question is usually wonky, as I try explaining that each of those roles encompasses the other. A teacher and historian are one, I say, earning accusations of being sophist. Perhaps it is no coincidence then that some of my favorite archival moments occur when I see my historical actors teaching others about their chosen craft. These sources are usually irrelevant to my primary research, and I tuck them away to be considered later.

As a PhD candidate trying to finish my dissertation, I am particularly drawn to my actors’ advice on writing. The process feels (to use a popular millennial phrase) very “meta,” particularly when the people I write about give advice about the act itself. Composing a person’s history comes with a certain amount of responsibility (a well-worn claim that once again earns me accusations of sophistry), and weighing subjects’ advice feels like a way to honor that responsibility.

Hence my excitement when I came across writing exercises tucked within Valentine’s notes. Valentine taught English and composition classes at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology from 1896-1902, and his papers contain lecture notes, assignments, and musings on prose and pedagogy. One of the exercises he recommends is about depth: “In order for you to determine the qualities of mind,-wealth, discipline, and understanding, which you possess, it is useful to write a very short sketch of

1. Someone you know,
   1. like
   2. dislike
   3. are indifferent to
2. a view,
   1. familiar
   2. unfamiliar
3. a thought
4. a feeling
5. a machine
6. a process
7. a story
8. an argument
9. history”

He recommended that each sketch be around 200 words.[1] Valentine wanted his students to determine if they had the deep knowledge of a subject to condense its essence down to a 200-word meditation—a written crucible of sorts. Compress to assess.

Valentine is an actor whom I find maddening. While I “know” him only through his writings and his policies as Indian commissioner, I at once like, dislike, and am indifferent to him. My “very short sketch” of him encompasses all three:

Born in 1872, Roger G. Valentine was a civic-minded man directed by principle and prejudice. A son of Massachusetts, a father and husband, Valentine assumed the role of commissioner of Indian Affairs in 1909. While he forswore essentialist racial classification of Native Americans, Valentine held other racist views, claiming that Natives needed to be taught self-respect, self-support, and good citizenship. Many of the policies he promoted operated from these paternalist assumptions. Valentine prized civic engagement and held citizenship and patriotism in the highest regard. As commissioner, he attempted to root out corruption, separate church from state, and solicit feedback from Native people. Yet he assumed one of his most prized possessions—US citizenship—would likewise be prized by all Natives. His administration created “competency commissions,” which assessed the “fitness” of individual Natives to be citizens of the United States. While he acknowledged the harm done by American policies, soldiers, and citizens, he almost never questioned why some Natives did not want to become citizens. A controversy, one that threw Valentine’s integrity into question (he and I believe rather unfairly), prompting his resignation in 1912. A long list of joined organizations and committees show his appetite for civic engagement went unabated until he died in 1916 at the young age of 43.

It is comforting to know that Valentine found writing difficult. His papers are speckled with frustrated marginalia and rabid reworkings. He would most likely quibble with my sentence structure just as I grumble at his passive voice. I like the image: historian and subject, united briefly through our common craft.

[1] “Notes from RGV’s composition class, 1902-1903,” carton 17, folder 21, Robert G. Valentine family papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

by Ashley Williams, Processing Assistant and Library Assistant

Happy Valentine’s Day Beehive readers! I hope you’re all in the mood for some flirtatious frivolity. To celebrate this season of candy and cupids, I’ve curated a small selection of amorous displays from the MHS collections ranging from sincere, heartfelt loquaciousness to bawdy verses that will make you blush. So cuddle up and get ready for the dripping sentimentality, and if you’re feeling a little bitter this season, maybe just enjoy heckling the silly ways people express affection for one another.

The first selection in the lineup is for the love poem enthusiasts in the crowd. This tiny volume published in 1853,  measuring a mere 12 centimeters is titled The Album of Love. It begins with a dedication and an entire page defining, “What is Love?” where the previous owner saw fit to leave a pressed flower. And, though this book be but little, it is fiercely packed with the sonnets and verses of all your favorite love poets, Shakespeare, Lord Byron, Spenser, Eliza Acton,  and John Clare.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. Though famous poets are great,  you didn’t come to an archive’s blog to read about published works, did you? Where is the personal tea? Don’t worry. The following transcription comes from a letter from the John Lowell Letters, dated November 30, 1823. In this letter John Lowell Jr. carefully constructs a marriage proposal to his cousin and soon-to-be wife Georgina M.A. Lowell. It’s nice to know this worked out for him because the calculated tone of the request makes it seem that he was apprehensive at best about his chances. There’s even a part in which he instructs her to burn the letter if she doesn’t feel the same way.

Dear Georgina

I venture to address you in this formal manner on a subject nearly connected with my happiness, because I cannot devise any other mode of bringing it before you. It is the offer of myself & the request that you will permit me to ask Uncle Lowells consent to our union. I say nothing of my affection or the desire I have long had to obtain your approbation before that of any other person, because if I have not already persuaded you of these things, protestations would now be useless. This step may appear premature or presumptuous but I hope the near approach of the period when I shall cease to live here & the solitude I feel to settle a question of this sort previously to it’s arrival will excuse me it If it is not in your power to permit me the indulgence of those sentiments I feel towards you, I will thank you to burn this letter & not let it’s reception disturb the harmony of our acquaintance. I declare that no lady shall ever be voluntarily embarrassed by my attentions, when I know them to be unacceptable–

Believe me that whatever your determination may be though I earnestly desire a favorable one. I also wish that it may contribute to your happiness, for the continuance of which I would certainly sacrifice my personal feelings.

I am truly sincerely

Yours

John Lowell J.

This next excerpt is from the Henry W. Bellows Correspondence and is a letter from Henry to his fiancee, Anna Huidekoper Peabody, dated May 27, 1874. It’s particularly short, but may also be some of the sappiest collection of words I’ve ever seen written down. Imagine receiving good morning texts like the letter that Henry sends to Anna:

My dear & only love, your precious note of yesterday came in just after breakfast to feed me with new longings to see you, who are my breath & life! Don’t imagine I ask anything more lovely than every sentence you write. I see you through every loop in the letter & they all have sweet & tender meanings hanging onto their pot-hooks!

Hold on to your pot-hooks because things are about to take a turn. These next two items are not for the faint of heart. If you blush easily, you may want to skip past these.

There is really no getting around the fact that the “love” sonnets in this book are just plain dirty. The love in question is definitely of a more physical nature, and many of the sonnets include references to a personified “Willie” who is usually being abused in some way or another. Crude nature aside, the sonnets do seem to follow the storyline of a relationship or series of relationships.

Did I hear someone in the audience ask about newspaper clippings?

This next letter excerpt happens to be accompanied by just such an artifact! The excerpt comes from the Stone-Jackson Family papers in a letter from Arthur L. Jackson to his wife-to-be Pauline F. Stone dated February 9, 1889. 

I enclose a little clipping that has a slight bearing on the subject and will merely say that I shall most certainly follow out its advice the very first time I see you. Shall I need mistletoe then sweetheart? If so I advise you to trim your hat with it and have all the ceilings in your house and veranda covered with it. If you do I shall kiss you under every single leaf of it. once for every day we have been separated, if only to make up for lost time. Just think how horribly in arrears we are that way now-a-days dearest. It will take just about a lifetime to ever get square again, won’t it dear.

In comparison to The Love Sonnets of a Hoodlum, this letter could be construed as tame, but it was still one of the racier correspondences I came across when putting this together as Arthur playfully details his desire to kiss Pauline and under what circumstances.

Now that we’re nearing the end of the post, I thought it would be a good idea to cool us down and cleanse our palates with Some Old Puritan Love Letters.

The particular letter pictured is from John Winthrop to Margaret Tyndall. It opens, “My only beloved spouse, my most sweet friend, & faithful companion of my pilgrimage, the happy & hopeful supply (next Jesus Christ) of my greatest losses, I wish thee a most plentiful increase of all true comfort…” Even with its formal language and regular allusion to biblical verse, this letter still manages to feel poetically intimate and caring. Please note that I did not photograph the entire letter as it was incredibly long. If you would like to see the rest, please stop by the MHS and check it out (figuratively… we aren’t a lending library). 

I want to wish all of our readers a Happy Valentine’s Day and remind you to find joy in both the romantic and platonic loves in your life this February. In the words of John Winthrop, “I wish thee a most plentiful increase of all true comfort…” (i.e. candy and soft things).

by Theresa Mitchell , Library Assistant

As someone who is starting her career in the library field, and hoping to start library school in the coming year, I am very interested in how libraries organize information. Paradigms like the Library of Congress Classification not only make the information in our collection easy to navigate, these classification systems are information in-and-of themselves. They trace a lineage of scholars trying to determine the best ways to arrange collections in repositories such as libraries and archives, in accordance with the dominant ideologies of their time.

In the descriptively titled “Four letters to the mayor of Boston regarding waste and inefficiency in the cataloging department of the Boston Public Library” (s.n., 1880), Fredrick B. Perkins penned a series of letters to the mayor of Boston about what he considered to be the malpractice of the cataloging department at the Boston Public Library. His letters, direct and full of wit, call for the mayor to cut the library’s budget as an effort to force them to either decrease staff or decrease the salaries of staff in their cataloging department. He points out some specific examples of their negligence: a card in the card catalogue was labeled “Bomarsund (in India)”, though Bomarsund is in the Balkans (and also a village in the U.K.). Whether or these cataloguers deserved pay cuts and whether or not all Perkins’ claims are true, these series of letters bring up an interesting point: that the navigability of library catalogs is a public concern—even more so now, as public institutions have done more to live up to their mission of serving the public at its broadest.

In the pamphlet “On the construction of catalogues of libraries” (Smithsonian Institution, 1852) written in 1852, prominent librarian Charles C. Jewett—who in his lifetime was the Librarian of the Smithsonian  Institution and the Superintendent of the Boston Public Library—proposed a method called stereotyping to effectively create library catalogs.^[1] In his program all public libraries interested in adhering to this set of rules would send a formatted list of the titles all the books in their collection. This list would then be made into clay plates for printing. His ultimate hope for this was to create an aggregate catalog of all participating libraries, which would eventually include libraries in Europe, moving toward what he termed a “universal” catalog. Of course, this plan is ideologically limited, the scope of his universalism only extending to the North American and European continents. His vision did not come to fruition, though he remains a figure in the library field for his writing about cataloging methods.^[2]

Photo-Bibliography (H. Stevens, 1878), written by bibliographer Henry Stevens in 1878, goes even deeper into the desire for an object that could, in-itself, act as a repository of knowledge. Stevens, an American expatriate living in the United Kingdom, calls for a full bibliography of all English books, and along with this bibliography, a “universal system” for cataloging.^[3] To achieve this, he hopes for a “Central Bibliographical Bureau or Clearing House”. He even lays out the ideal dimensions for titles in such a bibliography. Ultimately, though, he does not imagine his vision coming to fruition, because of the ever expanding nature of libraries: “As there is little hope of any library ever even approaching completeness, there is no apparent progress whatever made towards that universal and harmonious catalogue raisonné which we have so long and so devoutly been praying for”. This hope will continue to permeate at least parts of librarianship and academia. Even a resource we have from 1952, “Indexes and Machines,” by the academic librarian Earl Gregg Swem, is intrigued by some way capturing “total-books”, or all the books  published in English and European languages.

Looking to create something all-encompassing, these sources point to the limiting viewpoints of their creators, and perhaps more generally, the time in which they were created. None of these sources point to any other epistemologies or consider any sort of relativism, such as forms of knowledge-making outside of the book. Rather, they hint at exceptionalism. Universality came to be a stand-in for all that is a part and product of European and American culture, specifically of the educated classes. The decisions made by those who envisioned a specific classificatory system come to be viewed as neutral and arbitrary. Librarians such as A. Brian Deer have realized the importance of creating classification systems that align with the beliefs of their communities and counter hegemonic classificatory schemes. Deer, a member of the Mohawk of Kahnawá:ke community, created the Brian Deer Classification System in the mid-seventies, which worked to prioritize an Indigenous perspective and an Indigenous audience. This system has been adapted and reinterpreted by various libraries in North America.^[4]

Classification systems will never be perfect. Knowing that a total system would at best be a reflection of ideologies of those that created it, the fact no library is “ever even approaching completeness” allows room for growth. As the discourses around knowledge shift to be less conclusive and more inclusive, the ever expanding nature of a collection can come to be less of a burden and more of an opportunity.

If you want to learn more about how we organize our resources, peruse our online catalog, Abigail. And if you are interested in viewing the MHS sources listed in this post, or many of our other resources, please visit our research library, which is free and open to the public!

 

^[1] Baker, B.B. (1993) Cooperative Cataloging: Past, Present, and Future (5). Psychology Press.

^[2] Jewett, C. C., & Harris, M. H. (1975). The age of Jewett: Charles Coffin Jewett and American librarianship, 1841-1868. Littleton, Colo: Libraries Unlimited.

^[3] Schopieray, C. J. & Hixon, M. Henry Stevens papers (1812-1935). Retrieved from https://quod.lib.umich.edu/c/clementsead/umich-wcl-M-228ste?rgn=Collection+Title;view=text#Additional%20Descriptive%20Data

^[4] Doyle, A. M., Lawson, K., & Dupont, S. (2015). Indigenization of knowledge organization at the Xwi7xwa library. Journal of Library and Information Studies, 13(2), 107-134.

By Rakashi Chand, Senior Library Assistant

“We left Boston on Sunday the 5^th day of January 1845 in the Barque Hannah Sprague, Richard Canfield master, bound to Madras and Calcutta, 409 tons burden, loaded with ice and merchandise, to the consignment of Wm. C. Codman and Augustine Wills. Chas S. Fessenden of Boston Agent. Wm G. Bartlett of Newburyport 1st Officer, W. Smith of New York 2nd Officer. 9 Seamen besides the cook, steward and cabin boy. The Passengers including the Supercargo are Wm. C. Codman of Dorchester. Edward Gassett of Boston, Elis Jenkins of Hull and myself. John Lucike a (strange) passenger sent with Mr. Jenkins by Frederick Tudor of Boston for the purpose of Selling ice at Madras. Wind Strong from SE. Ship very crank- a bad sign (portending trouble) before the end of our long voyage. Being the first day out I immediately began to oversee the preparation of my State-room &c. Find it pretty difficult to walk on the deck, not being accustomed to the motion of a ship. Did not sleep very well, but was not the least bit sick.”

Thus begins Day 1 of Horatio Rotch’s 120 day journey towards Madras and Calcutta, India from Boston on a chilly January day. The log of the barque Hannah Sprague was kept by Horatio Stockton Rotch from 5 January 1845 through 25 December 1845, while on a trading voyage. Entries record longitude and latitude, course, winds, and distance traveled. One of many in the Society’s collection, I find this logbook to be simply remarkable. Indeed I am appreciative for his lovely legible handwriting (which I imagine is not easy aboard ship) but I am even more grateful for his detailed and honest descriptions throughout the journey. This must have been his first, as his narratives are rich in detail. The volume includes the logbooks of two subsequent journeys by Rotch: one aboard the barque Sylphide in 1846 and another on the brig Emily Bourne in 1849.

Rotch describes day to day happenings aboard the ship. It seems their journey was not in the least bit peaceful.

“ 2 Days Out

The gale kept continuing al day and increasing in violence towards night. Rained very hard and blew tremendously al night, so that the ship was in great danger of Capsizing. The ship bore up gallantly against the heavy sea, which at every plunge washed her decks, and almost overwhelmed her, and the next morning saw her safe.”

“3 Days Out

We got through the night safe, only to experience during the whole of today a constant succession of squalls, once in a while getting a peek at the sun. One of the sailors taken sick and put under my care by the Captain.”

“4 Days Out

Fair weather. Sun makes its first appearance to our great delight. First Observation taken. A Barque visible at the Southwest what name and where from we cannot find out, probably from some southern port. We are now in the South side of the gulf, and the change in climate is very manifest.”

And after two calmer days…

“7 Days Out

9 O’clock –The Storm still continues to rage, incessant squalls, very heavy sea. Blew a perfect hurricane all day and night. Thunder and lightning with most perfect squalls every five minutes. Scudding before the wind under a close-[suffered] foresail  Great anxiety for the safety of the Ship and consequently of ourselves. Almost gave her up at one time during the night. The Captain said he had never experienced such a tremendous hurricane, although he has been eight voyages to the East Indies. The ship bore up gallantly (Just like a seagull) in spite of the roaring of the sea, which at every rise looked like a huge Mountain about to dash us to pieces. The scene in the Cabin was quite comical, some praying, some groaning, and most all frightened to Death, especially an Austrian name Lucike. Nobody can conceive the danger of our situation, save an eye-witness. Words cannot describe the scene.”

That was only 7 days out with another 111 to go before they would near their first destination. Personally, I would have never left land again, but as we already know, Horatio Rotch set out on the very next ship. For those who wonder what it was like to be out at sea on such a journey, this logbook is a magnificent resource. While there is simply not enough space in this post to include all the interesting details of the logbook, I will add that there is a fight scene 87 days out on the homeward bound journey. What would a sea voyage be without an “Interesting Spectacle” between the Captain and the 2nd Mate? Rotch describes the altercation in detail as “This Gentlemanly Affair took place on the starboard side of the forecastle in presence of the crew and every-body else aboard.”

Arriving in India three months later, Rotch gives a description of the Calcutta and an interesting  recommendation:

“Calcutta

This is one of the largest cities in the east-indies and one to which it is well worth while to pay a visit, if only for once. It covers an immense space of ground and is three or four times the size of our largest American city (New York)…”

Turly, he must have succumbed to the lure and excitement of traveling the world, as is evident by the haste in which his next voyage begins. Horatio Stockton Rotch died in 1850 at the age of 28 and is buried in New Bedford, Mass. His thoughts and words live on through his wonderful logbook.

Interested in reading more? Visit the MHS library to view the log of the bark Hannah Sprague. Or, search our online catalog, Abigail, for logbooks. Everyone is welcome to do research in our Reading Room, so stop in the next time you are on Boylston Street, and take a journey back in time and across the Globe!

By Susan Martin, Processing Archivist & EAD Coordinator

The MHS recently acquired a fascinating letter, dated 10 August 1849 from Mecklenburg County, Virginia. It was written by “Nannie,” a young white woman from New England, to her brother back home. Over four large, densely packed, cross-written pages, she discussed a variety of subjects, including chattel slavery on a plantation in the antebellum South.

It’s a disturbing letter to read. According to Nannie, enslaved people were not mistreated, they suffered more at each other’s hands than at those of enslavers, and Northern opposition to slavery was the real problem, because it made Southerners cling more tightly to their ways. She warned that the South “will see, and vote for, a dissolution of the union before they will give one inch to the north upon the subject.” She also revealed the whites’ widespread fear of revolt and defended the separation of families as necessary to preserve order.

The importance of manuscripts like this to our historical understanding can’t be overstated. Many white Northerners were not, of course, abolitionists, but were either complicit in or openly justified the South’s “peculiar institution.” This letter gives us a first-hand look at their self-serving rationalizations and willful ignorance.

Cataloging this new acquisition was also challenging for another reason: I had no idea who wrote it. Nannie was probably a nickname, but the letter came to the MHS as a single item, not as part of a family collection, so I had no context to help me. I didn’t even know the name of the brother she was writing to. So I began with a close reading of the text, gathering whatever piecemeal clues I could.

1. Nannie mentioned several other correspondents, including Elizabeth, Parker, and Caleb.
2. She asked about happenings at Amherst, Mass., possibly her hometown.
3. She worked as a teacher for a Mr. Pettus, who treated her well and wanted her to stay on.
4. She apparently lived and taught in the family home; she described writing the letter “by the windows of my school room which looks out upon the piazza” and going upstairs one night to visit the “boarders.”
5. Her brother, the recipient, worked for an abolitionist paper, of which Nannie disapproved.
6. She wrote poetry and had previously published her work in newspapers under the pseudonym “Viola.”

And that was it. Not much to go on. I thought my best clue was the name Pettus and started there. Searching online, I found Pettuses galore in Mecklenburg County, including three listed in an 1860 census of enslavers, but I could not pinpoint who employed Nannie. I needed to come at it from a different angle.

I searched using various combinations of keywords (Nannie, Pettus, Mecklenburg, plantation, Parker, Caleb, Amherst, Viola, 1849, etc.), hoping but not expecting to stumble on something helpful. To my surprise, I got a break in the case, so to speak. I found a transcription of an 1851 letter from Arlena Pettus to someone called Nancy “Nannie” Henderson Hubbard!

Arlena had apparently been one of Nancy Hubbard’s students, and the details in her letter matched what I knew—she even asked after her teacher’s birds, and our Nannie had written about keeping mockingbirds. Using this website as a jumping-off point, I set out to confirm the identification. I found Historic Homes of Amherst, a 1905 publication by Alice Morehouse Walker, which filled in most of the gaps: Nancy Henderson Hubbard, born in 1823, attended school in North Amherst, “went South as a teacher,” and published poetry under the pen name “Viola.” This was definitely Nannie.

Researching Nancy Hubbard’s family tree, I found a brother Parker (who incidentally later served in the Union army), a sister Elizabeth, and a brother Caleb. The only living brother she didn’t mention in her 1849 letter—and therefore its recipient—was Stephen Ashley Hubbard (1827-1890), a journalist in Connecticut and later managing editor of the Hartford Courant.

Arlena’s letter not only linked the names Pettus and Hubbard, but also provided the specific Pettus for whom Nannie worked, the picturesquely named Musgrove Lamb Pettus (1808-1881). I verified this with the help of the Library of Virginia, which holds a few of Nancy’s letters discussing Musgrove’s family. My final and unexpected discovery was the 1850 Mecklenburg County census, where Nancy’s name is listed alongside Musgrove, Arlena, and other members of the Pettus household.

Nancy Henderson Hubbard returned to Massachusetts in 1851 and married Ansel Wales Kellogg, a banker in Oshkosh, Wisconsin. She died in Wisconsin in 1863, just thirteen days shy of her fortieth birthday. The Oshkosh Public Museum holds a carte-de-visite photograph of Nancy, a.k.a. Nannie, taken in 1855.

by Angela Tillapaugh, Library Assistant

Hooped petticoats arrived in the United States from England and France in the 18th century. Many women started to wear them as the hoops lifted heavy petticoats off the legs. The image above is a drawing of a woman in a dress from around 1865 with a full skirt and a view of her hoop skirt.

However religious leaders of the church condemned the garments because the lightness of the hoop skirts often caused them to raise and expose undergarments or bare skin. Newspapers also published satirical cartoons and articles exaggerating how impractical wide skirts were, suggesting women got stuck in doorways or crushed men with their hoops. Despite the controversy, women continued to wear hooped undergarments until the silhouette fell out of fashion around the 1780s.

Full skirts became fashionable again only a few decades later in the United States.  At first women used other means to achieve the desired full skirt by wearing crinolines, which were petticoats stiffened with baleen and horsehair. The heaviness of these crinoline made hoop skirts appealing once again. The trend of hooped petticoats really took hold after the invention of spring steel petticoats (also called crinolines) around 1850. These new undergarments eliminated the need for layers of stiffened garments, allowed the legs to move easily, and sit comfortably.[i] This type of undergarment is likely what is depicted on the young women in the image above.

While the image of dresses with large hooped skirts are often associated with the antebellum period of the South the new spring steel hoop skirt became enormously popular, often dubbed “crinolinemania”.  There were over 100 factories in New England making hooped petticoats and were even worn by women in rural areas of western Massachusetts.[ii]  Sara Gooll Putnam of Boston often included photos and drawings of her friends and family wearing full skirted dresses in her diary entries.

The hoop skirt remained popular for many decades but eventually the style fell out of favor by the end of the 1860s. The condemnation of hooped skirts became stronger after the end of the Civil War, particularly by ministers.[iii] Additionally, the garments were impractical.  While spring steel crinolines were an improvement wide skirts were still cumbersome, and in some cases even dangerous. In 1858 the New York Times reported that a woman in Boston died after standing too close to a fire in a crinoline, and that 19 women in England died due to crinoline related deaths.[iv] While the hoop skirt gave women a taste of freedom and mobility, eventually they wanted to have even more freedom of movement that a wide skirt cannot provide regardless of the undergarments holding it up.

[i] Erin Blakemore, “Why Hoop Petticoats Were Scandalous,” JSTOR Daily (JSTOR, January 28, 2018),   https://daily.jstor.org/why-hoop-petticoats-were-scandalous/)

[ii] Lazaro, David E. “Supporting Role: The Hoop Skirt in 1860s Western Massachusetts Fashion.” In Dressing New England : Clothing, Fashion and Identity, 31. Deerfield, MA: Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife, 2010.

[iii]Abbott, Karen. “Death by Crinoline.” Wonders & Marvels. Accessed January 10, 2020. http://www.wondersandmarvels.com/2012/08/death-by-crinoline.html.

[iv] “The Perils of Crinoline.” The New York Times, March 16, 1858.