Hannah Goeselt, Reader Services

Continued from Part 1.

The Problem of the Northmen. (1889)

The story leading up to the Statue’s unveiling is convoluted. In between the MHS 1880 and the 1887 meeting, the efforts of the Norsemen Memorial committee had fallen away to Eben Norton Horsford alone (though interestingly a committee of the same name funded the statue’s restoration and preservation endowment 100 years later). By then, Horsford had thrown himself into a passion project to find archeological evidence of Viking settlements on the Charles River. This, then, also put him in frequent opposition with members of the MHS, themselves prominent writers of American History. In multiple subsequent publications Horsford airs his grievances with his biggest “critics and censors”[1], MHS members Francis Parkman, Justin Winsor, Henry W. Haynes, and Thomas W. Higginson.

Winsor’s public feud comes from a quote within his eight-volume publication, Narrative and Critical History of America (1884-89), deeming Horsford’s research for his 1888 book Discovery of America by Northmen: Address at the Unveiling of the Statue of Leif Erikson, Deliverd in Faneuil Hall Oct. 29, 1887 as “the most incautious linguistic inferences, and the most uncritical cartographical perversions.” According to a review by Wisconsin prof Julius Olson[2], the 1889 publication by Horsford, The Problem of the Northmen, had been published in direct reaction to Winsor’s harsh words and the opinion of the MHS’s committee on his statue.

Within its pages we learn that the Norseman Memorial project “was long delayed, though ultimately carried out” despite a lack of evidence that Vikings had ever been to New England. Horsford elucidates: “it is quite true that members of the Massachusetts Historical Society discouraged the efforts of the immediate friends of Ole Bull and the two millions of Scandinavians of the West and East who sympathized with him, in his patriotic wish to recognize in a monument, to be set up in Boston, the services of Leif Ericson in the discovery of America. It is also true that they virtually caused the rejection of the city government of Boston of the offer by the late Mr. Thomas [Gold] Appleton of $40,000 for the erection of a memorial in Scollay Square to the Discovery of America by Northmen”.[3]

In a quest to find said evidence, Horsford had taken Winsor out to investigate the site of an old ditch and embankment in Weston. Winsor proclaimed it an early attempt to found the city of Boston, publishing an article saying as much, and ignoring Horsford’s idea that it was, in fact, the remains of a large and permanent Viking settlement.

Horsford continues, “I left the episode to be forgotten. It had not occurred to me that the memory of the excursion to Stony Brook was to take unhappy form and be so lasting, until I was stung with the charge of “perversions,” in a work to be sent as authoritative over the world”. Undaunted by these feelings, in 1889 Horsford erected a giant stone tower on Weston’s bank of the Charles to commemorate the Stony Brook site, now dubbed Fort Norumbega, as evidence of a fantastical “lost city of New England”, an ancient Norse citadel complete with stone seaports in nearby Watertown.

To Be Continued… in pt. 3!

[1] Horsford, Eben Norton. The Defenses of Norumbega and a Review of the Reconnaissances of Col. T. W. Higginson, Professor Henry W. Haynes, Dr. Justin Winsor, Dr. Francis Parkman, and Rev. Dr. Edmund F Slafter. Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Co. as The Riverside Press, Cambridge (1891): p. 8.

[2] Olson, Julius.Review of The problem of the Northmen and the site of Norumbega… and a reply by Eben Norton Horsford (1891). “It is to these words of Mr. Winsor, together with the opinion of a committee of the Massachusetts Historical Society, adverse to the plan of erecting a monument to Leif Erikson, that Mr. Horsford replies in his brochure”.

[3] Horsford, Eben Norton. Problem of the Northmen. A Letter to Judge Daly, the President of the American Geographical Society, on the Opinion of Justin Winsor, that “though Scandinavians may have reached the shores of Labrador, the soil of the United States has not one vestige of their presence”. Cambridge: John Wilson and Son, University Press, (1889): pp. 7-8.

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

I’ve written for the Beehive many times about my particular affection for manuscript diaries at the MHS, and this post will be no exception. Today I’d like to tell you about the diary of Lester Locke Downing of Cambridge, Massachusetts.

Downing served as a second lieutenant in the U.S. Army Transport Service during World War I. This pocket diary documents his service between 18 May and 20 December 1918 and his voyages back and forth between New York and France on the transport ship Osage. In these seven months, the Osage made three trans-Atlantic round trips as part of a large convoy. Downing’s brief but evocative entries really paint a picture of what his life at sea was like, both the monotony and the ever-present fear of submarine attack.

Downing didn’t have a lot of room to write in this small volume, but he managed to describe everything from how difficult it was to keep the convoy together (“At daybreak we were last ship in convoy. Speed of convoy is 10K. By 4:00PM in middle again. Only able to hold our own by not zig-zagging fully.”) to sightings of other ships, airplanes, airships, and animals (“Saw large school of porpoises & several large fish or turtles.”). His duties onboard included working on manifests, and in his down time, he usually read or played cards.

Whenever the ship was in New York for re-loading, Downing’s wife Elinor (née Haines) and mother Helen Adele (Locke) Downing came down from Massachusetts to visit with him for a few days, go to the movies, and eat out at restaurants. Then it was back to the ship and to France. The Osage landed at various locations to discharge cargo, including Saint-Nazare, Nantes, and Brest.

Because the diary entries are so short, the juxtapositions can be abrupt and jarring. For example, one day Downing wrote: “Passed to port a convoy eastbound. Tank steamer and 5 masted barge ahead also another steamer all westbound with us. A fine day. Pulled Captains tooth in afternoon. Mans body floated by in PM.” Other times, the lack of context makes an entry particularly eerie: “About 10:15AM passed a[n] empty life boat full of water.”

The convoy was in constant danger from enemy submarines, of course. Downing wrote about a few close calls, including this one in the middle of August: “Had submarine warning about 5:00PM. Right in our vicinity. Quite anxious. Steamer stern of us smoking.” He also mentioned a fellow sailor named Adolph Steinberg who suffered from trauma or mental illness (Downing used the words “demented” and “crazy”) and had to be left with the Medical Corps at Saint-Lazare.

What was the Osage’s cargo? The ship was transporting ordnance and chemical weapons, including picric acid, chlorine gas, explosive shells, and shrapnel. Picric acid was used extensively both as an explosive and as an antiseptic for the treatment of burns and trench foot. Chlorine gas, weaponized by both Allied and Central powers, attacked the respiratory tract and killed by asphyxiation.

Downing was on his third trip to France when he heard that Germany had signed the armistice. His entry that day was a bit anticlimactic: “Had had suspicions for some time.”

Lester Locke Downing was born on 16 March 1889, graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, and worked at Crowell & Thurlow Steamship Company in Boston. He was also an avid philatelist. He died on 25 July 1974 at the age of 85.

By Samantha Couture, MHS Nora Saltonstall Conservator & Preservation Librarian, and Lauren Gray, Reference Librarian 

Welcome to Part 2 of our series on conservation at the MHS. The ability to perform conservation treatment is an integral part of providing access to our collections and making sure they will be available far into the future.  We will discuss past conservation methods, how the field has developed, what conservation at the MHS has looked like, and the standards we adhere to today.

Book and paper conservation as a discipline is relatively new. Before the twentieth century, libraries and archives valued documents and books mainly for the text’s intellectual and historical content, rather than for the physical characteristics of the object. Treatments focused on repairs that were sturdy and allowed the item to be handled and read. It was very common to discard damaged bindings and other pages or inserts considered unnecessary.

However, there were individuals interested in the history that can be revealed by the physical characteristics of a book or document. William Blades, from Part 1 of this series, rails against bookbinders who routinely removed original bindings to trim the margins and put on new modern bindings. This was common practice, even at the MHS. One example in the MHS collection is William Bradford’s manuscript, “A ‘dialogue’ or the sum of a conference betweene some young men born in New England, and some ancient men which came out of Holland and old England 1648.” Sometime in the late 1800’s, this thin pamphlet was bound into a smart new Victorian leather binding with elaborate gold tooling.  The fragile pages were sewn into a text of blank pages, but it made it difficult to see all the text, and turning the pages put a great deal of stress on the paper. We will look at how Samantha chose to treat this document later in our series.

In the 20^th century, chemist and paper conservator William J. Barrow was very influential in the development of library and archives conservation. From the 1930s through the 1960s, he ran the W.J. Barrow Research Laboratory in Virginia. He collaborated with institutes such as the National Bureau of Standards and the Government Printing office. Barrow was an important link between the scientific and library and archive communities. He conducted many early accelerated aging tests, developed de-acidification techniques, and promoted the awareness of acid in modern papers and the damage it causes. [1]

Since Barrow’s time, conservation researchers have studied prevailing treatments and guided conservators in choosing the best methods. Conservators today need an understanding of the chemistry and materials used to reverse or slow the deterioration of paper. We have learned that many of our books and documents are stable without deacidification so long as the storage materials, building environment, and handling practices are suitable for long term preservation.

MHS has a long tradition of repairing manuscripts and books, which has evolved into today’s modern conservation lab.  In 1837, a committee was formed to find “the best mode of preserving the manuscripts of the Society.” [2] In 1910, a bindery was created, and manuscripts were ‘silked’ (a technique that involved attaching sheer silk to support fragile paper) and bound into volumes. By 1972, the first conservation lab was built, allowing for the deacidification of manuscripts. [3] Anne Bentley, Curator of Art & Artifacts Emerita, was the paper conservator for the MHS from 1973 to 1998. During that time, she conserved many crucial documents, including the washing and deacidification of Thomas Jefferson’s manuscript for his book, Notes on the State of Virginia. She oversaw the creation of the second conservation lab built in 2000. Ms. Bentley continues to support the work of preserving our collections as a source of expertise and institutional knowledge.

Modern conservation practice is a blending of art, craft, and science. Many traditional techniques of book and paper conservation are still used, having been proven safe and effective by current research. Two presses from the original bindery are still used frequently in the lab. These sit alongside a chemical fume hood, a water de-ionization system, and testing and analytical tools to enable sophisticated and complex treatments of our archival material. Treatments follow the American Institute of Conservation’s guidelines and code of ethics, which emphasizes retaining original materials, using reversible techniques whenever possible, and documenting treatments with written reports and photographs.

In our next installment, we will look closely at a few examples of repairs and treatments in the lab.

[1] William James Barrow: A Biographical Study of His Formative Years and His Role in the History of Library and Archives Conservation From 1931 to 1941, Sally Roggia

[2] MHS Proceedings, ser. 1, vol. 2 (1835-1855), p. 96. (2)

[3] MHS Proceedings, ser. 1, vol. 2 (1835-1855), p. 96. (3)

Advisor: Paul N. Banks
Submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Library Science in the Graduate School of Library Service, Columbia University, 1999

By Meg Szydlik, Visitor Services Coordinator

The Massachusetts Historical Society will be closed Saturday, May 25^th and Monday, May 27^th in honor of Memorial Day, so I thought I would look at some of the ways people have celebrated this day in the past. One popular way was by listening to speeches highlighting the importance of Memorial Day and why it mattered. Referred to as “Memorial Day Addresses” in our catalog, these speeches were a way to remind people exactly what the day was about. Memorial Day finds its origins in Reconstruction, the time after the Civil War. It was originally referred to as “Decoration Day” and centered around visiting the graves of loved ones who died in the Civil War and enjoying a picnic afterwards. This tradition was kept alive in the popular barbecues of my childhood, though without the graves. Traditions have certainly changed but it’s always interesting to look back at a snapshot of time and see what changed and what remained the same.

While today Americans tend to associate Memorial Day with more modern wars with still living veterans, the addresses I looked at, from 1881 to 1904, tied the holiday explicitly to both the then-recent Civil War and to the American Revolution. Many of them linked back to what were considered the origins of the United States and the founding principles. Reading through the addresses, many speakers viewed the wars America had fought as part of a tradition of patriotism and strong morals. Nowhere is this more evident than in Frank Smith’s 1904 address in Dover, Mass., which outlines in almost excruciating detail every war or conflict the town had sent men to, from fighting the indigenous peoples to the Spanish American War, in 1898. The published speech also includes a list of the soldiers who had died and were buried in the Dover Cemetery, a demonstration of the honor Smith felt they deserved. The connection between war and patriotism is made over and over again in these addresses, despite ostensibly praising and honoring peace.

That patriotism covers more than just the Union itself though. Most of the speakers also strongly tie these actions to the character of the region. This pride in being New Englanders is a key part of the argument these speakers are making—that these wars demonstrate the superiority of American ideals and that nowhere are these ideals more truly upheld than here. This call to sacrifice includes both men and women, though in very different ways. The picture of the idealized soldier in most of the speeches is a striking one. He is brave, strong, and true, the perfect specimen, willing to die. And the women take care of the home, work in the jobs that are left behind, and mourn the men who die on the battlefield. The men die and the women suffer. These addresses remind listeners to do their duty and do it faithfully, regardless of the cost.

There is a somberness to these addresses, but that is tempered by the sense of how honorable it is to fight and die in a war. This view of war is contradicted in our own collections, however. Susan Martin writes here and here about veterans who disagreed with the way the Revolution was commemorated, an interesting counter to the lofty language and ideals expressed by the speakers even within a similar time period.

By Rakashi Chand, Reading Room Supervisor

Dear Gentle Reader, although you and I may have never heard of Miss Elise Hensler, a woman infamous in Milan for her operatic prowess, and her daughter born out of wedlock, she caught the attention of a King and is now a Countess! Young ladies may read her story and swoon, but it was not all a fairytale ending.

Elise was born in Switzerland, but her family moved to Boston when she was young. She received a stellar education in the arts and languages, excelling in both. As a young adult, it was apparent that her voice deserved a European education, and off she went to Paris, bidding her sister and parents a fond farewell. Elise embarked on a European adventure unlike any other. While her family received regular letters and visits from Elise, their own heartbeats increased as they heard details, and tales, of Elise’s life in Europe.  A gifted young opera singer, Elise joined the Teatro alla Scala in Milan. Her lure was undeniable and at the tender age of nineteen Elise gave birth to her daughter, Alice. The bond between mother and daughter was lifelong, even as Elise’s own life was about to change dramatically.

Elise’s sister was Mina Louise Hensler, who married Daniel Denison Slade in 1856, a doctor of medicine, but was also an expert in horticulture and zoology.  Mina and Daniel had twelve children and lived in Chestnut Hill, Massachusetts. The letters between Elise and her sister Mina are among the many letters in the Slade-Rogers Family Papers at the MHS. Nineteenth century life In Chestnut Hill was pleasant, but the letters arriving from Portugal must have been enthralling, and indeed everyone waited for word from Elise.

Starting in February of 1860, Elise performed at the Teatro Nacional Sao Joao in Oporto Portugal, followed by the Teatro Nacional de Sao Carlos in Lisbon.  On April 15^th, 1860, Elise performed Guiseppe Verdi’s opera A Masquerade Ball, and captivated an audience member, King Ferdinand II of Portugal. Ferdinand was king-consort and widower of Queen Maria II, a prince of the royal house of Saxe-Coburg and Gotha, nephew to Ernest I and King Leopold I of Belgium. Ferdinand was known as the King-Artist, a patron of the arts and an artist himself, educated in music and drawing, and fluent in multiple languages.

Soon Ferdinand and Elise were unabashedly in love and shared common interests in language, architecture, gardening, painting, ceramics, sculpture, and arts.  Their courtship withstood the scrutiny of Portuguese society, and nine years later, the letter announcing their marriage finally arrived in Chestnut Hill.

On Saturday, June 30th Mina writes with great excitement to Grandma:

                                                                                                                Sat. June 30

Dear GrandMa,

                                                                We arrived safely I met Daniel at Waltham-With good news from my mother and sister. My sister was Married the tenth of June to the X King of Portugal–I wanted to tell you all about it, but as you were not alone, I could not. I have known about it for Years. & at last the Event has taken place. I feel very happy of course But [a bit] sad–How I Wish I could have been Present. Aunt Rogers drove up to see if it Were true–for I had not told any of them.

I feared something might Happen to prevent the Marriage–therefore kept Silent-I hope daily now to hear more particularly about it. They were Married first by the Priest And then by her Protestant Minister. I feel so glad at last …

And the very next letter in the folder, sent on June 12^th, 1869 (received on July 5^th in Chestnut Hill) were the particulars Mina was waiting to hear…

Because Elise was a commoner, she was given the title of Countess of Edla on her wedding day, allowing the King to marry her. The media tried to portray Elise poorly as a single mother in a 19^th century European Court, but she was talented and capable, rising above the rumor mill.  However, she was never fully accepted as Ferdinand’s wife and was ostracized and scrutinized by the Portuguese Court. Elise fought endlessly with the media’s portrayals of her life, and unlike any fairytale, she was often lonely. 

King Ferdinand named Elise universal heir to his properties and estate, including the Royal Palace. When he died on December 15^th, 1885, Elise was thrust into a years-long battle with the Royal family. Intimate details of the battle for the estates are found in the collection held at the MHS. In the end, Elise chose to live with her daughter, Alice, and her son in law, in Portugal, never to return to Boston. Her simple epitaph reads: “Here lies Elise Hensler, widow of His Majesty King Ferdinand II of Portugal, born in 1836 and died in 1929”.

What does modern Portugal and its tourism industry owe to Elise, the Bostonian, who could have claimed the Royal palace and all properties as her own? Over the years she worked to promote the arts and culture in Portugal, and as historians look back, her influence on modern Portugal is becoming more apparent. From benefactor of the Park of Pena to patron of Portugal’s modern masters, Elise continued to work towards the expansion of art, music and the preservation of architecture. Discredited, ostracized, criticized, but secretly admired, Elise was a Boston girl who fell in love with a king and his country. It is time for Elise to take her place.

Visit the Library of the Massachusetts Historical Society to learn more about Elise and read about the battle over her inheritance.

Hopefully, the readers of this lurid tale of love, loneliness, and the trials of a Countess has entertained and delighted. Sincerely, Lady Chand.