By Heather Wilson, Library Assistant

On the evening of her tenth birthday, 22 December 1863, María Teresa Carreño García de Sena (1853-1917), known as Teresa Carreño, sat at the grand piano in the Boston Music Hall. She was ending the year much as she’d begun it–performing for large crowds in Boston. That year she had also played throughout New England, in New York City, at the White House for President Lincoln, and in Havana, Cuba.

In addition to playing pieces by eminent composers and virtuoso pianists–on this night the concert program shows that she played pieces by American Louis Moreau Gottschalk, and Europeans Franz Liszt and Sigismond Thalburg–Teresa ended the concert with a work of her own composition. La Emilia Danza was a genre of dance music native to her home country of Venezuela, from which she had emigrated to New York with her family in 1862.

I began learning about Teresa Carreño when I read the picture book Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln [1], with my five-year-olds. So, I was excited to spot a record of her in ABIGAIL, the MHS online catalog, as I worked from home on my laptop. After a colleague working in the building emailed me scans of the two items, I showed the photograph to my kids. “Look; this is Teresa Carreño the year she played for President Lincoln! She played for lots of people in Boston, too!”

 In fact, she found large and appreciative audiences wherever she went.

On December 19, 1863, The Boston Evening Transcript ran an advertisement for the concert:

Theresa [sic] Carreno, the wonderful little artiste, is announced to give a grand concert at the Music Hall, on Tuesday evening next, the 22d inst. Her visit to Boston last season created unusual interest and excitement in musical circles, and she comes now better fitted than ever to astonish by her truly wonderful powers. She has acquired a greater degree of physical force in the meanwhile, and now performs the most difficult compositions of Liszt, Chopin, Beethoven, Thalberg, and Gottschalk. He [sic] has also composed some beautiful pieces, which will be heard in Boston for the first time. [2]

Many reviewers attributed Carreño’s talent to prodigious abilities and lessons she received from pianists such as Gottschalk, but a fuller picture includes lots and lots of practice at home. Carreño’s father, Manuel Antonio Carreño (1812-1874), played a major role in Teresa’s development as a pianist and composer. Under his tutelage in Caracas, Teresa began studying piano and composing at the age of six. Looking back on her earliest years of lessons, she said she practiced, “two hours in the morning and two in the afternoon, and the rest of the day I played with my doll.” [3] By the time the family emigrated to New York, she had been playing private concerts for years.

Looking at this carte de visite of nine-year-old Teresa, taken in Boston in January 1863, I couldn’t help but wonder what she was thinking. Wearing a dress and earrings, with a stool placed beneath her feet, she strikes a more restful pose than audiences would have seen while she performed. Referring to her ideal style, she once said, “One should be able to play with a glass of water balanced on the wrist.” [4]) Is she thinking about her doll? School lessons? Is she itching to travel back to New York, or eager for spring and her upcoming concerts in Cuba? Does she love to play as much as Dancing Hands suggests?

Indeed, some reviewers were skeptical of Carreño, and child pianists as a whole. The reviewer John Sullivan Dwight attended Carreño’s January 1863 performances in Boston. Although he called her “a wonder” he also wrote:

The danger is lest her talent, by such early continual exhibition and exposure, should all run to waste in superficial, showy music; and no less, that such abnormal and excessive tasking of the brain should wear the life out soon.” [5]

Dwight may not directly call her father a “stage dad” here, but if anyone was responsible for Carreño’s ‘continual exhibition’ it would have been him. In adulthood, however, Teresa Carreño credited her father with seeing her love of piano and teaching her so well:

You see what a foundation I had from my father who, in all his busy life […] found joy in training his little girl in the art which he so dearly loved, and of which he was himself in reality a master. [6]

Later in life, Carreño taught piano in the style her father had taught her as a child. She also continued to perform around the world for more than 50 years.

I was struck by Teresa’s fond memories of learning the piano from her father. Could her story, I asked myself, inspire my own parenting? Eight months into remote PreK (plus two months of summer learning run by yours truly), the only instruments my kids have played have been made out of recycled materials. One of my kids taught himself to whistle(!), but thus far has been unable to teach me to do the same. Perhaps, in the end, it comes down to sharing what you know and love. After all, we’ve read a lot of great historical books. And, besides, they don’t turn six until next year.

¡Feliz Cumpleaños, Teresa Carreño!

Teresa Carreño’s Archive

Teresa Carreño’s records are split between two institutions. The Teresa Carreño Papers, 1862-1991, are housed at Vassar College Archives and Special Collections Library. A digital exhibit provides access to a few primary source materials housed in the collection. (I personally love the 1886 program to a concert she performed in Caracas that refers to her as “al ilustre Americano.”) The Teatro Teresa Carreño in Caracas, Venezuela also houses a large collection of her personal and professional papers and materials, in addition to concert gowns. [7]

 

[1] Margarita Engle (author) and Rafael López (illustrator), Dancing Hands: How Teresa Carreño Played the Piano for President Lincoln, Simon & Schuster, 2019.

[2] https://documentingcarreno.org/items/show/53, Documenting Teresa Carreño, an open-access website compiling primary source materials related to Carreño’s career, Anna E. Kijas.

[3] Laura Pita, Teresa Carreño’s Early Years in Caracas: Cultural Intersections of Piano Virtuosity, Gender, and Nation-Building in the Nineteenth Century, Ph.D. Dissertation, University of Kentucky, 2019, p. 382.

[4] Pita, 412.

[5] Anna E. Kijas, “The Life of Teresa Carreño (1853-1917): A Venezuelan Prodigy and Acclaimed Artist,” Music Library Association, (Volume 76, No. 1), September 2019, p. 42.

[6] Pita, p. 374.

[7] Ronald D. Patkus, “Musical Migrations: A Case Study of the Teresa Carreño Papers,” RBM: A Journal of Rare Books, Manuscripts, and Cultural Heritage, (Vol 6. No. 1), 2005.

By Rakashi Chand, Senior Library Assistant

This holiday season is unlike any other we have experienced in our lifetime. We cannot gather, there are no office parties, and some of us cannot risk seeing our families during the pandemic. So why not use the opportunity to take inspiration from the past and celebrate historically?

Have a cup of punch!

Punch was the thing to do in 1773. On the evening of 16 December 1773, guests gathered at the home of Benjamin Edes. While they waited for darkness to fall, the family punch bowl was filled multiple times. Benjamin’s son Peter later wrote in a letter to his grandson:

“I recollect perfectly well that in the afternoon preceding the evening of the destruction of the Tea a number of gentlemen met in the parlour of my father’s house how many I cannot say as…I was not admitted to their presence. my station was in another room to make punch for them in the bowl which is now in your possession and which I filled several times– they remained in the house till dark…”

Benjamin Edes and his guests made their way to his office on Queen Street to disguise themselves as Indians before joining others on Griffin’s Wharf, where the three ships carrying tea were docked. Young Peter followed the group and related the action to his grandson:

“The Indians worked smartly, some were in the hold immediately after the hatches were broken open, fixing the ropes to the tea chests, others were hauling up the chests, and others stood ready with their hatchets to cut off the binding of the chests, and others cast them overboard.”

Strangely well-orchestrated, in three hours they had disposed of three hundred and forty-two chests containing over 92,000 pounds of tea. John Adams, wrote about it admiringly in his diary entry for 17 December:

“This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire.”

Now you must be wondering what was in that punch that could launch three hundred chests in to the sea? Sadly, we don’t have that recipe.

But, we do have another infamous punch recipe: Benjamin Franklin’s Milk Punch! Let me introduce you to the strange world of milk punch, popular in 18nth century festivities. While Franklin is famous for his many inventions, such a cosmopolitan man could certainly invent an amazing drink as well. Luckily, he enclosed a recipe for his milk punch in an 11 October 1763 letter to his dear friend James Bowdoin.

For the adventurous, the following is a modern interpretation of Franklin’s recipe, with portions reduced to one quarter of those suggested by Franklin. The flavor is lemony, with a slightly medicinal kick.

Ingredients:

6 cups (3 pints) of brandy
11 lemons
2 cups lemon juice
4 cups (1 quart) of spring water
1 freshly grated nutmeg
1 1/8 cups (1/2 lb) of sugar
3 cups of whole milk

Directions:

Zest eleven lemons.
Squeeze 2 cups of lemon juice.
Steep the lemon zest in the brandy for 24 hours.
Strain out the lemon zest.
Add 4 cups of spring water, 1 freshly grated nutmeg, 2 cups of lemon juice, and 1 1/8 cups of sugar to the brandy.
Stir until the sugar dissolves.
Bring 3 cups of whole milk to a boil.
As soon as the milk boils, add it hot to the brandy mix and stir.
The heat, lemon juice, and alcohol will begin to curdle the milk.
Let the punch stand for 2 hours.
Strain the punch through a jelly bag (or pillow case) until clear. Serve cold.

Naturally, Franklin and Edes were not the only ones imbibing in punch on late December nights. John Hancock certainly enjoyed a glass or two. Here is Hancock’s own punch strainer:

And to fully understand the importance (and popularity) of punch, here is the story of a punch strainer that began with plundering and international conflict. John Vryling, a Boston merchant and member of the Old South Church, was commissioned as an ensign in Col. William Gooch’s “American” Regiment–a unit of the British Army raised in North America in 1740. Vryling sailed for Jamaica with his regiment in October that year. Boston silversmith William Breed crafted this punch strainer from silver captured by John Vryling during the Siege of Cartagena in 1741.

On that note, punch anyone?

Join us for a cup of Holiday Punch by sharing your favorite recipes, or favorite punch stories in the comments below.

By LJ Woolcock, Library Assistant

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.

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.

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).

By Rakashi Chand, Senior Library Assistant

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. (!)…”

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.

Happy Diwali from the MHS!

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

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.

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.

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 Georgian reported 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 two letters, 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.

by Laura Williams, Visitor Services Coordinator

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.

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.

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.”