There is a lot going on at the MHS this week. Take a look at the programs we have planned:
On Monday, 9 December, at6:00 PM: Destination: Boston–Immigration & Migration, 1820-1920 with Andrew Robichaud, Boston University. From 1820 to 1920, Boston grew by leaps and bounds through an intensive (and often contentious) process of immigration and migration that ultimately created the modern metropolis. In this presentation and virtual exhibit, Prof. Andrew Robichaud and students from Boston University will present more than 20 rare artifacts and documents from the archives of the MHS. Through letters, diaries, drawings, photographs, reform tracts, and memoirs, presenters will unearth the complex and nuanced dimensions of immigration and migration to Boston. Light refreshments will be served following the presentation.
On Tuesday, 10 December, at 5:15 PM:Who Was “One-Eyed” Sarah? Searching for an Indigenous Nurse in Local Government with Gabriel J. Loiacono, University of Wisconsin, Oshkosh, and comment by Cornelia Dayton, University of Connecticut. This essay considers the life of an indigenous woman, known as “One-Eyed” Sarah, who provided full-time nursing care to poor communities in early nineteenth-century Providence, RI. The only historical sources that describe Sarah’s work never provide her last name or details beyond the description “Indian.” So who was she, and how do we tell her story? Using sometimes patchy sources of non-elite people, the author hopes to gain new insights into social welfare history and explore how ordinary women made the poor law function. This is part of the Pauline Maier Early American History Seminar series. Seminars are free and open to the public.
On Wednesday, 11 December at6:00 PM:At Home: A Look at Historic Houses Through the Archives with Beth Luey. Archival collections held in local institutions can help historians uncover the untold stories of historic houses in Massachusetts. The library of the New Bedford Whaling Museum documents the homes of the great whaling families, while Harvard documents the Ward House and the American Antiquarian Society welcomes us into the Salisbury Mansion in Worcester. The Mary Baker Eddy library documents the many houses where she lived, and, of course, the Massachusetts Historical Society brings the Adams family and their houses to life. A pre-talk reception begins at 5:30 PM; the speaking program begins at 6:00 PM. There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).
On Saturday, 14 December, at 10:00 AM: The History & Collections of the MHS. This is a 90-minute docent-led walk through of our public rooms. The tour is free and open to the public. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
On Saturday, 14 December, at 4:00 PM:Legacies of 1619: Citizenship & Belonging with Manisha Sinha, University of Connecticut; Elizabeth Herbin-Triant, University of Massachusetts—Lowell; Hasan Kwame Jeffries, Ohio State University; and moderator Marita Rivero, Museum of African American History, Boston. For 400 years, Africans and African Americans carved out a distinctive culture for themselves even as they sought equal rights in American society. This program will consider how African Americans struggled to gain equal access to political and social rights, all the while making the American experience their own. This is the final program in a four-part series co-sponsored by the Museum of African American History and the Roxbury Community College. There will be a pre-talk reception at 3:30 PM; the speaking program begins at 4:00 PM.
Abigail Adams: Life & Legacy Pop-Up Display Abigail Adams urged her husband to “Remember the Ladies” and made herself impossible to forget. But Abigail is memorable for more than her famous 1776 admonition. This final Remember Abigail display uses documents and artifacts through the ages to consider the way Abigail viewed her own legacy and to explore how and why we continue to Remember Abigail.
Fire! Voices from the Boston Massacre On the evening of March 5, 1770, soldiers occupying the town of Boston shot into a crowd, killing or fatally wounding five civilians. In the aftermath of what soon became known as the Boston Massacre, questions about the command to “Fire!” became crucial. Who yelled it? When and why? Because the answers would determine the guilt or innocence of the soldiers, defense counsel John Adams insisted that “Facts are stubborn things.” But what are the facts? The evidence, often contradictory, drew upon testimony from dozens of witnesses. Through a selection of artifacts, eyewitness accounts, and trial testimony—the voices of ordinary men and women—Fire! Voice from the Boston Massacre explores how this flashpoint changed American history. The exhibition is on display at the MHS through 30 June 2020, Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and Tuesday from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
Please note that the library and gallery spaces will close at 3:30 PM on Thursday, 12 December and the library will close at 3:00 PM on Saturday, 14 December.
Laura Ingallinella, Mellon Postdoctoral Fellow in Italian Studies & English, Wellesley College and Agnieszka Rec, Associate Editor, Publications, MHS
In her essay collection Ex Libris, Anne Fadiman suggests that every library contains an “Odd Shelf.” “On this shelf,” she writes, “rests a small, mysterious corpus of volumes whose subject matter is completely unrelated to the rest of the library, yet which, upon closer inspection reveals a good deal about its owner.”[i] While Fadiman’s own odd shelf holds books on polar exploration, the Massachusetts Historical Society’s arguably contains works of a noticeably older vintage.
Among the MHS’s hundreds and thousands of linear feet of family papers, rare books, and scholarly volumes are some two dozen medieval manuscript books and fragments, covering a range of topics from Spanish history to urine to the quest for the Holy Grail. [ii]
Chrétien de Troyes’ Yvain, Appleton Family Papers, MHS. A wonderful example of binding waste.
One particularly intriguing example is an unidentified medieval manuscript leaf in the Appleton Family Papers. Today, we’re happy to say: mystery solved! The fragment is in fact a late thirteenth-century excerpt of a text on procedural law, specifically the French translation of the Ordo judicarius by Tancred of Bologna (c. 1185–c. 1236).
MHS Ordinaire recto and verso
Born in Bologna and educated at the university there, Tancred was one of the leading authorities on ecclesiastical law in his day.[iii] After studying with renowned jurists Azo, John of Wales, and Lawrence of Spain, he taught canon law at his alma mater and often advised popes on legal and diplomatic matters. During his busy career as a teacher, writer, diplomat, consultant, and man of God, Tancred wrote many procedural texts, which he compiled into a complete manual, the Ordo judicarius, between 1214 and 1216.[iv]
The Ordo quickly became a standard reference manual for canon law and circulated widely over the centuries—it exists today in over a hundred manuscripts—and was also translated into French, German, and Portuguese.[v] The French translation, titled Li Ordinaires mestre Tancrés or more simply Ordinaire, was dedicated to a “noble Philip, king of France,” either Philip III (1270–85) or Philip IV (1285–1314). It seems to be a remarkably good translation: Frédéric Duval has noted that the translator tried his level best to turn Tancred’s dull and often repetitive legalese into a more lively vernacular text that could appeal to a “larger public” of law practitioners.[vi]
With the identification of the MHS fragment, the Ordinaire survives in ten manuscripts, five of which date before 1300.[vii] The script is a refined late thirteenth-century Gothic script (the so-called littera textualis) of better quality than other manuscripts of the Ordinaire produced in the same period (see, for example, Metz, Bibliothèque municipale, MS 1196). The page layout (or mise-en-page) of the manuscript, with two columns and paragraph marks in red and blue, resembles those of the earliest copies of the Ordinaire.
Like its Latin source, the Ordinaire is divided into four books, which deal, respectively, with judges; defendants and other parties; legal procedure; and sentencing. The MHS fragment is from book 3, chapter 13. That chapter discusses the so-called instrumenta, that is, the written evidence produced by the various parties involved in a trial. In an premodern age of handwritten documents, how could a judge trust that a piece of evidence was authentic? What were the telltale signs that an important document, such as a contract or a will, had been tampered with or even forged? Reading this fragment, we glimpse a legal system concerned with perjury, falsification, and ill intent, as well as a dogged pursuit of the “truth”—issues very relevant today.
So far our previously unidentified manuscript has a title, author, and approximate date, but what can we say about where it comes from? To answer that question, we turn to the language of the fragment. In this case, as with many manuscripts produced in France over the thirteenth and early fourteenth centuries, we can more conclusively say where it does not come from. We can exclude areas such as northern, northeastern, and southwestern France (namely, Picardy and Artois, Lorraine, and Gascony). The “neutral” spellings, word forms, and syntax found in this fragment normally suggest a provenance from the Île-de-France, that is, the environs of Paris, a major center of book production.[viii] Other important manuscripts of the Ordinaire (for example, Paris, Bibliothèque nationale de France, MS fr. 1073) were also produced there.[ix] It is also worth remembering that the Ordinaire had been written for the king of France, and Île-de-France would have been the first hub where a Parisian-born translation would circulate.
Paris, BnF, MS fr. 1073, a manuscript of the Ordinaire produced in Paris between 1275 and 1300 like the MHS fragment.
One final question remains: What is this medieval European manuscript doing among the MHS’s very American collections? This particular witness of Tancred’s Ordinaire entered the collections in 1864 as a gift from a W. Appleton Jr., likely William Joseph Warren Appleton (1825–1877), son of Rep. William Appleton (1786–1862). A library stamp is found in the lower left corner on one side of the leaf bears the name “W. Appleton Jr.” Seemingly something of a manuscript collector, William J. W. Appleton also donated several other manuscripts to the New England Historic Genealogical Society the same year as his donation to MHS.[x]
William Appleton Jr.’s library stamp, with the Appleton family coat of arms.
In our next post, we’ll delve further into the MHS’s premodern Odd Shelf and see what closer inspection might reveal about the historical society.
[i] Anne Fadiman, “My Odd Shelf,” Ex Libris, New York: Farrar, Straus, and Giroux, 1998, 21.
[ii] The De Ricci-Bond census lists twenty-seven, but there may well be more among the MHS’s many family papers. Seymour de Ricci et al., Census of medieval and renaissance manuscripts in the United States and Canada, vol. 1. (HW Wilson, 1935), 937–41.
The manuscript referred to here are the Coronica del rey do Enrique el quarto de Castilla y de Leon by Diego Enriquez del Castillo; Liber Uricrisiarum by Daniel Henry; and fragments of Perceval in the Appleton Family Papers. Dan Hinchen discussed other medieval manuscripts in the MHS collections in earlier posts to this blog here (part 1 & part 2) and here.
[iii] Peter Landau, “The Development of Law,” The New Cambridge Medieval History, ed. David Luscombe and Jonathan Riley Smith, vol. 4/1. (Cambridge, UK, 1995), 113–47, at 136.
[iv] Friedrich Bergmann, ed., Pillii, Tancredi, Gratiae libri de iudiciorum ordine (Göttingen, 1842), 89–314.
[v] José Domingues and Pedro Pinto, “Um fragmento em português do Ordo iudiciarius de Tancredo,” Glossae: European Journal of Legal History 13 (2016): 207–42.
[vii] Two other manuscripts were destroyed during World War II.
[viii] For the philologists among you, we can delve even futher into the language of fragment by considering how it fits into the stemma codicum recently constructed by Frédéric Duval. Essentially a manuscript’s family tree, a stemma codicum assesses the quality and relations of all the Ordinaire manuscripts. Duval’s stemma has two main branches θ and ε. Without any doubt, the MHS fragment does not belong to ε: where that branch presents an error of some sort, our fragment retains the correct reading in quite a few instances. For example, in the second column of the verso, our fragment cites a law by quoting its very first word in Latin, Iubemus (“we order”). The ε manuscripts, however, all mistake it for another similar one, Iubilemus (“we rejoice”). In other words, in this branch, a word typical of the Latin Christian liturgy made its way into a treatise on how to conduct a trial. Examples such as this one suggests that the MHS fragment might instead bear some affinity to or derivation from the θ branch of the Ordinaire.
[ix] See the descriptions in Duval, “Ordo judicarius.”
[x] These included the Book of Esther in Hebrew and a Koran in Arabic. The New England Historical and Genealogical Register, vol. 18 (Albany, 1864), 215.
Today, we return for the last time to the diary of George Hyland. If this is your first time encountering our 2019 diary series, catch up by reading the January, February, March, April, May, June, July, August, September, October, and November 1919 installments first! Then join me in following George day-by-day through the final month of 1919.
The Hills of Hingham by Dallas Lore Sharp (1916), p. 216.
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Dec 1. In forenoon sawed and split wood 2 hours for Mrs. M.G. Seaverns — 60. In aft. worked 3 hours for Mr. James — mowing with lawn mower and raking grass and leaves and other work –Clear. cold. W.N.W. Played on the guitar 1 1/2 hours in eve.
2d. Worked 5 hours for Mrs. Bertie Barnes — diging [sic] parsnips, cleaning out part of barn, and harvesting turnips — 1.50. Had dinner there. Bought a pint of milk there — 7 cts. Milk is 17 cts. per qt. At N. Scituate. tem. To-day 28-50; W.S.W. fair. Eve. par. Clou., W.N.W. Played on the guitar 1 1/2 hours in eve. The parsnips I dug to-day were the largest I ever saw — some of them were 16 inches long.
3d. Clear. cold. tem. 14-34. W.N.W. did some work at home in forenoon. In aft. Went up to my home. Staid 1 1/2 hours — got some more of my cloths. Called at Uncle Samuel’s. Ellen gave me a quart of milk and some apples. Walked up and back. Called at Mrs. Bailey’s this forenoon to see about some work Edith C. Sargent wants me to do. Eve. cold. 11:15 P.M. tem. 18.
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Dec 4. Sawed, split and housed the last of my wood — heavy timber boards and etc. Clear. Cold. W.N.W. tem. 13-34. Played on the guitar 1 1/4 hours in eve. Eve. cold. tem. 18.
5th. In forenoon wkred 1 1/2 hours for Mrs. James — about 7 hours in all — 1.00. Also got some wood and and put it in my wood house late in aft. Went into woods S. of Conihasset […] to pick some pr. [sic] pine. Did not find much. Very light snow storm. Tem. to-day about 18-40; W.S. and N.W. aft. Clear. W.N.W. Cold. Played on the guitar 1 1/4 hours in eve.
6th. Clear. W.N. in forenoon, S.E. in aft. tem. About 27-45. In aft. Worked 3 3/4 hours for Miss Edith C. Sargent taking off window screens and putting on storm windows and carrying coal ashes out of cellar and wheeling it out to the swamp — 1.05. She gave me 18 good apples (R.I. Greening). Eve. clou. W.S.E. Played on the guitar 1 1/2 hours in eve. Snow storm late in eve. Turned to rain later.
7th. (Sun.) Light rain and fog. Eve. clear.
8th. Cloudy. Damp. W.N., S.E. Went to Scituate Cen. and Greenbush to pick some evergreen — got a bag full. Rode to Beaverdam Road with Willie Stockbridge and Lottie in automobile (they called here in morning) then walked to S. Cen. and Greenbush. Had lunch in the woods. Ret. came back on 4:12 tr. from Greenbush. Began to rain at 5 P.M. Light rain all eve. Played on the guitar 1 1/2 hours in eve.
9th. Light rain all day — W.N.E. wind light, did some work at home late in aft. Worked 1 hour for J.H. Vinal getting good from a freight car and putting them in the store — 30. Very light rain in eve. Foggy. Played on the guitar 1 1/4 hours in eve. Galen Watson called here in aft.
10th. Cloudy and warm in morning. Windy and dark — w. Changed to N.W. and began to clear about 9 A.M. Went up to Uncle Samuel’s — had dinner there. In aft. Went to Mr. Hope hill and picked a bag full of evergreens, pr. pine, and etc. […] got some wood, cloths, bedding, and other things in my house and Ellery B. Hyland brought them here in his auto. Cold and very windy after 9:30 A.M. Tem. to-day — 60-30. Clear soon after 10 A.M. Eve. windy and cold — tem. 25. Played on the guitar 1h. 25m. in eve.
11th. Clear. Cold. W.W.; tem. 16-30. Worked 3/4 hour for J.H. Vinal in forenoon — in the store — 25.In aft. picked some pr. pine. Went nearly to Mungoe’s Corner — came out on a road in the woods near a farm where a family of Finns live. Their place is a mile from any public street. I met a young lady (a Finn) about dark 1/2 mile from the main road (about 13 or 14) She asked me if I had been to her house — I said I just came into the road that leads to their farm. I showed her some of the pine I had in a bag. Eve. clear. Played on the guitar 1 1/2 hours in eve. 11:30 P.M., tem. 28; hazy.
12th. Worked 2 1/4 hours for J. H. Vinal unloading a load of flour and packing it in piles in store — also cleaned and washed a large meat grinder — 61. Got 1/4 lb. of meat in it — fried it for my dinner. Light rain all day. Warm. tem. 30-60. Eve. cloudy. W.N.W. cooler. Played on the guitar 1 1/4 hours in eve.
13th. Cloudy. Warm. Damp. tem. 58-60. Did some work at home — got the last of the wood from the spot where the laundry was torn down — wood very dirty and wet, prob. I have picked out 1/2 cord there in all. Bought 65 pounds of very nice straw (rye) at the Story Grain store house — 91 cts. The manager sent 70 pounds (sent 5 lbs. gratis) […] Cook brought it here. In aft. Worked 1/3 hour (in the Store) for J.H. Vinal — 10. Eve. clou. W.N.W. Played on the guitar 1h. 25m. In eve.
14th. (Sun.) Cold rain storm until noon; then snow storm until 2 P.M. Then clou. Eve. clear. Cold. tem. 26 W.N.W. Took the old hay out my bed and filled with new rye straw; also took the wool out of my mattress and filled it with straw — 70 pounds of straw in both — too much in both of them 30 pounds is enough to fill a bed. Prob. I put over 40 pounds in my largest one.
15th. Clear. Cold. Windy. N.W. In aft. Went up to my place to get a piece of stove pipe and a few
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other things. Called at Uncle Samuel’s. Ellen gave ma a piece of winter squash to boil and several apples. Walked up and back. Stopped at Mrs. Merritt’s and bought a quart of milk. Ethel got 2 pairs of scissors for me to sharpen. She met with an accident about 3 weeks ago — ran into a telephone pole while riding in her automobile and her back is still lame. Eve. clear. cold. tem. 20. Played on the guitar 1 1/4 hours in eve. 11:45 P.M. tem. 18.
16th. Cold weather — tem. 11-22; W.N.W.; Clear, made some wreaths in aft. Also got some […] vines to wind them on. Eve. cold. clear. Tem. 18. Played on the guitar 1 ½ hours in eve.
Sold some junk to Samuel Benson this A.M.
30 pounds of cotton — 30.
3 pds. rags — 3.
10 1/7 pds. of zinc — 25.
2 pds. of brass — 10.
2 pds. of rubber — 10.
30 pds. of iron — 10.
60 pds. of papers — 15. (total 1.03)
17th. Cold weather. Snows storm until about 10 A.M. aft. Clear. Windy. N.W. Snow blowing about. A water pipe in the bath room froze last [sic] in night and it burst about noon. I had to keep the the [sic] water from the floor because it began to leak down into the store. Kept a pail under the place where it leaked and emptied it often — this was all I could do to-day. I got all the water out of the toilet and box last night — worked on it until 1:30 (after mid). Scott Gannett here this eve. And turned off the water. Also took the water out of the copper boiler — connected with the stove. Played on the guitar 1 1/2 hours in eve. Cold night. 11:45 P.M. tem. 2 below zero. […]
18th. Made wreaths (in my front room — opp. the R.R. station) Very cold weather — tem 7 below zero to 12 above. W.N.W. Played on the guitar 1 1/2 hours in eve. Eve. cold. — tem 2.
19th. Worked on wreaths — also piled up wood in the woodhouse and carried wood into the house — 2 hours for Mrs. M.G. Seaverns — 60.Cold. par. Clou.; W.N.W. temp. 5-26. Played on the guitar 1 1/4 hours in eve. Eve. cloudy. 12 (mid) clear. Tem 24.
20th. Clear. Cold. W.N.W. tem. 10-26. Went up to Uncle Samuel’s had dinner there. Picked 3 bags of hemlock twigs […] went to my home and got my sled and brought it here only a little […] ground. Stopped at Wm. Clapp’s. Martha A. Clapp there. She engaged 3 wreaths (pr. pine) walked up and back. Sold 1 wreath to Mrs. Ethel Torrey — 25. Called at Mrs. Merritt’s to get some milk — had none. Eve. clear. Cold. tem 19. Made 5 wreaths in eve. Then played on the guitar 1 1/2 hours.
21st (Sun.) Cloudy A.M. Clear after 11 A.M. W.N.W. tem. 16-32. Worked on my wreaths early in aft. Went up to Uncle Samuel’s. Irene there — she brought a loaf of bread there — Ellen gave me 1/2 of it also a large apple. Carried 3 pr. Pine wreaths to W.O. Clapp’s — for Martha — 75. Bought some milk at Mrs. Merritt’s. Rode 1 mile with a man in auto truck — some one who lives in Beechwoods — could not see who he was — too dark. Walked back in eve. Martha C. showed me a large grove filled with dif. kinds of green (wild) plants and red berries. Mrs. Clapp gave me 4 apples. Eve. clear. cold. tem. 15.
22d. Made wreaths (15) par. Clou. tem. About 15-42. W.N.W. eve. Clear. Tem. 28. Played on the guitar 1 1/4 hours in eve.
23d. Made wreaths until late in aft., then walked to Cohasset and carried 23 large hemlock wreaths. Sold none there, went to Hingham on 4:30 P.M. tr. from Cohasset. In eve. sold 12 wreaths there. Sold 4 to Mrs. Soule — 1.00. Sold 2 to a man opp. H.T.P. — 50. 2 to another man same place — 50. 2 to another man same place — 50. 2 to others — 50. Cloudy, wet, foggy to-day, W.N.W. Tem. about 30-42. Came back on 6:17 P.M. tr. Eve. very foggy, cold. Played on the guitar 1 1/4 hours in eve. I brought back 11 wreaths — the Conductor came and sat in a seat next to mine and took one and examined it, he said they were very handsome wreaths. I told him I got the hemlock in W. part of Scituate — where my place is — he belongs in Plymouth or Kingston.
24th. Made wreaths in forenoon. In aft. went to Hingham to sell wreaths — sold 4 to Prop. of Italian fruit store — 1.00. 2 to Thom. R. Studley — 50. 3 to man near R.R. Sta.– 75. 2 to a man near same place — 50. 1 to a man near same place — 25. Cloudy; W.N.W. tem. About 36-46. Wet and damp. Chilly. Began to rain over
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2:30 P.M. Light rain all. Cold. Met Henrietta, Ethel, and Frank on St. H. and E. are going to New London, Conn. to visit Lettie for 2 weeks — Frank was taking them to the R.R. Sta. in his auto: he bought 2 of my wreaths. Eve. dark. cold. Light rain. Played on the guitar 1 3/4 hours in eve.
Snow storm and mod. Gale late in night. Cold storm. Max. W. 35m. W.N.E.
diary snippet 2 – December 25th (Christmas Day)
25th. Christmas Day. Snowstorm until about 8 A.M. Par. clou. Until noon. Aft. clear. cold. Sold 2 of my wreaths to J. H. Vinal — 50. Late in aft. went up to Uncle Samuel’s — Had supper there and spent part of the eve. There. Carried all my wreaths (23) and put one on father’s and one on mother’s graves. One on the other end of the lot where Charlie’s little boy Edward, and little girl, Olive, are. One on each of Emeline’s little girls (Esther and Marion) graves, one on Aunt Emeline’s, the three are in Uncle Samuel’s lot. I put one on grandfather Hyland’s and grandmother Hyland’s — and on one my step-grandmother’s graves, and one on my great-grand-mother’s grave (Mrs. Lois Ellins). 10 in all. Left the rest at Uncle Samuel’s. Carried some rare kind of running evergreen to W.O. Clapp’s and gave it to Martha A.C. (also some pretty moss evergreen which I picked up near the North River. Called at Mrs. Merritt’s and bought some milk. Walked home in eve. Played (on the guitar) 1 h. 20 m. in eve. Eve. clear. cold. — tem. 21.
26th. Par. clou. W.S.W. tem. About 20-36. Late in aft. Went up to Uncle Samuel’s to get one of my wreaths — to put on Charlie’s new lot in Graveland Cem. — to put with a flag that was put there in honor of Fred. Fred did not come back with the 101st Machine Gun Battalion after the Great War ended. Eve. cloudy. W.N.W. Cold. Played on the guitar 1 1/2 hours in eve.
27th. Par. clou. W.W. tem. About 34-39. Mr. W.D. Gannett came here in forenoon and took the water pipes from the back of the stove (disconnected them from the copper boiler) and put a new grate in the stove — and cleaned out the stove. After he left here I took the stove out and cleaned it. Late in aft. went up to Uncle Samuel’s. Had supper there. Bought some milk at Mrs. Merritt’s. Ethel got it for me. She is nearly well again — got injured in automobile accident about a month ago. Rode 3/4 mile with Everett Marsh, and 1 mile with Robert Litchfield — in their autos. Walked back in eve. I went up to get some milk, but as I had a chance to ride to Uncle Samuel’s I did so. Received a Christ card in an envelope with a dollar bill from Henrietta — from New London, Conn. — she also sent me 2 […] chicks from Hingham — before she left there. Also rec. A Christmas card from Lottie several days ago. Eve. clou. Began to clear soon after I left Mrs. Merritt’s. Clear when I arr. back. Played on the guitar 1 h. 10 m. in eve. 11:30 P.M. tem. 32.
28th (Sun.) Clear. Tem about 25-38; W.N.W. eve. clear.
29th. Clear. Cold. tem. 15-35. Went up to Uncle Samuel’s late in forenoon. Had dinner there. In aft. cut wood in swamp for Uncle Samuel 3 3/4 hours. Had supper there. Walked back in eve. (also walked up there) Irene is there on a visit. Eve. clear. cold. Tem. at 11 P.M. 14. Fine weather in aft. W.E.S.S., W.N.W. in forenoon. Called at my home to get my saw horse and 4 ft measuring stick. Played on the guitar 1 h. 10 min. In eve.
30th. Light snowstorm all day. W.W.S.W. in forenoon, S.E. to E.N.E. in aft. tem. tem. [sic] 18-30. Cut wood 2 hours for Uncle Samuel — had dinner there, walked up and back. Called at Mrs. Merritt’s and bought some milk. Ethel got it — staid [sic] there 5 min. Eve. clear. cold. windy. W.N.W. Played on the guitar 1 h. 20 min. 11 P.M., tem. 23.
31st. Cut wood in swamp 4 1/2 hours for Uncle Samuel — had dinner there. Walked up and back — worked 20 min for Mrs. M.G. Seaverns — early in eve. Shoveling snow from path to street and clearing it from steps and […] — 15. Fine weather for the season. Clear. tem. 15-32. W.N.W. called at Eugene Brown
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To see if he has any potatoes to sell — Uncle Samuel wants to buy some. Eve. cloudy. tem. 32. Played on the guitar 1 h. 25 min in eve.
1919
[…] 3 cords and 1 ft. of hardwood in […] for Uncle Samuel — 7.50.
7 1/2 cords of hardwood for L.F. Hyland — 16.87. Hauled out 1/2 cord […] — 25.
Working for Uncle Samuel — mowing bushes — 75.
Working for L. F. Hyland — picking beans — 4.95.
Working for E. Jane Litchfield 9.60.
Hyman Coyne — 1.25.
Aaron Bates — 40.
Arthur E. Litchfield 4.30.
Wm. F. Carter — 7.72.
Mrs. Caroline Litchfield — 2.25.
Mason Litchfield — 5.00.
Peter W. Sharpe — 13.38.
Mrs. Emma F. Sargent — 5.85.
Charles Bailey — 1.50.
Mrs. Edna T. Bailey — 6.00
Miss Edith C. Sargent — 1.55
Fred T. Bailey — 5.60
Mrs. Salome Litchfield — 5.77
O. Clapp — 7.00
Mrs. Bertie Barnes — 7.50
Mrs. Vera Wilder — 13.60.
Herbert Bates and Mrs. Mary Wilder — 45.
Mrs. Mary Wilder — 35.
Mrs. Hazel Dimond — 1.65 […]
Joseph W. Morris — 2.10
George Crosby — 17.97
Mrs. Christine Ellis and Mr. Bullard — 8.78
Bruce Fletcher — 2.25
Mrs. Cora Bailey — 20.
Repaired and sharpened 1 pr. of scissors for Mrs. Henrietta Merritt — 15. Sharpened 2 prs. […] for Mrs. M — 12.
Working for S.T. Speare — 16.00
Margaret Speare — 5.70
Mrs. Ethel Torrey — 10.90
Frank Clapp — 26.50
Mrs. M.G. Seaverns — 26.55
H. Vinal — 6.41
Charles James — 2.00
Sold plants (from my garden at home) to Mrs. M. G. Seaverns — 1.00
Sold vegetables from my garden on the James place — 61. 35 boxes of currants 4.32 and 1/2 box of raspberries — 10 cts.
Sold the grass on my place — 1.00
Sold 1 1/2 feet of cedar wood — 1.50 (sawed into firewood)
Sold junk to Samuel Berson — 3.11
Made 54 wreaths (in Dec.) Sold 31 of them — 7.75
Assisting the Auctioneer at the auction at Henrietta’s — 5.00
Housing furniture and taking it out again for Mr. Smith after the auction — 1.00
Working for Henrietta (taking down buildings (in Nov.) — 2.00
And stay tuned for our serialized diary from 1920; the first post will appear on January 3rd!
*Please note that the diary transcription is a rough-and-ready version, not an authoritative transcript. Researchers wishing to use the diary in the course of their own work should verify the version found here with the manuscript original. The catalog record for the George Hyland’s diary may be found here. Hyland’s diary came to us as part of a collection of records related to Hingham, Massachusetts, the catalog record for this larger collection may be found here.
Join us for a program this week. Here is a look at what is planned:
On Monday, 2 December, at 6:00 PM:Revolutionary Networks: The Business & Politics of Printing the News, 1763–1789 with Joseph Adelman, Framingham State University. During the American Revolution, printed material played a crucial role as a forum for public debate. Joseph Adelman argues that printers—artisans who mingled with the elite but labored in a manual trade—used their commercial and political connections to directly shape Revolutionary political ideology and mass mobilization. Moving through the era of the American Revolution to the war’s aftermath, this history details the development of the networks of printers and explains how they contributed to the process of creating first a revolution and then the new nation. A pre-talk reception begins at 5:30 PM; the speaking program begins at 6:00 PM. There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).
On Tuesday, 3 December, at 5:15 PM: Climate in Words & Numbers: How Early Americans Recorded Weather in Almanacs with Joyce Chaplin, Harvard University. With support from the Guggenheim Foundation, Joyce Chaplin is compiling a database of manuscript notes about weather in early American almanacs, 1647-1820. Her talk focuses on how people recorded weather in numbers (including degrees Fahrenheit) and in words, ranging from “dull” to “elegant!” These notations are significant as records of a period of climate change, the Little Ice Age, also as records of how people made sense of and coped with that climatic disruption. This is part of the Boston Seminar on Environmental History series. Seminars are free and open to the public.
On Wednesday, 4 December, at 6:00 PM:Members & Fellows Holiday Party. MHS Fellows and Members are invited to the Society’s annual holiday party. Celebrate the season with an evening of holiday cheer and jovial camaraderie. This event is open to Members and Fellows of the MHS. Registration is required and space is limited.
On Saturday, 7 December, at 10:00 AM:The History & Collections of the MHS. This is a 90-minute docent-led walk through of our public rooms. The tour is free and open to the public. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
Abigail Adams: Life & Legacy Pop-Up Display Abigail Adams urged her husband to “Remember the Ladies” and made herself impossible to forget. But Abigail is memorable for more than her famous 1776 admonition. This final Remember Abigail display uses documents and artifacts through the ages to consider the way Abigail viewed her own legacy and to explore how and why we continue to Remember Abigail.
Fire! Voices from the Boston Massacre On the evening of March 5, 1770, soldiers occupying the town of Boston shot into a crowd, killing or fatally wounding five civilians. In the aftermath of what soon became known as the Boston Massacre, questions about the command to “Fire!” became crucial. Who yelled it? When and why? Because the answers would determine the guilt or innocence of the soldiers, defense counsel John Adams insisted that “Facts are stubborn things.” But what are the facts? The evidence, often contradictory, drew upon testimony from dozens of witnesses. Through a selection of artifacts, eyewitness accounts, and trial testimony—the voices of ordinary men and women—Fire! Voice from the Boston Massacre explores how this flashpoint changed American history. The exhibition is on display through 30 June 2020, Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and Tuesday from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
Please note that on Wednesday, 4 December, the library will close at 3:45 PM.
Ian Saxine, Bridgewater State University, W.B.H. Dowse Short-Term Research Fellow at the MHS
15 July, 1725 entry, John Penhallow Diary
Three years into a costly and unsuccessful war with the Wabanaki Confederacy on their “Eastern Frontier,” in 1725 Massachusetts leaders sent a commission to speak to their Indigenous foes and enquire “what was the Occasion of the war which the English…hardly knew.”[1] Most readers would find it hard to believe this ignorance over the causes of a conflict sparked by Bay Colony leaders’ consistent misreading of Indian treaties was genuine. So did I, when I started research on what will be the first book length treatment of a sprawling regional war between Massachusetts and the Wabanaki Confederacy during the 1720s that threatened to draw in numerous other unwilling colonies and tribes. The conflict went by many names (Dummer’s War, after the acting Massachusetts governor, is the most common), none suitable or often remembered. Marked less by battlefield drama than by small-scale ambushes and endless, fumbling negotiations, the conflict stands out to me for what it reveals about the invisible constraints on imperial ambitions in the early modern world. Most New England colonies agreed with Wabanaki critiques of Massachusetts’ unreasonable conduct towards them, and so refused to aid their beleaguered neighbor.
The details of one of the Bay Colony’s ensuing fact-finding missions survives in the MHS collections in a slender, unassuming booklet written by Captain John Penhallow, a militia officer posted on the Maine coast in the summer of 1725. Likely intended for his superiors, Penhallow’s “Journal in the three years War” detailed a month of diplomatic sausage-making. Unlike the better known records of formal treaties that punctuate colonial history, Penhallow’s account is stripped of ceremony. Instead, readers will encounter fumbling efforts to communicate in French, English, and Abenaki, a rare mention of Wabanaki writing symbols (“a few lines in Indian…[colonial translators] Could not interpret” and a detailed description of Indigenous property boundaries, also a rare find in any eighteenth-century collection.
Front Title, John Penhallow Diary
This item, catalogued as the John Penhallow Diary, is an unpolished manuscript, and was perhaps intended as the draft of a more formal report. In that respect the piece represents a way in which MHS collections from this period tend to shine—as an excellent repository of the private writings of public figures, whose official correspondence can be found down the road at the State Archives. John was the son of Samuel Penhallow, a superior court judge and prominent figure in colonial politics who wrote a book about the wars on the Maine frontier in 1726, and this item probably remained in Penhallow family collections before ending up at MHS.[2] (Similar, although much less illuminating reports of less well-connected militia officers can be found in abundance in the State Archives.)
Its unassuming appearance and lack of any headings give no indication that this document contains rare insights into Wabanaki politics and culture. Penhallow recorded candid Wabanaki statements about their land use practices, boundaries between groups, and internal political divides that seldom make it into official accounts of treaties published by Massachusetts.
This manuscript is one of the most powerful examples in my own experience of important findings coming from unexpected places. Penhallow’s account is probably mentioning a form of hieroglyphs used by the Wabanakis’ Mi’kmaq relatives. That, and its equally rare description of Indigenous property boundaries, makes it an invaluable resource for ethnohistorians interested in either of these understudied phenomena.
[1] All quotations from 15 July, 1725 John Penhallow Diary, n.p.
[2] Samuel Penhallow, History of the Wars of New-England. Boston, 1726. 1796 Lib. 31.21
This morning we took the early train at Alexandria that we might get to a fine view of the Pyramids by daylight. We are to see them before reaching Cairo. The way is charming. Palm trees, camels, laborers in flowing robes, buffaloes ploughing and sometimes yoked with a camel; and all cultivated ground [1].
So begins Sarah Freeman Clarke’s account of an Egyptian journey, during which she traveled by foot, train, boat, and donkey and explored pyramids, bazaars, tombs, and temples. Her sensitivity throughout the diary to color, light, and form and her receptiveness toward all she encountered reflect her vocation as an artist. Whenever she had the opportunity on the trip, she sketched people and landscapes. If lack of time prevented her from making a drawing, she would describe in her diary an image that she wished she could have captured in her sketchbook. The journal, entitled “Notes of a Nile Voyage,” is now part of the Perry-Clarke collection at the MHS.
At about 2 o’clock V. shouted “Pyramid” and we all looked…and as it seemed on the edge of the horizon were two faint spectral images, which would have been taken for mountains but for their symmetrical form. This is the most imposing view that one gets of these structures….when you are quite close they lose all their dignity and become ugly masses of broken and ill put together stonework [2].
Amidst many family responsibilities, Clarke (1808-1896) led an adventurous life, filled with learning and eclectic accomplishment. Born in Dorchester, she came of age during the intellectual and artistic ferment of antebellum Boston. Her first teacher was her paternal step-grandfather, Dr. James Freeman (1759-1835), minister of King’s Chapel in Boston. Under his guidance, Sarah and her brothers studied mathematics and ancient languages and literature. As her brother James recalled in his autobiography, Dr. Freeman’s aim as a teacher was to elicit his pupils’ interest in a subject rather than to pursue “mental discipline”[1] as an end in itself; study became a form of exploration for the children rather than a chore.
Now it is four o’clock, and when the lights are becoming most beautiful on these venerable objects, we must go for the days are short…. as we looked back to the pyramids they lost their… sordid aspect which they wear when you are too near to them and grow fairer and fairer at every step of distance gained [7].
Upon the death of her father in 1830, Clarke and her mother made ends meet by opening a boardinghouse in Boston. As her brothers left the city to pursue new ventures, Clarke began to extend her interests, taking advantage of city life. She gave art lessons to boardinghouse guests, attended lyceum lectures, and engaged in local philanthropic activities. The boardinghouse itself served as a makeshift school for Clarke, as it grew into a gathering place for budding educators, philosophers, and reformers. Among the visitors were her brother James, now a Harvard divinity student, and his friend and confidante Margaret Fuller, with whom he shared a devotion to German romantic literature.
During the 1830s and 1840s, Clarke became a student of the Romantic artist Washington Allston and formed friendships with Fuller, Ralph Waldo Emerson, and the Peabody sisters. Emerson described her as “a true & high-minded person,” but noted that she “has her full proportion of our native frost.”[2] Her reserve, perhaps, was a hidden strength, allowing her to listen and learn as much as she could from these friends and teachers. Emerson’s precept, to “satisfy the wants of your own soul…[despite] the prejudices of society,”[3] she said, had helped inspire her to pursue her art. “His discourses,” to her, were like “diamonds.”[4]
After lunch drove to the tombs of the Caliphs….The first we entered was an old mosque attached to a Sultan’s tomb. It was a lovely place, open to the sky, with white doves flying about the minarets, which rose, carved and beautiful, above the … upper edges of the walls of the inner court…. Another day when we return to Cairo I must come and paint a bit of the mosque and sky….The other tombs scattered around were beautiful. One had … a good view of the desert and the numerous domes, some in light and some in shadow made a charming picture with their pearly tints [21].
Clarke is worth getting to know not only for the distinguished company she kept, but as someone who found her own distinct path: as a landscape artist who exhibited her paintings at the Boston Athenaeum and whose drawings illustrated Fuller’s first book, Summer on the Lakes; as a participant in Fuller’s “Conversations” for women; as a teacher at Bronson Alcott’s Temple School; as a student of Dante, contributing a poem on the poet to first issue of the Dial and two studies to the Century magazine; and as founder of the Marietta, Georgia, town library.
We crossed the river in our small boat and took the donkeys on the other side … The sunlight coming from behind the … leaves and piercing them with its arrows and the play of color as well as light in this novel combination bewitched me, and I hoped to return and get a sketch of it at the same hour on another day [41].
Clarke was a veteran traveler by the time she made her Egyptian excursion, her interest sparked perhaps by the example of Allston, who had studied art in London, Paris, and Rome, following his graduation from Harvard in 1800. In 1843, after inheriting family money, Clarke, her brother James, and Fuller embarked on a western tour that covered Niagara Falls and the Great Lakes Region. The journey brought the travelers up close to places, people, and ways of life far removed from their everyday lives in Boston: native American encampments, wide open prairie, remote settlers’ cabins. As she would on all her later excursions, Clarke recorded her impressions in her sketchbook, much to Fuller’s delight. In a letter dated September 1843, Fuller wrote: “Sarah Clarke has made many sketches from the magnificent and lovely scenes we have visited. She has, in this way, quite a good journal of our summer.”[5]
Every part of this…temple, inside walls and outside, all over the pillars, pilasters,…and in every possible spot are sculptures. They are the history of the time—its newspapers, its records, its libraries, and its schools, for no doubt teachers brought here their pupils to be instructed in history [50].
In 1844, Clarke made the first of several trips to Italy, where she absorbed the landscape and art and drew outdoors. By the mid-nineteenth century, Italy was becoming a destination of choice for artists; Allston had described Rome as “the great University of Art.”[6] In the late 1860s, after inheriting most of her mother’s estate, she toured northern Italy to sketch the towns and landscapes that Dante would have known.
The ride through this valley is most impressive….It is a valley of stones. Walls of stones hem you in, your road is a bed of stones where once the Nile may or must have flowed….The glare of the sun on all this rock is most unpleasant, but the blue of the sky above, the yellow, red, and black rocks, every line melted by the … sunshine, the flowing outlines which show where the force of the water pressed and molded and rounded the rocks into the masses which we see, all bring before you the mighty force of a great river. It was impossible to stop to sketch in that glare but I would if I could so much was I impressed with the spirit of the place [68].
The Egyptian voyage would be Clarke’s last great expedition. In words and pictures, she had made many worlds her own. In later years, she settled in Marietta, Georgia, to be closer to family. Here she discovered yet another role for herself, that of making her books available to neighbors and family. Her collection became the basis for Marietta’s town library, founded with Clarke’s support, in 1893.
During her final years, Clarke, no longer able to travel, spent time with family and followed the news, taking a special interest in the 1896 presidential election between William McKinley and William Jennings Bryan. A letter she wrote to her sister-in-law suggests that her imagination and curiosity remained undiminished: “How I should have liked to take a flying machine, and fly from city to city, all over the country, to see the great crowds on election day!”[7]
Sources
Capper, Charles, Margaret Fuller: an American Romantic Life, v. 1, the private years. Oxford University Press, 1994.
Clarke, James Freeman, Autobiography, diary and correspondence, edited by Edward Everett Hale, Boston, Houghton Mifflin, 1891.
Emerson, Ralph Waldo. Journals and miscellaneous notebooks, Volume 7, edited by William H. Gilman and others, Harvard University Press, 1960.
Fuller, Margaret. The Letters of Margaret Fuller, Volume I, 1817-38, and Volume III, 1842-44, edited by Robert N. Hudspeth, Cornell University Press, 1983.
Kopp, Joan Alice. Sarah Freeman Clarke, 1808-1896: a woman of the nineteenth century. Marietta, Ga: Cobb Landmarks & Historical Society, 1993.
Marshall, Megan. Margaret Fuller: a new American life. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2013.
Marshall, Megan. The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism. Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, 2005.
Myerson, Joel. “A True and High-Minded Person: Transcendentalist Sarah Clarke. Southwest Review, Spring 1974, 163-172.
Stebbins, Theodore E. , Jr. The Lure of Italy: American artists and the Italian experience, 1760-1914. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, in association with Harry N. Abrams, Inc., Publishers.
Join us for a program this week. We have a talk on Monday evening and a seminar on Tuesday. Please note that the library and exhibition galleries will close at 2:00 PM on Tuesday, 26 November and the building will be closed Thursday, 27 November, Friday, 28 November, and Saturday, 29 November for the Thanksgiving holiday.
On Monday, 25 November at 6:00 PM:Black Radical: The Life & Times of William Monroe Trotter with Kerri Greenidge, Tufts University. William Monroe Trotter was an unlikely American hero. With the stylistic verve of a newspaperman and the unwavering fearlessness of an emancipator, he galvanized black working- class citizens to wield their political power despite the violent racism of post- Reconstruction America. For more than 30 years, the Harvard-educated Trotter edited and published the Guardian, a weekly Boston newspaper that was read across the nation. Defining himself against the gradualist politics of Booker T. Washington and the elitism of W. E. B. Du Bois, Trotter advocated for a radical vision of black liberation that prefigured leaders such as Marcus Garvey, Malcolm X, and Martin Luther king, Jr. A pre-talk reception begins at 5:30 PM; the speaking program begins at 6:00 PM. There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).
On Tuesday, 26 November at 5:15 PM:Navigating Colonial, Racial, & Indigenous Histories on the Juan Bautista de Anza National Historic Trailwith Laura Barraclough, Yale University, and comment by Maria John, University of Massachusetts–Boston. Launched by Congress in 1978, the National Historic Trail (NHT) system recognizes historic travel routes that contributed to the making of the United States. This paper examines the collision of colonial, racial, and indigenous histories on the Juan Bautista de Anza NHT, which commemorates the 1775-76 expedition of Mexican settlers from Sonora to San Francisco. While the Anza NHT has been empowering to contemporary Mexican Americans, it struggles to fairly represent the layered impacts of Spanish, Mexican, and U.S. colonization on the region’s Native peoples. This is part of the Boston Seminar on Modern American Society and Culture series. Seminars are free and open to the public.
Abigail Adams: Life & Legacy Pop-Up Display Abigail Adams urged her husband to “Remember the Ladies” and made herself impossible to forget. But Abigail is memorable for more than her famous 1776 admonition. This final Remember Abigail display uses documents and artifacts through the ages to consider the way Abigail viewed her own legacy and to explore how and why we continue to Remember Abigail.
Fire! Voices from the Boston Massacre On the evening of March 5, 1770, soldiers occupying the town of Boston shot into a crowd, killing or fatally wounding five civilians. In the aftermath of what soon became known as the Boston Massacre, questions about the command to “Fire!” became crucial. Who yelled it? When and why? Because the answers would determine the guilt or innocence of the soldiers, defense counsel John Adams insisted that “Facts are stubborn things.” But what are the facts? The evidence, often contradictory, drew upon testimony from dozens of witnesses. Through a selection of artifacts, eyewitness accounts, and trial testimony—the voices of ordinary men and women—Fire! Voice from the Boston Massacre explores how this flashpoint changed American history. The exhibition is on display through 30 June 2020, Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and Tuesday from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
The MHS was pleased to partner again this year with the Teachers as Scholars program to offer a two-day workshop this fall entitled, “Documenting the Revolution: Boston and the War for Independence.”
Teachers as Scholars (TAS) offers professional development opportunities for teachers that connect them directly with University faculty and other content experts—like the staff at the MHS! TAS offers 70 programs each year hosted by many of our neighboring institutions, including Harvard, Boston University, MIT, Brandeis, Simmons College, Tufts University, the University of Massachusetts (Boston), Berklee School of Music, Boston College, and Wheelock College.
At this year’s workshop, we explored the varied ways that Bostonians experienced the War for Independence, going beyond the typically broad strokes that teachers use to present this important period. Through newspapers, broadsides, and pamphlets, we examined the role of propaganda in recruiting volunteers, encouraging boycotts and rebellion, and forming a new American identity.
Jonathan Lane, Revolution 250 Coordinator, spoke to teachers about the major players in Massachusetts during the period of the Revolution, as well as the growing tensions in the colonies that erupted into protest, and ultimately, war.
Title page and frontispiece of Poems on Various Subjects, Religious and Moral. Written by Phillis Wheatley. First published in London on September 1, 1773.
Elyssa Tardif, Director of Education, explored accounts written by or about women like Phillis Wheatley, the brilliant writer who published a book of poetry while enslaved by the Wheatley family; Mercy Otis Warren, who wrote a history of the American Revolution; and Deborah Sampson, who disguised herself as a man to join the Continental Army.
The Female Review: or, Memoirs of an American Young Lady. Herman Mann. Dedham, [MA]: printed by Nathaniel and Benjamin Heaton, 1797. Frontispiece consists of an engraved portrait of Deborah Sampson, later Deborah Sampson Gannett. Engraving, circa 1797.Gwen Fries, Assistant Production Editor at the Adams Papers, led teachers through an activity that parsed four excerpts of a letter written by Abigail Adams—the celebrated “Remember the Ladies” letter of March 1776.
Kate Melchior, Assistant Director of Education, spoke about the experiences of Loyalists like the Robie family, as well as critical court cases like that of Quock Walker and Elizabeth Freeman, who successfully sued for freedom from slavery, which led to the abolishment of slavery in Massachusetts.
Teachers also had the opportunity to explore our newest exhibition, Fire! Voices from the Boston Massacre. The MHS Education team looks forward to continuing our partnership with Teachers as Scholars, as well as exploring new partnerships that will connect us with even more educators across the Commonwealth.
by Susan Martin, Processing Archivist & EAD Coordinator
Illustration from Moby Dick, 1930 (p. 81)
Today (20 November) marks the 199th anniversary of a tragic day for the whaling ship Essex. The Essex had sailed from Nantucket, Mass. on 12 August 1819, traveling from the North Atlantic to the South Atlantic, around Cape Horn, and up the west coast of South America. But 15 months into the journey, on 20 November 1820, while hunting in the Pacific Ocean, the ship was rammed by a very angry and very large sperm whale.
If this sounds familiar, it may be because this event served as an inspiration for Herman Melville’s Moby Dick. But as historian Nathaniel Philbrick explains in his 2000 book In the Heart of the Sea, “the point at which Melville’s novel ends—the sinking of the ship—was merely the starting point for the story of the real-life Essex disaster” (p. xiii). The 20 crew members who fled in the ship’s whaleboats would spend three months stranded at sea, their number eventually dwindling to eight.
Pamphlet by R. B. Forbes, 1884
When I searched our catalog for more information, I found that the MHS holds books on this subject published between 1999 and 2016, as well as a pamphlet called Loss of the Essex, Destroyed by a Whale, written in 1884 by Robert Bennet Forbes. Forbes was a merchant, sailor, and scion of a famous Boston family. He started his pamphlet with this eye-catching sentence: “Now that the word ‘cannibalism’ is forced upon our notice so unnecessarily, it seems a good time to make a few notes on the fate of the crew of the Essex.”
Wow, I didn’t see that coming.
Forbes’ pamphlet was clearly published in response to some provocation, but I couldn’t determine what that was. Sixty-four years had passed since the ship’s fateful voyage, and most of its crewmen were dead. (Several writers count Thomas Nickerson as the last survivor, but Seth Weeks died in 1887.) Moreover, the darker parts of the story had never been a secret. First mate Owen Chase had published his version of events in 1821. It was called Narrative of the Most Extraordinary and Distressing Shipwreck of the Whale-Ship Essex and included explicit details.
It’s possible that Nickerson’s death in 1883 had revived interest and prompted Forbes’ reply, but I can’t be sure. In any case, Forbes explained, unemotionally, the facts of the matter. Yes, the crew had resorted to cannibalism to survive their three grueling months at sea, but similar incidents had been known to occur throughout history. Forbes’ purpose was evidently to provide context and defend the decisions made by the desperate crew. In fact, the subtitle of his pamphlet is: With an Account of the Sufferings of the Crew, Who Were Driven to Extreme Measures to Sustain Life.
Illustration from Moby Dick, 1930 (p. 661)
Forbes largely relied on Owen Chase as a source. Other fragmentary versions of the story existed, but Chase got to print first, so his became the dominant one. As first mate, Chase had been responsible for the men in one of the three whaleboats, and he undoubtedly felt the need to defend his actions both during the initial whale hunt and in the months after.
In 1960, a mysterious manuscript was found in an attic in New York. This manuscript was later authenticated as the work of Thomas Nickerson, cabin boy on the Essex, who’d been only 14 when the ship sailed out of Nantucket. In 1876, he wrote down his memories of the voyage and even drew sketches of scenes as he remembered them. (Our friends at the Nantucket Historical Association now hold this manuscript.) Nathaniel Philbrick and others have discussed the ways these two accounts differ.
Some elements of the Essex tragedy are particularly fraught. First, while most of the men who died succumbed to starvation, one did not; 18-year-old Owen Coffin was shot after the drawing of lots. Second, a disproportionate number of the earliest crew members to die were men of color.
All in all, the story of the Essex is a haunting reminder of the dark but undeniable parts of American history.
Illustration from Moby Dick, 1930 (p. 335)
Speaking of Moby Dick, the MHS collections include a 1930 hardback edition of Melville’s classic novel with beautiful illustrations by Rockwell Kent. I couldn’t resist using Kent’s illustrations in this post, although they depict the Pequod instead of the Essex.
Sources at the MHS:
Dowling, David O. Surviving the Essex: The Afterlife of America’s Most Storied Shipwreck. Hanover, N.H.: ForeEdge, an imprint of University Press of New England, 2016.
Forbes, R. B. Loss of the Essex, Destroyed by a Whale: With an Account of the Sufferings of the Crew, Who Were Driven to Extreme Measures to Sustain Life. Cambridge, Mass.: John Wilson and Son, 1884.
Haverstick, Iola and Betty Shepard, eds. The Wreck of the Whaleship Essex: A Narrative Account by Owen Chase, First Mate. San Diego: Harcourt, Brace & Co., 1999.
Melville, Herman. Moby Dick, or the Whale. New York: Random House, 1930.
Philbrick, Nathaniel. In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex. New York: Viking, 2000.
It’s a busy week at the MHS. Here is a look at what is planned:
On Monday, 18 November, at6:00 PM:This Land Is Their Land The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, & the Troubled History of Thanksgiving with David J. Silverman, George Washington University. David Silverman explores the history of the Wampanoag people to reveal the distortions of the Thanksgiving Myth, a persisting story that promotes the idea that Native people willingly ceded their country to the English to give rise to a white, Christian, democratic nation. Silverman traces how the Wampanoags have lived—and told—a different history over the past four centuries. A pre-talk reception begins at 5:30. There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).
On Tuesday, 19 November, at 5:15 PM:Murder at the Manhattan Well: The Personal & the Political in the Election of 1800 with Paul Gilje, University of Oklahoma and comment by Kate Grandjean, Wellesley College. In 1800, journeyman carpenter, Levi Weeks, was accused of murdering Guliema Sands, a young woman living in the same boarding house. Using the trial transcript, this paper places the lives of Weeks and Sands in a larger context: Weeks as an artisan in a dynamic economy and Sands as a poor unattached woman amidst changing ideas about sexuality. The author also relates the trial to the New York election that occurred a month later.
On Wednesday,20 November, at6:00 PM:New Directions for Boston’s Subsidized Housing: Learning from the Past with Kate Bennett, Boston Housing Authority; Soni Gupta, The Boston Foundation; Lawrence Vale, MIT; Sandra Henriquez, Detroit Housing Commission; and moderator David Luberoff, Harvard Joint Center for Housing Studies. As neighborhoods across Boston face enormous development pressure, there is a risk that low-income residents will be forced out of the city. Social disruption due to gentrification, shifting government policies and programs, and the challenges of climate change make the future of affordable housing in Boston precarious. In the past, Boston modeled creative and successful solutions to dire housing problems, and there is hope that the city can continue to deploy innovative policies that will brighten the future for all city residents. Our final panel in this series will look at the future of affordable housing in Boston, taking stock of past lessons learned. Note: We had originally scheduled William McGonagle to be a part of this discussion. We were shocked and heartbroken to learn of his passing. Kate Bennett, the Acting Administrator of the Boston Housing Authority, has agreed to participate in his place. We apologize if there is any confusion due to the names listed in printed material being different from the names listed online. This is part three of a series of four programs that is made possible by the generosity of Mass Humanities and the Joint Center for Housing Studies at Harvard University. REGISTRATION IS NOW CLOSED.
On Thursday, 21 November, at5:15 PM:Mary Church Terrell’s Intersectional Black Feminism withAlison M. Parker, University of Delaware, and Kerri Greenidge, Tufts University. Civil rights activist Mary Church Terrell (1863-1954) highlighted the intersections of race and sex in black women’s lives. This paper focuses on Terrell’s critiques of the suffrage movement, the social purity movement, and the postbellum white nostalgia for “Black Mammies.” Terrell asserted black women’s right to be full citizens, to vote, and to be treated without violence and with respect. This is part of the Boston Seminar on African American History series.This session is co-sponsored by the New England Biography Series. Seminars are free and open to the public.
On Friday, 22 November, at 2:00 PM:Abigail Adams: Life & Legacy Gallery Talk. Join an Adams Papers editor to explore how Abigail Adams has come to hold a unique place within the fabric of American life.
On Saturday, 23 November, at 10:00 AM: The History & Collections of the MHS. This is a 90-minute docent-led walk through of our public rooms. The tour is free and open to the public. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.
Abigail Adams: Life & Legacy Pop-Up Display Abigail Adams urged her husband to “Remember the Ladies” and made herself impossible to forget. But Abigail is memorable for more than her famous 1776 admonition. This final Remember Abigail display uses documents and artifacts through the ages to consider the way Abigail viewed her own legacy and to explore how and why we continue to Remember Abigail. Join us for a gallery talk on 22 November at 2:00 PM.
Fire! Voices from the Boston Massacre now open! On the evening of March 5, 1770, soldiers occupying the town of Boston shot into a crowd, killing or fatally wounding five civilians. In the aftermath of what soon became known as the Boston Massacre, questions about the command to “Fire!” became crucial. Who yelled it? When and why? Because the answers would determine the guilt or innocence of the soldiers, defense counsel John Adams insisted that “Facts are stubborn things.” But what are the facts? The evidence, often contradictory, drew upon testimony from dozens of witnesses. Through a selection of artifacts, eyewitness accounts, and trial testimony—the voices of ordinary men and women—Fire! Voice from the Boston Massacre explores how this flashpoint changed American history. The exhibition is on display at the MHS October 31, 2019 through June 30, 2020, Monday and Wednesday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM, and Tuesday from 10:00 AM to 7:00 PM.
