By Jeremy Dibbell

We’ve recently acquired three wonderful new microfilm reader/scanners, and they’re receiving rave reviews from staff and readers alike (research fellow Matt Bahar, pictured here, has been making good use of one in recent days), and other library visitors have been tossing around some pretty impressive superlatives about them (by which I mean positive superlatives, which was not usually the case with the previous readers).

The new machines, called ScanPro 2000s, allow readers to scan images from microfilm as PDF or image files onto a flash drive, to their email account, or to a printer in the library. The quality is significantly better than the printouts made from our older machines, and the ability to create zoomable, enhanceable image files and high-quality PDF documents is definitely an improvement.

When we first saw a demo of one of these, staff picked a reel of microfilm that we knew was just about impossible to read on our other machines (too dark, too smudgy, &c.). With the ScanPro, a couple of quick clicks resulted in a clear, easily-readable image (I confess, I was shocked at the level of detail we could pick out by adjusting the settings just a little bit). There’s even a “spot-edit” feature, that allows you to lighten up that dark corner of a page or highlight a signature by increasing the contrast. Just about every time I use one of them (usually before we open since they’ve been pretty popular during the day!) I find another nifty new feature.

Researchers who cannot visit the library can request digital files to be e-mailed to them by the library staff. Please see details here at under “low resolution digital files.”

The purchase of the ScanPros was made possible thanks to a grant from the Ruby W. and LaVon P. Linn Foundation, and to fundraising efforts led by MHS Fellow Frederic D. Grant, for which we (and our readers) are exceedingly grateful.

Next time you visit, be sure to ask for a “test drive” of one of the new machines!

By Suzanne Carroll

If you’ve had enough beach reads this summer, perhaps it’s time to consider a publication from the Massachusetts Historical Society for your next book. Now through 31 August, the Society is offering many of its most popular titles at a discount to MHS Fellows and Members. Whether you’re interested in John Winthrop or John Adams, soldiers or suffragettes, the MHS has a wide range of engaging, high-quality books available for the curious reader. Click here [PDF] to learn more about our discounted titles.

Did you know that the Massachusetts Historical Society has been publishing books since 1792? Not only is the MHS the oldest historical society in America; it’s also one of the country’s oldest publishers. Perhaps even more surprising, many of the Society’s earliest publications are still available for purchase. The oldest volume in the inventory is Collections of the MHS, series 1, volume 6, which dates from 1799. Like all of the Collections, this volume features items straight from the archives, such as letters by George Washington and Peter Stuyvesant, as well as a list of vocabularies from American Indian languages. Bibliophiles may also be interested to know that copies of many of the Society’s Proceedings, dating from the 1860s, are still in stock, as are all 18 volumes of Sibley’s Harvard Graduates.

For information on any of our publications, whether from the 18th century or the 21st, visit http://www.masshist.org/in_print/ or e-mail publications@masshist.org.

By Jeremy Dibbell

The MHS awards a wide variety of research fellowships each year, and I’m happy to be able to pass along the list for the 2010-11 season. Please pardon the lengthy list. For more information about each type of fellowship, click the link in the heading. We look forward to welcoming back longtime friends and meeting new ones from among this exciting group.

MHS-NEH Long-Term Research Fellowships:

Rachel Van, Columbia University, Free Trade and Family Values: Kinship Networks and the Culture of Early American Capitalism

Joanne van der Woude, Harvard University, American Aeneids: Conquest and Conversion in Poetry from the Americas

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Research Fellowship (with the Boston Athenaeum):

Peter Wirzbicki, New York University, Black Intellectuals, White Abolitionists, and Revolutionary Transcendentalists: Creating the Radical Intellectual Tradition in Antebellum Boston

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) Awards (with 16 other institutions)*

Thomas Adams, Tulane University, The Servicing of America: Service Work, Political Economy, and the Making of Modern America

*Rachel Cope, Brigham Young University, Drops of Grace and Mercy: How Women Cultivated Personal Change through Conversion Processes

Christine DeLucia, Yale University, The Memory Frontier: Making Past and Place in the Northeast after King Philip’s War

Allison Elias, University of Virginia, Gendering the Problems of Working Women: Clerical Workers, Labor Organizing, and Second-Wave Feminism

Hayley Glaholt, Northwestern University, ‘Reversing the Chivalry of Christ’: Quaker Women Challenge the ‘Species Line’ of Pacifist Ethics

Jane Fiegen Green, Washington University St. Louis, The Boundary of Youth: Adulthood and Civil Society in Early America, 1780-1850

Yu-ling Huang, State University of New York at Binghamton, The United States and Reproductive Politics in Postwar East Asia: A Transnational Network of Demographic Knowledge, Contraceptive Technologies, and Population Control Policies

*Robert Mussey, ‘To Seek a Better Country’: A Biography of Richard Cranch and Family

*Nicholas Osborne, Columbia University, Little Capitalists: Savings Institutions in United States History, 1816-1941

Christopher Pastore, University of New Hampshire, From Sweetwater to Seawater: An Environmental and Atlantic History of Narragansett Bay, 1636-1836

*Joshua Smith, U.S. Merchant Marine Academy, Yankee Doodle Upset: New England’s Yankee Identity in the War of 1812

Peter Wirzbicki, New York University, Black Intellectuals, White Abolitionists, and Revolutionary Transcendentalists: Creating the Radical Intellectual Tradition in Antebellum Boston

* Note: Those names marked with a * will be conducting research at MHS through this award.

MHS Short-Term Research Fellowships:

Richard Boles, The George Washington University, Divided Faiths: The Rise of Segregated Northern Churches (African American Studies Fellowship)

Annie Rudd, Columbia University, The Performance of Everyday Life: A History of the Photographic Pose (Andrew Oliver Research Fellowship)

Anthony Antonucci, University of Connecticut, ‘When in Rome’: American Relations with the Italian States from Thomas Jefferson to Nathaniel Hawthorne, 1790-1860 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Matthew Bahar, University of Oklahoma, The People of the Dawnland and Their Atlantic World (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
 
Irene Cheng, Columbia University, Forms of Function: Self Culture, Geometry, and Octagon Architecture in Antebellum America (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Rachel Herrmann, University of Texas at Austin, Food and War: Indians, Slaves, and the American Revolution (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Sarah Keyes, University of Southern California, Circling Back: Migration to the Pacific and the Reconfiguration of America, 1820-1900 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Susan Pearson, Northwestern University, Registering Birth: Population and Personhood in American History (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Nathan Perl-Rosenthal, Columbia University, Corresponding Republics: Private Letters and Patriot Societies in the American, Dutch and French Revolutions, ca. 1765-1792 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Marc Selverstone, University of Virginia, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Withdrawal of American Troops from Vietnam (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

David Silverman, The George Washington University, Thundersticks: Firearms and the Transformation of Native America (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)

Eric Hinderaker, University of Utah, Boston’s Massacre: Authority and Violence in the British Empire (Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship)

Mary Kelley, University of Michigan, American Reading and Writing Practices, 1760-1860 (Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship)

Marc-William Palen, University of Texas at Austin, The Cleveland ‘Conspiracy’: Mugwumpery, Free Trade Ideology, and Foreign Policy in Gilded-Age America (Marc Friedlaender Fellowship)

David Preston, The Citadel, Braddock’s Veterans: Paths of Loyalty in the British Empire, 1755-1775 (Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)

Nora Doyle, University of North Carolina, ‘A Higher Place in the Scale of Being’: Experience and Representation of the Maternal Body in America, 1750-1865 (Ruth R. & Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)

Laura Prieto, Simmons College, New Woman: New Empire: 1898 and Its Legacies for Women in the United States (Ruth R. & Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)

Edward Hanson, The Papers of Robert Treat Paine (Paine Publication Fund Fellowship)

Brian Gratton, Arizona State University, Henry Cabot Lodge and the Politics of Immigration Restriction (Twentieth Century Fellowship)

Sara Damiano, The Johns Hopkins University, Financial Credit and Professional Credibility: Lawyers and Laypeople in New England Ports, 1700-1776 (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)

Neal Dugre, Northwestern University, Creating New England: Intercolonial Political Culture and the Birth of a Region in the Seventeenth-Century English Atlantic (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)

By Anna Cook

On Wednesday, 20 January, Eileen Hunt Botting from the University of Notre Dame spoke about her current project: a scholarly edition of Hannah Mather Crocker’s Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston, written between 1826-1829 shortly before Crocker’s death. Botting describes Reminiscences as “tripartite” in structure: two versions of Crocker’s history of Boston and an appendix of primary source material, including more than one hundred poems, often political in nature, authored by Crocker, some of which were published during her lifetime. The first, and longer, version of Crocker’s history is organized geographically and thematically, focusing on the people and places Crocker knew from a lifetime living in Boston. The second version is a shorter, edited version that Botting theorizes may have been drafted with publication in mind – possibly in the MHS Collections. 

Botting opened her talk with a brief biographical sketch of Crocker herself, a descendent from both the Mather and Hutchinson families of Boston. What little is known of Crocker suggests that she strongly identified with the Mather side of her family and was also deeply affected by her experience as a young woman coming of age in the midst of the American Revolution. As a daughter of the new Republic she saw herself as the “female heir” of the Mather tradition of ministry, writing persuasive poetry and in 1818 the first American-authored book-length tract on women’s rights, “Observations of the real rights of women, with their appropriate duties, agreeable to Scripture, reason and common sense.” Crocker was, Botting argues, the American equivalent of Mary Wollstonecraft, although her work was derided by later nineteenth-century feminist leaders as too conservative in her political demands. 

Reminiscences is the largest repository of Crocker’s extant writing and drew upon the Mather family library as well as Crocker’s personal connections to the Massachusetts Historical Society and the American Antiquarian Society. Crocker also draws upon oral remembrances shared among her circle of family and friends, providing valuable first-hand accounts of Boston during the Early Republic.   

Conversation among attendees at the presentation centered around Crocker’s methodology as a writer of history, particularly in the context of other female historians of her day (such as Hannah Adams and Mercy Otis Warren). There was also discussion about her religious ties (Botting describes her as a “an open-minded Congregationalist”) and speculation about the financial pressures that may have led her to begin writing and publishing after her husband’s death in the 1790s when she was left with about three hundred dollars to her name and seven surviving children (out of ten pregnancies!) to support. 

We look forward to the forthcoming Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston as a valuable addition to Boston and American women’s history, and hope it will be of use to future generations of scholars in a variety of fields.

By Anna Cook

Last Wednesday (16 December), MHS research fellow Karen Woods Weierman gave “concluding remarks” about the research that has brought her to a second fellowship here at the MHS: an examination of the 1836 legal case Commonwealth vs. Aves, or “the case of the slave-child Med” as it was commonly referred to. Med was a seven-year-old enslaved girl brought by her Southern owners to Boston when they came North to visit family. Anti-slavery activists discovered Med’s status and brought suit against the family claiming that since Med was on free soil it was unlawful to keep her enslaved, even though the family was only “in transit.” Judge Lemuel Shaw, who heard the case, ultimately decided in favor of freeing Med, and the case remained an influential legal decision until the Dred Scott decision of 1857.   

Karen Weierman’s work at the Historical Society this fall was comprised of four parts. She built on her work at the Boston Public Library, which holds the records of the Boston Female Anti-slavery Society (BFASS); she attempted to piece together the involvement of the Boston African-American community in Med’s case – a process that has involved a lot of archival detective work!; she delved deeper into the legal history of the case, with its cast of “usual suspects” who appear time and time again in slave transit cases of this period; and finally, she hopes to consider the literary dimension of the case – including the role played by such literary and abolitionist figures as Maria Chapman and Lydia Maria Child.

Her time at the MHS, Karen reported, has been helpful in clarifying what will be framed in the lens of her book project. Currently, she is hoping to maintain a tight focus on Med’s case and the surrounding decade, starting with an 1832 case that was the first slave-child case and ending with the 1842 Latimer case, which shifted the nation’s focus from slave transit cases to fugitive slave laws in the lead-up to the Civil War. While the case of Med has not gone entirely un-examined in the historiography, the attention it has received this far has been minor and no one has yet done an interdisciplinary study that seeks to combine local, Boston history, legal scholarship, and literary scholarship: this is a gap that Karen is hoping to fill with her work.

During the Q&A period, several audience members questioned what Med’s owners were thinking bringing a slave North to a city like Boston, which was known for its abolitionist activities. There was also a great deal of discussion about the way that the discourse of motherhood was shared by both the pro- and anti-slavery sides: those who argued for Med to remain with her owners suggested that anti-slavery activists would be ripping Med’s family apart by keeping her in the North while her mother remained enslaved in Louisana; abolitionists countered by pointing out that Med’s family was already torn apart by slavery and that it was the duty of the owners to free Med’s mother who could travel North to be reunited with her daughter. Both sides, in other words, were positioning themselves as “protectors of children” and the family.

Sadly, Med died before her eighth birthday in an orphan home, set free but with her custody remaining murky. The reason for her death remains unclear, but her story vanishes from the antislavery discourse given its less-than-triumphal end.  I look forward to seeing how Karen brings her back from obscurity and re-directs our focus toward this legal and social turning-point in the history of anti-slavery law.

By Jeremy Dibbell

The MHS, including the library, will be closed this Thursday through Saturday (26-28 November) in observance of the Thanksgiving holiday. We will resume regular hours on Monday, 30 November.

Additionally, the MHS website, including this blog, will be unavailable between 8-10 a.m. on Tuesday, 24 November for a hardware upgrade. We hope to be back up and running as soon as possible. Should you need to access the ABIGAIL online catalog during that time, please use this link.

By Anna Cook

On 4 November, Assistant Reference Librarian Tracy Potter and intern Sarah Desmond (Endicott College), gave a progress report on their project to survey the presidential papers held at the MHS. This project, funded by a generous donation from MHS trustee Dennis Shapiro (in attendence), has as its goal the preparation of a web-accessible subject guide to letters written by U.S. Presidents within the collections of the MHS. The finished guide will document all known correspondence, located through bibliographic research and a survey of staff members, and list the MHS holdings by president and then collection and subject matter. The only type of correspondence omitted will be straight-up autographs (i.e. signed commissions), which contain no substantive writing by the individual themselves. There will be a particular emphasis on documents from the presidential years, although other items will also be included as known. Sections on “other materials” and “related material” (items not held at the MHS which may be of interest) will add further value to the finding guide.

Hundreds of letters have so far been identified and itemized, including a twenty-eight page list of letters from Theodore Roosevelt, twenty-seven pages of letters from George Washington (including 173 letters to Timothy Pickering alone), and forty-nine letters from John F. Kennedy, mostly located in the Leverett Saltonstall autograph collection. Letters from every single President have been found in our collections, with the exception of the two most recent individuals to hold the office: George W. Bush and Barack Obama. Tracy and Sarah shared some of their favorite finds, including a letter from Richard Nixon in the Leverett Saltonstall papers in which Nixon relates his enthusiasm over a Fig Festival in California.

Conversation during the audience question and comment period focused on the methodology for locating the correspondence, questions about the intended audience for the finding guide, and suggestions for future uses of the information that will come out of this project, (such as a web-based exhibition highlighting the presidential papers held here at the Society).  Peter Drummey shared one of his own favorite items from a U.S. President: a preserved bird found in a letter from Theodore Roosevelt to a bird-watching friend during Roosevelt’s college days. 

We congratulate Sarah and Tracy on the work they have already put in and wish them luck as they forge ahead.

By Jeremy Dibbell

On Monday, 9 November, the MHS hosts the official launch of Woody Holton’s Abigail Adams, a new biography of the woman Holton calls the “most richly documented woman of America’s founding era.” Holton offers important new insights into the life and times of his subject: Catherine Allgor, quoted on the dust jacket, says of the book “This is not your father’s Abigail Adams. Woody Holton has given us the gift of the most fully rounded picture of those most famous of Founding Mothers to date. Entrepreneur, politician, mother, wife – Abigail Adams emerges from Holton’s burnished prose as the compelling, complicated person she was. The discoveries he has made, and the insights they have inspired, will shape how we think of revolutionary men and women and partnerships both political and personal.”

Much of Holton’s research for this book is drawn from the Adams Family papers collection here at MHS (in its various forms), so needless to say we’re delighted to see the project come to fruition and are very much looking forward to the launch event. Refreshments will be served at 5:30 p.m. on Monday, with a talk by Woody Holton to begin at 6 p.m. Copies of the book will be available for purchase after the lecture.

On a personal note, I started Abigail Adams last night, and read long into the wee hours. It’s as captivating a biography as any I’ve ever read.

By Jeremy Dibbell

The 2009 volume of the Massachusetts Historical Review is now available. You can order a copy here.

The volume’s contents:

Essays
– Jason M. Colby, Race, Empire, and New England Capital in the Caribbean, 1890-1930
– J. Patrick Mullins, “A Kind of War, Tho’ Hitherto an Un-Bloody One”: Jonathan Mayhew, Francis Bernard, and the Indian Affair
– Neil Longley York, Rival Truths, Political Accommodation, and the Boston “Massacre”
– Stephen Kantrowitz, A Place for “Colored Patriots”: Crispus Attucks among the Abolitionists, 1842-1863
– Robert J. Robertson, Louisa Catherine Adams Kuhn: Florentine Adventures, 1859-1860

Notes & Documents
– M. X. Lesser, A Transcendentalist Conversion Narrative

Review Essay
– Elizabeth R. Varon, The Afterlife of Abolition