By Nancy Heywood, Collection Services

Three years ago, on 5 August 2009, MHS staff began posting JQA’s line-a-day diary entries on Twitter, exactly 200 years after the day described. (Read about the projects launch in a post from July 2009.) JQA’s followers on Twitter received daily updates about his long voyage to Russia (he arrived in St. Petersburg on 23 September 1809) and since then have been reading JQA’s brief descriptions of his official duties, aspects of his family life and recreational activities such as frequent walks.  JQA’s diplomatic duties included many meetings with Russia’s Foreign Minister, Count Rumyantsev (JQA usually spelled his name, “Romanzoff”), diplomats from many European countries, and interactions with Levett Harris, the U. S. consul in St. Petersburg.  For example JQA’s line-a-day entry from 6 August 1810:

Interview and Conversation with Romanzoff. Call on Harris. Dined at Blome’s. Mrs Colombi here; and Jones.

Two hundred years ago (early August 1812), from his location in St. Petersburg, JQA monitored a war between France and Russia (Napoleon’s Grand Army invaded Russia in June 1812) and JQA anticipated hearing about a war between the U. S. and Great Britain.  It took a long time for news to travel across the globe, but JQA received a note on 5 August 1812 officially confirming the war between the U. S. and Britain, even though the U. S. declared war on 18 June 1812.  JQA’s line-a-day entry from 5 August 1812:

At the sale of de Bray’s furniture. Claude Gabriel here. Note from Proud. War declared 18 June by U.S. against G.B.

MHS enjoys sharing JQA’s succinct diary via tweets, and we were thrilled to get some favorable replies to a recent post mentioning his recent anniversary on Twitter:

I signed up for a Twitter account just so I could follow JQA. Thought it was a wonderful idea – still follow, still do!  (from @JoanCiolino)

@JQAdams_MHS a must follow for history geeks! (from @kristinmachina)

@JQAdams_MHS keep it up, it’s great! (@steveb7)

Those who have Twitter accounts can choose to follow (subscribe) to JQA’s twitter posts although the tweets are also available to anyone who visits the following web page: http://twitter.com/JQAdams_MHS.

The MHS provides access to digital images of every single page of John Quincy Adams’s diaries.  One benefit of the ongoing JQA Twitter Project is that MHS adds  transcriptions of the line-a-day diaries entries to the JQA diaries website after they are shared via JQA’s twitter account;  for example, please see the display of June 1812: http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/doc.cfm?id=jqad23_252.

By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

What does a conservation technician do?

My work consists of repairing and cleaning historic documents. I dry clean them by first removing the surface dirt, then testing the ink for solubility, and soaking the pages in purified water. After the soak, I de-acidify the pages and repair any damage with Japanese tissue paper and wheat starch paste that I make myself. 

How do you interact with manuscripts and objects in different ways than historians?

The main difference is that I view the documents as physical objects. I don’t focus on the intellectual content, but on the physical aspect of manuscripts.

What does a typical work day look like for you?

My days usually follow a routine, and involve a lot of multi-tasking. I come in, prepare the wheat paste, and begin soaking paper in the sink. Then I’ll dry clean the next batch, or trim excess repair paper while I’m waiting for the paper to finish soaking. Once in a while I’ll get unusual things in the lab that break up the routine. I once worked on cleaning glass plate negatives, and another time I cleaned a very large Civil War banner for an exhibition. The work is always interesting!

What are some common misconceptions about your job?

People always think I get to read all the manuscripts, but if I read every page I would never finish my work! Many also are shocked that I wash the paper. They think that that would ruin the documents, but it’s an important part of the conservation process.

What are you working on right now?

I’m currently working on conserving the final volume of Harbottle Dorr’s annotated Revolutionary-era newspapers (read more about that acquisition here). Dorr, a shopkeeper, collected Boston area newspapers in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, indexing the contents and making his own notes. It’s a very interesting project because, as with most historic documents in need of conservation, much of the damage is on the edge of the pages. That’s also where Dorr wrote his notes, so the conservation is preventing very valuable information from being lost.

What are some of your favorite projects and why?

I’ve really enjoyed working on the Dorr newspapers. Another one of my favorites was the Sarah Gooll Putnam diaries. She started keeping a diary at a young age and continued until her death. She was an artist, so her diaries contained sketches and fabric swatches – a lot of interesting things for me to look at while I did the work.* I also am a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, so I love working on any documents authored by him.

*See an entry from Sarah Gooll Putnam’s diary here.

By Amanda A. Mathews, Adams Papers

Here at the Adams Papers we receive calls on occasion from the media looking for information on John and John Quincy Adams. This past month, Gregg Lint, Series Editor for The Papers of John Adams, and Jim Taylor, Editor-in-Chief, fielded a somewhat more unusual request. Voice of America, Korea, interviewed them as a part of a series they are doing on American presidents (the interviews can be found here). These interviews posed an interesting question—what would you most want to convey about these two American presidents to an audience unfamiliar with American history?

Gregg Lint highlighted three aspects of John Adams’s career: his writing of the Massachusetts Constitution and its influence on the federal Constitution, his diplomatic career, and his success in keeping the country out of war with France during his presidency.

John Quincy Adams, Jim Taylor emphasized, was well prepared to be president by his legal, political, and diplomatic careers, however, partisanship and changing American democracy prevented him from accomplishing much while in office, leaving his most significant achievements before and after the presidency.

As Independence Day approaches, we think more about these two presidents. John Adams’s connection with the holiday is well known: the “Atlas of Independence” who famously died on the 50th anniversary of that historic event.

John Quincy Adams also has an important Independence Day connection. On July 4, 1821, he gave a speech before the House of Representatives, which later became the basis for the Monroe Doctrine. The Declaration of Independence, John Quincy Adams affirmed, “stands and must forever stand alone, a beacon on the summit of the Mountain, to which all the Inhabitants of the Earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light, till Time shall be lost in Eternity and this Globe itself dissolve nor leave a wreck behind.— It stands forever, a light of admonition to the rulers of men; a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed.”

With this message of liberty to the world, there is no doubt that John and John Quincy Adams would have been well pleased to find the stories of their lives and their steadfast belief in liberty broadcast to people around the world.

By Elaine Grublin

Join us on Saturday, 16 June from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM at our annual Open House featuring a preview of our summer exhibition Mr. Madison’s War: The Controversial War of 1812. Visitors are invited to participate in tours; listen to exhibition talks; enjoy refreshments; and learn more about the Society’s collections, programs, and services.

Here is a preview of the day’s activities:

• 10:00 AM — A guided tour of the Society’s public rooms departs the front lobby
• 11:00 AM — “Frederic Baury’s Extraordinary War,” a gallery talk offering a detailed description of the brief but illustrious Naval career of a Midshipman during the War of 1812
• 12:00 PM — A guided tour of the Society’s public rooms departs the front lobby
• 1:00 PM — “War and Peace: John Quincy Adams in St. Petersburg and at Ghent, 1809-1814,” a gallery talk focusing on John Quincy Adams’ detailed letters to his parents and voluminous diary accounts documenting his observations of the events leading up to the War of 1812 in America, and the “other” War of 1812, the titanic French invasion of Russia.
• 2:00 PM — A guided tour of the Society’s public rooms departs the front lobby

Throughout the day visitors can view Mr. Madison’s War: The Controversial War of 1812 and examine the controversial nature of the war in Massachusetts and the struggles between the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, enjoy refreshments in our 19-century gentleman’s library, and visit our information table to learn about MHS resources, upcoming programs, and how to become a member. 

For more information e-mail rsvp@masshist.org.

By Elaine Grublin & Kate Veins

Each year the MHS grants a number of research fellowships to scholars from around the country. For more information about the different fellowship types, click the headings below. 

Our fellowship programs bring a wide variety of researchers working on a full range of topics into the MHS. If any of the research topics are particularly interesting to you, keep an eye on our events calendar. All research fellows present at brown-bag lunch programs as part of their commitment to the MHS.

MHS Short-term Fellowships
African-American Studies Fellowship
Heather Cooper, University of Iowa
“Representing the Race: African American Performances of Slavery and Freedom in the Nineteenth Century”

Alumni Fellowship
Lauri Coleman, William and Mary
“Interpretations of New England Weather in the Revolutionary Era”

Andrew Oliver Fellowship
Katelyn Crawford, University of Virginia
“Mobility and Portrait Painting in the Late Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World”

Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship
Frances Clarke, University of Sydney                                                                           
“Minors in the Military: A History of Child Soldiers in America from the Revolution to the Civil War”                                                                  

Eberhard Faber, Princeton University
“‘Everybody Talks of Visiting That Country’: New England Reactions to the Louisiana Purchase, Territorial Rule, and Louisiana Statehood, 1803-1812”

Michael Hevel, University of Iowa
“‘Betwixt Brewings’: A History of College Students and Alcohol”

Ann K. Johnson, University of Southern California
“Cabinets of Miscellany and Meaning: Managing Information in Antebellum America”

Greta LaFleur, University of Hawai’I at Manoa
“American Insides: Popular Narrative and the Historiography of Sexuality, 1675-1815”

Jen Manion, Connecticut College
“Crossing Gender; Female Masculinity in the 18th and 19th Centuries”

Brooke Newman, Virginia Commonwealth University
“Island Masters: Gender, Race, and Power in the Eighteenth-Century British Caribbean”

Benjamin Park, University of Cambridge
“Localized Nationalisms in Post-Revolutionary America”

Brad Snyder, University of Wisconsin
“The House of Truth: The Men Who Created Modern Progressivism”

Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship
Sarah Sutton, Brandeis University
“Industrializing the Family Farm: Dairy Farming, Milk Consumption, and the New England Landscape”

Cushing Academy Fellowship in Environmental History
Jennifer Staver, University of California Irvine
“Energy, Work, and Power along the Pacific Coast of North America, 1768 to 1820” 

Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship
Katherine Grandjean, Wellesley College
“‘Terror ubique tremor’: Communicating Terror in Early New England, 1677-1713”

Marc Friedlaender Fellowship
Rick Kennedy, Point Loma Nazarene University                                                          
“Cotton Mather Biblia Americana Volume 8”

 Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship
Holger Hoock, University of Pittsburgh
“Scars of Independence: Practices and Representations of Violence in the American Revolutionary War”

Ruth R. & Alyson R. Miller Fellowship
Bonnie Lucero, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill                                            
“Privates, Prostitutes, and Pardos: Women and Racial Conflict in Cienfuegos, Cuba, circa 1898”

Lindsay Moore, Boston University
“Women, Power, and Litigation in the English Atlantic World, 1630-1700”

W. B. H. Dowse Fellowship
Nichole George, University of Notre Dame
“Riots and Remembrance: America’s Idols and the Origins of American Nationalism”

Reiner Smolinski, Georgia State University
“Cotton Mather: The Life of a Puritan Intellectual”

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship
Ann K. Holder, Pratt Institute
“‘Making the Body Politic’: Sexual Histories, Racial Uncertainties and Vernacular Citizenship in the Post-Emancipation U.S.”

MHS-NEH Long-term Fellowships
Megan Bowman, University of California Santa Barbara
“Networking for Global Perfection: The International Dimension of Nineteenth-Century Fourierism”

 Kristen Collins, Boston University School of Law
“Entitling Marriage: A History of Marriage, Public Money, and the Law”

Matthew Dennis, University of Oregon
“American Relics and the Material Politics of Public Memory”

Martha Hodes, New York University
“Mourning Lincoln: Personal Grief and the Meaning of the American Civil War”

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Fellows
*Denotes scholars whose itineraries include the MHS

Kelly Brennan Arehart, College of William and Mary
“Give Up Your Dead: How Business, Technology, and Culture Separated Americans from their Dearly Departed, 1780-1930”

Justin Clark, University of Southern California*
“Training the Eyes: Romantic Vision and Class Formation in Boston, 1830-1870”

Michael Cohen, Tulane University
“Jews in the Cotton Industry: Ethnic Networks in 19th Century America”

John Dixon, Harvard University*
“Found at Sea: Mapping Ships’ Locations on the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic”

Moira Gillis, University of Oxford*
“The Unique Early Modern American Corporation”

Jared Hardesty, Boston College*
“The Origins of Black Boston, 1700-1775”

Benjamin Hicklin, University of Michigan Ann Arbor*
“‘Neither a Borrower nor a Lender Be’?: The Experience of Credit and Debt in the English Atlantic World, 1660-1750”

Allison Lange, Brandeis University*
“Pictures of Change: Transformative Images of Woman Suffrage, 1776-1920”

Jason Newton, Syracuse University
“Forging Titans: Myth and Masculinity in the Working Forests of the American Northeast, 1880-1920”

Ana Stevenson, University of Queensland*
“The Woman-Slave Analogy: Rhetorical Foundations in American Culture, 1830-1900”

Gloria Whiting, Harvard University
“‘Endearing Ties’: Black Family Life in Early New England”

By Elaine Grublin

The Sunday, 8 April 2012, episode of the PBS program Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has a strong “connection” to the MHS. Several items from our collection are featured in the program, which highlighted the genealogy of Hollywood couple Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon. Kyra Sedgwick is a descendant of Theodore Sedgwick, a man whose family is well represented in the MHS collections. Watch the episode to learn the story of Theodore Sedgwick and the important role he played in Massachusetts history.

While you are watching, keep your eyes peeled for MHS librarian Peter Drummey, along with documents and images from the MHS collection intergral to telling the story of Kyra Sedgwick’s family. Those familiar with our buiding at 1154 Boylson Street will also recognize the Dowse Library as the back-drop in many scenes. 

If you are interested in learning more about the end of slavery here in Massachusetts, visit our web feature African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts. You can learn more about the life of Elizabeth Freeman (“Mumbet”) reading a manuscript draft of the article “Slavery in New England,” published in Bentley’s Miscellany in 1853. The author, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, was the daughter of Theodore Sedgwick. And for those with the time and inclination to dive into a study of the Sedgwicks, the Sedgwick Family Papers, Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers, and a number of other related collections are all available to researchers in the MHS library. 

By Anna J. Cook

Today the Library Reader Services staff welcomes a new Library Assistant to our ranks: seasoned MHS intern Liz Francis.

Liz has been a familiar face at the MHS since June 2011, when she began as an intern with the Massachusetts Finds Her Voice Civil War project. Thanks to her diligent research and writing we were able to highlight Civil War-era documents from our collections in August, November, and December of last year.

A long-time Massachusetts resident, Liz comes to us with a degree in Art and Education (University of California at Santa Cruz) and graduate coursework in Museum Studies, History of Art and Architecture, German, Russian (Harvard University), and Library Science (Simmons College). Her extensive experience at public history institutions includes positions at the Custom House Maritime Museum (Newburyport, Mass.), the Harvard Museum of Natural History, and the archives of the Chelsea Public Library. She brings with her a keen interest in New England history and a passion for reference services.

In addition to working with us here at the MHS, Liz will also continue in her position at the Arnold Arboretum’s Horticultural Library as well as her studies at Simmons. She hopes to graduate with her MLS in August 2012.

We are pleased to welcome Liz as part of our staff, and look forward to getting to know her better.

By Kate Viens

It is sometimes said that the MHS is “a genteel society.” Perhaps it’s our quiet customs, steeped in tradition. So, what are these hour-long events called “brown bag lunches”? Can one really bring food into the MHS, and upstairs, no less? Do presenters really deliver programs to a crowd munching on pretzels and carrot sticks?

The answer is “yes”! Think of the brown-bags as a working lunch for scholars, with you and I encouraged to join in and take the conversation in new directions. Many organizations offer brown-bag lunchtime talks, but at the MHS, they’re the epitome of “historical tradition meets modern scholarship.” 

Programs take place at the MHS around the oval table in the 19^th-century gentleman’s library of Thomas Dowse. Participants settle into massive mahogany and leather armchairs, unpack their chicken Caesar wraps, and begin to introduce themselves: a scholar from Johns Hopkins, a neighborhood resident, a graduate student from Berkeley, an MHS staff member… The program begins as the presenter describes his or her research in the MHS collections, following which, all are welcome to ask questions and comment.  

The MHS offers a brown-bag lunch program on the first Wednesday of every month, with others scheduled during the year. Lunches begin at noon and end promptly at one o’clock, and the MHS provides an assortment of soft drinks and coffee. 

On September 7, Laurie Ellen Pazzano will describe her research on “Peace field: 1788–1818, The New England Farm of John & Abigail Adams.” Laurie is a student of the Landscape Institute of the Boston Architectural College/Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University. 

On September 14, Anthony Antonucci will discuss his work, “Americans and the Mezzogiorno: United States Relations with the Regno delle Due Sicilie from Thomas Jefferson to Herman Melville, 1783-1861.” Anthony has just spent the year as a Fulbright Scholar in Italy and is earning his degree at the University of Connecticut. 

If you can make the time to join us, we would love to see you at these or future programs!