By Jeremy Dibbell

New Forbes family papers which arrived at the MHS in several installments, deposited by the J. M. Forbes Family Archives Committee in 2004, 2008 and 2009, have recently been processed and added to ABIGAIL. These include the J. M. Forbes & Co. estate papers, a collection of the papers of the estates of a number of Forbes family members, including Edith Emerson Forbes, William Hathaway Forbes, John Murray Forbes, Sarah Swain Hathaway Forbes, and others. The finding aid is available at http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0331.

A new collection of Perkins-Cunningham scrapbooks highlights the families and lives of another branch of the Forbes family, descended from Robert Bennet Forbes (the brother of John Murray Forbes, and a noted ship captain and China trader). His daughter Edith married railroad magnate Charles Elliott Perkins and lived much of her married life in Burlington, Iowa.  She kept twelve volumes of “A Grandmother’s recollections found in a diary in an old hacienda on the banks of the Mississippi River,” which consist of letters, reminiscences, and clippings about her family.  Edith Perkins’s daughter Edith married Edward Cunningham and lived most of her life in the Boston area, and she kept six volumes of scrapbooks, “Letters of Many Years,” similar to those of her mother, which tell of her life and her family over the years. Both of these series are a rich source of information on the Forbes, Perkins, and Cunningham families.  A description of them can be found at http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0330.

The Forbes deposits also include a very substantial group of “Additions” to the Edith Emerson Forbes and William Hathaway Forbes papers already here at the Society. These Additions have been added to the existing collection, and arranged in the same series (although not integrated with the original material), and can be accessed on-line through the finding aid to the whole collection, which now bears the somewhat cumbersome title of “Edith Emerson Forbes and William Hathaway Forbes Papers and Additions.” The finding aid is located at  http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0225.

The John Murray Forbes papers also received one box of additions, consisting of correspondence on various business and political subjects, and including a series of letters to Benjamin F. Sanborn concerning the education of J. M. Forbes’s son Malcolm. These were not integrated into the existing papers but added as a separate series to the collection, and described in the on-line finding aid at http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0228.

In addition, a handful of items were integrated into the existing Elise Cabot Forbes papers. No revisions to the guide were necessary; it is available at http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0107.

Please note that many of these collections are stored offsite and must be ordered at least one business day in advance. Follow the instructions in the finding guides for ordering material from these collections.

By Jeremy Dibbell

Some excellent news from our Senior Cataloger, Mary Fabiszewski, who announces a major milestone in her current project, creating catalog records for our online catalog (ABIGAIL) of all the printed pamphlets in our collections. Mary writes:

“The cataloging department (me) is pleased to announce, that with the addition of Barret Wendell’s ‘Relations of Radcliffe College with Harvard’ (much less salacious than it sounds, I’m sure), the 1800s are finally at an end (as far as cataloging pamphlets are concerned).

I started this project back in January of 2008 with the year 1831. Since then 15,725 new records have been added to ABIGAIL, bringing the total number of pamphlets for that time period to 19,352. Along the way, of course, each pamphlet got a new envelope and was put in its proper place..”

Reference Librarian Elaine Grublin provides some data about what the presence of online records means for the use of these documents:

“Just to show how much Mary’s cataloging efforts have paid off, here are some quick call slip numbers.

In 2006, items with “box” call numbers were requested 195 times. That was 7.6% of the total number of printed items called for in that year.

In 2009, items with “box” call numbers were requested 620 times. That was 29.6% of the total number of printed items called for in that year.”

I know all our researchers who use these materials join us in congratulating Mary for her hard work, and look forward to continued progress in 2010. The twentieth century pamphlets are scheduled to be completed by July of this year.

Oh, and in case you’re interested in Mr. Wendell’s pamphlet, you can (now) find the ABIGAIL record for it here.

By Peter Steinberg

A new guide to the Edward Atkinson papers, 1819-1920, is now available on the Massachusetts Historical Society website  (http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0016). Previously only minimally described, the newly processed collection and finding aid contribute to a fuller understanding of the breadth of Edward Atkinson’s business affairs.

Edward Atkinson was born on 10 February 1827 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He began working as a teenager and became a very well-known and respected authority in a number of business fields and social causes including cotton manufacturing, anti-slavery, fire prevention and insurance, and the science of nutrition, to name but a few.

The loose correspondence has been reorganized, and where applicable, separate series of correspondence have been created. We hope this will save researchers some time as they look for letters from many of Atkinson’s most frequent correspondents, including Wilbur Olin Atwater, Thomas F. Bayard, Jonathan Chace, John Murray Forbes, Franklin L. Ford, Charles Nordhoff, Charles Eliot Norton, John Ott, Ellen H. Richards, or David Ames Wells. 

Additionally, the 79 letterbooks have been re-indexed as part of the project; the new cumulative index can be found at the bottom of the collection guide. Outside of the above named separate series, there is no name index to the loose correspondence, but the index to the letterbooks can be used as a guide to narrow down a potential date or date range of Atkinson’s incoming mail. In the finding aid, each letterbook is also described separately with a list of selected subjects discussed and frequent recipients.

Indexing the letterbooks proved challenging as over the years, in at least two purges, letters were removed either by Atkinson or his descendants prior to the collection’s arrival at the Historical Society, and in creating the new index we found instances where letters were removed after the handwritten indexes were made. While the cumulative indexes do not include entries for the letters removed from the letterbook volumes, the original handwritten indexes remain available at the beginning of each letterbook. We took care to catch each instance, and often mourned the loss of letters which promised to be interesting or quirky, such as Atkinson’s letter to the Department of Lost Umbrellas.

Contributions to the creation of the finding aid were made by Kimberly Kennedy, Kyle Hudgins, Rebecca Hecht, Susan Martin, and Peter K. Steinberg. Support for this project was provided by the FM Global Foundation.

Please note that the Edward Atkinson papers are stored offsite and must be requested at least one business day in advance. Contact the Library at library@masshist.org or (617) 536-1608 to request materials. Please discuss your request with the reading room staff before requesting cartons by barcode.

By Laura Lowell

We are pleased to announce that the diaries of Rev. Theodore Sedgwick (1863-1951) are now available for research. Sedgwick, an Episcopal minister, graduated from Harvard College in 1886 and from the Berkeley Divinity School in Middleton, Connecticut in 1890. He served as the rector of churches in New York City, Williamstown, Massachusetts, and St. Paul, Minnesota before becoming the rector of St. Paul’s American Church in Rome from 1930-1934.

Rev. Sedgwick’s diaries consist of 46 loose-leaf volumes dating from 1884 to 1950. Chronicling numerous European voyages and trips throughout the United States, as well as Sedgwick’s daily life in Rome, New York, Florida, and Sharon, Connecticut, they include newspaper clippings, postcards, photographs, letters, programs, brochures, and other mementos that have been pasted on pages opposite related text. Sedgwick begins regular journal-keeping in 1930, typing several pages each day for almost twenty years. His diaries eventually totaled 7,044 numbered pages compiled into two volumes per year. They came to MHS as a gift of his granddaughters in late 2008.

Sedgwick’s motivation for compiling these amazing volumes is best expressed in his own words: “For a number of years my ministry was in Italy, which meant a divided family. A daily record, type-written with carbons, one to each member of the family across the sea, held us together. The weekly letters went then, and have not stopped since to keep alive the bond created by the daily happenings, which although of slight moment, yet tell of thoughts and reading, of church-going and gatherings, of political rallies and candidates, of friends and all that happens in intimate associations. One copy I have always kept and its pages were bound, at first in alluring Italian leather covers, but now in simpler form. Against the pages I insert newspaper items, of which I have made mention, and at least these clippings form a history of importance.” (“Good Weaving: The Happy Values of Increasing Years,” The Evangel, March 1949)

With rich detail and gentle wit, Rev. Sedgwick, or “Teedy”, as he was known to his family, chronicles his observations of the Fascist revolution, the Great Depression, and World War II. My favorite diaries are those that he wrote in Rome (vols. 6-13), which contain many descriptions of the well-to-do American community in Rome, Sedgwick’s changing impressions of Italian dictator Benito Mussolini, and comments on Italian politics and culture. Here’s an example:

“Yesterday a priest came to me, I could not understand what he was driving at so I sent him to Sartorio. Henry told me he wanted to know of some rich American girls to whom he could affiance some poor Italian boys. Henry told him he was selling his soul. The priest did not like Henry.” (9 February 1933)

You can read more about Rev. Sedgwick and his diaries in the collection guide. MHS also holds a large multi-generational collection of Sedgwick Family papers (1717-1946), as well as the papers of Rev. Sedgwick’s brother, Ellery Sedgwick (1872-1960), former editor of the Atlantic Monthly.