The Founding of the Massachusetts Historical Society

In August 1790, Boston minister Jeremy Belknap had proposed a "Plan for an Antiquarian Society" that would collect materials to document the history of the new nation, a plan that has been described as "the charter of the historical society movement in the United States." Six months later, on 24 January 1791, Belknap's "Antiquarian Society" became the "Historical Society," when seven like-minded individuals met with him to create what would become the oldest organization in the United States devoted to collecting materials for the study of American history. Later the same year, Belknap drafted a Circular Letter, of the Historical Society, in which he announced the Society's formation and purpose: "to collect, preserve, and communicate, materials for a complete history of this country."

Thomas Wallcut, the First Recording Secretary

Thomas Wallcut, the reporter of the first MHS meeting, was born in Boston in 1758. His early life was as exotic as any boy's in pre-Revolutionary New England: he attended Moor's Indian Charity School in Hanover, New Hampshire, to prepare for study at Dartmouth College and a career as a missionary to the Indians, beginning (before college) by living among the St. Francis Indians (at modern-day Odanak on the St. Francis River) in Quebec, Canada. The outbreak of the Revolution ended "Tommy" Wallcut's plans to become a missionary and his opportunity to attend college. He returned to Boston where, during the Revolution, he served on a privateer and then as a hospital steward in Albany and Boston. After the peace, he became a minor state official (for almost 40 years an engrossing clerk for the legislature—hence his careful, clear handwriting). He nearly missed the founding of the MHS for he had invested his pay as a veteran in western lands and in 1789-1790 he made a trip to Marietta in the the Ohio Territory, but rather than settling there, soon returned to Boston.

Wallcut was a prolific compiler of historical information and statistics, an energetic supporter of several abortive literary enterprises, and, above all, an avid antiquarian book collector. He never married and lived with his mother on High Street in Boston, cramming her house with the books and as many as 10,000 pamphlets he collected. He helped to found the MHS library with, considering his limited means, important gifts of pamphlets, newspapers, and maps. He served as recording secretary of the MHS for only a little more than a year, resigning his office in July 1792, but remained a member of the Society for the rest of his life.

Only 32 in 1791, Wallcut was the last survivor of the ten "founders" of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Ironically, although he was a generous donor to the MHS during its early years, he appears to have become alienated from the Historical Society—or the Historical Society from him—perhaps because he gained a reputation as an increasingly eccentric old bachelor. He donated a portion of his book collection, primarily on religion and classical languages, to Dartmouth College—those books, with Wallcut's permission, migrated to Bowdoin College when Dartmouth was divided by a faculty dispute. In 1812, Wallcut became a founding member of the American Antiquarian Society in Worcester, Mass., and he later allowed the Antiquarian Society to select books and manuscripts—and especially pamphlets—from his collection, a donation that was measured at more than two tons. Ironically, his gift to the Antiquarian Society included his personal notes on the founding of the Historical Society.

A religious seeker, Wallcut moved away from his evangelical origins and adopted the pacifist sensibilities of Nantucket Quakers whom he grew to admire. One of his last public offices was as secretary of the Massachusetts Peace Society, founded in 1815. Wallcut lived in Boston at a time when his vehement opposition to slavery was seen as an eccentricity, but poverty and illness exacerbated his odd behavior in old age. He spent the end of his life in the McLean Asylum for the Insane and Rev. Robert F. Wallcut, a nephew, handled his uncle's affairs. Thomas died in 1840, at the age of 82, only missing the 50th anniversary of the MHS by a few months. In 1879, Robert Wallcut donated additional books and manuscripts from his uncle's estate to the Historical Society. The MHS also holds a silhouette of Thomas Wallcut made in August 1835.

The Other MHS Founders

In 1795, the third MHS recording secretary, Rev. James Freeman, started a second volume of meeting minutes with the statement that Rev. Jeremy Belknap, Rev. John Eliot, Rev. Peter Thacher, and William Tudor of Boston, and James Winthrop of Cambridge, Mass., had originally planned the Historical Society and then invited five additional men to join them: Dr. William Baylies of Dighton, and Rev. James Freeman, George R. Minot, James Sullivan, and Thomas Wallcut of Boston. George Minot and James Sullivan drafted the "regulations" (constitution) for the Society, although Minot "being sick" did not attend the first meeting that took place in William Tudor's elegant Court Street, Boston home. Most of the MHS founders were Harvard-educated ministers and lawyers, along with a physician (Baylies) and a librarian (Winthrop), leaving Wallcut, in some respects, the odd man out. The other founding member without a college education was James Sullivan, the first MHS president, who then was the attorney general (and later the governor) of Massachusetts. Rev. William Jenks, another early MHS member, later recollected that Wallcut had told him, "I shall be satisfied if I can but carry the hod and mortar for men of learning."

The members present at the first MHS meeting decided that they would be listed in alphabetical order in their minutes—although Wallcut seemed to have some trouble in remembering to add his own name to the records. In spite of this democratic impulse, first among equals in the founding of the MHS was Rev. Jeremy Belknap, who was elected the first corresponding secretary. Through a series of published circular letters and notices and his own personal correspondence, Belknap attempted to convey news of the founding of the new organization and its purpose "to every gentleman of Science in the Continent and Islands of America." In a 21 August 1795 letter to fellow antiquarian Ebenezer Hazard, Belknap eloquently described his ambitions for the Society and the purpose of the MHS: "There is nothing like having a good repository and keeping a good look out, not waiting at home for things to fall into the lap, but prowling about like a wolf for the prey".