This Month at the MHS

The striking photographs of Clover Adams, wife of historian and writer Henry Adams, capture iconic moments of Gilded Age Boston and Washington, D.C., while also opening pathways to her long-concealed inner life. Her photographs tell a story—her story. This exhibition features many of Clover's images, some of which have not been shown publicly, along with her letters, the notebook she used to record the technical aspects of her photographs, Henry's letters, and other family materials.

At the heart of Clover’s story is a mystery: just when she found a powerful way through photography to document her life, it started to unravel. On a gloomy Sunday morning in December 1885, Clover committed suicide by drinking from a vial of potassium cyanide, a chemical used to develop photographs. Henry Adams commissioned a bronze statue by Augustus Saint-Gaudens to mark his wife’s grave in Washington’s Rock Creek Cemetery. But he rarely spoke of her and never mentioned her in his Pulitzer prize-winning The Education of Henry Adams.

What got lost—until now—was the remarkable story of how Clover, in the last years of her life, discovered with her camera an eloquent means with which to express herself.

In 1794, the first public theater in Boston opened on Federal Street despite strong legal and public opposition. The First Seasons of the Federal Street Theatre, 1794-1798 documents the battle over the Federal Street Theatre through playbills from early performances as well as the letters and publications of supporters and opponents of public theater in Boston. The MHS show is a satellite display of an exhibition titled Forgotten Chapters of Boston's Literary History on display at the Boston Public Library (BPL). Created by Professor Paul Lewis of the Boston College English Department and his students, the exhibition tells stories about Boston's literary history through letters, manuscripts, and early editions from the collections of the MHS, the BPL, the American Antiquarian Society, and Boston College. Divided into six “chapters,”  the exhibition follows the rise and fall of reputations, recovers out-of-print materials, and walks the streets of Boston in its literary heyday. The materials at the MHS will be on view 28 March through 30 July.

In colonial New England, classicism was not a common stylistic choice for preachers and poets. Puritan authors much preferred typology-casting Biblical figures as figurative forefathers of their own leaders-to antique heroes and forms. The guiding question of this paper is big and simple: what representative advantages does classicism confer? Or, what do you see if you look at early New England through a classical, rather than a Scriptural lens? What gets lost and what gets emphasized when Boston, for once, is a new Troy or Rome, instead of a shining Jerusalem? Only two exceptional events, Thomas Morton's Merrymount and King Philip's War, prompted a turn to classic origins: Morton's own The New English Canaan (Amsterdam, 1637) and Benjamin Tompson's New-Englands Crisis (London, 1676) and New-Englands Tears (1677). These (proto-)epics display an acute concern with place. Both authors depict the landscape and leadership of New England based on classical precedence-to opposite ends, one might argue. This paper will consider the larger stakes of such representations with an eye to future Puritan epics, such as Cotton Mather's Magnalia (1702).

This project examines the place of historical thought and historical representation in the build up to, and event and aftermath of, America's Civil War. A religiously tinged republicanism and a politicized millenarianism informed much of the antebellum abolitionist and the proslavery anti-abolitionist rhetoric and the arrival of the war intensified chiliastic sentiment. While the apocalypticism continued throughout the war, widespread destruction dampened hopes of Christ’s return. Perhaps the impact of the Civil War on American historical consciousness can be profitably compared to the French Revolution’s impact on European historical consciousness.

This program has been postponed until our 2012-2013 New England Biography Seminar series. Ms. Schiff will present on January 24, 2013. We apologize for any inconvenience that this change may cause.

This talk, led by MHS curator of Art Anne Bentley, will examine Clover Adams's use of the photographic medium to reflect her emotional connections to the arts and her subjects.

This project focuses on the young captains and sailors who went to seek a fortune and found a strange and rich world that profoundly influenced them and the young nation. As they encountered an entirely different culture and society, these men negotiated innumerable differences in traditions and beliefs in order to survive and succeed.

MHS annual business meeting followed by a program and reception honoring Gordon S. Wood, recipient of the John F. Kennedy Medal.

5:00 PM
Annual Meeting for elected MHS Fellows

6:00 PM
MHS Fellows and Members are invited to the presentation of the Kennedy Medal and remarks by recipient, Gordon S. Wood. A reception will follow.

RSVP by May 9 by calling 617-646-0560 or by clicking on the link above.

Sam Willis is currently researching the naval aspects of the American Revolution. He is interested in telling the story from the American, British, French, Spanish and Dutch perspectives. A major theme in his work is how naval power crossed the boundaries between land in sea and affected many different people in many different ways.

Jack Larkin is Affiliate Professor of History at Clark University and Chief Historian Emeritus at Old Sturbridge Village, the outdoor museum of early American history. He has also written The Reshaping of Everyday Life 1790-1840, and Where We Lived: Discovering the Places We Once Called Home, The American Home 1775-1840.

Reservations requested: please call 617-646-0560 or click on the ticket icon above to register online.

On June 6, 1761 and June 3, 1769, the planet Venus passed between Earth and Sun – each time visible as a small black dot against the burning face of the Sun for six hours. Transits of Venus always arrive in pairs – eight years apart – but then it takes more than a century before they are seen again. In the 1760s the world’s scientific community was electrified because the transit would allow them for the first time to calculate the distance between the planets in our solar system. This would require triangulated data to be compiled from various exact points around the globe – all taken simultaneously during the short period of the actual Transit. Join us for an intriguing glimpse at the spirit of the Enlightenment and the collaborative race to measure the heavens. Chasing Venus will be published in May 2012 in conjunction of the Transit of Venus on June 5/6, 2012.

Offered by the Arnold Arboretum of Harvard University and the Massachusetts Historical Society. Fee: $10 MHS and Arboretum members, $20 nonmember. Register by phone at 617-384-5277.