This Month at the MHS

In Death Lamented features rings, bracelets, brooches, and other pieces of mourning jewelry from the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries, ranging from early gold bands with death’s head iconography to jeweled brooches and intricately woven hairwork pieces of the Civil War era. These elegant and evocative objects are presented in the context of their history, use, and meaning, alongside related pieces of material culture.

Drawn from the collections of the MHS and Guest Curator Sarah Nehama as well as loans from the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Historic New England in Boston, and the Adams National Historical Park in Quincy, exhibition highlights include the Adams-Winthrop commemorative seal ring containing the braided hair of John Quincy Adams and a gold memorial ring for Queen Caroline of Brandenburg-Ansbach.

A full-color companion book, In Death Lamented: The Tradition of Anglo-American Mourning Jewelry, available for sale at the MHS, features photographs and descriptions of all of the Nehama and MHS pieces, along with historical and stylistic backgrounds and essays pertaining to cultural practices around death and mourning in England and America.

View a selection of mourning jewelry at www.masshist.org/features/mourning-jewelry.

In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, this exhibition features the pen Abraham Lincoln used to sign the document. Visitors can learn how the MHS acquired this extraordinary pen as well as view paintings, broadsides, engravings, and manuscripts that tell the story of how Boston celebrated Emancipation.

The exhibition galleries will be open 12:00 PM to 4:00 PM. 

View documents and artifacts related to Abraham Lincoln. Featured items include Lincoln's letter to Joshua F. Speed explaining his evolving views on slavery as well as the casts of the life mask and hands of Lincoln made by Leonard Volk in the spring of 1860.

When news arrived in Boston on New Year’s Day 1863 that Lincoln had signed the Emancipation Proclamation, long-planned celebrations, the largest anywhere in the United States, already were underway. MHS Librarian Peter Drummey and Curator of Art Anne Bentley will explain how this epochal event in American History became an extraordinary moment in Boston history, and how the pen Lincoln used to sign the proclamation became one of the most treasured artifacts in the MHS collection.

In commemoration of the 150th anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation on 1 January 1863, this exhibition features the pen Abraham Lincoln used to sign the document. Visitors can learn how the MHS acquired this extraordinary pen as well as view paintings, broadsides, engravings, and manuscripts that tell the story of how Boston celebrated Emancipation.

View documents and artifacts related to Abraham Lincoln. Featured items include Lincoln's letter to Joshua F. Speed explaining his evolving views on slavery as well as the casts of the life mask and hands of Lincoln made by Leonard Volk in the spring of 1860.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

Join us for a tour of the Society's public rooms. Led by an MHS staff member or docent, the tour touches on the history and collections of the MHS and lasts approximately 90 minutes.

The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Free and open to the public.

This paper examines a frustrating question for those concerned with environmental issues: Why has land preservation been such a challenge for suburbs in the late 20th century? It considers how land preservation occurs by offering a case study of a grassroots environmental movement in Fairfax County that formed around 1970 in response to plans for a single-family residential development adjacent to the Potomac River.

Why did most of Great Britain’s intellectual and artistic class sympathize with the Confederacy, either overtly or covertly, during the Civil War? This presentation examines the cultural conflict that erupted between New England poets and intellectuals and their British counterparts as a result of tensions arising out of the Civil War. Prof. Gougeon is a Distinguished University Fellow at the University of Scranton, where he teaches American literature. He is the author of Virtue’s Hero: Emerson, Antislavery, and Reform and Emerson and Eros: The Making of a Cultural Hero.

This event is co-sponsored by The New England Quarterly.

Reservations requeted. Please click on the ticket icon above, or contact the education department at 617-646-0560 / education@masshist.org.

Pulitizer-Prize winning author Stacy Schiff will discuss her career as a writer and biographer in conversation with Susan Ware. 

Stacy Schiff's most recent book is Cleopatra: A Life (2010), which was named one of the New York Times Book Review's top ten books of the year.  Her previous books include A Great Improvisation: Franklin, France, and the Birth of America (2005), Vera (Mrs. Vladimir Nabakov): Portrait of a Marriage (1999), which won the Pulitizer Prize, and Saint-Exupery: A Biography (1994). 

Susan Ware is an independent scholar who specializes in twentieth-century U.S. History, women's history, and biography.  Her most recent book is Game, Set, Match: Billie Jean King and the Revolution in Women's Sports (2011).

Edward Everett is known to history as the “other” speaker at the commemoration of the National Cemetery at Gettysburg – the man who, by his own admission, in two hours could not accomplish what Lincoln did in two minutes. Learn more about who said what—and why—at Gettysburg, and view letters exchanged by Lincoln and Everett.

This paper explores the implementation of deportation policy during the 1850s, when anti-Irish nativism reached its zenith with the rise of nativist politicians, the Know Nothings, in state politics. In particular, it examines the contradiction between the defense of African Americans’ personal liberty and the seizure of Irish immigrants by exposing the tangible presence of nativist force in the antislavery movement.

From the beginnings of the MHS, George Washington has been the subject of fascination and veneration. What does the Society’s early collection of Washington artifacts and documents say about the founding of the MHS—and the image of Washington in the early Republic?

The Object of History
A series of chats with MHS Librarian Peter Drummey about what documents and artifacts from the collections can tell us about the characters, events, and issues of the past, as well as the role of MHS in documenting the rich history of our state and nation.

Registration Required. Fee $25/$15 (F/M); Free for MHS Fund Giving Circle members. Please click on the ticket icon above, or contact the education department at 617-646-0557 / education@masshist.org.

Register for all three programs in “The Object of History” series and receive a registration discount! Series fee: $60/30 (F/M); Free for MHS Fund Circle members.