3 August 2006
“In the Footsteps of Freedom: Boston’s Freedom Trail and Its Heroes”
Teaching American History Workshop
Offered in conjunction with The Education Collaborative, The National Park Service, Old South Meeting House, and the Bostonian Society, this workshop introduced elementary- and middle-school educators to Boston’s role in the era of the American Revolution. During their visit to the Society, participants learned about the Society’s collection of Adams Family Papers, and how to access these treasures—as well as many other documents from MHS collections—through the MHS website. Participants also had the opportunity to view original eighteenth-century documents from the Society’s collections.

27 July 2006
“Charters of Freedom”
Teaching American History Workshop
Offered in conjunction with the Adams National Historical Park, this workshop brought elementary- and middle-school teachers from the Weymouth school system to the Society. Guest speakers included Carol Berkin, Professor of History at Baruch College, who discussed women in the era of the American Revolution, and the Honorable Hiller Zobel, who described the rewards and challenges of editing John Adams’ legal papers. Participants also had the opportunity to view original letters and diaries from the Society’s collection of Adams Family Papers, and learn more about how the Society cares for the treasures and makes them available to the widest possible audience.

21 July 2006
“The Haitian Revolution”
Project Rise
Thirty middle school students studying the Haitian Revolution in a summer enrichment program at the Governor’s Academy visited for a presentation on the Haitian Revolution and Toussaint L’Overture. Student viewed original materials from the Society’s collections, including letters between President John Adams and Secretary of State Timothy Pickering concerning the development of America’s foreign policy with Haiti.

14 July 2006
“Thomas Jefferson: Personality, Character, and Public Life”
NEH Summer Institute
Participants in this NEH–sponsored Institute (organized by Boston University) visited the Society to learn more about its Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts. The collection includes Jefferson’s Farm Book and Garden Book, as well as a manuscript copy of the Declaration of Independence. Participants viewed a range of original documents from the collection, and learned more about how to access these (and other) Jefferson materials on the World Wide Web.

13 July
“Constitutional History Renewal Project”
Teaching American History Workshop
The Society hosted one day of this two-week workshop, offered in conjunction with the University of Massachusetts-Amherst, which brought fifty educators from western Massachusetts to the MHS. Adams Papers Editor Gregg Lint provided participants with an overview of John Adams and the political implications of the Alien and Sedition Acts of 1798. Participants were also treated to a “behind-the- scenes” tour of Collection Services, where they learned more about how the Society cares for its collections and makes them available to researchers.

26 June 2006
“Rhetoric and American Democracy”
Gilder Lehrman Seminar
The Society hosted one day of this one-week seminar, led by James Engell, Professor of English and Comparative Literature, Harvard University. Sponsored by the Gilder Lehrman Institute, the seminar was designed to expose high school educators to classical rhetoric through primary sources of the Revolutionary era. During their visit to the MHS, seminarians were treated to a lecture from Pauline Maier, Professor of History at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, on the creation of the Declaration of Independence, and a show-and-tell featuring related documents from MHS collections.

6 and 20 June
“The Business of History”
Georgia Historical Society
The Society welcomed two groups of teachers on study tours organized by the Georgia Historical Society. On 6 June, participants were treated to a behind-the-scenes look at MHS that included visits to Collection Services, Reader Services, and the Adams Papers Project. On 20 June, participants learned more about Paul Revere’s many contributions to early American life. Special guest Robert Martello, Associate Professor of the History of Science and Technology, Olin College, offered a lecture on "Revolutionary Revere: Patriotism, Entrepreneurship, and Technology in Early America.”

31 May 2006
“A Prelude to the American Revolution”
Paxton Center Middle School (Paxton, Massachusetts)
Stacia Smith, 2005 Adams Teacher Fellow, visited with 14 of her students to present their class project, “A Prelude to the American Revolution,” which is based on the primary sources assembled by Stacia during her fellowship. Students produced biographical sketches of various revolutionary leaders such as Abigail and John Adams, John Hancock, and George Washington, and then wrote letters to the editors of various eighteenth-century Boston newspapers in the voice of their selected revolutionary figure. Students also created broadside accounts of the Boston Tea Party, Boston Massacre, and the signing of the Declaration of Independence. In honor of our NEH-sponsored timeline website project, the students presented us with a beautiful timeline of their own highlighting the key events of 1764–1776.

13 January 2006
WWI Propaganda

The Massachusetts Historical Society welcomed history teachers from the Foxboro Public School System for a professional development workshop on WWI propaganda. Participants were introduced to early forms of American propaganda, early examples of American poster art and American and European propaganda from WWI. The MHS education staff led the teachers in workshop on analyzing WWI posters.

19 November 2005
Jonas Clarke Middle School (Lexington, Mass.) - Boston Massacre Program

Peter Drummey, MHS Librarian, led the students in a show and tell of documents and artifacts from the Society's collections - that pertained to the Boston Massacre and Ann Rinaldi's work, The Fifth of March, a historical fiction about Rachel Marsh, a fourteen-year-old indentured servant in the Boston household of John and Abigail Adams, who is caught up in the colonial unrest that led to the Boston Massacre. The students viewed a letter that John wrote to Abigail about hiring Rachel Marsh, silver used in the Adams household, Phillis Wheatley's letters, Paul Revere's print of the Boston Massacre and newspaper accounts of the event. After the show and tell, Kathleen Barker, Education Coordinator, and Beth McLean, Education Programs Associate, led the students in a workshop where they were able to "be historians" by analyzing documents and answering questions in small groups.

2 November 2005
14 November 2005
Tea and Terror in Boston, 1764-1776
Teachers as Scholars Workshop

Using primary-source materials from the Society's collections, participants investigated the importance of the tea trade in the colonial era, Britain's controversial imperial policies, and different forms of colonial protest, including boycotts, riots, and the tea parties of 1773-1774. Participants also explored the political climate of Boston and the ways in which Samuel Adams and the Sons of Liberty used town meetings, newspapers, and broadsides to encourage Bostonians to participate in these passionate acts of rebellion. The two-day event culminated in a tea party held at the Society.

13 October 2005
Tufts University Theatre Class

Peter Drummey, MHS Librarian, and Beth McLean, Education Programs Associate, presented a program on early American theatre. The students were shown anti-theatre legislation and pamphlets, early American playbills, and John Gardiner's defense of theatre. Students also received an introduction to the library and a tour of the MHS.

8 September 2005
Rye Country Day School

The MHS hosted a group of 28 high school students from Rye Country Day for an afternoon program on the Boston Massacre. Students were given a brief introduction to the topic and then asked "to be historians" by answering questions and discussing a specific newspaper article, broadside, engraving, letter or personal account that pertained to the Boston Massacre and/or the trial that followed. After discussing their document and answering questions in groups of two or three, students had the opportunity to share their specific document with the larger group. To follow up, the education staff led the students in a discussion about why the Boston Massacre occurred, and to what extent the Boston Massacre really was a 'massacre.'

9 August 2005
Teaching American History Workshop

The MHS welcomed a group of 38 teachers who were participating in a TAH program organized through Bridgewater State College. Kathleen Barker, Education Coordinator introduced the group to the primary source resources available to teachers and students on the MHS website and gave them a preview of the NEH "Coming of the American Revolution: 1764-1776" timeline/documentary history. Beth McLean, Education Programs Associate, led the group in a workshop on Massachusetts's ratification of the United States Constitution. Teachers had the opportunity to read and discuss diary entries, letters, newspaper articles, and political cartoons pertaining to the ratification process. The original documents were on display for the teachers to view. Afterwards, the group had the opportunity to tour the MHS and research library.

25-29 July 2005
NEH Seminar - Governmental Dimensions
Declaring Rights/Declaring Independence

Led by Professor Pauline Maier, MIT, author of American Scripture: Making the Declaration of Independence Seminarians used the colonists' declarations of rights from that of the Stamp Act Congress (1765) through those of the Second Continental Congress in 1776 and other related sources to understand how their defense of rights led to a radical rethinking of the structure of government and transformed a colonial rebellion into a revolution with implications, as Thomas Paine asserted, for "mankind."

25-29 July 2005
NEH Seminar - Social Dimensions
The Coming of the American Revolution, 1764-76: Social Dimensions

Led by Professor Richard D. Brown, University of Connecticut, Storrs, coauthor (with Irene Quenzler Brown) of The Hanging of Ephraim Wheeler: A Story of Rape, Incest, and Justice in the Early Republic Using local and provincial records, newspapers, diaries, letters, and business ledgers, seminarians investigated the social, economic, and cultural relationships among whites-elite and common, male and female-as well as African Americans and Indians. They studied how in a society of major regional variation and prescribed roles, the dynamic conditions created by the revolution opened prospects for changes in social class, gender, and race relations.

11-15 July 2005
NEH Seminar - Ideological Dimensions
Ideology in the Origins of the Revolution

Led by Professor Bernard Bailyn, Harvard University, author of The Ideological Origins of the American Revolution Seminarians examined the political treatises and polemics, historical essays, sermons, letters and poetry in which colonists wrote about the need to protect and secure their rights within what they understood to be the British constitutional system. They also investigated inherited British and European influences in Revolutionary thought; the sources of colonists' characteristic hopes and fears; and how their worldview shaped their actions in the crisis of the 1760s and '70s.

11-15 July 2005
NEH Seminar - Economic Dimensions
Economy and Culture in the Age of Revolution

Led by Professor David J. Hancock, University of Michigan, author of Citizens of the World: London Merchants and the Integration of the British Atlantic Community, 1735-85. Seminarians examined letters, diaries and news reports, merchants' accounts, and official records in which colonists documented their commitment to property rights and economic independence. They also explored trade theory and practice in the eighteenth-century Atlantic world; British imperial tax policy and reform; the economic causes and forms of resistance among colonial elites and laborers; its manifestations in non-importation, non-consumption, and boycotts; and the economic and material implications of independence.

22 June 2005
Georgia Historical Society, Teacher Study Tour

The Massachusetts Historical Society warmly welcomed teachers, who were on a study tour organized by the Georgia Historical Society. Robert Martello, assistant professor at Olin College, offered a lecture entitled "Revolutionary Revere: Patriotism, Entrepreneurship, and Technology in Early America," and Peter Drummey, MHS librarian, presented Revere materials from the Society's collections.