| Title: | Collections
relevant to African American history at the Massachusetts Historical Society:
An Overview |
| Author: | Beth A. Bower |
| Repository: | Massachusetts Historical Society
1154 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02215
library@masshist.org |
|
Abstract:
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This guide is an overview of the Massachusetts
Historical Society collections that contain information by or about African
Americans.
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Within the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS) reside
manuscripts, books, printed materials, photographs, and artifacts by and about
African Americans. This overview is intended to guide historians, researchers,
genealogists, teachers, and others to the type and depth of information
available for the study of African American lives, institutions, and history at
the Society. It does not represent a detailed inventory of all collections, but
rather a preliminary survey of cataloged manuscripts, photographs, and
artifacts by or about African Americans.
The scope of this overview is defined as: (1) manuscripts, photographs, and
material culture (i.e., paintings, artifacts) created by African Americans and
African American institutions and community organizations; and (2) manuscripts
and material culture that specifically identify or describe African Americans.
An example of the former would be Phillis Wheatley's manuscript poems, while
the account books of Boston slave trader Hugh Hall represent the latter.
Correspondence between Horace Mann and Charles Sumner regarding the latter's
anti-slavery speeches in Congress are not included. While related to the
anti-slavery movement, this correspondence is not by or specifically about
individual African Americans, but rather is about a political event.
As late as the nineteenth century, many of the persons described in these
collections were born in Africa. However, as it is often difficult to establish
individuals' origins from brief mentions in documents, all citations related to
persons described as "Negro," "of color," "colored," or African are included in
this overview. The overview does not specifically deal with Native Americans,
although they also may be described in some of these records. Finally,
individual manuscripts are not listed except by way of example.
The materials are presented chronologically in three sections. The colonial
period (1630-1783) covers the period 1630, through the Revolution, to the
abolition of slavery in Massachusetts in 1783. The national period (1784-1865)
encompasses the early growth of the nation through the Civil War. The modern
period (1866-present) represents Reconstruction through the present.
Collections that extend through two periods are included either in the period
most strongly represented in the papers or mentioned twice.
To find more information on these resources or to request materials
described in this overview, readers may consult several MHS resources. The
Society's online catalog, ABIGAIL, available at
www.masshist.org,
contains collection-level descriptions of the Society's manuscript collections
and many of the photograph collections. Approximately 400 published and
unpublished manuscript and photograph collection guides ("finding aids")
contain more detailed information than the descriptions found in ABIGAIL. Many
of the finding aids are fully searchable at the MHS website:
www.masshist.org/findingaids,
and more are added on a regular basis. The collection-level records in ABIGAIL
also indicate if there is a finding aid available for the collection. Copies of
the paper finding aids that have not yet been converted to electronic format
are available in the MHS reading room.
The manuscript card catalog contains descriptions of approximately 320,000
individual items; very few of these appear in ABIGAIL. The published
Catalog of Manuscripts of the Massachusetts Historical
Society (G. K. Hall, 1969; 1980 supplement), available in more than 150
U.S. libraries, consists of photocopies of these item catalog cards. Although
almost all of the collection-level descriptions in the Catalog have been revised or superceded in ABIGAIL, the
published catalog remains a useful guide for descriptions of more than 300,000
individual manuscript items. The MHS card catalog, now available on microfiche
in the Society's reading room, contains the cards in the published
Catalog, as well as many additions and
corrections.
The MHS has also digitized and transcribed 117 items from the collection
relating to African Americans and the end of slavery in America. This website,
available at www.masshist.org/online/endofslavery.cfm,
contains images and searchable transcriptions of manuscripts, broadsides,
artifacts, and other primary sources related to the African American experience
in colonial Massachusetts.
This guide is organized into the following sections:
| | | |
| THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1630-1783) |
| | Africans, African Americans, and Their Families |
| | Slavery, Plantations, and the Slave Trade |
| | African Americans in the Revolution |
| THE NATIONAL PERIOD (1784-1865) |
| | African Americans and Their Families in the National Period |
| | Emancipation |
| | Slavery, Plantations, and the Slave Trade After the Revolution |
| | The Colonization Movement |
| | Abolition and Fugitive Slaves |
| | African Americans and the Civil War |
| | Artifacts and Photographs |
| THE MODERN PERIOD (1866-1970) |
| | African American Lives |
| | African American Organizations |
| | Civil Rights |
| | | | | |
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THE COLONIAL PERIOD (1630-1783)
Slavery, Plantations, Manumission |
| Africans, African Americans, and Their
Families
The MHS holds a significant collection of papers and artifacts related to
only one African in the colonial period, Phillis Wheatley (ca. 1753-1784).
Wheatley was a contemporary of the men who founded the MHS, so these early
collectors gathered her poems, books, broadsides, letters, table, and likeness.
Wheatley manuscripts can be found in the Andrews-Eliot papers, Hugh Upham Clark
papers, Cushing family papers, Miscellaneous and Miscellaneous bound
manuscripts, Oliver papers, Robie-Sewall papers, Thomas Wallcut papers, Thomas
Jefferson papers, and Whitwell papers. The MHS owns the December 15, 1773
broadside for Wheatley's "An elegy, to Miss. Mary Moorhead..." and three
editions of her book, published in 1771, 1773, and 1784. A table said to have
been used by Phillis Wheatley and attributed to Benjamin Frothingham, Jr.
(1734-1809) is also in the Society's collections.
The MHS has resources containing vital records of Africans and African
Americans in colonial Massachusetts such as birth, marriage, church membership,
tax, and death records. The most comprehensive of these is the Boston
African-American Database Project (BAAD). BAAD is a computerized database of
4,000 records of black Bostonians from a variety of colonial records sources,
and is a subset of the much larger "Thwing index" of Boston residents between
1630 and 1800. Researchers may access the database at the Massachusetts
Historical Society or from Inhabitants and Estates of
the Town of Boston 1630-1800, a joint CD-ROM publication of the MHS and
the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS), available from the
NEHGS. Users can search by last name, first name, birth date, death date,
parents, spouse, occupation, or simply on the code "A" to access all 4,000
African American records of the subset BAAD.
Other African American vital records may be found in the records of the
First
Parish Church Dorchester, First Church Hingham, English and Indian
Church in Natick,
King's
Chapel in Boston, the Roxbury Tax Assessment Lists (1697-1804), Census
of Massachusetts (1777), and the Chelsea papers. The
Boston
Overseers of the Poor records contain "warning out" books (1745-1770,
1771-1773) that record the name, town of origin, when persons were residents of
Boston, and the date they were "warned out" of Boston. The diary of Robert
Love, a justice of the peace appointed in 1765-1766 to carry out the "warning
out" process, complements the overseers' records. Other colonial period documents by or about African Americans can be found
in Miscellaneous manuscripts and Miscellaneous Bound manuscripts, which consist
of individually-cataloged documents. The majority of these manuscripts are
legal documents such as recognizance bonds, testimonies, and affidavits from
the greater Boston area. Several of these documents relate to other MHS
collections. While the Jeffries family papers contain a letter from John Usher,
John Saffin, and others to slave trader William Welstead relating instructions
for a surreptitious landing of a parcel of slaves in 1681 at Nantasket, the
Miscellaneous Bound manuscripts contain the bill confirming the delivery,
costs, and disposition of these slaves. Similarly, John Saffin's agreement of
June 26, 1694 for emancipation of his slave Adam started the controversy that
resulted in the publication of Samuel Sewall's The
Selling of Joseph: A Memorial (Boston: Printed by Bartholomew Green and
John Allen, 1700). The only copy of this publication in existence, as well as
Sewall's correspondence and diaries, are owned by the MHS.
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| Slavery, Plantations, and the Slave
Trade
The individuals documented in these collections are, in the majority of
cases, Africans or the descendants of Africans forcibly brought to North
America as slaves. The Winthrop family papers, especially John Winthrop's
journal, chronicle some initial slave trading ventures of the Massachusetts Bay
colony from 1638 through 1645. The journal was originally published as
A Journal of the Transactions and Occurrences in the
Settlement of Massachusetts and the other New-England Colonies...
(Hartford: Printed by Elisha Babcock, 1790), with later editions in the
nineteenth and twentieth centuries as The History of New
England from 1630 to 1649. Various journal entries record the arrival
in 1638 of the ship Desire with slaves from
Providence Island (in the Caribbean), and the misadventures of early Puritan
slave traders. Correspondence discussing enslavement of both Africans and
Native Americans is also scattered throughout the collection.
Other slave importation activities are documented in the
Sir
William Pepperrell papers, Miscellaneous Bound manuscripts, the
Jeffries family papers, the Hugh Hall papers, and the Peter Faneuil papers. The
Pepperrell papers contain several letters regarding slave-trading ventures to
Africa in which William Pepperrell (1696-1759) had a financial interest. The
Jeffries family collection contains the seventeenth-century papers of various
Jeffries family members and those of John Usher (1648-1726), treasurer and
receiver general of the Territory and Dominion of New England under Sir Edmund
Andros. These papers contain correspondence relative to Usher's participation
in the slave trade, the disposition of slaves sold in Boston, and references to
slaves owned by Usher, the Jeffries family, and others. Hugh Hall (1693-1773) was born in Barbados in 1693, raised in Boston, and
educated at Harvard College. After several years training in Barbados and
London, he returned to Boston as a merchant. His account book (1728-1733)
records shipments of slaves (along with other goods) arriving in Boston, their
names, and to whom they were sold. The Moses M. Hays papers contain the New
York merchant's letterbook, which records references to transactions in the
slave trade (1769-1771).
Two decades after the arrival of the Winthrop fleet, Boston had become a hub
of Atlantic trade. Merchants offered provisions to ships trading in the
Atlantic; agents for British firms traded foodstuffs to the Caribbean; and
craftsmen built and repaired trading vessels. This included ships plying the
African slave trade. Boston-based businesses had family members or associates
throughout the Caribbean, and many of these families owned West Indian
plantations and African or African American slaves. These collections of
colonial-period family papers contain one or more of the following document
types relative to free or enslaved Africans and African Americans: slave bills
of sale with the names of slaves; receipts, letters, and accounts for medical
attention, clothing, or hiring out; indentures or agreements; family probate
and estate records containing lists of slaves, value, expenses related to the
owner's funerals (most often clothing), and disposition; letters or agreements
regarding cost for upkeep of slaves; receipts for rent; descriptions of
behavior, appearance, or attitude; and manumission or freedom agreements.
Collections which contain at least one of these documents are: the
Barker-Edes-Noyes papers, Jeremy Belknap papers, Bromfield and Clarke family
papers, Bowdoin-Temple portion of the Winthrop papers,
Nathan
Dane papers, Caleb Davis papers, Dalton family papers, Dolbeare family
papers, Frederick Lewis Gay papers, Benjamin Goodwin papers, Christopher Grant
papers, Samuel A. Greene papers,
David S.
Greenough family papers, Hancock family papers, Henry Knox papers,
Lee-Cabot papers,
Cotton
Mather papers, Metcalfe family papers, James Otis, Sr. papers, Robert
Treat Paine papers, Oliver Partridge papers, Elizabeth Porter correspondence
(1754-1755) in the Bulfinch family papers, Robie-Sewall family papers, John
Rowe diaries, Thomas Saunders papers, Samuel Phillip Savage collection,
Sayer-Gilman papers,
Sedgwick
family papers, Samuel Sewall papers and diaries, Shrimpton family
papers, Smith-Carter papers,
Ward
family papers, Watts family papers portion of the
Chelsea papers, and Charles M. Whelden papers. The Dolbeare family papers are a good example of the content to be found in
these collections. The collection contains various slave bills of sale executed
by the Dolbeares and their in-law Dr. William Clark. The deaths of James and
Sarah Dolbeare within several years of one another in the 1740s occasioned
detailed estate accounts including the altering of a jacket for their slave
Fortune, rent paid to the estate by Scipio "a free negro man," and the granting
of the slaves to various relatives. The papers also contain Dr. William Clark's
agreement with Ebenezer Griggs of Dudley to take, keep, and maintain his
"infirm Negro man Robin."
The account book of Dr. Joseph Warren, Boston physician (and Bunker Hill
hero), contains detailed accounts of each visit, the name of the patient or
parent/master, and occasionally the reason for treatment. The
Boston
Conveyances, although prepared by Nathaniel I. Bowditch in the
nineteenth century, contain detailed reconstruction of property and information
about inhabitants dating back into the colonial period. For instance, in a
North End conveyance record, he traces the ownership of property through
Zipporah Potter, a seventeenth-century African American woman. The Dolbeare, Greenough, and Shrimpton family papers also contain
manuscripts related to their West Indian plantations. For example, a plantation
in Antigua is first recorded in the Shrimpton family papers managed by
Shrimpton son-in-law and Antiguan lieutenant governor John Yeamans. The
plantation passed to his son Shute Shrimpton Yeamans through subsequent owners
until 1818 when David Stoddard Greenough (1752-1826) sold it. Of particular
note are the plantation accounts for 1775-1818. The Dolbeare family owned a
plantation in Jamaica. The Cary family papers, while predominantly relevant to
the national period, contain the papers of patriarch Samuel Cary (1742-1812), a
Chelsea, Mass. native who made his fortune on a plantation in Grenada. The
Daniel Axtell account book documents the management of a plantation in South
Carolina from 1699 to 1707.
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| African Americans in the
Revolution
Africans and African Americans served in the Revolutionary War on both sides
of the conflict. Black historian and activist William Cooper Nell (1816-1874)
gave both the flag and the medallion of the Bucks of America, an African
American Revolutionary War unit, to the Historical Society in 1862. Little is
known about the Bucks of America, however Nell described the presentation of
the flag to the Bucks of America by Governor John Hancock in his book
The Colored Patriots of the American Revolution, with
Sketches of Several Distinguished Colored Persons: To Which Is Added a Brief
Survey of the Condition and Prospects of Colored Americans (1855).
Other collections that contain one or more documents relative to black
participation in the Revolution are the
William
Heath papers, the Henry Knox papers, the George Metcalf papers, and
the John Rowe diaries. |
THE NATIONAL PERIOD (1784-1865)
Freemen, Abolitionists, Colonization, and
Slavery
The Society's collections relative to African Americans in slavery and
freedom are most extensive in the national period, due in some part to the
founding of the Society in 1791. Many MHS members were abolitionists, so they
were the "history makers," as well as the collectors of the records of these
movements and events.
|
| African Americans and Their Families in the
National Period
There are several collections of African American family papers at the
Society. The
DeGrasse-Howard
papers contain the family papers and photographs of the DeGrasse,
Howard, Downing, and Asbury families. Of particular interest are the medical
account book kept from 1852 to 1855 by Dr. John S. V. DeGrasse (1825-1868) and
a carte de visite photograph of Dr. DeGrasse by the well-known African American
painter and photographer Edward Mitchell Bannister (1828-1901). Mrs. Shirley
Asbury Downs of Austin, Tex. owns the DeGrasse-Howard family papers. The
collection is on permanent loan to the Museum of Afro-American History, which
has deposited the collection at the Historical Society. The Mary Hartford papers in the Jeremy Belknap papers contain late
eighteenth- and early nineteenth-century documents on Boston African Americans
and papers related to the living arrangements and support of Mary Hartford, an
African American servant in the Belknap family.
Within other collections are papers and accounts of African Americans from
the first half of the nineteenth century. From western Massachusetts, the
Sedgwick
family collection contains an account of the life of Elizabeth
"Mumbet" Freeman of Stockbridge written by author Catherine Maria Sedgwick, a
miniature portrait, and her necklace. A related Stockbridge collection is the
typescript about Agrippa Hull (1759-1848), the African American Revolutionary
War orderly of Polish Brigadier General Tadeusz Koscuiszko (1746-1817), and a
photograph of Hull's second wife Margaret Timbroke. The William Lloyd Garrison papers contain documents related to and/or
correspondence of William Cooper Nell and Sarah P. Remond (1826-1894), as well
as their photographs. Other black abolitionists' photographs in this collection
include William Wells Brown (1815-1884), Frederick Douglass (1818-1895),
Charles L. Remond (1810-1873), Joshua B. Smith (1813-1879), and Harriet Tubman
([1820]-1913). The Theodore Parker papers contain a letter from William Craft
(1824-1900). The
Horace
Mann papers contain correspondence from Peter Randolph ([1825]-1897)
of Philadelphia and several African American anti-slavery groups. The Society
also owns an engraving of "Ain't I a Woman and a Sister" by Patrick Henry
Reason (1816-1898), a New York African American engraver, lithographer,
abolitionist, and fraternal order leader. Other collections which contain one or more documents regarding individual
African Americans are: the Adams family papers, Andrews-Eliot papers,
Boston
Conveyances, Peter Brooks's farm journal and wastebooks, Jared
Curtis's notebooks,
Emerson
family papers,
David S.
Greenough family papers, Groton (Mass.) historical papers,
Henry
Herbert Edes papers, Israel Keith papers, Miscellaneous manuscripts,
Harrison Gray Otis papers, Robert Treat Paine papers, and Joel Parker papers.
The Horace Mann papers, the G. W. Norcross autograph collection, and the
Spaulding-Fearing papers all contain correspondence related to African American
education and schools. Information on African American seamen is contained in
the Jonathan Ingersoll Bowditch papers,
Boston
Port and Seamen's Aid Society papers, William Jenks papers, and
Miscellaneous Bound manuscripts. In addition, vital records regarding African
Americans can be found in the
Boston
Overseers of the Poor records, First Church of Hingham records,
Roxbury Almshouse records, Joseph Thomas papers (Nantucket), and the records of
Boston's Trinity Church. |
| Emancipation
It is generally agreed that slavery in Massachusetts ended in 1783 through
legal rather than legislative action. No one act or case set all slaves free on
a specific date, but rather individual agreements and legal actions executed
throughout the Commonwealth culminated in de facto
freedom of Africans and African Americans owned by Massachusetts residents. The
Jeremy Belknap papers contain his famous correspondence with St. George Tucker
(1752-1827) of Williamsburg, Va. regarding the abolition of slavery in
Massachusetts. Belknap circulated Tucker's queries among the white and black
communities, and some of their responses are part of the collection. Copies of
petitions to the legislature by Prince Hall (1735-1808), African American
community leader and founder of the African Masonic Lodge in the United States,
and others in the black community are also in the Belknap papers.
The emancipation of slaves immediately raised legal and societal issues
regarding the status and protection of freed people. Disagreements between
towns and former slave owners over the responsibility for the support of
destitute or aged ex-slaves found their way into the courts and town records.
The Adams-Morse papers,
Boston
Overseers of the Poor records, Francis Dana papers, Miscellaneous
Bound manuscripts, and
Sedgwick
family papers all contain documents related to these disputes and
warnings-out. The status of slaves brought to Free states from slave states is
discussed in the Theodore Parker papers and the Sedgwick family papers. |
| Slavery, Plantations, and the Slave Trade
After the Revolution
In the late 1780s, many states banned the importation of slaves from Africa,
but these laws were generally ignored. The African slave trade was made illegal
in the United States in 1808. Throughout the late eighteenth century, and even
after 1808, New England's mercantile community continued to participate in the
illegal African slave trade, as well as the interstate slave trade. The
Ebenezer Burgess papers, Nathaniel Cutting journal and letterbooks, Moses M.
Hayes papers, Benjamin Joy papers, and Thomas Handasyd Perkins papers document
the legal and illegal trade in slaves from Africa to the U.S., Brazil, and Cuba
in the national period.
New England families had many blood and business ties to the slave-owning
states and the West Indies. The Society's collections contain business records
and accounts of plantations including the
Atkins
and Tidd-Lord-Henchman-Carret family papers (Cuba), John H. Cabot papers
(Tennessee), Cary family papers and Samuel Cary papers (Grenada),
Francis
Russell Hart collection (Antigua), Hubbard-Greene papers (Guyana),
Jackson family papers (Savannah), Thomas Jefferson and
Lamb
family papers (Virginia), the Pemberton collection (South Carolina),
Vaughan
family papers (Jamaica), and Winthrop Sargent papers
(Mississippi). New Englanders also traveled in the South, the Caribbean, and South America
during the national period and wrote descriptions and impressions of
plantations, slave auctions, and slavery. Mrs. William Nye Davis's journal
(Cuba & West Indies), William Richards Lawrence letterbooks (the South and
Cuba), Horace Mann
papers (Tennessee), H. Pierce family letters (Brazil), George Cheyne
Shattuck papers (South Carolina & Georgia), Rinaldo R. Taylor letters
(Louisiana), and Wheelwright family papers (Cuba) all provide some record of
these slave societies. The Theodore Parker papers contain correspondence
describing the Washington, D.C. slave market and manumission techniques. The Edward Lillie Pierce volumes chronicle his oversight of freedmen working
the Port Royal, S.C. plantations during the Civil War; the Peirce family papers
contain a reminiscence of teaching these same freedmen; and the Noyes family
papers have documents regarding Edward J. Noyes's administration of the
Routhwood Plantation in South Carolina in 1866 after emancipation.
|
| The Colonization
Movement
Not long after the American Revolution, movements began to support the
relocation of freed slaves to the West Indies and Africa, and later Kansas,
Canada, Florida, and the American West. Known broadly as "colonization"
movements, there was initially support within both the black and white
communities. The Ebenezer Burgess papers and Miscellaneous Bound manuscripts
contain documents related to the colony in Sierra Leone. Burgess's papers also
chronicle the early identification of Liberia as a potential colony site. The
Massachusetts Colonization Society's records document the organization's
mission to send free black citizens of the United States to Liberia. The
records of
the Trustees of Donations for Education in Liberia contain
correspondence and other materials (1842-1927) regarding Liberia College, and
the DeGrasse-Howard
family papers contain the papers of Edwin Clarence Howard (1846-1912),
who attended Liberia College from 1861-1865. The papers of George E. Ellis, Charles E. French, William Lloyd Garrison,
Amos Adams
Lawrence,
Amos
Lawrence,
Horace
Mann, Harrison Gray Otis, Theodore Parker, and Thomas Walcutt all
contain documents regarding the African colonization movement and/or the
Canadian colonization settlements, including letters of Josiah Henson
(1789-1883) and Nathaniel Paul ([1793]-1883). The papers of abolitionist
attorney and Massachusetts Civil War governor
John A.
Andrew (1818-1867) include correspondence about Florida and Colorado
colonization initiatives. New England Emigrant Aid Company records chronicle an
organization that supported freemen settling in Kansas, as do portions of the
John A. Andrew papers and the Amos Lawrence papers. |
| Abolition and Fugitive Slaves
Massachusetts, especially the cities of Boston and Salem, were destinations
for escaped slaves because of their active free African American communities.
The Hancock papers, Miscellaneous manuscripts,
Horace
Mann papers, Harrison Gray Otis papers, and Saltonstall family papers
all contain correspondence regarding fugitive slaves. The Wormsley-Latimer
papers contain a manuscript biography of escaped slave Peter Byers (b. ca.
1800) of Virginia. Massachusetts lawyers were actively involved in a number of fugitive slave
cases in the 1840s and 1850s, including those of the Amistad slaves, Anthony Burns (1834-1862), Shadrach
Minkins ([1800]-1875), George Latimer, and Thomas Sims. John Quincy Adams
defended the Amistad slaves in the period
1838-1842, and his correspondence and diaries are in the Adams family papers.
The Noyes family papers contain an 1840 account of the Amistad trial. Henry Ingersoll Bowditch (1808-1892)
defended George Latimer in 1842, and his papers are contained in "Papers
related to the George Latimer Case." Additional items related to the Latimer
case can be found in the Bowditch and
Channing
family papers. The surety bond for Thomas Sims, captured in 1851, is
found in the Miscellaneous Bound manuscripts, and reaction to the case can be
found in the Daniel Foster and Horace Mann papers. The Dana family
papers contain information on the Shadrach Minkins case (1851), as do
the John
A. Andrew and Horace Mann papers. The Andrews and Dana collections
also contain files related to the Anthony Burns case, with letters from Burns
to Dana. Miscellaneous Bound manuscripts hold correspondence about the efforts
to free Burns, including a letter from Leonard V. Grimes (1815-1873), pastor of
the African American Twelfth Baptist Church. The Charles Cushing Barry papers
have the records of the Pine Street Anti-Slavery Society and the financial
papers, including cancelled checks, arranging the purchase of Anthony Burns.
The Tracy Patch Cheever journal has reaction to this case. The Society also
owns a number of broadsides related to the fugitive slave issue. While the Society has an extensive collection of manuscripts and printed
materials related to the anti-slavery movement, this overview focuses on
manuscripts that provide information or insight into the condition,
identification, or lives of free and enslaved African Americans. New England's
abolitionists, both black and white, worked actively to protect fugitives who
had escaped to New England and to free or purchase those still enslaved. The
Boston Vigilance Committee minutes are found in the Henry Ingersoll Bowditch
papers. Later, Bowditch founded the Boston Anti-Manhunting League whose records
and artifacts are also owned by the Society. The Theodore Parker papers contain
correspondence regarding help given to fugitive slaves and offers to sell
slaves by their masters. The Belcher-Jennison-Weiss papers contain the diary
and papers of Reverend John Weiss and anti-slavery broadsides related to
fugitive slaves. The papers of the Adams family, John A. Andrew, Nathaniel
Ingersoll Bowditch, Dike family, Thomas Bradford Drew, William Lloyd Garrison,
Amos Adams
Lawrence,
Lee
family, Horace Mann, and Harrison Gray Otis all contain correspondence
and other materials related to the efforts to free and protect African
Americans. The Society also holds records of the Boston Female Anti-Slavery
Society (BFASS), which was actively involved in the case to free "Little Med."
The John A. Andrew papers also contain tokens and a seal of BFASS. |
| African Americans and the Civil
War
Massachusetts was the first northern state to raise African American troops
after the Emancipation Proclamation in 1863, and Massachusetts abolitionists
were actively involved in raising other African American units. The
Amos Adams
Lawrence papers,
John A.
Andrew papers,
Lee family
papers, Norwood P. Hallowell papers, Miscellaneous manuscripts, and
the broadside collection all contain information on the recruitment of African
American troops. Massachusetts's African American troops are chronicled through
documents, artifacts, and/or photographs in the following collections: the
Edward J. Bartlett correspondence (5th Regiment, Massachusetts Volunteer
Cavalry), Fifty-Fourth Regiment papers,
Edwin
Gittleman research materials, Lee family papers, and the Robert Gould
Shaw letters (54th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry); and the Association of
Officers of the 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry,
Fox family
papers, Norwood P. Hallowell papers, Edward W. Kinsley papers, David
Thayer papers, and Wolcott papers (55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry).
Engravings of the battles fought by these troops are found in the Society's
engraving collection. The Atkins-Forbes papers, Lee family papers, and Miscellaneous manuscripts
contain documents related to fundraising for, construction of, and dedication
of the Robert Gould Shaw monument on Boston Common. The
Norwood P.
Hallowell scrapbooks document reunions of the 5th Massachusetts
Volunteer Cavalry and the 54th and 55th Massachusetts Volunteer Infantries. In
addition, the Lee family papers have information relative to the construction
of the Crispus Attucks monument. Other African American units are recorded in the
Edward
Atkinson papers (1st South Carolina Volunteers), John O. Sargent
papers (2nd Regiment Louisiana Native Guards), Benjamin Butler collection (5th
Corps, United States Colored Troops [USCT]), Vendig collection (8th Corps de
Afrique), DeGrasse-Howard
papers (35th USCT), Henry Hedge Mitchell papers and John Owen Jr.
papers (36th USCT), Daniel Foster papers and the J. A. Munroe supply vouchers
(37th USCT), and Warren Goodale papers (114th USCT). The MHS also holds the
diaries (1862-1865) of William Benjamin Gould, an escaped slave and sailor who
served in the Union Navy during the Civil War on the armed steamer
Cambridge and the steam frigate
Niagara. The diaries are published as
Diary of a Contraband: The Civil War Passage of a Black
Sailor, edited by William B. Gould IV (Stanford University Press),
2002. Union Army officers often recorded their impressions of slavery and
plantation life, Confederate treatment and movement of slaves, and their
opinions of freemen and African American troops. The Joseph Lincoln Brigham
family papers, Lorin Low Dame papers, William H. Eastman letters, Ebenezer Hunt
correspondence, Orville W. Leonard military papers, Charles F. Read papers,
Charles M. Whelden papers, and Henry Mitchell Whitney correspondence all
contain some mention of African Americans in their letters or journals. "Twelve
days 'absence without leave' and what came of it" is Isaac Harris Hooper's
manuscript account of his escape from Libby Prison in Richmond, Va. to Union
lines in Williamsburg, Va. with the help of free and enslaved African Americans
and Native Americans in Virginia.
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| Artifacts and
Photographs
Some impassioned abolitionists actively documented the realities of slavery
by collecting items emblematic of bondage. Slavery artifacts are found in the
collections of Governor John A. Andrew and Henry Ingersoll Bowditch's memorial
cabinet created for his son Nathaniel Bowditch (1839-1863). The MHS has a
branding iron, several whips, a piece of a slave auction block, and an iron
yoke found on a young New Orleans plantation slave. The Society also has a
significant collection of State (Alabama, Arkansas, Florida, Georgia, Missouri,
Mississippi, and North Carolina), Confederate Bank, and Confederate States of
America currency that depicts African American slaves. The glass negative
collection of Miss Margaret Hastings contains photographs of black
abolitionists, broadsides, fugitive slave material, prints depicting slavery,
slave trade documents, and Boston abolitionist buildings, such as the African
Meeting House. The
Jenks and
Jewett collections also contain photographs of African Americans. |
THE MODERN PERIOD (1866-1970)
African Americans, Organizations, and Civil
Rights |
| African American Lives
Papers and descriptions of African Americans in the second half of the
nineteenth and into the twentieth century are found in the
DeGrasse-Howard
family papers; letters to James Wormley, the black proprietor of
Wormley's Hotel in Washington, D.C.; letters to William C. Gannett regarding a
dispute over African American students at Harvard in 1922; Sarah Pananty's
writings and bibliographies related to the South End and Boston during the
1930s; and "Reminiscences of a country doctor" by Alfred E. Worcester, which
describes the Dixie Hospital's training school for African American nurses. The
George Frisbie Hoar autograph collection contains letters of Frederick Douglass
and Frederick Douglass, Jr. (1842-1892), and the Whitwell autograph collection
has the autographs of Booker T. Washington (1856-1915) and Phillis Wheatley.
The Amelia
Peabody papers contain photographs of rural African American families.
The MHS also owns a portrait by Cloyd Lee Boykin (b. 1877), a Boston African
American artist. |
| African American
Organizations
The modern period is characterized by collections related to philanthropy by
and for African Americans and their organizations. In 1860, an interracial
group of concerned citizens opened the Home for Aged Colored Women on Beacon
Hill to care for elderly African and African American women. Many of these
women were ex-slaves and the Home's records, which date from 1861-1950, contain
small biographies on each, as well as notes at their deaths. The MHS has
records of the New England Freedman's Aid Society, originally the Educational
Commission, which oversaw teaching of freedmen in the South. The William Lloyd
Garrison papers have letters regarding funds for emancipated slaves in the
South.
The records of the Society for Propagating the Gospel Among the Indians and
Others in North America contain correspondence between the Society and
individuals involved in the education of African Americans after the Civil War
at industrial and other schools, such as the Tuskegee Normal School and
Institute, Hampton Institute, Calhoun Colored School, and Claflin University.
The papers of Robert Treat Paine (1835-1910) also include letters from Tuskegee
Normal School administration and students. The Samuel May papers document the
Holley School, a charitable school for black children at Lottsburgh, Va.
founded by reformers Abigail Kelley Foster (1811-1887) and Sallie Holley
(1818-1887). This collection also contains a number of photographs of the
exterior and interior of the school and its students. The
Lend a
Hand Society records include information and photographs of African
Americans in the South. Liberia remained an interest of Bostonians into the twentieth century. The
previously mentioned Massachusetts Colonization Society records and
Trustees
of Donations for Education in Liberia correspondence continue into the
twentieth century. The Daniel Dulaney Addison papers document the American Mt.
Coffee Association, which underwrote the relief work of Jane E. D. Sharp in
Monrovia, Liberia, and Liberia College in the period from 1895-1919. The Lend a
Hand Society records also contain information on the American Mt. Coffee
Association. |
| Civil Rights
The Society's late nineteenth- and early twentieth-century collections
contain records related to civil rights, including Boston Central Labor Union
records, the Gamaliel Bradford papers, the records of the American Civil
Liberties Union of Massachusetts, and
Americans
for Democratic Action (ADA), Massachusetts Chapter records. The ADA
records contain papers related to Senator Edward W. Brooke (b. 1919). |
When using the items described in this guide, researchers should cite the
collection containing the item.
For information about the collections and items described in this guide,
consult ABIGAIL, the online
catalog of the Massachusetts Historical Society.
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