Calendar of Events

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.

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.

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.

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.

Discussion will focus on two seminar papers: “African American and Indian Church Affiliation: Reevaluating Race and Religion in the North, 1730-1776,” by Richard Boles of George Washington University, and  “A World of Deference and Dependence: Slavery and Unfreedom in Eighteenth-century Boston,” by Jared Hardesty of Boston College. Boles’s paper explores black and Indian participation in each major Protestant denomination, suggesting the need to reevaluate aspects of the religious history of the colonial North in regard to how blacks and Indians influenced theology and church practices. Hardesty’s essay aims to raise serious questions about the nature of freedom in the American Colonies by engaging the literature concerning liberty in early America and challenging the popular slave/free dichotomy that dominates the historiography.

Internationally famous author, pioneering Unitarian, rural and urban benevolent worker, sister to six siblings, active aunt to 37 nieces and nephews, and prolific correspondent, Catharine Maria Sedgwick’s fascinating life deserves a full-length biography. With over 4,000 letters in addition to personal journals at the MHS, there is much to examine. In her brown bag talk Lucinda Damon-Bach will share some of the questions and discoveries to date that are helping her to clear up misconceptions and prepare a long-overdue book about Sedgwick’s life and work.

In March 1861, when Lincoln delivered his First Inaugural, neither he nor many in the audience envisioned that four years later, at his Second, the eradication of slavery would be imminent. What events led to the Emancipation Proclamation? And what would follow as Lincoln led the nation toward his “king’s cure for all the evils,” the Thirteenth Amendment? On the eve of Lincoln’s birthday, William Martin will explore Lincoln’s passage from the careful Constitutional lawyer of the First Inaugural to the almost messianic figure of the Second. An MHS Fellow,  Mr. Martin has written novels that appear on the New York Times bestsellers list, as well as scripts for television and film.

Reservations requested. Please click on the RSVP link above, or contact the education department at 617-646-0560 / education@masshist.org.

By examining towns of Plymouth County, particularly Pembroke and Middleboro, this project shows how political, economic, and at times military power flowed from effective control of the waterways. The shift in what might be called “water regimes” was a crucial location of what Charles Sellers has called the Market Revolution.

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.

Rescheduled from October 30. This seminar paper will focus on the ideological elements in the conflict that emerged over wage and price regulation, as wartime debates created a conceptual gap between calls for economic equality and liberty. It is part of a larger study of the evolution of notions of equality in America.

MHS Fellows and Members are invited to a special preview reception of "Proclaim Liberty Throughout All the Land." The evening will begin with remarks by Stephen T. Riley Librarian Peter Drummey.

In the decades leading up to the Civil War, Boston became a center of the national antislavery movement, and in 1831 William Lloyd Garrison, "all on fire" for the cause, began publication of The Liberator, the country's leading abolitionist newspaper. There was strong resistance to the radical movement, however, not only in the slaveholding South, but among Northerners' as well. The exhibition features manuscripts, photographs, artifacts—including the imposing stone for The Liberator—and portraits related to the abolitionist movement in Boston.

Librarian Peter Drummey will discuss materials in the new exhibition that illustrate the life and career of William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the Liberator, and a central figure in the antislavery movement in Boston.

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 essay will explore Broadway as the central location for many of Jaffe’s case studies of cultural entrepreneurs as well as the subject and site of new ways of seeing in the city. His research includes Currier & Ives lithographs, John Rogers sculptures, E. & H. T. Anthony Stereographs, and Harper's illustrations.

Join us at this two-day workshop as we explore eighteenth-century letters from the collections of the Revere House and the Massachusetts Historical Society! Teachers will learn more about the importance of letters as a communication tool in the eighteenth century, as well as their importance as historical sources today. Participants can also try their hand at writing letters using eighteenth-century technology and conventions and transcribing letters written by members of the Revere and Adams families.

Participants can earn 12 PDPs by attending both days of the course and writing one lesson plan, or One Graduate Credit (equal to 22.5 PDPs) from Framingham State (credit pending) by paying an additional fee of $75 and completing a more extensive project.

Registration Fee: $80. Includes course readings, morning snacks and one lunch. To Register: Please complete this registration form and send it with your check (payable to the Revere House) to:19 North Sq., Boston, MA 02113.

Workshop Schedule

SATURDAY, March 2, 2013
9:00 – 4:30 Paul Revere House 19 North Square, Boston, MA 02113

Morning Sessions:
Letter-writing in the 18th century: Who wrote letters and why?

Reading Between the Lines: What do surviving Revere letters tell us about the family? Small groups work together to note information gleaned from original and transcribed Revere family letters. A short tour of the Revere House is included to see a few Revere written items on display. Staff reveal the recent discovery of a missing Revere letter, how it came to light and how it has since been conserved.

Afternoon Sessions:
Composition Workshop: Write your own 18th c. style letter by following patterns & styles noted in examples shared in the morning sessions and required reading.

Penmanship: Quill Pen Writing Workshop: Copy out your own letter with a quill pen and ink. Proper 18th c. writing style & quill pen sharpening method will be taught by R. P. Hale, calligrapher and printer extraordinaire.

SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2013
9:00 – 4:30 Massachusetts Historical Society 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215

Morning Sessions
Making Sense of Manuscripts: Learn more about the challenges & rewards of working with eighteenth-century documents such as the Adams Family Papers.

Collections Tour: View examples of letters in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s extensive collections.

Afternoon Sessions:
Your turn: Try your hand at transcribing eighteenthcentury letters from the Society’s collections. After working in small groups, participants can share their own challenges and successes.

A Life in Letters: What does the correspondence between Abigail Adams and her husband and sisters tell us about life in the late eighteenth century? Participants will examine a series of letters in order to create a sketch of Adams family life at the time of the American Revolution.

For Further Information: Contact the Education Department: 617-646-0557 or education@masshist.org.

Recently scholars have pointed out links between the 1636-1637 Anglo-Indian conflict known as the "Pequot War" and the 1643-1645 Dutch-Indian conflict known as "Kieft's War." This paper unpacks the larger historiographic implications of seeing the two wars as tandem events, and viewing New England and New Netherland as part of a single contested region.

For much of the 20th century, Charles E. Wyzanski, Jr., the presenter's father, engaged the leading individuals and intellectuals of his time and left his imprint on a surprising number of them. While a first-year law student in 1927, Wyzanski received a handwritten note from Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, in which Holmes hoped that whenever Wyzanski's work "seemed to present only mean details, he might realize that every detail has the mystery of the universe behind it and keep up [his] heart with undying faith." Wyzanski did just that until his death in 1986, influencing to a remarkable degree the legal, political, intellectual, and moral life of his times.

In Cape Cod, Henry David Thoreau describes using an early MHS publication as a sort of antiquarian travel guide -- a way of looking back on the landscape he traversed as it had been described almost 50 years earlier. What did the founders of the MHS set out to print and what have later generations made of our early publications?

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.

Join us at this two-day workshop as we explore eighteenth-century letters from the collections of the Revere House and the Massachusetts Historical Society! Teachers will learn more about the importance of letters as a communication tool in the eighteenth century, as well as their importance as historical sources today. Participants can also try their hand at writing letters using eighteenth-century technology and conventions and transcribing letters written by members of the Revere and Adams families.

Participants can earn 12 PDPs by attending both days of the course and writing one lesson plan, or One Graduate Credit (equal to 22.5 PDPs) from Framingham State (credit pending) by paying an additional fee of $75 and completing a more extensive project.

Registration Fee: $80. Includes course readings, morning snacks and one lunch. To Register: Please complete this registration form and send it with your check (payable to the Revere House) to:19 North Sq., Boston, MA 02113 by 31 January 2013.

Workshop Schedule

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 9, 2013
9:00 – 4:30 Paul Revere House 19 North Square, Boston, MA 02113

Morning Sessions:
Letter-writing in the 18th century: Who wrote letters and why?

Reading Between the Lines: What do surviving Revere letters tell us about the family? Small groups work together to note information gleaned from original and transcribed Revere family letters. A short tour of the Revere House is included to see a few Revere written items on display. Staff reveal the recent discovery of a missing Revere letter, how it came to light and how it has since been conserved.

Afternoon Sessions:
Composition Workshop: Write your own 18th c. style letter by following patterns & styles noted in examples shared in the morning sessions and required reading.

Penmanship: Quill Pen Writing Workshop: Copy out your own letter with a quill pen and ink. Proper 18th c. writing style & quill pen sharpening method will be taught by R. P. Hale, calligrapher and printer extraordinaire.

SATURDAY, MARCH 9, 2013
9:00 – 4:30 Massachusetts Historical Society 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215

Morning Sessions
Making Sense of Manuscripts: Learn more about the challenges & rewards of working with eighteenth-century documents such as the Adams Family Papers.

Collections Tour: View examples of letters in the Massachusetts Historical Society’s extensive collections.

Afternoon Sessions:
Your turn: Try your hand at transcribing eighteenthcentury letters from the Society’s collections. After working in small groups, participants can share their own challenges and successes.

A Life in Letters: What does the correspondence between Abigail Adams and her husband and sisters tell us about life in the late eighteenth century? Participants will examine a series of letters in order to create a sketch of Adams family life at the time of the American Revolution.

For Further Information: Contact the Education Department: 617-646-0557 or education@masshist.org.

In 1909, Elizabeth Lowell Putnam formed the Massachusetts Milk Consumers’ Association with the intent of tackling what was then known as “the milk question.” Using the MMCA as a case study, this paper argues that Boston milk reformers’ understanding of the new science of bacteriology fundamentally shaped their perceptions of the relationship between the rural environment, the food city dwellers consumed, and the health of human bodies.

Prize-winning author and MHS Fellow Megan Marshall will read from Margaret Fuller: A New American Life, her biography of the 19th-century heroine who spent her last years in Rome and Florence as a war correspondent covering the early stages of Italy’s Risorgimento. How should we remember this period in Fuller’s life, particularly given the scandal of her love affair with Giovanni Ossoli? Folk ensemble Newpoli will conjure the vibrant music that Fuller came to love as emblematic of Italy. Ms. Marshall is the author of The Peabody Sisters: Three Women Who Ignited American Romanticism, winner of the Francis Parkman Prize, the Mark Lynton History Prize, the Massachusetts Book Award, and a Pulitzer Prize finalist. Newpoli performs southern Italian folk music from the Middle Ages to the 19th century.

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

New Fellows and Members are invited to a special reception and tour to learn more about the MHS and its collections. For more information, call 617-646-0543. RSVP required.

Curator of Art Anne Bentley will examine the nature and use of our set of William Lloyd Garrison’s banners, displayed circa 1840s to 1850s in local fairs and demonstrations sponsored by the Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society.

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 panel discussion featuring Carla Kaplan, who will talk about her forthcoming book on white women in the Harlem Renaissance; Diane McWhorter, who will discuss the civil rights struggle and the growth of the military-industrial complex in postwar Alabama; and Lois Rudnick, who will reflect on Mabel Dodge Luhan and her circle of friends in New Mexico.

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.

Men and women 150 years ago grappled with information overload by making scrapbooks—the ancestors of Google and blogging. Mark Twain and Susan B. Anthony, abolitionists and Confederates, African American janitors and farmwomen cut out and pasted down their reading. Professor Garvey will discuss these various perspectives, covered in her recent book Writing with Scissors, including the findings she uncovered while doing research at the MHS. All scrapbook makers passed along their understanding that the press was not a simple record, but a set of voices and conversations.

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

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.