Calendar of Events

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 conference for Massachusetts history organizations is presented by Mass Humanities, Massachusetts Historical Society, University of Massachusetts Amherst Public History Program, and the University of Massachusetts Boston Public History and Archives Track. 

Join us on Monday, June 3rd at the Hogan Campus Center, College of the Holy Cross, for a thought-provoking day examining myth in Massachusetts history. Ray Raphael, author of the forth-coming Constitutional Myths: What We Get Wrong and How to Get it Right (March 2013), a companion volume to the earlier Founding Myths: Stories that Hide our Patriotic Past, will explore “Why Myths Persist” in his keynote address.

In sessions and round tables such as Massachusetts History beyond the Tea Party; Reinterpretation 101; Redefining Freedom on the Trail, and “It Never Happened Here”: Iconic Myth as Burden we will examine and present organizations, programs and projects that have successfully harnessed myths, expanded their narratives, and redefined their mission without losing their identity. In practical sessions/workshops we will explore “teaching the problem,” and how to use this model for programming purposes in exciting ways that successfully challenge audiences.

Registration Fees
Fee includes workshop, morning refreshments, buffet lunch (vegetarian option available), and afternoon snack.

• $85 Standard Fee per person
• $60 Student Fee (include copy of student ID with registration or bring ID to event if registering online)
• $75 Per person for 3 registrants from same organization at the same time
• $65 Per person for 4 registrants from same organization at the same time

For more information, or to register for the conference, visit the Mass Humanities website: http://masshumanities.org/history_conference.

When and why did The Federalist become The Federalist Papers? What role did the essays play in the ratification debates? Can Publius be considered an authoritative source for interpreting specific sections of the Constitution – or for discovering its inner meaning?

Ray Raphael’s latest book is Constitutional Myths: What We Get Wrong and How To Get It Right. His previous works include Mr. President: How and Why the Founders Created a Chief Executive, Founding Myths, A People’s History of the American Revolution, and The First American Revolution: Before Lexington and Concord.

The project traces the historical roots of contemporary concerns about college students' alcohol use. The brown bag session will specifically focus on college students and alcohol between 1820 and 1860. The diaries that antebellum college men kept reveal students' drinking behaviors, the meanings they made from alcohol, and their reactions to and involvement in the temperance movement. 

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.

MHS Fellows are invited to attend the Society's annual business meeting followed by a program and preview reception for The Object of History: 18th-Century Treasures from the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. RSVP required.

5:00 PM
Annual Meeting for elected MHS Fellows

6:00 PM
Remarks by Stephen T. Riley Librarian Peter Drummey followed by a reception and exhibition preview for MHS Fellows and Members

Following the Society's annual business meeting, MHS Fellows and Members are invited to a special preview reception of The Object of History: 18th-Century Treasures from the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society. The evening will begin with remarks by Stephen T. Riley Librarian Peter Drummey. A reception and exhibition preview will follow. The exhibition highlights 18th-century treasures from the Society's collections including portraits, needlework, firearms, clothing, furniture, silver, documents, and books.

“Estlin Cummings Wild West Show” features a selection of E.E. Cummings’s childhood writings and drawings, showcasing the young poet’s earliest experiments with words and illustrations. Drawings and paintings include ink blots, watercolors, and sketches in pen and pencil of cowboys and Indians, boats, the “world’s tallest tower,” wild west shows, hunting expeditions, locomotives, zoos, circuses, elephants, and house plans.

Image: “Estlin Cummings Wild West Show,” drawing by E. E. Cummings. From the Cummings-Clarke family papers. Artwork by E.E. Cummings. Used by permission of the Trustees for the E. E. Cummings Trust.

From 13 June through 7 September, the Society will display letters written by John and Abigail Adams to each other, to their children, and to friends and family regarding their views on education.

In a letter to his wife, Abigail, dated August 28, 1774, John Adams writes: “The Education of our Children is never out of my Mind. Train them to Virtue, habituate them to industry, activity, and Spirit. Make them consider every Vice, as shamefull and unmanly: fire them with Ambition to be usefull-make them disdain to be destitute of any usefull, or ornamental Knowledge or Accomplishment. Fix their Ambition upon great and solid Objects, and their Contempt upon little, frivolous, and useless ones.”

What is the meaning of historical objects? Why are they preserved, and why have they survived? Are they valued for their associations with notable historical figures or landmark events, as objects of beauty, as the survival of relics from a distant past, or for the stories they convey? The exhibition explores these questions through the display of 18th-century portraits and objects from the Society's collections, along with rarely seen engravings, needlework, maps, weapons, furniture, clothing, scientific instruments, and silver.

J.L. Bell will discuss the provenance, history, and people connected with one of the fascinating items featured in The Object of History exhibition: Ephraim Moors's powder horn. Carvings on the horn icnlude a crude drawing of the Continental Army encampment on Winter Hill, five grenadiers, a mansion house, and the head of a beast. Aside from what the carving itself says and the name of the sea captain who donated it to the Society, almost nothing else is known about this object. Bell will discuss his investigation into the object's details, and what they tell us about the Siege of Boston.

J. L.Bell is a Massachusetts writer who specializes in (among other things) the start of the American Revolution in and around Boston. His blog, Boston1775.net, features "history, analysis, and unabashed gossip about the start of the American Revolution in Massachusetts."

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.

David Wood, the curator of the Concord Museum, and Peter Drummey, the Librarian for the Society, will discuss early works of art, artifacts, and documents on display at the MHS as part of The Object of History exhibition.

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 the 1880s, the field of sexology declared masculine women to be inverts—true homosexuals. Prior to this period, representations of gender crossings were more varied and common. Such representations shine a spotlight on some of the most obvious anxieties concerning women’s place in society as well as the constitutive relationships between sex, gender, and sexuality.

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.

At its height in the late eighteenth century, Jamaica was the most valuable and productive of Britain’s colonial possessions in the Atlantic world. Yet intertwined with Jamaica’s reputation for unparalleled profit was a growing apprehension of settler degeneration—in manners, morals, bloodlines, and especially life expectancy. The island, as one would-be colonist put it, offers “the most flattering prospect of pecuniary acquisition or death.” Such notions signify Britain’s ambivalent and contradictory relationship with Jamaica, and the West India colonies more generally, during the era of slavery.

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 program will present research from a project that investigates social and environmental change along the far Pacific coast of North America from 1760 through 1820 by focusing on knowledge of and labor in the region’s oceanic and littoral landscapes. Beginning in the late eighteenth century, Spanish missionaries and soldiers, Russian hunters, and British traders, as well as New England-based merchants and sailors, began traversing North America’s Pacific coast, forming new relationships between these ocean-based travelers, North American indigenous peoples, and the coastal environment. Using the logs and diaries of sailors as well as the journals, account books, and letters of merchants, the brown-bag presentation will focus on the specific ways that “Boston men” and their backers understood, approached, and literally navigated the physical and the social geographies of the North American Pacific.

In 1803 and 1804 New Englanders warily eyed their country's vast new acquisition. Some worried that Louisiana was a “savage,” uncivilized land that would corrupt the new nation; others that it would reduce the already-declining political importance of New England; others that it would become a new addition to the “empire of slavery.” Still others, however, especially Jeffersonian republicans, dismissed these and other concerns and celebrated the Purchase and the economic opportunities it would bring. A few went so far as to move south in search of fortunes in the Orleans Territory.

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 two-day workshop will focus on how to use local resources – documents, artifacts, landscapes and the rich expertise in every town – to examine historical issues with a national focus. We will concentrate on the period just after the Revolution and the concerns and conflicts, hopes and fears, experiences and expectations of the people living in the Boston area at a time of uncertainty, fragility, and possibility. We will investigate such questions as: What was it like to live in a town that had been around for a long time in a country that was new? When the nation was first forming after the Revolution, what were people in our town/region worried about? How much did the geography, economy, culture, and social makeup of our region influence those concerns? How can we find out? What resources/pieces of evidence does our community have that relate to this time period and the people living in it? How can we best present this evidence and allow people of all ages to discover answers to some of these questions? How does our local focus add a crucial dimension to our understanding of a key period in American history?

The workshop is open to teachers, librarians, archivists, members of local historical societies, and all interested local history enthusiasts. Workshop faculty will include Jayne Gordon and Kathleen Barker of the MHS Department of Education and Public Programs, Historian Benjamin Park, MHS Teacher Fellow Betsy Lambert, and Elaine Grublin, MHS Head of Reader Services. There is a $25 charge to cover lunches both days; program and material costs have been generously funded by the Saltonstall Foundation. Educators can earn 14 PDPs and 1 Graduate Credit (for an additional fee) from Framingham State University.

Additional two-day workshops will be held in the Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area towns of Leominster and Lancaster (central Massachusetts) on July 30/31, at Coolidge Point in Manchester (North Shore) on August 13/14, and in Pittsfield (Berkshires) on November 8/9.

To Register: Please complete this registration form and send it with your payment to: Kathleen Barker, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215.

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

Fashion Across Borders and Seas: Print Culture, Women’s Networks, and the Creation of Feminine Identities in the British Atlantic World, 1750-1900 examines the diverse media through which women learned about fashion, and how ideas of fashion were circulated around and between Britain and the United States from the time of the enigmatic fashion doll, to the birth of modern advertising. 

This project considers how the circulation of visual and material sources for fashion information such as fashion dolls, portraits, fashion illustrations, cartes-de-visite and advertisements, as well as fashion accessories created through reproductive processes such as fans and shawls, was as much a process of learning as it was of sharing. The circulation of these objects enabled women to form valuable networks whereby ideas of femininity, politics, national identity and imperialism were created, solidified and challenged. 

A discussion of research into a hub of bibliomaniacs associated with the early years of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Among the circle of learned historians, friends of dusty research and poetry, were George Livermore, Charles Deane, Alexander Young, and Edward Crowninshield. Livermore was fond of bibles and illustrated and large paper copies, and Deane kept minutes of his painstaking bibliographic and historical research on fly-leaves, margins, memoranda, and scraps of paper scattered between the pages of his 13,000 books. Together, these amateur men of letters provide a unique outlook on the culture of book collecting and the formation of private and public libraries in mid-19th-century America.

Join us as we commemorate the 150th anniversary of the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth Regiment's attack against Fort Wagner, South Carolina. The Fifty-fourth Massachusetts Volunteer Infantry Regiment was the first military unit consisting of black soldiers to be raised in the North during the Civil War. Prior to 1863, no concerted effort was made to recruit black troops as Union soldiers. The passage of the Emancipation Proclamation in December of 1862 provided the impetus for the use of free black men as soldiers and, at a time when state governors were responsible for the raising of regiments for federal service, Massachusetts was the first to respond with the formation of the Fifty-fourth Regiment.

Our guest speaker, Noah Griffin, is a man of many talents. Educated at Harvard Law, Yale and Fisk University, he spent 35 years in government, politics, media, and journalism before embarking on a career as a singer, actor, and inspirational speaker. Visit his website to learn more about his work: http://www.noahgriffin.com/Home.html.

Learn more about the Massachusetts Fifty-fourth, as well as the Society's manuscripts and photograph collections related to the regiment at our 54th Regiment! site.

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 project reconstructs the business and political methods of post-revolutionary land speculators, aiming to trace the causes and consequences of the early republic's first wave of large-scale land speculation, from 1776 to 1812. In routing their capital through the new nation’s most important resource, land speculators situated themselves at the center of contentious debates about property, equality, and political economy in a democratic republic. Speculators sought to profit off the extension of the United States' revolutionary republican society; in the process, their methods shaped and changed the Revolution's outcome.

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.

The People's Martyr tells the story of the life of Thomas Wilson Dorr and the 1842 rebellion in Rhode Island that bears his name. Thomas Dorr's attempt at constitutional reform set off a firestorm of debate over the nature of the people's sovereignty in Jacksonian America. Historian Erik J. Chaput devotes particular attention to issues of gender and race, especially the profound fears held by southern politicians that Dorr's ideology would lead to slave insurrections.

Erik J. Chaput received his doctorate in early American History from Syracuse University in 2011. Chaput is on the faculty in the School of Continuing Education at Providence College. Dr. Chaput's research has appeared in numerous publications, including Rhode Island History, Common-Place, American Nineteenth Century History, The New England Quarterly, the U.S. Catholic Historian, The Catholic Historical Review, Historical New Hampshire, and the Historical Journal of Massachusetts. Chaput is the co-editor with Russell J. DeSimone of a digital edition of the letters of Thomas Wilson Dorr. The letters are avilable on the Dorr Rebellion project site hosted by Providence College.

This two-day workshop will focus on how to use local resources – documents, artifacts, landscapes and the rich expertise in every town – to examine historical issues with a national focus. We will concentrate on the period just after the Revolution and the concerns and conflicts, hopes and fears, experiences and expectations of the people living in the Boston area at a time of uncertainty, fragility, and possibility. We will investigate such questions as: What was it like to live in a town that had been around for a long time in a country that was new? When the nation was first forming after the Revolution, what were people in our town/region worried about? How much did the geography, economy, culture, and social makeup of our region influence those concerns? How can we find out? What resources/pieces of evidence does our community have that relate to this time period and the people living in it? How can we best present this evidence and allow people of all ages to discover answers to some of these questions? How does our local focus add a crucial dimension to our understanding of a key period in American history?

The workshop is open to teachers, librarians, archivists, members of local historical societies, and all interested local history enthusiasts. Workshop faculty will include Jayne Gordon and Kathleen Barker of the MHS Department of Education and Public Programs, Freedom's Way Director of Education Maud Ayson, Historian Mary Fuhrer, MHS Teacher Fellow Timothy Castner, and Nancy Heywood, MHS Digital Projects Coordinator. Additional partners include the Freedom's Way National Heritage Area, Leominster Public Library, and the First Church of Lancaster. There is a $25 charge to cover lunches both days; program and material costs have been generously funded by the Saltonstall Foundation. Educators can earn 14 PDPs and 1 Graduate Credit (for an additional fee) from Framingham State University.

Additional two-day workshops will be held in Boston on July 15/16, at Coolidge Point in Manchester (North Shore) on August 13/14, and in Pittsfield (Berkshires) on November 8/9.

To Register: Please complete this registration form and send it with your payment to: Kathleen Barker, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215.

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

This project examines confluences between the scientific and progressive ideas associated with the early English Enlightenment and the concurrent proliferation of Caribbean slave plantations. Through a study of sugar plantations, it demonstrates how both slavery and the Enlightenment shared common roots within the expansionist discourse of natural science in the late seventeenth century.

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.

Using historical documents, landscapes, buildings and artifacts as investigative tools, participants will examine the concerns, conflicts, dilemmas, decisions, and dramatic confrontations of people along the road to revolution. Presented by the Massachusetts Historical Society and partnering organizations, the workshop takes place in locations throughout Boston, Lexington, Lincoln and Concord. An outstanding group of historians, educators, and site interpreters will work with the group over the course of the four day workshop.

This workshop is open to teachers and the general public, and is funded in part by a grant from the Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati. Educators can earn PDPs and 2 graduate credits (for an additional fee) through Framingham State University.

Registration

$125 ($100 for teachers and MHS fellows/members)

Workshop fee includes:

• Four-day program (daytime, plus one Thursday evening) with additional half day for educators
• Admission to all partnering sites
• Packet of reading materials
• Welcome breakfast on Monday at the Massachusetts Historical Society, lunches on Tuesday (Concord Museum), Wednesday (Lexington Historical Society) and Thursday (Old Manse), and a final evening with living history characters, colonial entertainment, and dessert in Minute Man National Park

To register, complete this registration form and send the form with your payment to:

Kathleen Barker
Massachusetts Historical Society
1154 Boylston Street
Boston, MA 02215
education@masshist.org

Complete directions for public transportation options, parking, and special lodging rates in Concord will be sent to all registrants. Questions? Call workshop directors Jayne Gordon (617) 646-0519 or Kathleen Barker (617) 646-0557.

Workshop Schedule

MONDAY, August 5: in Boston
Morning:

• Welcome breakfast at the Massachusetts Historical Society Introductions of participants, partners, places, and theme
• The Curious Newspaper Collections of Harbottle Dorr 
• Documenting the Coming of the American Revolution

Afternoon:

• Lunch on your own in Boston
• Background walking tour with Historian Bill Fowler (from the Common to the North End)

TUESDAY, August 6: in Concord
Morning:

• The Characters and the Community with Historian Bob Gross/ Part 1 (Concord Museum)
• “Reading” the artifacts in the “Why Concord?” gallery (Concord Museum)

Afternoon:

• Lunch at the Concord Museum
• The Characters and the Community with Bob Gross/ Part 2 (Concord Museum)
• “Reading” the Landscape: the world and worries of the Concord farmer with historian Brian Donahue (Minute Man National Park, Battle Road Farm fields)

WEDNESDAY, August 7: in Lexington
Morning:

• Paul Revere Capture Site and The Road to Revolution film (Minute Man National Park)
• Who Shot First 1? Depositions and other accounts with NPS Education Coordinator Jim Hollister (Lexington Green)

Afternoon:

• Lunch at Munroe Tavern (Lexington Historical Society)
• The experience of the British soldier (at Munroe Tavern)

THURSDAY, August 8: in Concord and Lincoln

Morning:

• Using primary source documents to (re)construct lost lives with Historian Mary Fuhrer (Major John Buttrick House, Minute Man National Park)
• Who Shot First 2? Depositions and other accounts with Jim Hollister (North Bridge)

Afternoon:

• Lunch and tour of Old Manse: William Emerson, Ralph Waldo Emerson and the Legacy of Revolution
• Research/Writing workshop: “People at a Crossroads” with Mary Fuhrer and Educator Joanne Myers (on the grounds of the Old Manse)
•  Break for supper on your own in Concord

Evening:

• Special living history program “Battle Road Heroes” (Hartwell Tavern historic area, Minute Man National Park)
• Dessert and colonial entertainment in the Hartwell Barn

FRIDAY, August 9: in Boston

• Optional morning for educators to work on lesson plans with teacher-facilitator Duncan Wood (MHS)

Tourists stream into shops and restaurants on Banister's Wharf in Newport, purchasing products from Rhode Island and around the globe. When merchant John Banister (1707-1767) owned this wharf in the 1740s, he imported luxury apparel, tools, household items, and foods from many places. For nearly thirty years Banister's ships traded goods from and to other American colonies, the West Indies, and Europe. The Banister account books provide a focus on this golden era of trade. Lists of commodities provide information about the lives of consumers and producers in the public marketplace. The transactions reveal a merchant's family expenses and income. Banister's careful delineation of profit, loss, commissions, taxes, and ownership shares provides insight into his roles as merchant, retailer, ship owner, broker, and as a trade and industry leader of Newport. These details of mid-eighteenth-century Rhode Island reveal how Banister, as an adventurous capitalist, influenced the economy of pre-Revolutionary America.

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 project considers how women, Loyalists, slaves, and Native Americans, as well as Patriots, experienced, made, and remembered the American Revolution from 1763 to 1791, with a coda about historical memory arranged around General Lafayette’s Jubilee Tour. In an effort to get past the binaries that often still characterize the historiography on the Revolution, it uses objects and images to narrate how ideology, politics, and war—and their material practices—were ambivalent and fluid in the revolutionary era.

This two-day workshop will focus on how to use local resources – documents, artifacts, landscapes and the rich expertise in every town – to examine historical issues with a national focus. We will concentrate on the period just after the Revolution and the concerns and conflicts, hopes and fears, experiences and expectations of the people living in the Boston area at a time of uncertainty, fragility, and possibility. We will investigate such questions as: What was it like to live in a town that had been around for a long time in a country that was new? When the nation was first forming after the Revolution, what were people in our town/region worried about? How much did the geography, economy, culture, and social makeup of our region influence those concerns? How can we find out? What resources/pieces of evidence does our community have that relate to this time period and the people living in it? How can we best present this evidence and allow people of all ages to discover answers to some of these questions? How does our local focus add a crucial dimension to our understanding of a key period in American history?

The workshop is open to teachers, librarians, archivists, members of local historical societies, and all interested local history enthusiasts. Workshop faculty will include Jayne Gordon and Kathleen Barker of the MHS Department of Education and Public Programs, Historian Christian Samito, MHS Teacher Fellow Dean Eastman, andLaura Lowell, MHS Manuscript Processor. Worksho ppartners include Salem Maritime National Historic Site and The Trustees of Reservations. There is a $25 charge to cover lunches both days; program and material costs have been generously funded by the Saltonstall Foundation. Educators can earn 14 PDPs and 1 Graduate Credit (for an additional fee) from Framingham State University.

Additional two-day workshops will be held in Boston on July 15/16, Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area towns of Leominster and Lancaster (central Massachusetts) on July 30/31, and in Pittsfield (Berkshires) on November 8/9.

To Register: Please complete this registration form and send it with your payment to: Kathleen Barker, Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA 02215.

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

This project is interdisciplinary in nature and has foundations in both 19th-century American women’s history and literature. It focuses on literary representations of career women by late 19th-century American women writers. By reimagining the intertwinings and interconnections of society and women’s paid labor, the project shows that work, and women’s work in particular, was no longer a fixed entity that showed up in the lives of those living during the 19th-century but rather was a shaping force.

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.

In 1848, the first American institutions for children with intellectual disability opened in Massachusetts. The state school in Boston was the project of prominent reformers; the private school in Barre was founded by an entrepreneurial physician. Despite their differences, the trajectories of both schools were grounded in the state's social and political climate. This project explores the schools, their staff and pupils, from their antebellum origins up to the Eugenics movement.

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.