MHS Fund Giving Circle members are invited to a festive evening with good food,fine wine, and lively conversation inspired by Dolley Madison. During dinner, MHS President Catherine Allgor, who is known for her published work on Dolley Madison, will provide history and fun facts about dining with Mrs. Madison. 

Dinner tickets are $100 per person. Please note that no tickets will be mailed; a master guest list will be at the door. 

Registration will open on 29 January.

This event is open only to MHS Fund Giving Circle Members. Join a Giving Circle today at www.masshist.org/support/mhsfund. 

The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Yankees in the West.

This panel takes the opportunity to bring the fields of environmental and early American history into closer conversation. Environmental historians are concerned with concepts such as ecological imperialism and non-anthropocentric empires, built and natural environments, controlling and organizing space, and the relationship between borders and frontiers. How does or might this influence scholarship on early America? How can work on early American history enrich environmental historians’ understanding of empire, metropoles and borderlands, movement and colonization?

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

After being forced to flee Marblehead in May 1775, the Robie family joined fellow refugees in Halifax, Nova Scotia. In exile, each family member developed a unique perspective on his or her new home and outlook for the future. Repatriation further complicated these understandings and divided the family between two nations. This project explores how a family in exile struggled to maintain kinship networks while its members adapted to a new social environment.

The remarkable cultural history of the great Midwestern city of Chicago contains some exceptional modernist credentials. From the 1893 World’s Fair through mid-century, Chicago writers revolutionized literary forms during the first half of the 20th century, a period of sweeping aesthetic transformations all over the world. Olson’s enthralling study bridges the gap between two distinct and equally vital Chicago-based artistic “renaissance” moments: the primarily white renaissance of the early teens and the creative ferment of the “Black Metropolis” of Bronzeville.

The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Yankees in the West.

Who decides what should be remembered in public spaces? Is removing a monument the equivalent of erasing history, or should monuments change along with their communities? Join MHS in exploring how monuments and memorials can help students understand history, historical memory, and how national symbols play a critical role in articulating culture and identity.

This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 22.5 PDPs or one graduate credit (for an additional fee).

Image: Dedication of the Memorial to Robert Gould Shaw and the 54th Massachusetts Regiment, Boston, 31 May 1897, albumen print.

Highlights:

• Explore WWII and Holocaust commemoration across the globe 
• Learn about the history of Confederate monuments in America: When were they erected? Who built them? What do they signify? 
• Discuss ways to engage students in conversation on current national debates over Confederate symbols in public spaces
• Take a tour of Reconstruction-era Boston Monuments

In 1948, inspired by changes to federal law, Massachusetts officials started to plan highways circling and cutting through the heart of Boston. But when officials began to hold hearings in 1960 the people pushed back. The story of how an unlikely multiracial coalition of urban and suburban residents, planners, and activists emerged to stop a highway is one full of suspenseful twists and surprises. And yet the victory and its aftermath are undeniable: federally funded mass transit expansion, a linear central city park, and a highway-less urban corridor that serves as a daily reminder of the power of citizen-led city-making and has had lasting national implications.

The U.S. Constitution is not a “social contract,” but a popularly issued corporate charter.  America’s constitutional innovations—constitutional conventions, written charters, judicial review, and charter amendment—represent a transfer of the governance mechanisms of corporations to the state.  Ciepley's current project examines the roots of this new mode of constitutionalism in New England’s corporate colonies.

On 24 March 2018 from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM, we invite the public to stop by 1154 Boylston Street in Boston to donate 2017 and 2018 Women’s March memorabilia—pink hats, signs, pins, t-shirts, photographs (prints or digital images)—as well as written accounts to its collection.

If you do not want to part with your Women’s March items, consider wearing them to the MHS and having your picture taken (a photographer will be on site) to be added to our collection. We also encourage written experiences and accounts of the marches to be shared. These can be e-mailed to collections@masshist.org or mailed to: Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, MA, 02215, attention Brenda Lawson. Images can be donated online at www.masshist.org/womensmarch. 

If you are unable to come to the MHS on 24 March but have items you would like to donate, please contact Anne Bentley (abentley@masshist.org or 617-646-0508) or Brenda Lawson (blawson@masshist.org or 617-646-0502) to discuss.

Selected items collected on 24 March will be displayed as part of our 2019 exhibition on women’s suffrage.

Image: Catherine Allgor, 2017 Women's March

The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Yankees in the West.

In 1909 and 1912, the Arizona legislature enacted requirements that all voters be literate in English, sparking a storm of multilingual protests in the papers and the courts. How and why Anglo-Arizonans took the right to vote from thousands of Mexican-American men and how Spanish-speakers fought back shows how conflicting views of race and ethnicity have influenced citizenship in the U.S.’s southwestern borderlands.

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

Nineteenth-century children rarely had access to money, even when they worked. Yet, several forms of authority instructed children in specific expectations of spending, saving, and giving. This talk explores how and why children were taught to interact with and value financial resources as well as how these lessons were racialized.

Watch the recording of this event, embedded below:

THIS PROGRAM IS SOLD OUT

PLEASE NOTE - PEOPLE WHO REGISTERED FOR THIS PROGRAM AFTER 3/15/18 MAY BE ASKED TO SIT IN OVERFLOW SEATING 
(The overflow seating is on the same floor, one room over with a live video feed)

Throughout American history many groups have struggled to establish their rights as citizens. While the United States was a grand experiment in republican government, in the beginning only a small percentage was allowed to participate. Over time, citizenship has grown, but this has often not been a simple or a smooth process. Join MHS for a panel discussion that will explore this history of citizenship and protest. How have groups throughout American history used agitation to help change the dialog about their position as citizens? How can this history help inform our views and reactions to the changing political climate we see today?

This program is made possible by a grant from Mass Humanities

The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Yankees in the West.

As the revolutionary war ended, members of committees, conventions and other extraordinary revolutionary institutions continued to operate as independent political actors. Between 1781 and at least 1786, committeemen and conventioneers launched forceful, violent efforts to reengineer American society. Committee-directed mobs expelled “tories” from many communities, and committeemen and conventioneers used both local laws and contract theory to legitimate these expulsions. This paper argues that the wave of political violence after the American victory at Yorktown in 1781 ultimately reflected conflicts within the American political community over who could be an American, what institutions constituted “the people” in a republic, and the character and limits of the “the people’s” power to form self-governing institutions. These disputes played an important role in creating the 1787 constitutional crisis.

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

This presentation explores Native American participation in the American antislavery movement from the 1830s to the 1860s. In addition to attending meetings, Indians signed petitions, donated money, organized fundraising fairs, held positions in antislavery societies, and assisted fugitive slaves. Most significantly, they influenced abolitionist thought on a number of issues.

Watch the recording of this event, embedded below:

Panelists: Panelists: James Levitt, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Meg Winslow, Mount Auburn Cemetery; Cindy Brockway, The Trustees; and moderated by William Clendaniel

Some of the early efforts to preserve open space for the physical and spiritual benefits offered by access to nature came from private organizations. Mount Auburn Cemetery was the first large-scale designed landscape open to the public in North America and as such began the rural cemetery movement that later led to public parks. In 1853 the Laurel Hill Association was founded in Stockbridge, inspiring a national Village Improvement Society movement. Later generations have benefited from the first private, statewide conservation and preservation organization, The Trustees of Reservations. Historic New England has saved traditional farms and Mass Audubon and other private organizations preserve and manage open space across the state. How common is this preservation by private organizations? How sustainable is this concept for future generations?

MHS is proud to partner with the Trustees of Reservations, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center to plan this programming.

This program is supported by the Barr Foundation.

MHS Fund Giving Circle members, Fellows, and MHS Members are invited to a lively evening that explores theculture and history of alcohol consumption in Boston. Using illustrations, photos, and multimedia clips, Stephanie Schorow will speak about Boston’s drinking history beginning in the colonial period, continuing through Prohibition and into the current craft cocktail scene. Following the talk, enjoy a reception, sample cocktails, and continue the conversation.

Schorow is the author of a series of books on Boston history, including Drinking Boston: A History of the City and Its Spirits; Inside the Combat Zone: The Stripped Down Story of Boston’s Most Notorious Neighborhood; The Cocoanut Grove Fire; and The Crime of the Century: How the Brink’s Robbers Stole Millions and the Hearts of Boston. She has worked as an editor and reporter for the Boston Herald, the Associated Press, and numerous other publications; she currently teaches writing at Regis College.

This event is open only to MHS Fund Giving Circle Members, Fellows, and Members.

For generations Americans have been fascinated with the American west. Depictions of the western landscape flooded New England in the mid19th century, spurring a stream of western tourism. Yankees in the West draws from the Society's collections of letters, diaries, photographs, drawings, and artifacts to explore the ways New Englanders experienced the trans-Mississippi west in the late19th and early 20th centuries.

This paper reexamines the emergence and development of the ice trade in Boston and North America, described in 1806 by the Boston Gazette as a “slippery speculation.” What can the ice trade tell us about environmental, economic, political, and spatial change in nineteenth-century Boston and North America?

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

During the Second Great Awakening, almost all denominations discouraged female preachers. Of course, some women did it anyway. Elaw ignored her husband and clergy, faced significant danger, and preached from Maine to Virginia. Then famous, now Elaw and her published Memoirs are mostly unknown. Blockett will discuss the silences of race and gender in the archive.

All high school students in the United States study American history, and many of them seek mastery in the subject, which is the second most popular at the Advanced Placement level. Yet relatively few female actors appear in high school textbooks, and graduates arrive on college campuses with widely varying levels of exposure to the history of women, gender, and sexuality in America, especially prior to the 1990s. This panel discussion, featuring university faculty, secondary educators, and activist curriculum specialists, aims to seed an ongoing discussion between high school and post-secondary instructors of American history about gendering the U.S. History curriculum. What topics in women’s and gender history and in the history of sexuality get covered when, where, and how? How can college- and university-based scholars do more to connect their work with high school classrooms? How are secondary educators—and their students—advancing and reshaping the field?

This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 10 PDPs with the completion of a lesson plan.

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

What fuels a family’s compulsion for philanthropy? Charitable giving is an intrinsic part of our culture and its story can be told through a colorful, multifaceted family whose actions mirror America’s attitudes towards giving. Between 1638 and today, the Browns of Rhode Island have provided community leaders, endowed academic institutions, and transformed communities through art and architecture. However, they also have wrestled with society’s toughest issues slavery, immigration, child labor, inequality and with their own internal tensions. Sylvia Brown, of the family’s 11th generation, and Edward Widmer will explore this story.

The mounting political tensions that ignited the battles of Lexington and Concord are critical to the narrative of the American Revolution. However, the economic forces that propelled these iconic battles are another vital part of this history. When Benjamin Franklin wrote home describing the living conditions in Britain and Ireland, his country men were appalled. Could the Crown’s motive be to reduce the prosperous American colonies to such serfdom? This threat inspired the vast turnout of Patriot militiamen that so shocked the British and led the colonists to victory in the first armed conflictsof the War of Independence.

In 1628, King Charles the 1st made a royal grant of what is now the entire state of Massachusetts (not including Plymouth) to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Remarkably, ALL of this territory had previously been granted to others. In four separate actions between 1621 and 1623, this land had been granted, by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, President of the Council for New England, to himself and to his associates, and colonized. However, the King's Charter overrode their charters and boundaries.

At this Partnership of Historic Bostons discussion group at MHS, we will replay the struggles and strategies the Mass Bay Colony used to defend, and expand, its land grant against Gorges' accusations of usurpation, sedition, and religious non-conformity, and the efforts to recapture his lost territory by Gorges and his supporters. 

There are five readings (portions of original documents and maps), and a sixth suggested reading.  These will be emailed to everyone who registers thru MHS by Wednesday evening, April 18, and a few copies will be available at the meeting.  

Charles Manson made national news in 1969 when several “Family” members were arrested for murder, but by then he was well-established in Los Angeles. This paper explores the cultural fluidity that allowed Los Angeles’s hip aristocracy to mingle with marginal figures like Manson, but also the backlash which turned the Manson Family into a warning for the dangers of migration and the promiscuous cultural mixing that could follow.

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

Watch the recording of this event, embedded below:

Massachusetts has undertaken large scale preservation of open space by government entities. The Boston Public Garden, the Emerald Necklace, the first American public beach in Revere, the banks of the Charles River, and a network of state forests were all significant contributions to keeping open land available to the public. Were these projects pioneering? Have they shaped national discussions? Are similar projects possible today or will projects like the Community Preservation Act offer equivalent impacts?

MHS is proud to partner with the Trustees of Reservations, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center to plan this programming.

This program is supported by the Barr Foundation.

Part of a larger book project, this paper argues that the seemingly distinct conflicts across the English colonies in the 1670s were actually connected by the political initiatives of the scattered Susquehannock Indians. The dispersion of the Susquehannocks caused instability in surrounding Native American and colonial societies, drawing them into a spiral of violence interrupted only by Susquehannock success, which brought stability to the northeast and shattered the southeast.

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

This presentation will discuss how World War I disrupted traditional notions of neutrality in the United States. After the war, a movement comprised of scholars, journalists, peace activists, and “anti-monopolist” US Senators worked together to articulate a new conception of US neutrality. Unlike the more widely discussed international war outlawry movement, this national movement focused narrowly on one radical conclusion: that protection of capitalist interests had motivated World War I, and thus, that the US government must permanently disavow the right to protect those interests in order to prevent war’s future recurrence.

Watch the recording of this event, embedded below:

The Boston metropolitan area is in the enviable spot of having more people who want to live and work here than there is space for. Real estate regularly sells for prices that would have seemed inconceivable twenty five years ago. This situation puts more funds in municipal coffers, but what will this increased demand and density do to plans to preserve open space? How will climate change impact our priorities for preserving open space and how might it limit our options?

 MHS is proud to partner with the Trustees of Reservations, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center to plan this programming.

This program is supported by the Barr Foundation.

Watch the recording of this event, embedded below:

This workshop is FULL and registration has closed.  Please contact Kate Melchior at kmelchior@masshist.org with any questions.

Known as the “master of the art of narrative history,” David McCullough is the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. He will join us to discuss his perspective on history, education, and American legacy.

This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 22.5 PDPs or one graduate credit (for an additional fee).

Note: Due to high demand, this workshop is currently restricted to K-12 educators ONLY. This includes both classroom educators and museum/heritage institution educators.

If you have any questions, please contact Kate Melchior at kmelchior@masshist.org or 617-646-0588.

Ann Hulbert and Megan Marshall will discuss Hulbert’s new book, which examines the lives of children whose rare accomplishments have raised hopes about untapped human potential and questions about how best to nurture it. The conversation will draw on a range of examples that span a century—from two precocious Harvard boys in 1909 to literary girls in the 1920s to music virtuosos today. Hulbert and Marshall will explore the changing role of parents and teachers, as well as of psychologists, a curious press and, above all, the feelings of the prodigies themselves, who push back against adults more as the decades proceed.

While historians have analyzed the rise of companionship and romance in marriage, they have overlooked a critical continuity: marriage continued to serve vital financial functions. This talk briefly sketches the economic importance of marriage and families’ strategies for managing wealth across generations.

MHS Fellows and Members special preview and reception for Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose &Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825 is SOLD OUT.

Virtually forgotten for 200 years, Isaac Vose and his brilliant furniture are revealed in a new exhibition and accompanying volume. Beginning with a modest pair of collection boxes he made for his localBoston church in 1788, Vose went on to build a substantial business empire and to make furniture for the most prominent Boston families. The exhibition and catalog restore Vose from relative obscurity to his rightful position as one of Boston’s most important craftsmen. Opening at the MHS on May 11, the exhibition will be on view through September 14.

Become a Member today!

Image: Couch, Isaac Vose & Son, with Thomas Wightman, carver, Boston, 1824. Historic New England, Gift of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1923.507); photograph by David Bohl.

Virtually forgotten for 200 years, Isaac Vose and his brilliant furniture are revealed in a new exhibition and accompanying volume. Beginning with a modest pair of collection boxes he made for his localBoston church in 1788, Vose went on to build a substantial business empire and to make furniture for the most prominent Boston families. The exhibition and catalog restore Vose from relative obscurity to his rightful position as one of Boston’s most important craftsmen. Opening at the MHS on May 11, the exhibition will be on view through September 14.

The complementary book, Rather Elegant Than Showy (May 2018), by Robert Mussey and Clark Pearce, will be available for sale at the MHS.

Image: Couch, Isaac Vose & Son, with Thomas Wightman, carver, Boston, 1824. Historic New England, Gift of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1923.507); photograph by David Bohl.

The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

 While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose & Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825

In 1805 and 1806, former vice president Aaron Burr traveled through the trans-Appalachian West gathering support for a mysterious enterprise, for which he was arrested and tried for treason in 1807. The Burr Conspiracy was a cause célèbre of the early republic-with Burr cast as the chief villain of the Founding Fathers—even as the evidence against him was vague and conflicting. James Lewis will explore how Americans made sense of the reports of Burr’s intentions and examine what the crisis revealed about the new nation’s uncertain future.

Watch the recording of this event, embedded below:

Feast, sip, and celebrate history at the eighth Cocktails with Clio! 

Thursday, 17 May 2018
6:30 PM

Fairmont Copley Plaza
Boston, Massachusetts

We invite you to join us for a festive evening in support of the Center for the Teaching of History at the MHS featuring Harvard President Drew Faust in conversation with MHS President Catherine Allgor. The evening will begin with a cocktail reception. A seated dinner will follow.

Tickets are $300 per person. Purchase tickets today!

The History and Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Tour is a 90-minute docent-led walk through our public rooms. The tour is free, open to the public, with no need for reservations. If you would like to bring a larger party (8 or more), please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

While you're here you will also have the opportunity to view our current exhibition: Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose & Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825

In 1824 and 1825 General Lafayette made a farewell tour of the United States. The 67-year-old hero was welcomed in an adoring frenzy. The visit to Boston of the sole surviving major general of the Continental Army was one of the largest celebrations the city had ever seen. A “Committee of Arrangements” was organized to rent and furnish an appropriate home and all of the furniture was purchased from Isaac Vose & Son. Alan Hoffman will recount the general’s visit and discuss his translation of Lafayette’s private secretary’s journal.

This talk examines the religious critique of manifest destiny put forth by New Englanders from 1848-1871. Although manifest destiny is often portrayed as an ideology rooted in Puritan theology, this talk explores how opponents of expansion in New England used religion to castigate and separate themselves from this ideology.

Black Americans did not just pray for emancipation, they conjured it. This project examines the political work of revival in wartime refugee camps and envisions emancipation as a religious event. It reckons with religion as a mediating force between the enslaved and the state, asking "Who belongs and how?" for those negotiating statelessness and peoplehood in the midst of self-emancipation.

As Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and James Monroe risked their lives and their liberty for  American independence, and as reformers, each rejoiced at the opportunity to be part of the French Revolution, praying that it in turn would inspire others to sweep away Europe’s monarchies and titled nobilities. But as the 18th century unfolded, these three embarked on different routes to revolution. As writers, soldiers,and statesmen, these three men reshaped their country and the Western world.