by Samantha Couture, MHS Nora Saltonstall Conservator & Preservation Librarian

Welcome to Part 3 of our series on conservation at the MHS. Here, we will discuss a few of the conservation treatments that Samantha performs in our lab. The purpose of any conservation work is to reverse or repair damage to extend the useability and lifespan of the item or provide access for research or exhibition. The benefits of doing a treatment or repair are weighed against any potential risks to the item, the time involved, and the research value of the piece.

There are many variables that affect treatment and its effectiveness, such as the type of paper, kinds of inks and other media, the nature and extent of the damage, and any ‘inherent vice’ present in the paper or ink. Effective treatments can reduce dirt and pollutants that degrade paper and media, remove acids that cause embrittlement, remove tape and adhesives that stain and damage paper, flatten a document so that it can be framed or stored, and repair tears and fill lost areas to strengthen and stabilize the paper. There are some things treatments can’t do, like reverse brittleness of paper or leather, darken faded inks, or remove some types of discoloration.

One collection at MHS that needed a significant amount of attention is the Perry-Clarke family papers. When our processing archivists began to arrange and describe the family correspondence, they discovered significant amounts of soot and fire damage to the documents. Soot is acidic and sticky, and clings well to paper. Over time, it can cause the underlying paper to become stained and brittle. It’s also very easy to get soot from one document to another while handling. Additionally, some of the items were torn or in pieces, and unable to be handled by researchers.

Luckily, the paper of most of the fire damaged items was of good quality and was strong enough to mend. This letter, written by James J. Clarke on January 28, 1840, to Alfred, was badly damaged and in pieces. To allow the item to be handled, the sections, weakened areas, and tears were mended using Japanese paper pre-coated with adhesive. The pre-coated tissue was cut into the shapes of the tears and losses. Then the adhesive is reactivated with alcohol and attached to the area to be mended.

The MHS has several manuscripts by Mayflower passenger William Bradford. We looked at one of these in Part 2 when we examined Bradford’s “Dialogue.” The binding was beautifully made at the MHS in the nineteenth century, but it was difficult to see all the text, since the pages didn’t open fully. In 2023, one leaf of the pamphlet needed to go out on exhibit. We decided to remove the entire manuscript from the binding and after exhibition, mend and sew it into a paper cover, which is most likely what Bradford would have done originally.

Another of our Bradford manuscripts, ‘Some observations of God’s merciful dealing with us in this wilderness, and His gracious protection over us these many years’ [fragment], had also been bound in the 19^th century. The pages were attached along the spine to blank leaves making some of the text impossible to see. The manuscript was stained and too fragile to be used.

Because of the staining and acidity of the paper, Samantha decided to wash the manuscript. Washing refers to many types of water and solvent solutions used in paper conservation. Washing removes soluble acids, dirt, and can lighten stains. Removing acids makes the paper more flexible and less likely to break or tear. An added treatment done during the washing process neutralizes the iron in iron gall ink to prevent further corrosion. After washing, the pages were reinforced and lost areas filled with Japanese paper. After treatment the pages were digitized and then they were resewn into a paper cover.

The MHS has a significant map collection. Like many, this hand drawn map of Naushon and the Elizabeth Islands made in 1836 was attached to a cloth backing, nailed to wooden dowels, and then rolled for many years. The new acquisition arrived with cracks, tears, water stains and was so tightly rolled it was impossible to keep flat.

First, the cloth and adhesive were removed from the back of the map. Then the pieces of the map were washed. To align the pieces of the map, it was first placed wet between mylar and eased into place. The mylar allows the map to then be turned upside down and lined with Japanese paper. The map was then dried between wool felt and weight. Now, the map is stored with the rest of the collection and is ready to be used by researchers.

Below is the finished treatment after drying and flattening.

There are many activities besides direct treatments that we do at the MHS that contribute to the preservation of our collections. In our next post, we will discuss the building environment, storage and handling practices, budgeting and time management, documentation, and disaster preparedness.

by Heather Rockwood, Communications Manager

I sometimes say, “my art history degree did not teach me the history of art, it taught me how to look.” And by “look,” I mean that I have a background knowledge in symbolism, period, style, medium, subject, color, and composition. When I visit museums with friends, I try not to overburden them with interpretation, but perhaps I sometimes do. This skill of looking helps me in my work at the Massachusetts Historical Society. On our social media pages and in our e-newsletters, I am sharing stories from one of the most interesting and important Early Republic collections and archives in the United States. For example, I use my looking skill to find meaning behind the iconography used in art that is a language no longer taught or known to us, except within university classrooms. I thought that for October’s blog, I’d share my looking skills on how to see mourning iconography in the MHS’s collection and archive. Keep reading (or looking!) if you dare!

I would like to start with an interesting embroidery created by Lydia Young Little, circa 1803–1804. At that time, part of a girl’s education would have been embroidery, or another skilled art done while seated, such as quilling or shell-work. An embroidery created by a fourteen- or fifteen- year-old girl signaled that she was properly educated by prosperous parents. Lydia used silk thread and watercolor on silk to create this scene of mourning, which its symbols depict. The urn symbolizes both the corporeal remains of the body and the container of the body’s ashes.  The urn is on top of a carved rock slab, which is most likely the grave’s headstone. The wreath relates to the wreath that was often hung on the door of a house in mourning. Even today, a wreath is a common gift to a family who has lost a beloved member. The willow tree, sometimes called a “weeping willow” because the leaves appear to be tears falling from the branches, is also a symbol of mourning. Besides these more obvious symbols are subtle ones, such as the fully closed house in the background. A home’s shuttered appearance was a traditional way to convey a house in mourning. The three children pictured are mourning, but only one, the girl on the left, is actively crying, as shown by her stance on her knees and her handkerchief in her hand. The other two are standing with one hand pointed towards the sky, symbolizing that a family member has passed on to heaven. The last two symbols refer to who has died—the children’s father. The girl on the right holds an anchor symbolizing his seafaring life, and the single ship in the harbor refers to the deceased’s position as a captain. In fact, this embroidery was made to mourn Captain James Little, Lydia’s father.

The tale of the Battle of Bunker Hill and the loss of the handsome and charming Joseph Warren is a story I love to tell. This broadside contains an elegiac poem about the battle and an acrostic poem for Warren. Three rows of twenty caskets each illustrate the top of the page—an indication that the first poem is about the death of many individuals. At the bottom right of the page is Warren’s acrostic poem, illustrated by a casket with his initials and a skull and crossbones, the latter a popular symbol of death. Sometimes the skulls have angelic wings, indicating the deceased person has gone to heaven, as also shown in Lydia Little’s embroidery with the children pointing skyward.

Now that you are familiar with mourning iconography, what are some of the symbols you see in the following images, and are there other symbols you see that we didn’t discuss? Have you learned how to look?

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

Since July, I’ve been introducing you to individual members of the remarkable Clarke family of Boston, whose papers I recently processed. Next up is Alice de Vermandois (Sohier) Clarke. Alice was the daughter of lawyer William Sohier and Susan Cabot (Lowell) Sohier. In 1878, she married Eliot Channing Clarke, the only son of Rev. James Freeman Clarke, which is how her papers came to be here at the MHS.

For this post, I’d like to focus on eleven folders of manuscripts in the Perry-Clarke additions documenting Alice’s work with the Boston Female Asylum.

Some sources refer to the Boston Female Asylum as an orphanage, but that isn’t strictly true; the asylum also accommodated girls with living parents who couldn’t support them. Bacon’s Dictionary of Boston (1886) has a good summary of the organization.

No. 1008 Washington Street. Established 1800; incorporated 1803. Receives destitute girls between three and ten, preference being given to orphans, though others are sometimes admitted; teaches them common-school branches, sewing, and domestic service; places them in families by indenture until 18, a few being always retained during their minority to serve in the asylum. Full surrender of a child is required on admission…

I was excited to see this material. Dating from 1894 to 1900, the papers consist primarily of correspondence between members of the asylum’s board of managers, including Alice; women in whose homes girls had been placed; superintendent Eliza J. Ross, who worked as a liaison for placements; and, most importantly, two of the girls themselves.

The managers really seemed to try to find the right placement for each girl. Alice’s notes mention some of them by name: for example, Leila Johnson was “small” and “easily led,” but a “good girl & worker.” Margaret Woodleigh was “very reliable,” but “cold distant no friends.” And Lizzie Alcott was “backward” and “cross at times” and needed a home with “(no men).”

I only have the space to discuss two individual stories very briefly, but I encourage you to come and look at the material yourself.

Edith Turner

Edith was living with the Hanscom family in Lawrence, Mass., but wrote to Alice begging for a new place: “Everything is quiet just now but only for a day or so an[d] then it will be war again so please get me away as soon as possible.” Sure enough, the following morning Edith and Mrs. Hanscom had an argument, and Hanscom slapped her. The desperate girl wrote to Alice again, saying “I cannot an[d] will not stand what I have to any more” and threatening to run away.

The collection also includes a letter from Winifred Hanscom with her side of the story. She didn’t deny what happened, but described it as “discipline.” She called Edith “high spirited and independant and […] saucey [sic].”

Edith was eventually placed with Abby F. Solberg of Melrose, Mass., an “intelligent rather artistic” woman with a physical disability and two young children. Superintendent Eliza Ross wrote, “Mrs. Hanscom [was] not very well pleased to part with [Edith]. I fancy she did a good deal of work.”

Grace Smith

Grace wasn’t happy, either. The 15-year-old was living with the Dockrill family in Manchester, N.H., where she was responsible for most of the housework, including sweeping, cleaning carpets, washing dishes, emptying slops, making beds, cleaning bathrooms, washing floors, etc. But Mrs. Dockrill said Grace was careless and lazy, and both of them wrote Alice asking for a change.

Carrie Dockrill was kinder to Grace than Hanscom had been to Edith. She said Grace had “good qualities” and thought she might enjoy placement at a farm because she loved the outdoors. Superintendent Ross called Grace “rather a peculiar and unbalanced girl,” but argued that of course “it is hard to change one’s nature wholly.”

Grace, for her part, promised “to turn over a new leaf and make something and somebody of myself.” After Mrs. Dockrill’s death a few months later, the girl was placed with a Mrs. Gould, also in Manchester. An undated note in the collection, in Alice’s handwriting, reads: “Grace Smith successful.”

I hope you’ll join me for my next post about the Perry-Clarke additions.

by Meg Szydlik, Visitor Services Coordinator

In my previous blog posts here and here, I examined Massachusetts Congressman Gerry E. Studds as a gay man and environmental activist. In this post, I want to look at his antiwar stance, which focused on the violence in Vietnam, and later in South and Central America. While there is less on this in his collection at the MHS than I had hoped, there are still tantalizing glimpses of the antiwar convictions that pushed him to run in the first place.

Prior to his election to Congress, he campaigned for Senator Eugene McCarthy (not to be confused with the anticommunist senator Joseph McCarthy) during his 1968 run at the Democratic presidential nomination. McCarthy’s stance against the Vietnam War attracted Studds. Studds himself then ran for the House of Representatives and was elected on an anti-Vietnam War platform in 1972. The Vietnam War was a civil war between the communist North Vietnam, backed by China and Russia, and anticommunist South Vietnam, backed by the US and France.  US involvement in the war, including troops, bombs, and Agent Orange sprays, ended in 1973, then the war officially ended in 1975 with a North Vietnamese victory. The wildly unpopular and casualty-heavy war was captured through photojournalism and news reports that inspired years of peace protests across the country which ultimately resulted in American withdrawal from the conflict. Studds’ election was part of this wave of discontent.

Studds did not only care about the war in Vietnam, however. He was also a strong opponent of the violence in Latin America, including El Salvador’s civil war and Reagan’s support of the Contras in Nicaragua, which culminated in the Iran-Contra affair. The twentieth century was a period of great unrest and revolution in South and Central America, with many previous “banana republics,” dealing with the repercussions of living under exploitation for so long. The Reagan administration supported the Salvadorean government in their civil war, but Studds called for a real inclusion of the revolutionary forces in the negotiations for peace and reform and for the United States to provide support in the negotiated settlement. The extreme human rights violations of the Salvadorean government and its military arm, which was responsible for killing thousands of its own citizens, did not stop the US government from offering billions of dollars in aid to the anti-communist leadership over the course of the war. Studds sought to stop that flow of aid and violence and instead support peace. He expressed that US leaders were “not this hemisphere’s only experts on democracy, social justice, the fair treatment of indigenous populations, or human rights. There are many other supporters of these concepts in Latin America.”

In addition to these examples, Studds also supported nuclear disarmament, another point of conflict between him and President Ronald Reagan. Much of his time as Congressman in the 80s was spent opposing Reagan’s agenda. While a lot of that involved working to protect the rights of lesbian and gay individuals and fund research and support for those suffering from HIV/AIDS, things Reagan famously did not particularly care about, Studds’ environmental activism and anti-war sentiments also clashed with Reagan’s pro-business and Cold War focus. He was far from the only representative to have these positions, but his drafts and letters to other legislators help paint a picture of the movement’s efforts. If you are in Boston, I highly recommend checking out the Gerry E. Studds Papers. Just be sure to request it ahead of time!

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

Today I’d like to continue my series on the Clarke family by telling you about Lilian Freeman Clarke (1842-1921), whose papers can be found here at the MHS in the Perry-Clarke collection and additions, as well as two smaller collections of correspondence and Sturgis-Hooper family papers. Lilian has made a few appearances at the Beehive, most recently in a funny post written by my colleague Hilde Perrin last December.

Lilian was the oldest daughter of Anna Huidekoper Clarke and Rev. James Freeman Clarke of Boston. She was a social reformer and translator. I’ll be focusing on the former in this post.

Two quick clarifications: First, you’ll find her name spelled “Lillian” in many secondary sources, but she and her family consistently used “Lilian,” so that’s what I’m going with. Second, she was actually christened Lilian Rebecca Clarke, but like her aunt Sarah, she adopted the middle name Freeman. This was undoubtedly a nod to her Freeman ancestors, probably especially her step-great-grandfather (great-step-grandfather?) James Freeman, the first ordained Unitarian minister in the United States and an important influence on her father James.

The Perry-Clarke additions, the collection I recently processed, contains family correspondence, personal correspondence, and other personal papers of Lilian F. Clarke. Included is a ledger containing detailed accounts of some of her charitable work between 1895 and 1900.

In 1873, Lilian was concerned about the lack of resources available to new mothers living in poverty. Noticing that “there was in Boston no charity intended to care for infants which did not involve the separation of the mother and child” (from a 1913 report), she and two other women decided to provide direct assistance to these mothers that would allow them to retain custody of their children.

The group was variously known as the Charity (or Society) for Aiding (or Helping) Destitute Mothers and Infants. The two other founders were Dr. Susan Dimock, resident physician at the New England Hospital for Women and Children, and Elizabeth “Bessie” Willard Greene. Tragically, in May 1875, both Dimock and Greene were killed in the wreck of the S.S. Schiller off the coast of England. Lilian was left to shoulder the bulk of the work, though she found a willing and able partner in Mary R. Parkman.

This volume lists expenses for room and board, medicine, milk and food, travel fares, etc. Included are the names of women receiving assistance, as well as Lilian’s charitable partners. For example, Johanna (Pelger) Denecke appears frequently; she was a German immigrant and a widow who apparently boarded many of the mothers and children at her home.

I was impressed by the group’s ability to zero in on a gap in traditional social services, not to mention the individual attention paid to each recipient. Two things were especially important to Lilian: that they worked without institutional bureaucracy, and that they made no distinction between married and unmarried mothers.

Lilian supported various causes during her lifetime. Her obituary in the Boston Globe described her as “a member of almost every organization for the protection of children, and enthusiastic in every movement for the humane treatment of animals.” She also worked with the U.S. Sanitary Commission during the Civil War. She was a suffragist and an anti-vivisectionist. And she donated to victims of the Armenian massacres in the 1890s and the Armenian genocide.

But based on her papers, she devoted the majority of her time and energy to her work with mothers and children in Boston. She was the primary driving force behind the Society for Helping Destitute Mothers and Infants from its founding in 1873 to 1918, when she had to resign because of physical disabilities. The organization disbanded a year later due to lack of funds.

The MHS holds several of the charity’s reports printed between 1875 and 1919. And Lilian herself described its work, particularly the role of Susan Dimock, in “The Story of an Invisible Institution,” published in 1906 in The Outlook magazine. In that article, she emphasized Dr. Dimock’s philosophy: “Think that every patient is your sister. Imagine that you see your own sister in that bed before you.”

On September 25, 2024, join us for a virtual program, Women & Children First: The Trailblazing Life of Susan Dimock, M.D., with author Susan Wilson, and former president of the Dimock Community Health Center Jackie Jenkins-Scott. Register to attend online.