Detail of Definitive Peace Treaty between the United States and Great Britain.[Treaty of Paris.], 3 September 1783
Hello, my name is Kevyn Spill. I have worked as a remote intern for the Adams Papers at the MHS during the summer. I am currently a rising senior student attending Trinity University in San Antonio, Texas. I had the privilege of transcribing documents for the Papers of John Quincy Adams and researching correspondence for the upcoming Winning Peace select topics webpage, which details John Adams’s role in negotiating Anglo-American peace at the end of the Revolutionary War. In the process of this research, one letter in particular stuck out to me as an interesting reflection of John Adams’s character while he served in politics, that being a letter addressed to his wife Abigail on 27 February 1783.
By this time, John Adams had already written several letters detailing his desire to leave France and return home. He missed his wife, children, and extended family dearly. In other letters, Adams worried about the health and well-being of his brother-in-law Richard Cranch. However, he felt it was his “Destiny” to remain in France and secure peace for his new nation. He understood that he had “come into Life at a critical dangerous time, and to see Prospects before me that I dreaded and wished to avoid but could not, with Honor or a good Conscience.”
With this in mind, Adams referenced both John Dryden and Roman senator Scipio in his understanding of what it means to be a good patriot and servant to his country. Dryden was a popular English poet and playwright who described a patriot as someone who helps their country flourish. Scipio, Adams noted, “served his Country, when it was in need of his Courage and Conduct” but “dismounted from the Saddle, when he found the Beast which bore him began to grow restif and ungovernable.”
Detail from John Adams to Abigail Adams, 27 February 1783
Adams believed he had similarly served his nation in its time of need and could now return to more peaceful endeavors. “No Honors, not a Crown—no Profits, not all the Indias, would be the smallest Temptation to me now to go thro’ it again, nor would ever have tempted me to begin it,” he wrote. “I thought it my Duty and that I should be a guilty Wretch if I did not do it.”
While Adams longed to be reunited with his family in Massachusetts, he remained in France and signed the Definitive Anglo-American Peace Treaty on 3 September 1783, thus winning peace for the early republic he had fought so hard to create. “I took my Part according to the Dictates of my Heart and Head,” Adams wrote, “and have gone thro’ it and all its Horrors, and landed the Public safe and glorious in the Harbour of Peace.”
For more information about the Adamses and their roles in and reflections on securing peace at the end of the Revolutionary War, see the upcoming Winning Peace select topic page.
I am incredibly thankful for the Adams Papers to give me the opportunity to work on both the Winning Peace select topic page and correspondence of John Quincy Adams over the summer. I look forward to using what I learned here in my future studies and career.
At the beginning of last year, my colleagues Caitlin Walker and Nancy Heywood introduced you to the MHS Digital Archive, our then-brand-new repository of born-digital and reformatted audiovisual material. The archive has grown by leaps and bounds since then. I’d like to plug one particular collection we’ve acquired that includes digital material: the records of Massachusetts Peace Action, or MAPA.
MAPA, a state affiliate of Peace Action, was founded in the 1980s, primarily in response to the proliferation of nuclear weapons. The organization advocates for an end to wars, violence, militarization, and imperialism around the world. Their records, donated to us between 2013 and 2020, fill fourteen record cartons and include meeting minutes, reports, newsletters, correspondence, financial records, newspaper clippings, etc.
The donation also included twelve audiocassettes and eight VHS tapes, dating primarily from the late 1980s and 1990s. This audiovisual material has been reformatted and is now available at the MHS Digital Archive. The easiest way to find it is to follow the blue links from the Massachusetts Peace Action collection guide.
Screenshot of a video from the Massachusetts Peace Action records
You can listen to a conference call discussing organizing strategies; watch a 1989 forum of speakers from the Soviet Union (unfortunately the audio’s pretty rough on this one); or virtually “attend” some of MAPA’s conferences featuring speeches by Asoka Bandarage, Noam Chomsky, Robert Reich, Bernie Sanders, and others. There’s a wealth of information here; for example, I recommend the very interesting remarks of community activist Betty Richardson at a 1993 workshop on the intersection between race and the peace movement.
AI-generated transcripts are available, but I want to emphasize that all the description and metadata work for this material was person-generated. I’m particularly pleased with how well we’ve been able to integrate these digital and digitized items with the organization’s paper records.
When the MHS does not hold copyright to digital material, researchers must be physically present in our Reading Room to view it. But most of Massachusetts Peace Action’s digital material may be enjoyed from the comfort of your own home. So can many other items in the MHS Digital Archive, which we hope you’ll spend some time browsing through.
I’m very happy to announce that the Bullard-Lauriat family papers are now available for research at the MHS. I’ve been processing this collection for longer than I care to admit, but it’s definitely been worth it. It’s a fascinating collection documenting the lives of multiple generations of the related Bullard and Lauriat families.
Screenshot of the collection guide to the Bullard-Lauriat family papers at the MHS
If you know any of the Bullards or Lauriats, it’s probably Charles E. Lauriat, Jr. Long-time Bostonians may remember Lauriat’s bookstores, which closed in 1999. Lauriat’s began as Estes & Lauriat, co-founded in 1872 by Charles’s father, and Charles served as president of the company from his father’s death in 1920 to his own in 1937.
Charles is probably best known today for one dramatic incident in his life: he survived the sinking of the Lusitania on May 7, 1915. In fact, he didn’t just survive; he saved the lives of many others, as well. His correspondence from that time describes the events and their aftermath. I particularly enjoyed it when Charles wrote his father-in-law to gently chide him for bragging to people about what he’d done. His father-in-law’s reply? Essentially “sorry, not sorry.”
Charles wrote a book about his experiences called The Lusitania’s Last Voyage, a riveting and surprisingly modest account.
The Lusitania’s Last Voyage, by Charles E. Lauriat, Jr.
But I don’t want to give Charles all the attention. The majority of the papers actually belong to his wife Marian (née Bullard). Charles and Marian married on March 20, 1912, and by all accounts, theirs was a very happy and loving union. They had five children together, though their first, Natalie, tragically died as an infant.
Marian’s parents were George P. Bullard and Nina (née Jenks) Bullard, and they’re also represented in the collection, especially Nina. She was a world traveler, wrote detailed diaries and letters about her travels, and even gave speeches to local clubs. At the outbreak of World War I, Nina was stranded in Europe, and her letters home about the situation were printed in Boston newspapers. Her husband George was a prominent businessman and politician in West Newton, Massachusetts.
Other family members you’ll find in the collection include Charles’s parents; Marian’s sister Clara “Cherry” Bullard, who married Rev. Julian C. Jaynes (the officiant at her parents’ wedding!); cousin Martha F. Metcalf, who taught at schools for the deaf; and Charles and Marian’s children, especially minister Nathaniel and demographer Patience. There’s even an autograph book once belonging to Nina’s younger brother that contains the signatures of Louisa May Alcott, Dickens, Longfellow, Tennyson, and others.
I’d like to mention one person in particular, Rena Struggles. She was a British woman who spent decades working as a housekeeper and child care provider for families in England and the U.S., including the Lauriats. Even when the Lauriat children were grown, Rena corresponded frequently with the family. Her letters during World War II are heartbreaking. She lost her mother and her home in the London Blitz.
The Bullard-Lauriat collection is large; it fills over 32 record cartons. When the boxes came to us, they were full of miscellaneous loose unidentified papers, letters still in envelopes, mountains of acidic newspaper clippings, oversize rolled documents, you name it. I’m very gratified the papers are now arranged, described, and available for any and all interested researchers.
From coordinating Massachusetts History Day (MHD) contests to helping host class visits, my co-op with the education department at the MHS has offered me an opportunity to explore the expansive work being done in history education. As I reflect on the past six months, I realize that all I have seen and done has attempted to answer one overarching question: How do we (educators) keep students engaged?
Student engagement is not a new challenge for educators, but concerns have grown amid a rapidly changing educational landscape. The numerous discussions, brainstorming sessions, and trial-and-error processes I have been involved in at the MHS have been fascinating and provided me with valuable insight to confront this age-old question.
Working on MHD, especially, has made me understand that personalization is key to engagement. The program allows students to pick their own topics and gets them interacting with history in more personal and interesting ways than the classic lecture format. Seeing students so excited and deeply passionate about their hard work was inspiring and gave me optimism for the future of education I aspire to one day help shape.
Additionally, I had the chance to dive into archival research at the MHS. I am currently helping with the development of an immigration primary source set. Through my sources, I hope to explore the identity struggles immigrants face in the U.S., particularly the tug of war between assimilating into American culture and preserving their heritage.
I also had the opportunity to co-lead class visits to the MHS, which gave me hands-on experience with teaching. As a history student myself, I often am the one going through the process of learning and historical inquiry, while a teacher is there to guide me. However, during class visits, I served as the teacher. I primarily worked with small groups of students, guiding their conversations about materials in show-and-tells and the MHS exhibit to achieve learning goals. I witnessed students going through the learning processes as they tried to understand what the materials are and why they are important and relevant.
While I used the toolkit of questions and guiding tactics I developed from observing class visits to help students work through the activities, I soon discovered that the structured strategy I was using wasn’t always effective in getting students excited about learning. What I found led to greater engagement was tailoring the experience to each student.
Forming personal connections with students, whether between them and me or between them and the materials, helped them to recognize the relevance of history in their lives. By taking the time to really talk to students, more were willing to share their thoughts and questions, leading to deeper engagement and analysis. These small conversations made the visits more meaningful and memorable, hopefully encouraging students to seek out similar opportunities.
These experiences were valuable to me, not only because they will benefit me in a future career in education, but also because they gave me a greater appreciation for academia as I return to my studies with a new perspective on learning and teaching.
I can not express the amount of gratitude I have for the education team. Their hard work and dedication to advancing education are deeply admirable and, from the start, have made me feel valued and a part of the team. There is still an endless list of exciting projects the team has, which I hope to contribute to even after I finish my co-op.
By Cassandra Cloutier, Associate Director of Research & Executive Coordinator of the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium
The Massachusetts Historical Society’s Research Department is pleased to announce the 2026-2027 cohort of research fellows. Each year, the MHS provides financial support for scholars producing original scholarship based on our unique collections.
During the 2026-2027 award year, the MHS will administer a variety of short-term fellowships that cover four to eight weeks of research. In addition to sponsoring research at the MHS, the Society also administers the Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship on the Civil War, Its Origins, and Consequences in collaboration with the Boston Athenaeum. In addition, the Society administers the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium award in collaboration with twenty-nine other regional institutions.
The projects awarded for this year’s cohort span the seventeenth century to the present day and explore a variety of topics including women in the early American republic, the history of capitalism, African American caretakers, Reconstruction-era society, the post-war American military, and more. Others are examining material culture, food systems, and natural disasters throughout American history. At the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution, several scholars are analyzing the founding of the country and various aspects of the conflict and its actors.
Please see the list of recipients and their projects below. We look forward to learning more about these projects in the coming year!
Short-Term Fellows 2026-2027
Barnes, Mollie, Associate Professor, University of South Carolina Beaufort, “Ednah Dow Littlehale Cheney and Nineteenth-Century Women’s Lives” (Ruth R. Miller Fellowship)
Bennett, Zachary, Assistant Professor, Norwich University, “Conquering the Dawn: New England’s Anglo-Wabanaki Wars” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts)
Bowthorpe, Avonlea, Ph.D. Candidate, College of William and Mary, “Confidence and Coercion: Gender and Economic Agency in the British Atlantic, 1713-1800” (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)
Boyer, Emily, Ph.D. Student, Northeastern University, “Lemuel Shattuck: 19th Century Boston, Public Health, and the Creation of Modern U.S. Genealogy Practices” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Brian, Amber, Associate Professor, University of Iowa, “Prescott and the Foundation of Hispanic Studies in the U.S.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Brooking, Greg, Independent Scholar, “Henry Laurens: A Southern Founder” (Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship)
Carabatsos, Julia, Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University, “Album Logic: Assembling and Arranging America in Nineteenth-Century Art” (Andrew Oliver Research Fellowship)
Covington-Ward, Yolanda, Professor, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, “Diasporas within Africa: Identity, Culture, and Christianity among Congo Recaptives in Nineteenth Century Liberia” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Criswell, Joel, Ph.D. Student, Texas A&M University, “Honorable Insanity: How Abolitionists Reimagined Madness in 19th Century U.S.” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Davis, Indy, Ph.D. Candidate, Princeton University, “In the Name of Guardianship: Law and the Frailty of Incapacity” (Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship)
Del Santo, Christopher, Ph.D. Candidate, The Graduate Center, City University of New York, “The Lycurgan Moment: Classical Slavery, Modern Government, and the Politics of History in the Early American Republic” (Marc Friedlaender Fellowship)
Flecha, Jesse, Graduate Student, Texas A&M University, “International Slavery, International Freedom: The Grant Administration’s Effort to End American Slavery Abroad” (Elizabeth Woodman Wright Fellowship)
Gandolfo-Lucia, Nicholas, Ph.D. Student, Brown University, “Paper Money Between Empire and Capitalism in the Eighteenth-Century North Atlantic World” (W.B.H. Dowse Fellowship)
Gonzalez, Alfredo, Assistant Professor, University of California, Santa Barbara, “Senator Henry Cabot Lodge Jr. and the American Foreign Legion” (Abigail Bowen Wright Fellowship)
Haynes, Olivia, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, “Unseen Hands: Black Midwives, Care, and Belonging in the Early American North” (Alyson R. Miller Fellowship)
Heckart, Jordann, Ph.D. Candidate, Baylor University, “Dissenting Women: How Women Responded to Church-State Relations, 1730-1833” (C. Conrad & Elizabeth H. Wright Fellowship)
Hogue, Sarah Anne, Ph.D. Candidate, The University of Southern Mississippi, “Military Deputy Husbandship, Divorce, and Women’s Economic Responsibilities During Warfare, 1639-1783” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts)
Kelly, Matthew, Assistant Professor, University of Washington, “Taken for Granted: Indigenous Land, Capital, and the Origins of American Common Schools” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Lincoln, Angelina, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Maryland, College Park, “African American Children and their Caretakers in and around the Civil War’s Refugee Camps” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Majerowicz, Daniel, Ph.D. Candidate, University of California, Riverside, “Negotiating the Commonwealth: Jurisdiction, Sovereignty, and State-Building in Early Pennsylvania, 1681-1720” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
McKenna, Nicholas, Ph.D. Candidate, Johns Hopkins University, “Before the Shot (Heard ‘Round the World)” (Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship)
Palazzolo, Elena, Assistant Professor, University of Mississippi, “Modern Fare: Reconstructing the U.S. Food System, 1862-1906” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Peterka, Aaron, Independent Scholar, “The Responsibility of Victory: American Citizen-Soldiers and the GI Mutinies of 1945-1946” (Military Historical Society of Massachusetts Fellowship)
Rosch, Cat, Ph.D. Candidate, Brandeis University, “Eccentric Troops and Grassroots Forces: College Women, Reproductive Health, and Activism in Massachusetts, 1960-1973” (Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship)
Rothe, Brayden, Ph.D. Student, University of Minnesota, “Counting the Consequences: Francis Amasa Walker, Statistical Authority, and the Remaking of the Nation after the Civil War” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)
Sauers, Cameron, Ph.D. Candidate, Pennsylvania State University, “Raising Free Laborers: Institutions, Indenture, and Children at Work in 19th Century America” (Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellowship)
Scouller, Wulfstan, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University, “Enterprizing War: How Merchants Shaped King Philip’s War” (Samuel Victor Constant Fellowship from the Society of Colonial Wars in Massachusetts)
Stanley, Matthew, Associate Professor, University of Arkansas, “Capital Reconciliation: Owners, Workers, and the Political Economy of Civil War Reunion” (Governor John A. Andrew Fellowship)
Stanton, Grant, Assistant Professor, Drew University, “The Language of Liberty: Black Politics and the Law of Antislavery in Revolutionary Massachusetts” (African American Studies Fellowship)
Sweat-Montoya, Sydney, Ph.D. Candidate, College of William & Mary, “Evading Empire: Commercial Networks and Illicit Trade in the Western Circum-Caribbean, 1630-1800” (Kenneth and Carol Hills Fellowship in Colonial History)
Urus, Arianne, Assistant Professor, Vanderbilt University, “Common Shores: A Political Ecology of the Eighteenth-Century Newfoundland Cod Fisheries” (Mary B. Wright Environmental History Fellowship)
Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship (jointly awarded with the Boston Athenaeum)
Bowen, Alexander, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Georgia, “A Land of Gilded Promises: Florida in the Long Gilded Age, 1865-1926”
New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Fellows visiting the MHS
Allukian, Kristin, Associate Professor, University of South Florida, “Letters from Lowell: New Perspectives on the Epistolary Culture of America’s First Female Industrial Class”
Bennett, Zachary, Assistant Professor, Norwich University, “Conquering the Dawn: New England’s Anglo-Wabanaki Wars”
Blum, Edward, Professor, San Diego State University, “A Republic that Counts: How Data Broke the British Empire and Made an American One”
Bose, Neilesh, Professor, University of Victoria, “Charles Dall, India, and Indian Religion in Nineteenth Century New England”
Bouwkamp, Julia, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Pennsylvania, “Bodies of Critique: Women, Writing, and the Politics of the Personal in the Early United States”
Dickerson-Pells, Makhai, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Massachusetts, Amherst, “Braided Justice in the Dawn Lands: Black Reparations and Indigenous Land Back in Southern New England, 1960-2026”
Dinnie, Sam, Ph.D. Candidate, George Washington University, “‘This Convulsed Commonwealth’: Western Massachusetts Women in Protest and Dissent, 1734–1787”
Duggan, Marie Christine, Professor Emeritus, Keene State College of the University System of New Hampshire, “New Englanders and New Spaniards: Elusive Trust in the Age of Revolutions”
Eisenstein, Lea, Ph.D. Candidate, Princeton University, “Coming Out: The Private and Public History of Hysterectomy in America”
Gasha, Anna, Adjunct, Columbia University, “Hurricanes and Floods in New England: Loss, Recovery, and Preparation of the Built Environment”
Jackson, Holly, Professor, University of Massachusetts, Boston, “No Half Measures: Radical Non-Resistance and the Theory of Abolition”
Jon, Ihnmi, Assistant Professor, Tufts University, “Mind the Archival Gap: The ‘Hermit Nation’ at a Crossroads (1876-1910)”
McLaren, Aidan, Ph.D. Student, University at Albany, “Empires in Glass: Greenhouses and Controlling Climates in the Atlantic World, 1607-1815”
Rojas, Heath, Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University, “Written in the Heart: Sentimental Deism in the Enlightenment and the Age of Revolutions”
Sedzielarz, Aleksander, Assistant Professor, Kean University, “Making a Move: Diversion, Dialogue, Desire, and Empire in Games and Sport in the US and Asia-Pacific (1834-1959)”
New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Fellows not visiting the MHS
Aboelela, Ayah, Ph.D. Candidate, Northeastern University, “The Late Ottoman Hajj between Medina and Jerusalem”
Bianco , Allison, Independent Scholar, “38 Going on 90: A Print Series of The Great New England Hurricane”
Carabatsos, Julia, Ph.D. Candidate, Columbia University, “Album Logic: Assembling and Arranging America in Nineteenth-Century Art”
D’Urso, Carina, Ph.D. Student, Boston College, “Picturing America: Civic and Communal Life at the Children’s Art Centre”
Flinchbaugh, Anna, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Southern California, “Replication, Repetition, and Historical Revisionism: Art Needlework in the United States and United Kingdom”
Forsyth, Ari, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Washington, “A History of Jewish Social Work in the United States, 1880-1940”
Gardner, Martha, Associate Professor, Massachusetts College of Pharmacy and Health Sciences, “Rights and Risks: Why American Women Kept Smoking even as Men Began to Quit, 1960s-1990s”
Haruna, Halima, Ph.D. Student, Northeastern University, “An Intellectual History of Black Women’s Disability Politics, 1870s -1900s”
Ombadykow, Dolma, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University “The Human and its Borders after Biology: Twentieth Century Maintenance of Life, Livability, and Labor, 1900–1961”
Pack, Caroline, Independent Scholar, “From the Home to the Hospital: The Making of Death Care in Late 19th Century New England”
Rosen, Joshua, Ph.D. Candidate, Boston College, “City of Tenants: Rental Housing in Late 20th Century Boston”
Scouller, Wulfstan, Ph.D. Candidate, Yale University, “Enterprizing War: How Merchants Shaped King Philip’s War”
Turner, KT, Ph.D. Candidate, University of Idaho, “Claiming Space: The Emancipatory Power of African American Theatre During Reconstruction to 1900”
New England’s son Noah Kahan makes his triumphant return to Fenway Park this week, including an 11 July show on the birthday of John Quincy Adams. Kahan’s works have long reminded me of JQA but none moreso than Kahan’s most recent album, The Great Divide, an intensely personal look at life in a New England family.
Portrait of Abigail Adams Smith—“Nabby”
“You’re home, and I’m so grateful you are. Because you’re going to fix it; you’re going to patch it up. Honey, we’re fragile. You’ve always been so tough.” —American Cars
I’ve already written at length about JQA’s close relationship with his sister, Nabby. Nabby was the family’s regulating ballast. Endlessly tender and patient, she was a bedrock for Adams. This tribute Kahan wrote for his sister couldn’t be more apt.
“I’m cursing every exit sign and my devotion to hoping you might change your mind and to hating you for going.” —Downfall
It may seem strange to choose a song with the chorus “I’ll keep rooting for your downfall” as the one to sum up a marriage, but John Quincy’s relationship with his wife, Louisa Catherine, was anything but straightforward. Two strong but opposing personalities, they had trouble living together and even more trouble living apart. Louisa had no appetite for public life, and her husband’s return to Congress after losing his presidential bid was one of the most strained moments of their marriage. (“Staying Still” is also a JQA/LCA anthem!)
“I wish you could know me, and I wish I could know you much more sometimes Wish I could do nothing with you, sit in the yard while the day dies.” —Willing and Able
This album is one long run of songs written for the three Adams brothers—JQA, Charles, and Thomas. An elder brother who was handpicked by George Washington for diplomatic service would hardly encourage fraternal affection, particularly as the younger boys failed to keep up academically and professionally (and struggled with alcohol abuse). Yet John Quincy never stopped adoring his brothers, chiseling away at the wall between them with job offers and much-needed funds.
“I’m an astronaut; you’re the moon. I stare at you, I sing to you, I circle you.” —Orbiter
In my opinion, the true north of JQA’s life was his mother, Abigail. This track Kahan wrote for his mother perfectly encapsulates their relationship. JQA’s wife, Louisa Catherine, understood this relationship well, reflecting that her mother-in-law was “the guiding Planet around which all revolved.”
“Everybody’s asleep, let’s talk about him. Talk about high school, talk about death Where do we go when we die? I wouldn’t mind right here. No, I wouldn’t mind at all.” —Dan
17 August 1826 found a grieving John Quincy Adams writing to his “dear friend and cousin” William Cranch about the loss of their fathers and “the memory of the Scenes of our childhood.” Cranch was born two years and one week after his cousin and remained one of the few constants of Adams’s life. The cousins went from running around the Massachusetts countryside together as small boys to serving the federal government in Washington, D.C. As Adams aged and outlived his parents, sisters, brothers, two sons and a daughter, his cousin William was always there to remember what everyone else had forgotten.
The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding of the edition is currently provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Packard Humanities Institute.
As newlywed Elizabeth Copley Greene (1770–1866) settled into her new estate, she found herself thousands of miles away from the artistic family who raised her. Born in Boston in 1770 but raised in cosmopolitan London after her family fled during the American Revolution, Greene grew up immersed in the artistic circle of her father, painter John Singleton Copley (1738–1815). In July 1800, she married the Boston merchant and planter Gardiner Greene in London. Elizabeth’s subsequent reverse migration produced a bountiful correspondence between her and her family spanning decades—materials I studied as the Andrew Oliver Fellow at the Massachusetts Historical Society for my dissertation on the use of pastel in Revolutionary-era North American art.
Before Copley left for London, he was the most prominent portraitist in colonial North America, renowned for his work in oil, miniature, and pastel. Popular for replicating textures like skin and textiles, pastel was nevertheless controversial for its fragility—a quality evident in some portraits, like that of Jonathan Jackson (figure 1). Despite this concern, Copley thought his “best portraits done in that way,” and worked in pastel until he left for Europe in 1774. He favored the medium enough to use it for pendant portraits of himself and his wife, Susannah, around the time of their marriage in late 1769, a year before Elizabeth’s birth.
Figure 1. John Singleton Copley, Jonathan Jackson, ca. 1767-1769, pastel on paper, 56.2 cm x 46 cm, Massachusetts Historical Society, Artwork 01.252
Of Copley’s children, only Elizabeth returned to North America; it was her branch of the family that became most invested in sustaining his artistic legacy. Elizabeth’s daughter, Martha Babock Greene Amory, wrote The Domestic and Artistic Life of John Singleton Copley, R.A. (1882), a history drawing from oral history and family letters. Another descendant, Harcourt Amory, later deposited these materials at Massachusetts Historical Society. While the Copley Family papers (Ms. N-1034) preserve Elizabeth’s received family correspondence through 1847, they lack later letters excerpted in Amory’s book, raising questions about how descendants sought to shape Copley’s legacy as they preserved it.
While many of the works in Copley’s studio eventually reached Boston through Elizabeth’s descendants, the pastel portraits had never left. Fleeing Massachusetts with three young children during wartime, Susannah could not transport the fragile artworks. During Elizabeth’s first year in Boston, she noted that she was in possession of the portraits of her parents. Her mother’s response expressed extreme distaste (figure 2): “I have to say that I hope you will not adorn your new house with those sad portraits which you mention, pray hang them in a closet.” Though fashionable in 1769, thirty years later, they were out of style in London.
Figure 2. Letter from Susannah Clarke Copley to Elizabeth Copley Greene, December 20, 1800 (section dated December 26), Copley Family Papers (Ms. N-1034), Box 1 (Folder Oct-Dec 1800), Massachusetts Historical Society
For Elizabeth, that did not matter; the portraits were the only representations she possessed of her parents. They remained in her family a for a generation longer than the letters before being sold to the collector Henry Francis du Pont, at whose Winterthur Museum they remain today. These portraits remain in good condition because they never crossed the ocean on a ship, rather remaining as a stand-in for Copley in Boston and cared for by his descendants. To Elizabeth, their chalky faces served as daily reminders of her beloved parents; the value of seeing their faces was worth whatever the aesthetic cost. The survival of art depends on such personal devotional acts. From a daughter’s insistence on displaying reminders of home to the researcher’s study of her letters, these materials—protected through generations at Massachusetts Historical Society—help reveal human priorities and desires across time and distance.
Further Reading:
Gurnsey Jones, ed., Letters & Papers of John Singleton Copley and Henry Pelham, 1739-1776 (Massachusetts Historical Society, 1914)
Copley Family Papers, Ms. N-1034, Massachusetts Historical Society
For the last few months, I’ve been telling you about Henrietta Schroeder, a 14-year-old American girl on a European tour with her family in 1889. Her diary in the Stout family papers is a very entertaining record of that trip.
Today I’d like to introduce you to some of her friends. One of Henrietta’s most endearing qualities, I think, is her love for her friends, so I wanted to know more about the girls that meant so much to her.
The Curiosity Raising Club
On October 19, 1889, Henrietta had a great idea: “Lina Wetherill, Edith Speyers & Lena Schroeder & myself are going to get up a club, called the ‘Cur[i]osity Raising Club,’ […] for the purpose of getting up the cur[i]osity of others.” Just who were these curious young women?
I’ve mentioned Lina Wetherill before – that is, Caroline Bowen Wetherill, Henrietta’s best friend. Henrietta often wrote about Lina in her diary like this: “Oh! how I long for her, pray for her, love her. Oh! how I wish I could see her over here and (if only for an hour) press her to my heart once more, and be able to hear her voice, and feel her warm kiss once more.”
Lina, the daughter of Civil War veteran Francis Dring Wetherill, was born in 1876 and grew up in Philadelphia. At the age of 30, on a trans-Atlantic ocean liner, Lina met a 42-year-old bachelor lawyer from Seattle named Josiah Collins. They married a few months later and went on to have two sons together. Lina died in Seattle at the age of 80. I sincerely hope she and Henrietta stayed friends for the rest of their lives.
Confusingly, there was another Lena in Henrietta’s life, this one with an “e.” Here she is in an adorable photograph pasted into Henrietta’s diary.
Photograph of Lena Schroeder, ca. 1889
This Lena was Selina Richards Schroeder, Henrietta’s first cousin once removed, the daughter of New York cotton broker Gilliat Schroeder. She was born in 1875, just ten days before Henrietta. The Historical Society of Pennsylvania holds three diaries kept by Lena between 1888 and 1891. They look very similar to Henrietta’s; one of them even includes her picture!
In 1896, Gilliat Schroeder made some bad investments, and as the New York newspapers quaintly expressed it, “unfortunate speculation swept away the [family’s] fortune.” Lena, who was just 20 years old, went into business as a dressmaker to support her family, soon moving to larger premises in Manhattan and employing at least 25 other women. Her entrepreneurship was lauded in contemporary papers and in an 1898 book called What Women Can Earn.
The last member of the Curiosity Raising Club was Edith Lawrence Speyers, also of New York, Lena Schroeder’s first cousin through their mothers, Louisa and Selina Lawrence. Edith was also born in 1875, the oldest of the friends by a few months.
Edith would become best known as a leader in relief organizations during both world wars. She was chair of the National League for Women’s Service during World War I and, in 1920, founded the Dug Out, a Manhattan club for disabled veterans. For her various wartime efforts, she was decorated by the governments of France, Romania, and Serbia. But Edith didn’t rest on her laurels. She headed the National Women’s Council of the Navy League during World War II, when she was in her sixties. She was widowed twice and died in 1949.
Edith McVickar (née Speyers) and Breck Trowbridge receiving honors from Romanian politician Gogu Negulescu, clipped from the Dodge Center Record, October 9, 1919
I hope you’ll join me as I pick up Henrietta’s story in a future post!
By Bianca Laliberté, Andrew Oliver Fellow, 2025-2026
I have not yet encountered a philosopher dealing with the reality of archival research who has not confessed to me the ache and discomfort they experienced once actually immersed in the work. Fair enough: the Foucauldian confrontation of the philosophical tradition with the messy realm of the archives would not come about without irritation. Archival research breaks the flow of the tightly configured reading processes that inform this tradition. It cracks open the philosophical experience, leaving much room for emotional and cognitive dissonance, opening the door to a sort of chaotic sentiment.
Figure 1. Jeremy Belknap Diary, 1786. Massachusetts Historical Society, Ms. N-1827; P-380, Boxes A.1.10-11 III.
I wish to bring attention to the fact that such a Western philosophical narrative holds space for a rather European point of view. Unless we think of the development of American thought as a mere extension of European thought—which I can’t resign myself to doing for critical reasons analogous to the ones put forward by Ned Blackhawk, we must admit that, on the other side of the Atlantic, the logic of archival research somewhat follows an inverted logic. When facing the intellectual history of early America, one could argue that the chaotic sentiment is not experienced as the product of a philosophical breakthrough. It appears to me to be much more accurately perceived as the effect of an intrinsic quality. For researchers looking into materials from the seventeenth and eighteen centuries, the cognitive need to confront and defeat the dispersion of what we could call “American thought” through the grey world of archives and documents tends to feel rather unavoidable. Chronologically speaking, first comes the dissemination of the body of modern American thought, then come its otherwise structured forms.
Figure 2. Jeremy Belknap Diary, 1786. Massachusetts Historical Society, Ms. N-1827; P-380, Boxes A.1.10-11 III
Gérard Deledalle, the French philosopher who introduced American pragmatism in France during the golden years of continental philosophy, did not share these preoccupations. His framing of the beginnings of American philosophy (1954) led him no further back than to written oeuvres that could arguably be compared to textual forms that are familiar to the philosophical tradition. After rapidly covering contributions from individual thinkers like Samuel Johnson, Jonathan Edwards, or Thomas Jefferson, he rushes to address the emergence of American transcendentalism. Many early Americanists, on the other hand, have tended to be much more generous—sometimes too much so. Following patterns observable in early American discourses, many of them willingly identify the unarticulated philosophies of the seventeenth and eighteen-century American context as “practical” and even as “pragmatic” ones, sometimes without giving the notion of philosophy itself any further thought. This loosening of the notion of philosophy is not only the fruit of academic developments, however. The approaches to knowledge that drove eighteenth-century-born American learned societies certainly contributed to it.
Figure 3. Jeremy Belknap Diary, 1787. Massachusetts Historical Society, Ms. N-1827; P-380, Boxes A.1.10-11 III.
In Jeremy Belknap’s annotated almanacs, calendar pages and blank pages covered with manuscript notes drastically alternate (Figures 1–4). These artefacts convey a powerful image of his personal experience of the disruption of continuous time. And so does the gathering of the first collections of the MHS, through which he certainly dealt with the interrupting rhythm of archival dissemination, even more so given that the organizing principles that led his endeavor surpassed the bibliographical and archival categories. His approach could, in that sense, be called “intermedial”: the spectrum of material he embraced included objects, maps, images, and so-called “curiosities”. Belknap never bestowed his collecting philosophy with a formal theorization, and it would be quite dubious to frame him as a philosopher. However, to build on a statement articulated by Abram C. Van Engen (2023) in relation to the discipline of history, the impact that individuals like Belknap, Ebenezer Hazard, and John Pintard have had on the development of American intellectual history at large has yet been overlooked by scholars attached to the various disciplines that draw on the gigantic pool of early texts and artefacts that they collected. This postulate includes—or should include—philosophy and intellectual history.
Figure 4. Jeremy Belknap Diary, 1787. Massachusetts Historical Society, Ms. N-1827; P-380, Boxes A.1.10-11 III.
One way to think of this interdisciplinary phenomenon in general terms would be to verify to what extent it sheds light on the horizon of a troubling possibility, which Van Engen touches upon: the disseminative logic that determines the making of the various fields of Early America to this day stood at the heart of Belknap’s nationalist project. This is, at least, what I want to leave for the reader of this blog post to think about. Continental standpoints of philosophy fed the critique of American nationalism from the 1970s on. We need a philosophy of archival research which recognizes that the unreflective application of these standpoints to the American proto-imperial context runs the risk of blinding us to the task here at hand. From the perspective of the study of Early America, the study of institutional history and the critique of structures of power that motivated Michel Foucault’s engagement with archival research cannot target a monolithic form of philosophy alone. It must be capable of weighing the fact that the American nationalist metaphysic, which Belknap and his associates translated into a practice of gathering, embodies a sort of democratic and inclusive quality. One could speak, using the terms of Jacques Rancière—and not without a touch of irony—of a democracy of the sensible, where sheets of paper, records, images, and Indigenous art pieces, are put together for the State’s and citizen’s eye to see and exhibit. This invites us to acknowledge that our defense of democratic approaches to research thus requires deeper thinking and renewed forms of investigation, which might prove necessary to face the symptomatic return of nationalism.
And of course, following this path, one should expect to experience a certain level of ache and discomfort.
Further Reading:
For a critique of the denial of the cost of political and imperial “independence” of the United States, view Blackhawk, Ned. The Rediscovery of America. Native Peoples and the Unmaking of U.S. History. New Haven, Yale University, 2023—and p.1 in particular, where he writes: “Historians have largely followed suit in focusing on Europeans and their descendants: Puritans governing a commonwealth in a wilderness; pioneers settling western frontiers; and European immigrants huddled upon Atlantic shores. Scholars have long conflated U.S. history with Europeans, maintaining that the United States evolved from its British settlements”.
Deledalle, Gérard. Histoire de la philosophie américaine, Presses universitaires de France, Paris, 1954.
For a critique of unreflective applications of philosophical interpretation to the Early American context, view Beard, Charles. The Supreme Court and the Constitution. New York, Paisley Press, 1912. On p.79, Beard argued that the Founding Fathers and the Framers of the Constitution, “were not philosophers, but men of business and property . . . and had no problem with the system of class rule and the strong centralization of government which existed in England”.
Van Engen, Abram C. (2023). “Pursuing the “True History” of America” in The Massachusetts Historical Review, Published by the Massachusetts Historical Society, Vol 21, 2020. I wish to thank Ondine Le Blanc for referring this brilliant article to me.
Adams Family Correspondence, volume 17, forthcoming in 2027, is filled with politics, diplomacy, war, and strong opinions, but also many personal changes for the Adams family. Several beloved Adams family members and dear friends die between 1809 and 1812, the years covered in this volume. In the midst of this sorrow, John and Abigail watch their grandchildren develop into teenagers and young adults. Letters of the third generation first appeared in volume 16, but their correspondence plays a more prominent role in the series as they grow older. While some of the grandchildren are more famous than others due to their own careers or family drama, I want to highlight one of the lesser-known Adams grandchildren, Susanna Boylston Adams.
Susanna Boylston Adams (1796–1884) was the eldest daughter of Charles and Sarah Smith Adams (Sarah Smith Adams was the sister of William Stephens Smith, who married Charles’ sister Nabby!) Susanna and her younger sister, Abigail Louisa Smith Adams, spent much of their youth with grandparents John and Abigail after their father’s death in 1800.
Silhouette of Susanna Boylston Adams, by Boston artist Henry Williams
In 1817, Susanna married Lt. Charles Thomas Clark, who died two years later. She remarried in 1833 to William R. H. Treadway, who died in 1836. The Adams family provided her with financial support until her death. The first letter to Susanna in our collection is an 1808 letter from her grandmother, printed in volume 16, with most of her early correspondence falling into the timeline of volume 17. Her writings are even more frequent in the Adams Papers as she gets older.
Susanna was born during her grandfather’s presidency but grew up in the idyll of her grandparents’ farm in Quincy. Her social circle was filled with cousins (including Nabby’s daughter, Caroline Amelia Smith) as well as young women in the greater Quincy area, including Ann Hall, an orphan raised by the Adamses’ neighbors, and Ann Gerry, daughter of Elbridge and Ann Thompson Gerry. She also traveled locally, including to Newburyport to spend time with friends. In October 1810, Abigail wrote to her in Newburyport that this was the “first time you have gone so far from home without a guide.” She reminded Susanna about proper etiquette and social behavior.
Most of the extant correspondence is comprised of letters that Susanna received rather than those she wrote, but we are able to learn quite a bit about Susanna from her incoming mail and how often she addressed letters as her grandmother’s assistant. She had an especially close relationship with John Adams; Abigail noted he loved reading Susanna’s letters, hearing her sing and play guitar, and going on outings together, including a visit to the First Church of Weymouth.
For more on Susanna Boylston Adams, be sure to check out Adams Family Correspondence, volume 17, when it is published in 2027!
The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges the generous support of our sponsors. Major funding of the edition is currently provided by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Packard Humanities Institute. Volume 16 and 17 of the Adams Family Correspondence also received support from the National Historical Publications and Records Commission.
