Come Celebrate Indigenous Peoples’ Day at the MHS!

by Alexandra Moleski (Penobscot/Wolastoqey), MA History Day Program Coordinator

In celebration of Indigenous Peoples’ Day, the MHS and other cultural organizations in Boston’s Back Bay will be Opening Our Doors to offer free programming for the general public. Join us on Monday, October 12 from 12:00 pm to 4:00 pm for a day of discussions and family-friendly activities centering Indigenous histories.

As part of programming, I’ve had the pleasure of curating An Echo Through the Ages: Seven Generation Thinking in the MHS Collections, a special display of Indigenous material culture that is on view through October. Seven Generations is a philosophy that has been foundational to many Indigenous communities and cultures since time immemorial. It emphasizes interconnectedness between past, present, and future. In other words, our actions in the present moment should honor the histories and knowledge of our ancestors and communities going seven generations back, while also preserving and protecting that inherited knowledge and the world we live in for the next seven generations. This mindfulness can take many forms, like the preservation of language and ceremonies, or environmental consciousness and social activism.

Each of the items in the display explores themes of shared knowledge, stewardship, and community across generations. Their stories inspire us to reflect on our own histories: what knowledge and values have been passed down to each of us, and how do we honor them in our daily lives? What do we hope to pass to the coming generations?

One of my favorite items is the large 1835 broadside of the Cherokee syllabary, which was completed by Sequoyah in 1821, after a decade of work assigning unique symbols to every syllable in the Cherokee language.

According to Cherokee oral tradition, Sequoyah’s writing system was inspired by the shapes of worms in the earth and birds in the sky, and he would spend hours writing on tree bark or in dirt.

Written communication between Sequoyah and his daughter Ayoka validated the efficiency of his writing system and the need for it across Cherokee communities. In 1828, just a few years after the syllabary’s creation, the Cherokee Nation published the Cherokee Phoenix, the first Indigenous language newspaper in the U.S. By the 1830s, the Cherokee had a 90% literacy rate. Sequoyah’s syllabary was instrumental in unifying the Cherokee Nation in the face of forced removal and preserving their language for generations to come.

Join us on October 12 to learn more about the rest of the collection items in An Echo Through the Ages and to explore additional programming, including “These Are Our Lands, Forever,” a talk withBrad Lopes, Aquinnah Wôpanâak scholar and Director of Education for the Aquinnah Wampanoag Tribe from 1 pm – 2 pm.

Woliwon!

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A Balancing Act

By Sara Georgini, Series Editor, Papers of John Adams

As he crested the midpoint of his presidency, John Adams’ public life exploded in crisis. “My Administration, will not certainly be easy to myself.— It will be happy, however if it is honourable,” he observed to predecessor George Washington on 22 June 1798. Our newest scholarship from the Adams Papers, Volume 23 of the Papers of John Adams, illuminates the host of challenges he faced from March 1798 to June 1799. First and foremost, the second president struggled to make peace with France while accelerating plans for national defense. The bribery fiasco of the XYZ Affair and catastrophic failure of the first mission to France, coupled with privateers’ relentless attacks on American commerce, made that task trickier to accomplish.

A white hardcover book with blue-green oakleaf and acorn seal, Volume 23, sits alongside a bookshelf brimming with previous volumes of the Papers of John Adams

When Adams doubled down on his French policy—despite protest from his cabinet and Congress—support flowed in via hundreds of patriotic addresses from all sixteen states in the union. Adams sat down and answered as many as possible, reveling in a wide-ranging dialogue with his fellow citizens about revolutionary legacies, French missteps, and executive power. “Nothing in the course of my Life, has given me a more exquisite pleasure, than the frank acknowledgments from Various quarters,” Adams wrote to Bristol, Penn., residents on 4 My 1798, adding: “Your Freedom and Independence deserve to be maintained at every hazard—”

His popularity peaked quickly. Adams signed off on the Alien and Sedition Acts in July, a legacy-tarnishing set of laws that eroded individual freedoms guaranteed by the Constitution. Democratic-Republicans pushed back. They leveraged the new legislation to foment rebellion against the Adams administration. “I apeal to your conscience if it is not to intimidate the people and force them to a compliance with the unjust unreasonable unconstitutional laws,” author Margaret Rodgers Irvin Smith railed to Adams on 25 April 1799, continuing: “There is more power put into your hands than ever ought to be comited to any one man.” Meanwhile, mounting trouble with France called for a more robust army and navy. The implementation of a direct tax to cover military costs sparked episodes of dissent and even local fury, such as Fries’ Rebellion.

In Volume 23 we use 408 documents to tell fresh stories from the founding era that illuminate President John Adams’ role at home and in the world. This period represents the high tide of archival treasure in the Adams Family Papers. With that in mind, we worked hard to amplify and contextualize new voices while capturing the complex political tumult of early America. One story that leapt from the manuscripts was Adams’ pursuit of a trade deal with the revolutionary Black republic of St. Domingue (now Haiti). In his dealings with general Toussaint Louverture, Adams labored to reestablish profitable commerce in the Caribbean by creating a carveout for St. Domingue amid the roiling embargoes of the Quasi War. Elsewhere, Adams welcomed diverse commentary from a vast realm of correspondents, including Christopher McPherson, a free Black religious thinker; Abigail Fellows Cunningham, a Charlestown acquaintance; and trusted confidantes like Tristram Dalton, John Jay, and Adriaan François Van der Kemp.

With reelection hopes still hazy on the horizon, the president prepared for war and planned for peace. This chapter of John Adams’ public life reveals a series of tough balancing acts: Extend diplomacy and fund military buildup. Evade foreign influence and encourage free trade. Protect civil liberties and defend national security. The political ground shifted under Adams’ feet as well. Rejecting the notion that he should act as head of the Federalist Party, he strained to sustain principles of constitutional balance. On 29 March 1798, with the Franco-American alliance in tatters, John Adams laid out his executive view of affairs to attorney general Charles Lee, writing: “If any one entertains the Idea that because I am a president of three votes only, I am in the Power of a Party, they shall find that I am no more so, than the Constitution forces upon me.”

The Adams Papers editorial project at the Massachusetts Historical Society gratefully acknowledges support for this volume from the National Endowment for the Humanities, the National Historical Publications and Records Commission, and the Packard Humanities Institute. All letterpress volumes of The Adams Papers are printed by Harvard University Press.

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

“You Have No Home to Come to”: Rena Struggles Through the London Blitz

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

Every once in a while, when I’m processing a collection, I run across a person I just want more people to know about. One of those people is Rena Struggles, whose correspondence is part of the Bullard-Lauriat family papers.

Her full name was, amazingly, Cecerina Victoria Struggles, which I think sounds like someone who attended Hogwarts with Harry Potter. Her family apparently called her “Cissy,” but she preferred Rena. She was born in London on June 9, 1885, one of the many children of James and Ida Berger Struggles. At the age of 20, wanting to make her own way in the world, she traveled across the Atlantic to find work in America. She would spend the next 32 years working as a housekeeper and nanny for different families in Massachusetts, including the Lauriats.

After moving back to the U.K. in the late 1930s, Rena corresponded with the Lauriats, particularly the mother Marian. Rena had quite a poetic way of expressing herself. Here’s a taste of her style (she separated her thoughts on the page with dramatic dashes):

Things and people move so much slower here than in America, there is an outward gentleness with an inward strength – in English things and English men – like the slow streams, yet they are deep and strong.

And when Marian was apparently sorting and discarding some of her late husband’s books, Rena wrote:

I know how you all feel, but we must carry on. – it has ever been thus – from the begining [sic] of time – To be strong – brave – great men have lived through the ages – in those that come after them. I don’t believe it makes us cold and hard – no – it gives us a better understanding of Life – only sometimes we learn too late.

Unfortunately, the Struggles family would be indelibly marked, like so many others in London, by the months-long German bombing campaign known as the Blitz. As early as 1938, Rena’s letters had been peppered with references to air raids, gas masks, evacuations, and barrage balloons. By 1940, Londoners were, she said, “well trained,” even the children. Then, on November 18, she wrote a bleak and heart-breaking letter to Marian:

185 Droop [St., the family home] – is no more. Sat. night it was bombed. mother was killed – my sister taken to hospital I know not where yet my youngest brother – and 7 year old son – and his wife – were buried 4 hours – and taken out I believe alright … I feel too bad to cry or write. the message said don’t come home – you have no home to come to … dont tell Patience.

Color photograph of a pile of documents. On the top of the pile is a letter written in black ink addressed to “Dear Mrs. Lauriat,” from London, England, dated 18 November 1940. Lying to the left of the letter is a card reading “In Loving Memory” with a black border around it and an illustration of flowers.
Letter from Rena Struggles informing Marian Lauriat of the death of Ida Struggles and the destruction of the family home, with mourning card

(Patience was Marian’s youngest child, only 12 years old at the time.)

Ida Struggles was killed instantly, along with a neighbor, Ellen Louise Sutton, who was visiting at the time. Rena’s sister, brother, sister-in-law, and nephew survived with minor physical injuries. Ida was buried at Paddington Cemetery six days later, and Rena described the funeral as “hurried,” with no tolling of the bell to mark “the coming of the soul into God’s acre – owing to war … even the cemetry [sic] had been bombed. – stones lying all which ways.” Months later, Rena still hadn’t “cried over mother – or the home. it was too ghastly – I could not.”

Rena herself lived a very long life. She died on June 23, 1981, just two weeks after her 96th birthday. I found an article in the Brighton (U.K.) Evening Argus, published in 1974, that includes the only picture of her I’ve located. She was bed-bound due to a disability, but still worked making clothing for dolls.

Black and white screenshot of a portion of a newspaper article titled “Top Prize to a Woman Who’s a Real Winner,” with one column of text at the right. To the left of the text is a black and white photograph of three white women, one lying on a hospital bed and the other two standing next to it. All three women smile at the camera, and in the foreground are several dolls.
Detail from an article about Rena Struggles in the Brighton (U.K.) Evening Argus, 16 October 1974
Posted in From Our Collections

What If?

By Ella Starkman-Hynes, Louis Leonard Tucker Alumni Fellow, PhD Candidate at Yale University 

A strange thought occurred to me on the first day of my research fellowship at the Massachusetts Historical Society: most of the scholars around me are probably looking for evidence of things that happened. I might be the only person looking for evidence of things that didn’t.

My dissertation, “A Different Kind of Mirror: Alternate Histories in Civil War Memory,” examines the role of counterfactuals (also known as alternate histories or what-ifs) in constructing memory of the American Civil War from the late 19th century through the present day. In short, it is a comprehensive survey of Civil War memory, told through all the Civil Wars that never happened.

The challenging part of looking for counterfactuals in the archive is that you never quite know where you’re going to find them. In my first few days at the MHS, I spent a lot of time looking through various family papers waiting for what-ifs that never materialized.

Before too long, however, I began to find the kind of large-scale reimagining of the Civil War and its consequences that I had been seeking. Most excitingly, I began to find patterns of counterfactual thinking that appeared across multiple people’s recollections of the war. I found a fascinating counterfactual in Captain John P. Reynolds’ unpublished Civil War reminiscences. Writing in 1893, Reynolds speculated that Richmond, the capital of the Confederacy, could have been taken in 1862. But, he mused, “the peace that followed would undoubtedly have respected slavery as a condition, and this political cancer … would have recovered from the ‘operation’ to still menace the institutions of a great free republic.”

Excerpt from John P. Reynolds Civil War reminiscences, ca. 1897, Massachusetts Historical Society.

I found a similar counterfactual in the unpublished Civil War recollections of Brigadier General Oliver Edwards. Edwards argued that countless unnecessary deaths occurred because President Lincoln could not find the right person to command the Union Army. And yet, it had to be this way — “the God of Battles would not give us any victory that would end the war until the extinction of slavery was certain to be the result.” This use of counterfactual thinking to comprehend the Civil War’s meaning was exactly the type of thing I had hoped to find in the archive, and I was thrilled to see this mode of thinking in Reynolds’ and Edwards’ reminiscences.

Excerpt from Oliver Edwards, “My Recollections of The Civil War,” Clarence Ransom Edwards papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

I also found some intriguing counterfactuals in the E.W. Kinsley G.A.R. Post Records, a source base which MHS Reference Librarian Dan Hinchen recommended to me. In a newspaper clipping from 1895, I found a record of a speech given by General Nelson Miles in which he asserts that imaginatively inverting the Civil War’s outcome is the only way to “comprehend the magnitude” of the Civil War’s cause. If the North had lost the war, he asserted, “the world could then have said that after nearly 100 years of experiment under the most favorable circumstances  … republican institutions had been tried and had utterly failed on the Continent of America; despotic government, and with it human slavery, would have been the fate of man for an indefinite period of time.”

Printed photograph of General Nelson A. Miles. Grand Army of the Republic, E. W. Kinsley Post No. 113 (Boston, Mass.) records, Carton 2, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Although historians have been somewhat wary of drawing scholarly conclusions from counterfactuals, this reticence comes at a cost. Gavriel Rosenfeld, a pioneering scholar of counterfactuals, has noted the importance of this genre for memory studies: “Speculative accounts about the past, he writes, “are driven by many of the same psychological forces that determine how the past takes shape in remembrance. Biases, fears and wishes, the desire to avoid guilt, the quest for vindication — these and other related sentiments all influence how people remember how it ‘really’ was.” What-ifs, although unconventional sources, can thus add a great deal to our understanding of how Civil War memory has evolved — or failed to evolve — over the course of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

Works Referenced:

Gavriel Rosenfeld, “Why Do We Ask ‘What If?’ Reflections on the Function of Alternate History.” History and Theory 41, no. 4 (2002): 90–103. http://www.jstor.org/stable/3590670. 93.

Posted in From Our Collections, Research fellow

“Privacy Was Their Ambition”: John Adams and The Anglo-American Peace Treaty of 1783

By Kevyn Spill, Adams Papers Intern

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.”

Several lines of handwritten text on sepia-toned paper
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.

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged

New Audiovisual Material at the MHS Digital Archive

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

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.

Color screenshot of a blurry video showing four people seated in chairs at the front of a room. Along the right of the screen is a time-stamped transcript.
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.

Posted in From Our Collections, MHS News

New Collection Available for Research

By Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

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.

Color screenshot of a webpage titled “Bullard-Lauriat family papers.”
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.

Color photograph of the outside of a thin black hardbound book. Printed on the cover in red is the text “The Lusitania’s Last Voyage by Charles Lauriat, Jr.” flanked by images of two smokestacks.
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.

Posted in From Our Collections

A Co-op Reflection 

By Nadeen Makhzomi, Education Department Intern

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. 

Thank you so much, and I hope to be back soon!

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Announcing the 2026-2027 MHS Research Fellows

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”
  • ardan, dee(dee), Independent Scholar, “(M)other Tongues, Monstrous Tongues: Feminist Psychoanalysis and Race”
  • 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”
Posted in MHS News

John Quincy Adams and the Great Divide

By Gwen Fries, Adams Papers

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.

Faded image of young girl with curly hair set in decorative gold frame.
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!)

Two miniature portraits of young men. The left image is grayscale. The right is in color.
Charles, left, and Thomas Boylston Adams.

“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.

Posted in From Our Collections Tagged