by Rakashi Chand, Reading Room Supervisor

I simply gasped when one of our researchers called me over to her desk in the reading room to look at a diary entry by a young woman, Amelia Peabody, writing about the sinking of the Titanic—and the darkness that the tragedy spread over the nation.

Amelia Peabody was born in 1890 to Frank Everett Peabody and Gertrude Bayley, a wealthy family that kept a summer house in Marblehead and a winter residence at 120 Commonwealth Avenue in Boston. Amelia studied sculpture and became an accomplished artist, horsewoman, farm owner, breeder, and philanthropist. Amelia would go on to inherit both the estate of her father and her stepfather, William Storer Eton.

Amelia’s world was greatly impacted by the Titanic disaster, with friends and acquaintances on board the ill-fated ship and the unsettling realization that all in Amelia’s circle could well have been on board.   The following transcription is the 23 April 1912 diary entry, part of the Amelia Peabody Papers.

April 23, Tuesday

One of the world’s greatest disasters has happened since I last wrote. On Sunday night at 11:45 April 14^th the new steamer Titanic hit an iceberg and two hours later she sank with some 15 hundred on board- almost 7 or 8 hundred were saved, picked up by the Carpathia about 4 hours later from the life-boats. The horrible part about it is that probably all or almost all would have been saved if there were life-boats enough. As it was, every available boat was filled & the men left behind had nothing to do but wait for the end. It was a smooth night so that the berg wasn’t seen until a quarter of a mile away which is only a few minutes for a boat of that size. They were going too fast, but they didn’t think the big bergs were near. Capt. Smith who went down with the ship had been averse & taking it because he thinks such large ones are unwieldy. The women & children were almost all saved & everyone has felt proud of the bravery of all these American & Englishmen. Betty Millets Uncle Frank D. Millet helped, with others, the women & children into the boats and smiled & waved to them as they went off, all the time with that awful knowledge that there was absolutely no hope for themselves. The other Millets were unable to find out for 4 days whether he had been saved or not. There was a name Mile on the saved list which might have meant him or three others. Regular Millet luck. He had just been appointed President of the Am. Academy of Art in Rome & he had been over fixing up the beautiful villa that goes with the position. Everyone was brave. Even the 50 or more little bell boys- They were told to stay in the cabin out of the way & they obeyed quietly & then when the Captain gave the order of all for each man for himself they came out on deck & smoked cigarettes to show that they were really grown up, & waited until the boat went down beneath them. Not one was saved. Only two men who were on the ship as she sank are alive. Both were sucked down and apparently blown up again by the explosion of the boilers, & managed to reach boats that could take them aboard. One half sunk raft held 30 men who had to refuse to let any of the struggling ones in the water come near. Luckily the water was icy and killed most of them quickly.

As the week went on, the tragedy of the Titanic continued to loom. On Wednesday, 24 April, Amelia wrote about rehearsals and performances of a show she was part of that was “great fun & quite worth all the trouble. . . . The Titanic however threw a subconscious gloom over it all.” Then, in her next entry on Monday, 29 April, she wrote “Nobody comes to call except Sundays & then I’m usually out. Even Betty isn’t coming in on account of her Uncle, whose body has been recovered, by the way.”

Visit the Library to learn more and make your own discoveries while exploring the words and worlds of people like Amelia Peabody.

Further Reading:

Amelia Peabody by Linda Smith Rhoads (Boston, 1998).

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

In my last post, I introduced you to a woman named Sarah, of New Braintree, Massachusetts, and a letter here at the MHS that she wrote to a cousin, probably in 1874. Thankfully she’d mentioned a few friends or relatives in the letter, and I could identify them using digitized copies of published genealogies. But who was Sarah?

Some of the people she mentioned in her letter were Lucius Prouty, the Peppers, Miss Wood, Dwight, Hattie Prouty, Lizzie Whipple, and Frank. I’d zeroed in on the children of Homer R. Prouty of North Brookfield, Massachusetts, for three reasons: many of these names appear in that branch of the family, North Brookfield is right next to New Braintree, and the time period was right.

But I didn’t know Sarah’s connection to the Proutys. (I should note that it was common at the time for people to refer to relatives by their full names, when so many names were reused. For example, if you had a sister Mary and a cousin Mary, you’d likely refer to your cousin by her full name to distinguish her.)

I searched the Prouty genealogy for Sarahs (79 results), backed out a generation to expand my search to cousins and aunts, and even clicked through Prouty and Pepper plots at Walnut Grove Cemetery, but I couldn’t turn up anyone that seemed likely to be our correspondent. When I’m stuck, I find it usually helps to go back to the original letter for more clues.

I was confident I had the right family. Brothers Lucius, Charles, and Dwight were all mentioned in the letter. Lucius married Miss Pepper, and Dwight and Charles both married Misses Wood. Hattie (Harriet) was the wife of another brother. Lizzie Whipple baffled me at first, until I stumbled on Elizabeth Quimby (Allen) Whipple, buried in New Braintree. This name stood out to me because the mother of Lucius, et al., was none other than Nancy (née Allen) Prouty. So I dove into the Allen genealogy.

Lizzie was, in fact, a first cousin of the Proutys in Sarah’s letter. She also had a 17-year-old son Frank, who turned out to be the linchpin of my investigation. Sarah had written, “Frank is at Poughkeepsie and hopes to recieve [sic] his diploma about the first of April.” Frank Herbert Whipple was indeed attending Eastman Business College in 1874.

Lo and behold, Lizzie had a sister Sarah. I initially discounted her because she was married, and our correspondent wasn’t. Then I saw that she didn’t marry until 1877. I’d finally found the woman who wrote the letter.

Sarah E. Allen was born in 1831 and died in 1906. Census records confirm she worked as a dressmaker before her marriage at the age of 45 to Charles Curtis Rice, a telegraph lineman. I couldn’t identify the letter’s recipient, her “dear Cousin,” but was glad I could at least give Sarah her due and add her to the MHS catalog.

by Hilde Perrin, Library Assistant

While March’s Women’s History Month has just concluded, women’s history is still present in our collections here at the MHS. Our collections are full of inspiring women, many of whom advanced and advocated for women’s rights through their lives and work. But the complexity of history also means that many women worked against women’s rights, and their material has also been preserved. Through working on a project to create a subject guide of women’s suffrage materials held by the MHS, I discovered that we own a large collection of anti-suffrage material from the debate around women’s right to vote and the passage of the 19^th amendment. Among this material are the records of the Massachusetts Association Opposed to the Further Extension of Suffrage to Women. Established in 1895, this association worked to combat the rise of feminist suffragists and argued that the vote should not be extended to women. While it is often assumed that women’s suffrage was hampered by men, these records show that there were also women who felt strongly opposed to suffrage and organized against it.

Donated to the MHS by the estate of Mrs. Randolph Frothingham in 1946, the records contain several copies of bylaws and overviews of the work of the association, which detail the belief held by these women, and the pattern of work they took part in to share their views. Women over the age of 21 who were “interested in the welfare of their state” were encouraged to become members, with no membership fee limiting their participation. The association advanced its cause through three branches of work: legislative, educational, and constructive. The legislative work included contacting and informing members of the legislature about their opposition to women’s political rights. The educational branch promoted print material, including pamphlets and magazines, and organized public audiences to increase the general knowledge of their cause. The constructive work focused on building the membership of the association, mainly working through members and local community organizations to build relationships and encourage the spread of anti-suffrage ideals.

An example of the educational material circulated by the anti-suffrage association includes a pamphlet addressed to “Mr. Voter.” Printed on red paper, it reminds male voters that women’s suffrage is “an experiment,” and that “the great majority of women do not want the ballot thrust upon them” by what the pamphlet calls a “fanatical minority.” Reminding readers that the “average woman is no better than the average man,” the pamphlet urges the reader to “Vote AGAINST woman suffrage.” The pamphlet typifies the association’s anti-suffragist sentiment, reminding us of the complexity that exists within our collections and history at large.

For more information about the women’s suffrage movement in Massachusetts, visit the digital feature “Massachusetts Debates a Woman’s Right to Vote,” and be on the lookout for a new subject guide coming out in the next few months about our women’s suffrage materials!

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

I’ve written many times at the Beehive about how much I enjoy, as a processing archivist, solving the mysteries in our collections. Not long ago, I cataloged a letter that gave me a chance to flex my investigatory muscles again.

The letter was written by someone named Sarah in New Braintree, Massachusetts, to her “dear Cousin.” The only date given is March 1, but from the paper and the writing, I guessed it was written in the mid-1800s.

There’s nothing particularly earth-shattering in the letter. Sarah mostly shares family news and complains about the weather, “household cares,” and all the sewing she’s done lately, presumably for income. She writes, “I have cut about fifty dresses the past year and a good part of them I have made.”

But obviously our researchers are better served when we can be as specific as possible about who wrote what, when, and where. Thankfully, Sarah name-drops several people like bread crumbs for me (creative spelling and punctuation hers).

Father had quite an ill turn while Jesse was at Worcester […] Lucious Prouty is going to move to this town he has bought the Pepper place, her fathers […] Miss Wood, Dwights lady has been teaching here this winter […] Hattie Prouty has been up here, and she says Dwight is going to fix up their house […] Lizzie Whipple has closed her school […] Frank is at Poughkeepsie hopes to recieve his diploma about the first of April […] Grandpa Whipple has been quite feeble all winter

It’s a little embarrassing to admit how often these investigations come down to random internet searches. It’s a question of forming specific enough queries. I usually start with the most unusual names, sometimes paired with a place or date. Searching for Lucius Prouty and New Braintree quickly got me to a genealogical website that lists him and his wife Mary Ann Pepper.

As I gather information, I refine my searches with more names and look for definitive sources. It wasn’t long before I found a digitized copy of a printed Prouty genealogy, and it seemed like I was on the right track. Not only would the dates be about right, but several of the names Sarah mentions can be found in Lucius’s branch of the family. (Lucius even had a sister named Sarah, but I decided she couldn’t be our correspondent because she was married. Our Sarah apparently wasn’t, writing forlornly, “It has been a hard winter for old people, and old maids.”)

The clincher was Lucius’s brother Dwight, who married a Miss Maria Wood in 1874. Not only did this confirm for me that I had the right family, but I also suspected it gave me the date of Sarah’s letter. What better reason to fix up a house than an upcoming marriage?

So these were clearly the people Sarah was talking about, but who was she? Stay tuned to the Beehive to find out.

by CJ Haggard, Library Assistant

The Massachusetts Historical Society holds a remarkable set of liquor license petitions from eighteenth-century Boston. The petitioners wrote to the Boston Selectmen and the Court of General Sessions of the Peace for Suffolk County in the hope of obtaining a license to retail liquor or keep a tavern. Of the petitions, sixteen are written by men and nine by women, with each detailing the particular circumstances and requests of the petitioners. The petitioners give the reasons they must obtain a license, describe how neighbors and friends are willing to help them get started, and ask the Selectmen and the Justices to look on their situations with compassion. Most interestingly to me, however, is that most petitioners specified the location of their proposed tavern or shop, whether it was a rented venue or their own house.

While looking through these petitions, I had the idea to map each location to identify patterns and see their modern-day position. Using the Norman B. Leventhal Map & Education Center’s digital 1769 map of Boston with a modern overlay, I successfully mapped the locations of most of the proposed liquor-selling locations in the petitions held by the MHS. You can view them on Google Maps or on the map below.

The map I made reveals that these institutions were spread out around colonial Boston, ranging from the North End to Boston Neck. The locations are not exact, as I often had little to go off of other than a street name or nearby landmark. A few petitions are also missing from the map, as they either did not give a location or I was not able to figure out where they were based on the directions provided. These petitions are noted as such in the key.

I also enjoy looking at the map and seeing what stands there today. For example: Joseph Goldthwait’s house, where he kept a tavern “for the Accomodation of Gentlemen from the Country,” would have been remarkably close to the modern-day location of Bova’s Bakery, a favorite of mine. Although it is unclear exactly where his house stood in 1767, he describes his situation as being “in back Street leading to Charlestown Ferry.” The end of Back Street (now Salem Street) closest to the Charlestown Ferry is exactly where Bova’s is today.

The Admiral Vernon Tavern, or the Vernon’s Head Tavern, also has a modern equivalent. Thomas Hubbart’s 1764 petition describes the tavern as being on King Street, now State Street, which led from the Old State House down to Long Wharf. In The Crooked and Narrow Streets of Boston, Annie Haven Thwing goes into more detail about the tavern’s location, stating it “was on the northeast corner of Merchants Row.” Merchant’s Row still exists today by Faneuil Hall. Even more excitingly, the lot at the northeast corner of Merchant’s Row is a modern-day bar called Clarke’s at Faneuil Hall, mirroring its colonial use. Although the Admiral Vernon Tavern is no more, one only needs to visit Clarke’s to walk in the footsteps of Thomas Hubbart himself.

I hope my map sparks some interest in these incredible petitions in our collection. The peek into colonial Boston they provide is fascinating, and I encourage anyone interested to visit the MHS and learn more.

Further Reading: On our library catalog ABIGAIL, you can view listings for Joseph Goldthwait’s petition and Thomas Hubbart’s petition. If you would like to view the listings for other petitions, you can click on the “Taverns (Inns) Massachusetts Boston” subject heading attached to both Goldthwait’s and Hubbart’s listings. All petitions appear in our holdings of Miscellaneous Bound Manuscripts from 1764 to 1773.

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

When Ellis Dexter Atwood died in 1950, 1,500 people attended his funeral. What made him so beloved? One reason was the Edaville Railroad in South Carver, Massachusetts.

The story of Edaville began in 1941 when Atwood, one of the country’s leading cranberry growers, purchased historic railroad cars, tracks, and equipment from a defunct Maine railway. Atwood knew these narrow-gauge cars would be ideal for working his cranberry bogs. By 1947, he had transferred this equipment to his 1,800-acre estate in South Carver and built 5.5 miles of track for transporting supplies in and cranberries out. He also offered free rides to friends, and these rides soon became a popular weekend tourist attraction. Just three years later over 2,000 people a day were visiting Edaville.

Railroad enthusiasts were, even then, fascinated by these vintage narrow-gauge railroads, which at two feet wide were less than half the standard. Three months after Edaville opened, one such enthusiast named Martin Schmidt wrote Atwood for more information, and Atwood sent him some mimeographed promotional literature on the history of narrow-gauge railroads and Edaville in particular. Those papers are here at the MHS.

This unassuming collection turned out to be a lot of fun to research. I found some terrific contemporary write-ups on Edaville in Popular Mechanics (1949) and The Baltimore & Ohio Magazine (1950).

Railfans will find a lot of detail in this small collection to interest them, but my main takeaway is that Atwood was funny! I love to find humor in historical manuscripts, which can sometimes feel dry and inaccessible. The collection includes a hilarious proto FAQ written by Atwood. Among the usual questions about hours and directions, we also find these: