By Andrea Cronin, Reader Services

On 30 July 1801 the snow Pacific Trader bound for Canton floundered in the Pacific Ocean when the vessel took on water in the midst of a violent two-day gale. The winds tore the sails and mangled the rigging so terribly that the ship and its small crew limped into safe harbor at Macao on 23 August 1801. Proprietors William and Sullivan Dorr in Canton received more than ten letters from Captain Samuel Edes aboard the Pacific Trade in the subsequent month while the ship sheltered and was repaired in Macao. These letters are contained in the Samuel Barrett Edes papers held at the MHS.

On 27 September 1801 Captain Edes writes to inform the Dorrs of the progress of ship repairs and the condition of the cargo. However, it is the verso page of the letter that truly captures my imagination. The verso functioned as the envelope, containing the address information of the intended recipient, Sullivan Dorr. Far more interesting than the address is the beautiful example of Chinese Hanzi characters composed on the verso.

I imagine that the Hanzi message reveals directions due to its location close to the address, just near the seal. However, a larger question looms in my mind. Who wrote this inscription? The small crew of the Pacific Trader hailed from Massachusetts, New York, Virginia, Ireland, St. Croix, Guadeloupe, and Bengal according to a crew list in the Samuel Barrett Edes papers. None of these men were native to China or surrounding countries that utilized Hanzi script. Although some crewmen may have learned the spoken language, the beautiful and careful script of the Hanzi suggests to me that a native writer composed the message.

Are you familiar with 19^th century Chinese Hanzi script? Can you read this inscription? We would love to hear from you!

By Amanda A. Mathews, Adams Papers

On this day in 1789, President George Washington wrote a short letter to each state’s governor, enclosing a copy of twelve proposed amendments to the new United States Constitution for consideration, which Congress had passed on September 25 with the signatures of the Speaker of the House and the President of the Senate, Vice President John Adams. Of the twelve, ten received the necessary ratification and collectively became known as the Bill of Rights.

These amendments corresponded with many of the changes for which John Adams had expressed a desire when he first read the proposed Constitution. “A Declaration of Rights I wish to see with all my Heart,” he confided in early 1788, “though I am sensible of the Difficulty of framing one, in which all the States can agree.— a more compleat Seperation of the Executive from the Legislative too, would be more Safe for all. The Press, Conscience & Juries I wish better Secured.— But is it not better to accept this Plan and amend it hereafter?”

Adams certainly was “sensible of the Difficulty” of writing a constitution. A decade earlier, in the fall of 1779, he toiled over his draft of the Massachusetts constitution, drawing upon the other states’ constitutions as well as his own extensive study and consideration of law and government. Not only did he include protections for the press, religious belief, and juries, but reflecting the importance the Declaration of Rights held for Adams, he had placed it ahead of the frame of government itself.

While the proposed amendments did not repair all the defects that Adams perceived in the federal Constitution (he particularly opposed the limited presidential veto and the need for Senate approval of nominations), he understood that the Constitutional Convention’s achievements could not be diminished, even if the final product remained flawed. “A result of accommodation cannot be supposed to reach the ideas of perfection of any one,” Adams admitted in the conclusion of his Defence of the Constitutions of Government of the United States, “but the conception of such an idea, and the deliberate union of so great and various a people in such a plan, is, without all partiality or prejudice, if not the greatest exertion of human understanding, the greatest single effort of national deliberation that the world has ever seen.” The new Bill of Rights moved the nation another step toward a “more perfect union.”

By Andrea Cronin, Reader Services

“…perhaps you will find that you are to far up the Country for otters,” Boston merchant Ebenezer Dorr advises his son Ebenezer Dorr, Jr. who served as the supercargo onboard the schooner Amelia in a 10 December 1787 letter contained in the Dorr Family Papers. The elder Dorr continues, “if so one of you can scower the Seashore for them, they are your principall object, we are now making our first shipment on the new plan & making preparation for the second, the third expect you will proceed with if business turns out as I expect.”

The fur trade between the United States and China boomed in the late 18th century after the gates of Canton’s markets opened to United States merchant shipping in 1784. The Dorr family invested heavily in the fur trade expeditions of the schooner Amelia (1787), the sloop Lucretia (1792), and the snow Pacific Trader (1799-1801). In this letter Ebenezer Dorr instructs his son to collect otter pelts from the Pacific Northwest for trade in Canton where such furs commanded substantial returns. The Chinese merchants sought American furs, paying premium prices for luxurious otter pelts. The crew of the schooner Amelia engaged in sealing and trapping in the Pacific Northwest in efforts to bolster their wares before continuing passage to Canton.

The market of pelts employed not only the efforts of Chinese and American merchants, but Russians too. While otter fur exacted better prices, other furs sold in this market included seal, beaver, buffalo, wild cat, and even raccoon. In the very same letter the elder Dorr writes to his son that he should seek out, “rackoon if blackhaired & well furr’d … & wild cat they being furrs fashionable in Russia.” Those savvy Dorrs in Boston understood the unique demands of the participating powers in the fur trade and aimed to capitalize on their fur trading endeavors in the Pacific Northwest and Canton.

By Dan Hinchen

During the last week of July I attended a course at Rare Book School, housed at the University of Virginia, Charlottesville. The class was an introduction to bibliographic description or, basically, the physical description of books created during the hand-press period, or, up to about the mid-19th century. The course focused mainly on the printing process that occurred in between the functions of the author and the binder.

The course concentrated on just a few elements of bibliographic description, namely format, collation formulae, signing statements, and pagination. This information seems a bit esoteric at first but it can be valuable for researchers who study printing processes or who examine all editions of a given title in order to identify printing errors and corrections and discrepancies among various printings.

As I walk through the stacks here at the Society now, I keep my eyes peeled for interesting-looking volumes that I can practice with. Trebly-beneficial, this will allow me to 1) keep my newly-acquired skills sharp, 2) familiarize myself more with the MHS’ rare book collection, and 3) potentially aid our cataloging department in the cases where these descriptions are not already present.

And with that said, I will share one such example of a collation formula to illustrate the practice. The volume I chose has a long title so I will only give part: “Pansebeia: or, A view of all the religions in the world…” (London, 1664). The MHS has three different copies of this title from three different dates. This 1664 version is the fourth edition. When I checked in our online catalog, ABIGAIL, I noticed that this copy did not have a collation formula attached while the other two did.

I start by measuring the size of the leaves and examining the paper for evidence of chain lines and watermarks. These will give clues as to the format of the book (folio, octavo, duodecimo, etc.). Then I perform a leaf count which is just as it sounds, counting all the leaves in the book that would have been involved in the printing process (this excludes things like blank leaves at the front and back, and illustrations that would have been inserted after printing).  Next is the collation formula. This step involves identifying signature marks that appear throughout the text and then, using the pattern in which they appear, forming a signing statement. The signatures consist of letters and numbers at the bottom of the page that, along with other clues, informed the binder of the order in which pages should be arranged before binding. The last step is to identify the pagination, or, how the pages are numbered and where mistakes are made. All of this description is put into a formula that looks much like an algebraic statement:

8°: A⁸ a⁸ B-I⁸ L-R⁸ T-2M⁸ 2N⁴ 3A⁸ 3a⁴ 3B-3F⁸ (K⁸ S⁸  3F8 missing; 2D6 missing, removed); [$4 (-3A2, 3a4) signed; missigning V4 as U4]; 345 leaves; [32] 1-544 [545-552]; ²[24] 1-78 [79] [misnumbering 68 as 63, 78 as 73, 206 as 106, 479 as 463, and ²66 as 96].

Look confusing? In my next post I will explain the formula and some of the terminology associated with bibliographic description. Stay tuned!

By Amanda A. Mathews, Adams Papers

Two hundred years ago today, August 22,1813, Thomas Jefferson wrote a letter to his old friend, Abigail Adams; the first he had directed to her since 1804. While Jefferson’s incredible correspondence with John Adams has rightly acquired fame, Jefferson and Abigail maintained a warm relationship and a notable correspondence as well following their joint stay in Europe in the 1780’s, interrupted, during the often personal political conflict and mistrust of the 1790s and early 1800s.

The renewed friendship between Jefferson and the Adamses is evident in Jefferson’s playful tone. “I have compared notes with mr Adams,” Jefferson teased, “on the score of progeny, and find I am ahead of him, and think I am in a fair way to keep so. I have 10 1/2 grandchildren, and 2 3/4 great-grand-children; and these fractions will ere long become units.”

Jefferson concluded, “under all circumstances of health or sickness, of blessing or affliction, I tender you assurances of my sincere affection and respect; and my prayers that the hand of time and of providence may press lightly on you, till your own wishes shall withdraw you from all mortal feeling.”

What Jefferson could not know, however, was that it was under sickness and affliction that he was writing to his two old friends. Abigail Adams Smith, better known as Nabby, the only daughter of John and Abigail Adams, had passed away on August 14 at her parents’ home after a recurrence of breast cancer, ending a difficult adult life generated by her husband’s financial misadventures. In her reply to Jefferson, “your kind and Friendly Letter found me great affliction for the loss of my dear and only daughter, mrs smith . . . I have the consolation of knowing, that the Life of my dear daughter was pure, her conduct in prosperity and adversity, exemplary, her patience and Resignation becomeing her Religion— you will pardon by being so minute, the full Heart loves to pour out its sorrows, into the Bosom of sympathizing Friendship.”

Abigail closed her letter with her own assurances of friendship, “altho, time has changed the outward form, and political ‘Back wounding calumny’ for a period interruped the Friendly intercourse and harmony which subsisted, it is again renewed, purified from the dross. with this assurance I beg leave To subscribe myself your Friend.”

While the letters written between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson certainly deserve the recognition they have received, Abigail’s independent friendship with the third president, one built on mutual respect and shared sorrows, fostered a correspondence equally as fascinating.

By Anna J. Clutterbuck-Cook, Reader Services

There’s been a lot of chatter recently about the new Netflix original series “Orange is the New Black,” a drama about life in a women’s prison. As Heather Chapman, one-time volunteer at the Massachusetts Correctional Institute in Framingham, writes in The Guardian:

The reality is over 2 million Americans are currently locked up. Put another way, that’s 1 in 100 US adults.  And 1 in 37 Americans will be locked up at some point in their lifetimes. Despite the “lock ’em up and throw away the key” mentality, most of these people will re-enter society. The public should understand our correctional system – and its financial and human costs – far better than we do now.

What does a twenty-first century Internet series have to do with an institution like the Massachusetts Historical Society? While the medium is new, the message is not: American calls for prison reform and advocates of prisoner’s rights have long historical precedent. Before the advent of moving pictures – and long before the invention of the Internet – reformers and prison advocates alike used text and images, to convey their message. Here are a few examples drawn from the MHS collections.

This illustration from prison warden Gideon Haynes’ Pictures From Prison Life: An Historical Sketch of the Massachusetts State Prison (1869) depicts a tidy building and grounds, with a row of prisoners exercising.

A different perspective can be found in the lyrics and illustration of “Song of the Convict,” a maudlin lament written by William and James Bradley, “two brothers, prisoners,” for the celebration of Thanksgiving at the Massachusetts State Prison in 1846. Along with the image of the forsaken prisoner kneeling in his cell, the lyrics of the song document the religious motivation of many behind prison reform campaigns during this period:

Phillippi’s dark dungeons with anthems are shaken,
And notes of thanksgiving peal thro’ the night air;
O! what can such joy in a Prison awaken?
The friends and the spirit of Jesus are there;
There angels mercy paints,
Mid rising songs of saints,
The rainbow of Hope on the cloud of despair.

Women in prison (the subject of “Orange is the New Black”) were then, as now, their own particular topic of concern. In a circular tentatively dated from 1849, the Prisoner’s Friend Association reported to its membership:

The design of the Charity is, to furnish to female prisoners, on their discharge from the House of Correction, a temporary home, to encourage them to reform, and to enable them to do so by procuring for them honest means of support.

Examples of successful “reform” and subsequent participation in society are detailed in explicitly gendered (and in one case racialized) terms:

One, who in the moment of temptation was guilty of theft … was returned to her family [upon release], where she has since, for a period of eighteen months, faithfully discharged her duties as a wife and mother.

A young girl, also, whose heart had not been hardened by crime, after a short imprisonment, was taken by our Agent and furnished with a place of service, where she remains.

A colored girl, with few acquaintances and no friends, was sent to a family in the country, where she has given such evidence of fidelity and capacity as to merit and receive from her mistress the highest encomiums.

At once progressive in the assumption that former criminals may be rehabilitated, the reformers in the Prisoner’s Friend Association also paint a very clear picture of the limits of that rehabilitation: who it is possible to rehabilitate, and what the former prisoners might be suitably rehabilitated for: the roles of wife and mother, the position of servant.

Researchers interested in the history of prison life, prison policy, and prisoner advocacy are invited to explore our collections to see what other primary sources we have to offer!

By Nancy Heywood, Collection Services

John Quincy Adams (JQA) had a remarkable life and over the course of almost 70 years assembled an extraordinary number of diaries.  JQA began keeping a diary in 1779 at the age of twelve and continued writing diary entries until shortly before his death in 1848.  All in all, his diary entries fill 51 volumes, over 14,000 pages.  JQA’s diaries are part of the Adams Family Papers at the Massachusetts Historical Society (MHS).  MHS shares this American treasure in many ways:

By making page images of the entire set of diary volumes available

By making the Adams Papers Editorial Project’s authoritative transcriptions of JQA’s diary entries for 1779-1788 available as part of the Adams Papers Digital Edition

By tweeting his succinct line-a-day diary entries about his life 200 years ago via a Twitter account

The diaries are important because they share the life and thoughts of a man who held many important public offices and interacted with many world figures.  John F. Kennedy summarized JQA’s significance this way:

John Quincy Adams—until his death at eighty in the Capitol—held more important offices and participated in more important events than anyone in the history of our nation, as Minister to the Hague, Emissary to England, Minister to Russia, head of the American Mission to negotiate peace with England, Minister to England, Secretary of State, President of the United States and member of the House of Representatives.  He figured, in one capacity or another, in the American Revolution, the War of 1812 and the prelude to the Civil War. Among the acquaintances and colleagues who march across the pages of his diary are Sam Adams (a kinsman), John Hancock, Washington, Jefferson, Franklin, Lafayette, John Jay, James Madison, James Monroe, John Marshall, Henry Clay, Andrew Jackson, Thomas Hart Benton, John Tyler, John C. Calhoun, Daniel Webster, Lincoln, James Buchanan, William Lloyd Garrison, Andrew Johnson, Jefferson Davis and many others. (John F. Kennedy, Profiles in Courage, NY: 1956, pages 35-36.)

John Quincy Adams often kept several different types of diary volumes simultaneously, and for many dates there are several entries—long entries, short entries, lists, draft entries, and also “line-a-day” entries.  The line-a-day entries are short –the words describing one day fit on one handwritten line, and each page contains entries for one month.  These succinct summaries of JQA’s activities fit within Twitter’s 140-character limit and in on 5 August 2009 MHS began tweeting JQA’s line-a-day diary entries 200 years after the day he described. 

We enjoy hearing from JQA’s followers and thought we’d share a few tweets that we’ve received via the JQA Twitter account:  

@JQAdams_MHS I look forward to the tweets every morning. 🙂 I feel as if I actually know him. lol.   [From Susan T. @marypoppins68 9:41 AM – 19 Jul 13]

@JQAdams_MHS has been dead for 165 years and he still tweets more than most people I know. [From Sean Junkins  @sjunkins 5:04 AM – 15 Jun 13]

@JQAdams_MHS it is amazing that these entries can be so old and still stir such emotion. This project has really humanized JQA for me.   [From JD Miller @jdudemill 7:18 AM – 15 Sep 12]