by Elizabeth Hines, 2024-5 NERFC Fellow

When is it the right time to make war on one’s neighbor? The colonies in New England and New Netherland debated this question in the early days of European expansion, just as countries do today. The Massachusetts Historical Society’s collection contains material that sheds light on a little-known almost-war between neighbors on North America’s shores: the time New England’s planned attack on New Netherland was cancelled by news of a peace treaty. The MHS is one of the most important archives historians can use to trace this dramatic story.

The Dutch colony of New Netherland was located to the east and south of the New England colonies, in what is now New York.

In Europe, England and the Netherlands declared war against each other in 1652, in what would later become known as the First Anglo-Dutch War. In North America, the copy of John Hull’s diary held by the Massachusetts Historical Society provides wonderful commentary on the growing tensions between New England and New Netherland at this time. The English colonists accused the Dutch of plotting against them with Indigenous groups. Hull, the Massachusetts Bay Colony mintmaster, described the visit of two commissioners from New England to New Netherland to discuss these accusations as “something that might further clear the righteousness of the war, or prevent it.” He was clear about the motivation of the visit, as many English colonists were clamoring for war with New Netherland.

The Endicott Papers contain a letter of instruction to those commissioners that reflects previous frustrations. The letter insists that that “delays, slow and unsatisfying treaties… may not be admitted” from the Dutch. One of the signatories of the letter was John Endecott, the Governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony:

Endecott also wrote to John Winthrop, Jr., one of the magistrates of the Connecticut Colony, about New Netherland. Other letters to Winthrop are transcribed in the Winthrop Family Transcripts. John Haynes, the Governor of the Connecticut Colony, wrote to Winthrop with news of English naval victories over the Dutch forces in Europe. The painting below shows one of the major naval battles of the war:

By 1654, the government in England responded to the desires of some colonies and decided to extend the war to North America. They sent ships of officers and soldiers to New England to plan an attack on New Netherland. Hull recorded in his diary that they were there “to root out the Dutch if they would not submit to the power and government of England.” The officers aimed to recruit 500 colonists to join their forces. However, in the middle of their planning and recruiting, a ship arrived with news from Europe: England and the Netherlands had signed a peace treaty, and the First Anglo-Dutch War was over. The attack on New Netherland was cancelled, and the English and Dutch colonies would remain neighbors for another decade.

Since the English colonists would take over New Netherland in 1664, why does their aborted attack in 1654 matter? It was a first step toward the eventual absorption of New Netherland into English North America. It provides an early example of colonial outposts becoming part of strategy in European wars. And the discussions among the colonists and the administrators in England about territory and sovereignty would contribute to their developing conceptions of empire. The Massachusetts Historical Society’s collection helps us to understand this story better and to see how it expands our view of early imperial history.

by Betsy Klima, MHS-NEH Long-Term Research Fellow, Spring 2025

I’ve spent the last few months in residence at the MHS as a long-term research fellow. I’m working on a book on author Susanna Rowson and the story of her novel Charlotte Temple. Charlotte Temple tells the story of an English teenager who falls in love with a British soldier. They sail to New York, where he marries another woman and leaves the pregnant, unmarried Charlotte to a tragic death. My book, Guilty Pleasure: The Story of America’s First Romance Novel, explores Charlotte Temple’s unique popularity with American readers—and shows how it paved the way for today’s romance novels.

Charlotte got good reviews when it was first published in London in 1791. After it debuted in Philadelphia in 1794, Charlotte became a sensation. America’s first best seller, Charlotte Temple would remain in the public consciousness for over a century. Charlotte Temple’s name was inscribed onto an actual gravestone, given to children, and bestowed on a race horse. Her wax body captivated curious throngs. Her image circulated in pocket-sized books with tiny type.

Charlotte Temple was so popular for so long that it’s easy to find copies from the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries in libraries, often inscribed with their owners’ names. But I am looking for more than names. I want to understand how the novel found its early readers.

One day over lunch at MHS, a fellow researcher suggested that the Cary family papers might help me paint a picture of Boston in the 1790s and early 1800s when Susanna Rowson lived in town. So one June day, I sat in the Reading Room, a gray box full of manila folders on the table before me.

The Carys were Bostonians whose sugar plantation on the island of Grenada made them a small fortune. In 1791, patriarch Samuel Cary moved his growing family to a farm in Chelsea, Massachusetts, where they hoped to live out their days in comfort funded by the labor of enslaved people on an island far away. But slave rebellions in 1795 and 1796 destroyed their plantation. By 1797, their finances faltering, the Carys pulled their son Lucius out of school and sent him to work with his brother Sam in Philadelphia.

Lucius was not happy. His beautiful penmanship makes his feelings clear, even centuries later.  On January 23, 1797, Lucius wrote to his mother, Sarah Cary, “Now I call this a very lonesome life. I have not a single acquaintance…. You know I said in my last letter that I was going to the play. I did and was much pleased. I have found no circulating library yet. I have been quite wretched since I left you for want of society but I have exerted all my philosophy and have almost conquered it.”

The letter stops me in my tracks—the unmistakable voice of a 14-year-old boy negotiating an unfamiliar and challenging situation. He has been wretched and homesick, but, he reassures his mother, he has “almost conquered it.” He misses his ten younger siblings and sends his love to each of them by name.

Lucius wrote often to his mother about everyday life in 1797 Philadelphia. On March 10, he wrote, “I have been to Rickett’s once and twice to see the Play. I have also had the pleasure of seeing General Washington, Mrs. W, and family, I could hardly believe my eyes when I saw this long wished for sight.” Ricketts’ was a popular equestrian circus. Lucius saw the Washingtons at the New Theatre, where Susanna Rowson performed from 1794-1796.

I could feel myself getting closer. And then I found Charlotte.

Lucius must have joined a circulating library. On July 1, he informed his mother, “The books that I have read are principally Lives, Voyages, Magazines, Travels, Histories, Letters, and some Novels…Novels Montalbert, Charles Townley or Bastile, Charlotte or tale of Truth, and a few others.”

Charlotte is there, part of a lonely 14-year-old boy’s reading list. Did the story of teenaged Charlotte, friendless and alone in New York resonate with Lucius? Did it keep him company? Make him laugh? Make him cry? We’ll never know. But the evidence that he read Charlotte keeps me going on my quest to understand why it resonated with so many Americans—and why it’s been forgotten.

 Alaina Scapicchio, Ph.D. Candidate, University of South Florida

In 1992, a significant anniversary loomed large over the city of Salem, Massachusetts. Three hundred years prior, the infamous months-long witch trials had turned the lives of residents in Salem Village, Salem Town, and the surrounding areas upside down. The commemoration of those events in the late 20th century, for some Salemites, seemed no different.

While on fellowship at the Massachusetts Historical Society, I came across a tantalizing folder tucked in a massive collection of records from the Massachusetts chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU). This folder was simply titled “Salem Witches, 1992.” As a Ph.D. candidate working on a dissertation that examines commemoration and memory of witch trials in the US, I could imagine what the file might contain but thought it best to dampen my excitement until it was in my hands.

If you’ve worked in a reading room before, you’ll know that there is a certain level of decorum expected from researchers. So, I’m sure you can imagine the difficulty of stifling a shout of joy and the urge to jump up-and-down at my table upon opening the folder. Those emotions were brought on by the letterhead and the signature on the first page inside.

Laurie Cabot is a significant figure in Salem history for several reasons, primarily because she was a harbinger of a shift in the city’s population and economic landscape. Cabot moved to Salem in the late 1960s as a practicing Witch and in 1970 opened up The Witch Shoppe, the first occult store in the city. As a spiritual leader, Cabot attracted many Witches, Wiccans, and New Age religious practitioners to the area over the next few decades. Amidst the backdrop of a collapsing industrial economy, many of these new residents followed in Cabot’s footsteps and opened up metaphysical shops in Salem’s historic downtown–a tourist boon. Governor Michael Dukakis even named Cabot the city’s “Official Witch.”

While I was familiar with Cabot’s influence on the city, this was my first time encountering the organization Witches’ League for Public Awareness. Luckily, a brochure in the back of the folder provided their vision statement.

It quickly became clear from the contents of this folder that the Witches’ League was needed more than ever in 1992. Apparently, as the tercentenary anniversary of the witch trials descended upon the city, so too did numerous groups of Christian Fundamentalists to protest any recognition or celebration of Witchcraft. This ACLU file contains a letter from a concerned Salem resident who was surrounded by one of these groups while on a walk with her children and asked about her religious beliefs. In another letter from Cabot to the Civil Rights Division of the Attorney General’s office, she claimed that one specific Methodist organization had “targeted local businesses for coercive treatment aimed at their immediate closure, or to cause the removal of certain items from their business fare.” Letters from the aforementioned office and from the Mayor of Salem confirm Cabot’s claims to be true, as they informed her that they would be prepared to take “immediate action” against the perpetrators should they return.

However, it was not simply these rogue religious agents that the Witches’ League had a problem with. In fact, they often took greater issue with a more legitimate body. The Salem Witch Trials Tercentenary Committee was created by the city’s municipal government to develop educational and commemorative events for 1992 in remembrance of the 300th anniversary of the trials. They estimated that this milestone anniversary could attract nearly one million visitors to the ‘Witch City’ and the committee sought to provide tourists with opportunities to spend their money there all year long. All of these events were to culminate in the dedication of a memorial to the twenty victims killed during the panic.

Prior to discovering this folder, I had seen references in newspaper articles about local Witches in Salem who were unhappy with some of the language included in the Salem Witch Trials Memorial and who felt the city was purposefully leaving them out of events during the tercentennial year. These sentiments are made crystal clear by Cabot in a few of the letters she copied the ACLU in on. She even blamed the city outright for some of the incidents mentioned above, arguing “Because of the misuse of the term “Witch” and “Witchcraft” by this City, it’s [sic] agencies, and these out-of-state organizations, a substantial number of Salem’s citizenry, businesses, and tourists are being placed at risk.” Cabot had chastised the city just two months prior for their linking of Puritanical understandings of witchcraft with the Devil. She was not the only one either. In a printed copy of the “North Shore Sunday Feedback” included in the folder, another Salem Witch accused the committee of adopting “the Puritans’ superstitious and half-demented definition of Witchdom as its own…”

In 1992, Salem’s modern-day Witches were not going to let the delirium that had overtaken hundreds in 1692 repeat itself. They organized and wrote to their local government officials and the ACLU to ensure that their religious rights were protected. Since Witchcraft had been recognized by the federal government as a valid religion, officials had to respond to their statements of distress. The Salem Tercentenary Committee, however, did not. The Witches’ League may have been able to protect their practitioners, but they could not salvage their image in the eyes of many Salemites— a struggle that continues today.

Materials Referenced:

Emerson Baker, “Witch City?” in A Storm of Witchcraft: The Salem Trials and the American Experience (New York: Oxford University Press, 2015), 256-286.

Alaina Scapicchio, ““Memories Rescued from the Mire of Oblivion”: The 1885 Rebecca Nurse Monument and Salem Witch Trials Commemoration,” USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations, 2022. https://digitalcommons.usf.edu/etd/10354

Lynn Smith, “Official Witch is Haunting Dukakis– By Accident,” Los Angeles Times, Aug. 8, 1988. https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1988-08-08-me-97-story.html.

Mary B. W. Tabor, “‘The Witch City’ Dusts Off Its Past,” New York Times, Sept. 9, 1991.

Christopher White, “Salem as Religious Proving Ground,” in Salem: Place, Myth, and Memory, eds. Dane Anthony Morrison and Nancy Lusignan Schultz (Boston: Northeastern University Press, 2004), 43-61.

by Cornelia H. Dayton, University of Connecticut

Stenographers were not present in the early courtrooms of settler New England.  To gain insight into how a particular civil suit or criminal case proceeded, the researcher can examine, first, the folio-sized Record or Minute Book. This typically offers a short paragraph summarizing the case, which was written by the court clerk at the case’s conclusion. Second, the file papers, folded into a bundle, may survive. Minimally, one finds the original writ or indictment and often the bill of costs. If one is lucky, some witness depositions are wrapped in the bundle. However, these two forms of records for any given case do not constitute a complete record, because no one recorded the words of witnesses who testified in person (as most did).

To the rescue come a few eminent judges who kept notes while sitting on the bench.  Our scribbling judges focused on naming the deponents (“Mrs. Scott,” “Dr. Mather,” “Sarah Janes”) and summarizing what they said. The MHS houses the magnificent series created by Increase Sumner, kept from 1782 to 1794 in small, sewn notebooks that he called “Notes of Evidence.” At the time, Sumner sat on the Supreme Judicial Court, prior to becoming governor of Massachusetts. His fellow SJC judge Nathaniel Peaslee Sargent maintained a similar habit from 1777 to 1790.

Sumner and Sargent tended to write the most copious notes on oral testimony in serious criminal cases. The appellate court had original jurisdiction over felonies and capital cases. The defendant’s life or future freedom from confinement depended on the outcome. Thus Sumner and Sargent wrote two to six pages on testimony in most murder, manslaughter, infanticide, adultery, arson, assault with intent to ravish, riot, and sedition cases. But civil suits too—such as for ejectment, criminal conversation, and defamation—solicited intriguing observations from subpoenaed New Englanders.

For example, many family members and neighbors testified when Ruggles Spooner of Petersham brought a breach of promise case against a former lover, Sarah Peckam. (Most such cases were brought by jilted women.) Sarah reportedly said she withdrew her consent to marry Ruggles because she “was afraid her father would forsake her.” At other times she claimed her parents would not “suffer” the match to happen and, in that case, “they shall maintain me all the days of my life – I will have no other.” She repeatedly told various friends, “a bad promise is better broke than kept.” Some scenes are worthy of soap operas. A Berkshire County resident with the surname Winchell sued “Esq. Goodridge” in 1782 for depriving him of the sexual and emotional company of his wife of seven years. The Winchells had recently separated. Two male witnesses testified to the dramatic scene that unfolded after Mr. Winchell heard from locals that his wife was having an affair.

Winchell desired me to go [with him one night] & see Goodrich abed with his Wife. (from David Pixley’s testimony, according to Increase Sumner’s notes)

[I] went with Winchell who was in great distress . . . Winchell burst into the bed room [and told] Goodrich to go along. She [Mrs. Winchell] told her husband to get out of her bedroom. They scuffled together.  Mrs Ingersoll [who lived in the Winchell house and lodged in an adjacent room, as her husband put it, “3 feet” away] began to read out of the Bible. Goodrich said there was no need of a Sermon. (from Sumner’s notes on Cyrus Papoon’s testimony, with my interpolations and modernized punctuation)

Judges’ bench notes like Increase Sumner’s reveal a lot about the content of courtroom testimony, the social relationships among deponents and the case parties, plus late-eighteenth-century ways of speaking about emotions and household dynamics. We need to remember, however, that they were not full, verbatim transcripts. Starting in about 1800, enterprising publishers began producing a new genre: the criminal trial report. Hawked to the public as cheap pamphlets on selected, sensational trials, these included (to varying degrees of completeness) all parts of the trial—from indictment to ruling or sentence. Court reporters’ use of stenograph machines dates to 1877 in Massachusetts. And yet through all the shifts in note-taking technologies, some judges, including U.S. Supreme Court justices, have found it helpful to keep their own bench notes.

Research Notes: 

For the emergence of published trial reports, see Daniel A. Cohen’s study of New England crime literature prior to 1860, Pillars of Salt, Monuments of Grace (1993), espec. Chap 7.

Increase Sumner papers, 1769-1798, Ms. N-1642, Boxes 1 and 2, Massachusetts Historical Society.

Nathaniel Peaslee Sargent Papers, Series 1: Court Minutes, MSS 489, Phillips Library, Peabody Essex Museum.

Charles Chauncey, Superior Court Judge in Connecticut 1789-1793, kept extensive notes on testimony he heard. Chauncey Family Papers, Yale University Manuscript and Archives, Mss. Group No. 135, Series VII: Legal Papers, Box 14.

Lawyers often “minuted” courtroom trials when they represented one of the parties. Good examples in MHS collections include many items in the Legal Papers of John Adams and those of Robert Treat Paine. Here is Paine on grand jury testimony leading to the 1782 trial of Priscilla Woodworth for petit treason (killing her husband).

An internet search reveals that SCOTUS justices Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., and Harry A. Blackmun kept bench notes. Hugo L. Black’s notes occupied over 600 looseleaf binders; he instructed them to be burned after his death.

By Emma Moesswilde, Georgetown University

Spring in New England seems, finally, to be just around the corner, with the promise of fresh food and sunshine after a long winter. Yet, with snow on the ground, it isn’t too hard to remember that late winter and early spring were historically periods of extreme leanness for European settlers living in Maine and Massachusetts in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. The gap between the dwindling of winter stores and the advent of spring vegetable and dairy produce could be a daunting time for early modern cooks facing a scant larder.

My research on seasonal variability and rural life in the British Northern Atlantic world has led me to examine the recipes that these cooks might have employed through the winter and early spring. Looking at manuscripts from the MHS collections has revealed a rich array of culinary knowledge recorded in the few published cookbooks of early America and the many manuscript recipe collections which maintained culinary knowledge across communities and generations.

One of the most important ways in which early American cooks prepared for leaner seasons was through preservation practices. Even in periods of abundance, when the produce of fields, forests, oceans, and livestock filled the pot and the plate, those who worked in the kitchen looked towards leaner times by ensuring this bounty would be available to eat months in the future. My research in the MHS collections has found diverse recipes for preserving all kinds of rural produce. Walnuts, for instance, could be picked “about Midsummer, when a pin will pass through them,” and soaked in a mixture of vinegar, dill, ginger, mace, nutmeg, pepper, garlic, cloves, and mustard. According to an anonymous recipe book from around 1800 (Ms. S-835), the walnuts must be kept “under the pickel they are first Steep’t in or they lose their Colour” and could add interest to dishes throughout the winter as a “rellish with fish, fowl or Frigasy [fricassee, i.e., stew].”

The development of preservation recipes preoccupied early American cooks and agricultural thinkers facing the challenge of food availability. Among the Vaughan family papers is a document entitled “Recipe for Preserving Butter” (Box 22, Ms. N-83, Oversize) which exemplifies the development of preservation techniques. Cooks interested in preserving butter (presumably for a season in which cows had run dry and were not producing milk) were instructed to beat sugar, salt, and saltpeter into butter “thoroughly cleansed from the milk” which could be topped with salt as a brine and “kept in pots of ten or twelve pounds.” “It requires then only to be covered from dust,” the instructions conclude. Yet below this recipe, more ruminations follow in the same handwriting: “If to be preserved several months — would it not be effectually secured from the air by pouring melted butter on the top so as to form a perfect crust?” The multifold methods for preservation ensured that cooks could put food by through a variety of methods, and for even longer periods of time.

Preservation recipes also abound for meats such as bacon, fruit preparations such as preserves and vinegars, and the preparation of drinks such as cider, to name just a few. Recipes from the period are also rife with references to dried goods such as peas, beans, and salted fish whose storage was detailed in farming manuals like that of Samuel Deane (22450 Evans fiche). The broad expertise required to stock the early American larder is preserved in household manuscripts such as the recipe books of the Karolik-Codman family, which contain multiple types of handwriting and interleaved recipes that reference the knowledge of others, as in the case of “Mrs. Englishes receipt for Preserving Pears” (Box 4, Ms. N-2164). Such recipes provide insight into what may have stocked the pantries of early American cooks and ensured that, at least for most of the winter and early spring, some produce was still available. By the time fruit trees blossomed and fields thawed in April and May, bare shelves awaited another cycle of preservation practices.

By Blake McGready, The Graduate Center, CUNY

Elijah Winslow disobeyed his sergeant’s orders and went swimming in the Susquehanna River, so he had no one to blame but himself when he drowned. In the summer of 1779, Winslow and thousands of other Continental soldiers assembled in the Pocono Mountains as they prepared to invade the homelands of the Haudenosaunee people. While encamped at Easton, Wyoming, and other mountain villages, American revolutionaries flagrantly defied orders. They deserted camp, plundered the locals, and indulged in swimming in the rivers. Winslow was one such offender. A sergeant remembered that “Winslow asked Leave…Repeatedly both Last Night and this Morning to Go into the River.” After the sergeant denied Winslow’s request, he ventured into the water anyway. By the end of the day, the army determined that Winslow’s death was “entirely Accidental.”[1]

I read this account in the orderly book of the 2nd New Hampshire Regiment, one of the many Revolutionary War orderly books at the Massachusetts Historical Society. Orderly books document everyday details about life in the Continental Army—the officers in charge, the placement of troops, accounts of battlefield defeats and losses, etc. For a scholar looking more closely, these records also show enlisted men struggling with officers over the conditions of their service. Officers wanted to secure the compliance of unruly troops, while at the same time rank and file soldiers objected to military hierarchy. Orderly books seethe with conflict between officers and their disobedient men.[2]

The 2nd New Hampshire Regiment’s insubordination leaps off the pages. When the army arrived at Easton, officers ordered soldiers to limit their bathing in the nearby Delaware River. Less than a week later, officers repeated the prohibition, now reporting that some soldiers developed “Intermitting Fevers” on account of their “their too frequent Going into the Water and Remaining too Long in that Situation.” Despite repeated orders against swimming, Elijah Winslow drowned one month later.[3]

Theft was another major issue. When Yankee soldiers arrived at Easton, several of them harassed and plundered the town’s mostly German inhabitants. After Continentals traveled “a Great Distance…into the Country” and robbed the locals, commanders established a half-mile perimeter around camp. The restrictions did not work, and soldiers were soon caught stealing sheep from local farmers. A court martial also found several New Jersey soldiers guilty of “Stealing hoggs” and other property from civilians. In early July, Major General John Sullivan begged his men to not rob the locals’ hay or burn their fences.[4]

Sullivan struggled to stop vengeful troops from taking matters into their own hands. Armed parties departed camp and intimidated disaffected locals. Continentals insulted Native allies (“Warriers of the Anydas [Oneidas] Tuscorara and Stock bridge Indians”) who had recently joined the rebel ranks. How dare soldiers “Ridicule & Speak Contemtably” of the Native troops, Sullivan declared. But over the coming days, the jeering continued and tensions between white revolutionaries and Native soldiers simmered.[5]

In August and September, the Continental Army ferociously devastated Iroquoia. As the maelstrom of Continental predation barreled through the Haudenosaunee heartlands, soldiers burned Native villages, assaulted Native women, and robbed Native gravesites. What can an orderly book tell us about this pivotal invasion? During the weeks before the army entered Iroquoia, officers had been struggling constantly with their troops’ discipline. Soldiers repeatedly violated orders against bathing, stealing, and taunting Native soldiers. The Continentals, it seemed, were spoiling for a fight.[6]

As American revolutionaries destroyed Haudenosaunee villages and farms, they wrote many journals and diaries bragging about the devastation. Their orderly books, however, tell a different story. These documents shed light on soldiers’ numerous infractions and the tensions within the Continental Army. Furthermore, they reveal that soldiers’ acts of plundering and terror began well before the army stormed into Iroquoia. In the Poconos, the Continentals rehearsed the destruction and belligerence that would characterize their invasion of Native lands.

[1] “Winslow askd Leave…,” entry dated July 6, 1779, Orderly book, Wyoming and Easton, Pennsylvania, 27 May-25 July 1779, 2nd New Hampshire Regiment, Continental Army, recorded by William Mordaunt Bell, Revolutionary War Orderly Books (P-394), Reel 4, Massachusetts Historical Society. (I have modernized the spelling of most entries but included the original text in the notes.)

[2] John A. Ruddiman, “‘A Record in the Hands of Thousands’: Power and Negotiation in the Orderly Books of the Continental Army,” The William and Mary Quarterly 67, no. 4 (2010): 748.

[3]  Entry dated May 29; “Intermitting Fevors”; “their two [sic] frequent Going into the Water and Remaining two Long in that Situation,” entry dated June 9.

[4] Liam Riordan, Many Identities, One Nation: The Revolution and Its Legacy in the Mid-Atlantic (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2008), 80; “a Great Distance…into the Cuntrey,” entry dated June 7; entries dated June 9, 24, July 5, 12.

[5] Entries dated June 10, 15, 24.

[6] For actions of Sullivan’s men in Iroquoia, see Maeve Kane, “‘She Did Not Open Her Mouth Further’: Haudenosaunee Women as Military and Political Targets during and after the American Revolution,” in Women in the American Revolution: Gender, Politics, and the Domestic World, ed. Barbara B. Oberg (Charlottesville: University of Virginia Press, 2019), 83–92.

By Kathryn Angelica, PhD Candidate in History, University of Connecticut

On December 14, 1899, the Massachusetts Historical Society received a collection of papers donated by Boston-born reformer Caroline Dall. An abolitionist, intellectual, suffragist, educator, and writer, Dall had a formidable reputation for speaking her mind. At the age of seventy-seven and living in Washington D. C., she sealed a number of trunks containing her life’s achievements. “At least I have lived to do this,” she wrote in her journal, “whether I shall finish the autobiography is doubtful.”[i]  She included several volumes relating to her public career, reams of correspondence, copies of her published works, and “three trunks containing typewritten material, of which no public use [was] to be made until fifteen years after her death.”[ii] Plagued by ill-health, tragedy, and uncertainty for the majority of her life, she took an active role in ensuring the preservation of her life’s accomplishments.

Dall in fact lived another thirteen years until 1912, and although never completing her autobiography, was nonetheless able to curate the archive of her life. The Caroline Healey Dall Papers today span twenty four boxes and eighty-one volumes.[iii] Hidden within the collection are a series of annotations that do much to shape the narrative. On correspondence written between June 1834 and February 1863, for example, Dall made sixty-one annotations ranging from brief notes to paragraph-length reflections. One letter from 1842, written to the students of West Parish School while she taught in Washington D.C., contains notes dated 1878 and 1896. Footnotes on this selection of material are dated from 1856 to 1899, suggesting Dall routinely pored over correspondence from decades past, drawing different conclusions.[iv]

Dall’s careful curation of her personal papers reflects her belief in the historical significance of her activism. She debated writing an autobiography for decades. Referring to Julia Ward Howe’s Reminiscences as evidence of “self-conceit,” she was wary of the potential ramifications of revealing her innermost thoughts.[v] Many of her annotations control the narrative of her life. Dall ripped, destroyed, and crossed out material she deemed “uncharitable parts unnecessarily preserved” but once added to the remainder “may it be used if my life is ever written.”[vi] In July of 1869, she indicated that she had censored a collection of letters from 1843-1844 concerning her marriage. Later, she wrote, “I never want my life written – till it can be written as a warning. I despise long lives in general – don’t ask to have any written – only it must be, truly, if at all.”[vii] Dall believed a biography would be written with or without her consent. The proactive decision to send her papers to Boston herself, rather than trust an executor, illustrates how she inserted herself into the archival process.

Annotations offer insights into Dall’s changing relationships with contemporaries like Ednah Dow Cheney, Paulina Wright Davis, and Theodore Parker. Dall and Cheney met in their childhood years, but by 1878, experienced a rift in their friendship. “No act of mine is the cause of Mrs. Cheney’s late demeanor to me. I am told it is caused by envy & jealousy,” Dall scribbled on the back of a letter from Cheney she ultimately discarded, “Alas! what does she envy?”[viii] On a letter from Davis, she admitted that its contents were “discreditable to Mrs. D” but advocated for its preservation regardless. Dall also marked letters to and from Parker with the date ‘May 28, 1898,’ suggesting her intention to organize, review, or publish her exchanges with the radical abolitionist and lecturer. Her annotations reveal her perspective of the era and serve as guidelines for future biographers. She identified letters of “an historic bearing and interest” and remarked on feminist and reform concerns.[ix] On December 5, 1899, days before she sealed the final trunk bound for Boston, Dall penned, “The letters enclosed throw light on my own life from 1849 to 1869 during many dark & doubtful days, when I stood alone as few women ever do … No one may ever care to read them – but they show how groundless many women have been & I think best to preserve them.”[x]

Historians of the nineteenth century rarely get the opportunity to commune directly with their subjects. The annotations within Caroline Dall’s papers offer a glimpse into what she herself viewed to be the pivotal achievements, tragedies, and challenges of her life. Her commentary transforms her writings into multidimensional documents transcending decades and reflecting both her immediate reactions and retrospective reflections. Furthermore, they create an immortal dialogue with the imagined reader. In this way they are living documents, offering both tantalizing possibilities for historical discovery and stark warnings to the intrepid biographer.

[i] Caroline Dall, Journal Vol. 42, December 7, 1899, Caroline Healey Dall Papers, Massachusetts Historical Society.

[ii] Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical  Society, Second Series Vol XI 1896-1897 (Boston: Published by the Society, 1897), 333; Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Second Series Vol. XIII, 1899-1900 (Boston: Published by the Society, 1900), 310; Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings October 1909 – June 1910, Vol. XLIII (Boston: Published by the Society, 1910), 38; Massachusetts Historical Society Proceedings October 1912 – June 1913, Vol. XLVI (Boston: Published by the Society, 1913), 379. In addition to her personal papers, Dall donated a “rail cut by Abraham Lincoln” and a cabinet table.

[iii] An additional 11.5 boxes, 5 photograph folders, and 1 folio folder of Caroline Dall’s papers are held Harvard’s Schlesinger Library. 

[iv] Caroline W. Healey to the Teachers of the West Parish School, September 17, 1842, Correspondence, Reel 1, CHD Papers.

[v] Caroline Dall, Journal Vol. 42, December 7, 1899, CHD Papers.  

[vi] Note within letters dated July 1869, Correspondence, Reel 1, CHD Papers.

[vii] Note within letters dated August 1869, Correspondence, Reel 1, CHD Papers.

[viii] Ednah L. Cheney to Caroline H. Dall, April 13, 1856 [back page of letter, rest discarded], note dated 1876, Correspondence, Reel 2, CHD Papers.

[ix] Caroline H. Dall to Paulina W. Davis, November 1855, Correspondence, Reel 2, CHD Papers.

[x] Note within letters dated December 5, 1899, Correspondence, Reel 1, CHD Papers.