This Week @ MHS

By Dan Hinchen

This week is a very quiet one here at the Historical Society. There are no special events on the calendar but that does not mean that there is no reason to pay the Society a visit. The MHS has three current exhibitions that are free and open to the public. The “headlining” exhibition is “The Object of History: 18th Century Treasures from the Massachusetts Historical Society,” which features portraits, needlework, firearms, clothing, furniture, silver, scientific instruments, documents, and books from the Society’s collections.

Complementing the main exhibition is a smaller display called “The Education of Our Children is Never Out of My Mind.” On view here are letters written by John and Abigail Adams to each other, to their children, and to friends and family regarding their views on education.These two exhibits will be viewable until 7 September 2013.

The third exhibition, unrelated to the other two, is “Estlin Cummings Wild West Show,” featuring a selection of E.E. Cummings’s childhood writings and drawings, showcasing the young poet’s earliest experiments with words and illustrations. This display will be available until 30 August 2013.

All of these exhibitions are free and open to the public six days a week, Monday-Saturday, 10:00am – 4:00pm.

Finally, on Saturday, 13 July, the Society will host The History and Collections of the MHS, a 90-minute docent-led tour that explores all of the public rooms in the building while touching on the art, architecture, history, and collections of the Society. The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

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Fashionable Watering Places and How to Reach Them … in 1879

By Andrea Cronin, Reader Services

“Within a few hours’ ride from the metropolis are sections of country and seaboard, which in variety of character, loveliness of climate, and grandeur of scenery, are unsurpassed by any of the celebrated and more distant watering places on the continent,” wrote the unknown author of an Old Colony Railroad Company publication entitled, “Southeastern Massachusetts: Its Shores and Islands, Woodlands and Lakes, and How to Reach Them.” Having spent a few weeks utilizing the Old Colony Railroad system to travel throughout southeastern Massachusetts, the author wrote a guide for other adventurous vacationers in what is essentially a wonderfully descriptive, 49-page advertisement. The pamphlet lists more than 70 destinations, including traditional summer locales such as Provincetown, Martha’s Vineyard, and Nantucket and the less exotic locations such as Taunton, Foxboro, and Attleboro.

The author lays heavy praise on Newport, Rhode Island. “In Newport, however, the walks are probably more sought after than the drives. Foremost among these is the Cliff Walk among the sea bluffs, on which the pedestrian may continue his rambles to Easton’s Beach and round the southern point of Fort Adams.” Of course! The famous Cliff Walk of Newport is listed within the guide and is still as popular today as it was in 1879. Our Cliff Walk is dotted with gilded mansions. What might that scenic “ramble” have looked like in 1879 before these remarkable homes — Rosecliff, the Breakers, Marble House, Ochre Court, and Rough Point, to name a few –peaked over the cliffs?

The author directs the reader from a distant third-person narration, a change from the way many guidebooks are written today. Yet the suggestions of what to do at Monument Beach inspire today’s reader just the same. “From Monument Beach, a boat sail to Burgess Point, a distant about a mile and a half, or across to Marion, some six miles, or along the eastern shore, can scarcely be equaled. The bay is studded with gems of beauty.” Monument Beach is located within Bourne, MA near Phinney’s Harbor for all those interested vacationers reading this blog.

Though one might find the author’s descriptions fascinating, the pamphlet existed to  advertise the Old Colony Railroad. It concludes most helpfully with a list of hotels near the Old Colony Railroad’s stations to aid the traveling vacationer.

While the Old Colony Railroad no longer traverses southeastern Massachusetts as it did in 1879, parts of the system are still used today by modern commuters. Planning a summer get away? Why not get inspired to plan a trip to southeastern Massachusetts this summer? Visit the library at Massachusetts Historical Society — no sunblock required, but reading glasses are suggested — to check out this publication and others on early tourism in Massachusetts.

Posted in From Our Collections

This Week @ MHS

By Dan Hinchen

It is a holiday week and there are plenty of goings-on here at the Massachusetts Historical Society to celebrate our nation’s independence. Please note that the library of the Historical Society will be closed on Thursday, July 4, in observance of Independence Day.

Kicking off the week on Monday, 1 July, come by at noon for a Brown Bag Lunch talk. This installment features Jen Staver of University of California, Irvine, presenting “Navigating the Other North American Coast: New England Merchants and Sailors Approach the North American Pacific, 1780s-1820s.” Ms. Staver’s project investigates social and environmental change along the far Pacific coast of North America from 1760 through 1820 by focusing on knowledge of and labor in the region’s oceanic and littoral landscapes. Brown bag lunch talks are free and open to the public, so pack up a midday snack and come on by.

On Wednesday, 3 July, another brown bag lunch talk will take place. This time, short-term fellow Lo Faber, Loyola University of New Orleans, presents “The Spirit of Enterprise Excited by the Acquisition of Louisiana: New Englanders and the Orleans Territory, 1803-1812.” In 1803 and 1804 New Englanders warily eyed their country’s vast new acquisition. Some worried that Louisiana was a “savage,” uncivilized land that would corrupt the new nation; others that it would reduce the already-declining political importance of New England; others that it would become a new addition to the “empire of slavery.” Still others, however, especially Jeffersonian republicans, dismissed these and other concerns and celebrated the Purchase and the economic opportunities it would bring. A few went so far as to move south in search of fortunes in the Orleans Territory. This event is free and begins at 12:00pm.

And on Thursday, 4 July, the MHS will host a special Independence Day Exhibition. Though the library is closed, the gallery spaces will be open from 12:00pm to 4:00pm, currently displaying three exhibitions. Also included on Thursday is a special exhibition of materials related to the Declaration of Independence. Exhibits are free and open to the public six days per week, Monday-Saturday.

Finally, on Saturday, 6 July, the Society will host The History and Collections of the MHS, a 90-minute docent-led tour that explores all of the public rooms in the building while touching on the art, architecture, history, and collections of the Society. The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

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The “Exhilarating Effect of Wiry Transit”: America’s Nineteenth-Century Cycling Boom

By Anna J. Cook, Reader Services

As the Boston bike share program, Hubway, settles in for its third successful season of supporting urban cyclists, other cities around the country are rolling out their own infrastructure – encouraging more city dwellers to pick the efficient, environmentally-friendly mode of transportation. While bicycling is not an option for everyone, bike share stations make it possible to combine a bike ride with walking and public transit in flexible, efficient ways. As a first-time Hubway participant, I am re-leaning my adopted city (and the rules of the road!) this summer from the seat of what was once called “the safety bicycle.”

The safety bicycle, developed in the 1880s and popularized in the 1890s, was designed with two wheels of the same size. It was easier to ride and less dangerous than previous models. It was also a model of bicycle marketed to women as well as men. The late nineteenth and early twentieth century saw a boom in cycling for utilitarian transport and for pleasure. The Massachusetts Historical Society’s collection documents some of the ways in which the popularity of cycling made its mark on Boston. For example, in 1886 Geo. H. Walker & Co. published a Bicycling and Driving Road Map of Boston and Vicinity, the title of which prioritizes cyclists over those new-fangled motorcars.

We also hold a copy of the 1880 volume Lyra Bicyclica: Forty Poets on the Wheel, published in Boston and edited by one J.G. Dalton. Dalton prefaces the poems included therein with the autobiographical note, “The author-compiler is one of the very first Bostonians to ride and write into notice the bicycle in this country.” He goes on to describe how “under the early exhilarating effect of the wiry transit … he called upon our native poets … to favor us with a song or two for the new move, declaring that its peculiar charms and potencies and awaited an adequate celebration” (1-2).

One such song, albeit written in 1879, comes down to us as a specimen of sheet music in four-part harmony written by Thomas Keith. The three-verse ode begins:

Come ye whose sore and weary feet
With corns and blisters walk the street;
Come mount with us this easy seat
And ride in a way that can’t be beat.

We match for speed the fleeting wind,
The lagging coach leave far behind.
With wheel and axle underpin’d,
We ask no favors of that kind.

Then mount with us this easy seat,
And ride in a way that’s fun complete.
A cordial welcome all shall greet,
Who undertake to learn this feat.

Our family papers document members’ participation in the League of American Wheelmen, Harvard’s competitive collegiate cycling team of 1888-1901, and include photographs of women and men, girls and boys, posing proudly with their bicycles. I am sure our nineteenth-century predecessors would be asking us what took us so long to re-discover the “exhilarating effect of the wiry transit.”

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The Chesapeake-Leopard Incident and the War of 1812

By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

This past Saturday marked the 206th anniversary of the Chesapeake–Leopard affair, a controversial incident in American history and a contributing factor to the start of the War of 1812.

In 1807 Britain was fighting in the Napoleonic Wars. The British navy sent a number of ships to blockade the French from obtaining supplies in the United States, but some crew members of these ships deserted and sought protection with American authorities. The US navy recruited these men, and they joined the crew of the USS Chesapeake.

On June 22, 1807, the British HMS Leopard pursued the USS Chesapeake off the coast of Virginia. The captain of the Leopard sent a message demanding to search the Chesapeake for British naval deserters but the Chesapeake’s Commodore James Barron refused. The Leopard opened fire and the Chesapeake, poorly armed, was forced to surrender, but not before several crew members were wounded or killed. The British removed four deserters from the Chesapeake’s crew. Only one of them was British – the rest were American seamen who had been impressed into British naval service. The Leopard then sailed to Halifax so that the men could be tried.

The American public was outraged by the actions of the British navy, but quickly divided over how to respond, with some calling for war and others caution. The Society has a number of manuscripts in its collections related to the public response to the Chesapeake incident. In “Peace Without Dishonor, War Without Hope,” a “Yankee Farmer” appealed to the reason of his readers and argued against a rush into war. “If we succeed in the war, we gain the right to cover a few British deserters, whom we do not want, and which…will bring little profit; but we hazard our lives, our liberties, our government,” he wrote. Others, however, were not so interested in peace. “Illustrations on the Fulfillment of the Prediction of Merlin” contains a poem titled “The Chesapeake Massacre,” which was written by a “Revolutionist of ’75.” The final stanza reads:

If Jefferson and Congress join,

We can defeat the base design

                        Of villainous ingrates;

Then let us arm at ev’ry point,

And with our blood, our cause anoint,

                        And trust to God our fates.

Pres. Jefferson chose to respond with an embargo rather than go to war with Britain, but his decision was controversial. The embargo hurt American industries and was difficult to enforce. Despite Jefferson’s attempt to avoid war, the British navy’s act of aggression sowed a seed that ultimately contributed to war between the United States and Great Britain five years later.

 To learn more about the War of 1812 read this earlier blog post about an 1813 political cartoon, or view this online exhibition. 

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This Week @ MHS

By Dan Hinchen

As summer gets into full swing, things are pretty quiet at the MHS with only two items on the calendar for this week. First, on Wednesday, 26 June, the Society will host the next installment of the Brown Bag Lunch series. Come by at 12:00pm to hear Brooke Newman, Virginia Commonwealth University, present “Island Masters: Gender, race, and power in the eighteenth-century British Caribbean.” At its height in the late eighteenth century, Jamaica was the most valuable and productive of Britain’s colonial possessions in the Atlantic world. Yet intertwined with Jamaica’s reputation for unparalleled profit was a growing apprehension of settler degeneration—in manners, morals, bloodlines, and especially life expectancy. The island, as one would-be colonist put it, offers “the most flattering prospect of pecuniary acquisition or death.” Such notions signify Britain’s ambivalent and contradictory relationship with Jamaica, and the West India colonies more generally, during the era of slavery. This event is free and open to the public so pack a lunch and stop on by.

Then, on Saturday, 29 June, visit the Society for The History and Collections of the MHS, a 90-minute docent-led tour that explores all of the public rooms in the building will touching on the art, architecture, history, and collections of the Society. The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

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Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch Diary, Post 22

By Elaine Grublin

The following excerpt is from the diary of Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch.

June 18th, 1863

So too let me feel in regard to my suffering, bleeding country. We have heard within a few days, of the sudden aggressive movement of the rebel army, & its inroad into Pennsylvania. May the Ruler of nations grant that the pressure of each immediate danger may arouse a spirit that shall not slumber till it brings conquest and peace! The fine, calm eradication by President Lincoln of his course in making arrests, is worth noting at this time. God be thanked for our firm, honest chief magistrate!

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This Week @ MHS

By Dan Hinchen

This week is the first full week for the three new exhibitions on display. Among them, the Society is featuring correspondence between John and Abigail Adams that illustrate their views on education for their children in “The Education of our Children is Never out of My Mind.” Also on display are several childhood drawings and early poetic works of e.e. cummings in “Estlin Cummings Wild West Show.” Finally, the new main exhibit on display is “The Object of History: 18th-Century Treasures from the Massachusetts Historical Society,” featuring a range of artifacts from the Society’s holdings, from flint-lock pistols to a pair of spectacles. All of these exhibits are free and open to the public, Monday-Saturday, 10:00am-4:00pm.

In conjunction with the main exhibit, the Society will host a series of conversations with MHS Librarian Peter Drummey about what documents and artifacts from the collections can tell us about the characters, events, and issues of the past, as well as the role of the MHS in documenting the rich history of our state and nation. On Monday, 17 June 2013, join in on the latest in this series as David Wood, Concord Museum, and Peter Drummey discuss early works of art, artifacts, and documents on display. Registration required. Fee $25/$15 (F/M); Free for MHS Fund Giving Circle members. Please contact the education department at 617-646-0557 / education@masshist.org. Register for all three programs in “The Object of History” series and receive a registration discount! Series fee: $60/30 (F/M); Free for MHS Fund Circle members.

Then, on Wednesday, 19 June 2013, the MHS will host another talk in the Brown Bag Lunch series. This week, Jen Manion of Connecticut College presents “19th-Century Narratives of Transgender Experience & the History of Possibility.” In the 1880s, the field of sexology declared masculine women to be inverts—true homosexuals. Prior to this period, representations of gender crossings were more varied and common. Such representations shine a spotlight on some of the most obvious anxieties concerning women’s place in society as well as the constitutive relationships between sex, gender, and sexuality. Brown bag lunches are free and open to the public, beginning at 12:00pm.

Last, on Saturday, 22 June, there will be a free tour of the Society’s home at 1154 Boylston St. The History and Collections of the MHS is a 90-minute docent-led tour that explores all of the public rooms in the building will touching on the art, architecture, history, and collections of the Society. The tour is free and open to the public. No reservation is required for individuals or small groups. Parties of 8 or more should contact the MHS prior to attending a tour. For more information please contact Curator of Art Anne Bentley at 617-646-0508 or abentley@masshist.org.

Posted in This Week @MHS

“A New Constellation”

By Dan Hinchen

Today is a holiday that is often forgotten in between Memorial Day and Independence Day. Yet the reason for this holiday looms large in the celebration of both those other days. It is doubtful that there is any emblem used on those days that is more prominent than the one created on this date.

There are many stories about how the stars and stripes originated. Some believe that John Paul Jones flew the colors above his ship as early as 1775, a variation of the Grand Union Flag. Others say that, in 1776, Betsy Ross presented the first flag to George Washington, drawing special attention to the five-pointed stars used instead of six-pointed. Still others believe that it was Francis Hopkinson, a delegate to the Continental Congress, who came up with the design.

Grand Union Flag

What we do know is that on 14 June 1777, members of the Second Continental Congress passed a resolution which stated “that the Flag of the United States be thirteen stripes, alternate red and white; that the Union be thirteen stars, white in a blue field representing a new constellation.” This set a general design for the flag official. While it is possible that this was meant to apply to maritime vessels because the resolution seems to have been forwarded by the Marine Committee, it was adopted as the flag of the newly independent colonies.

13-Star Flag of the United States (1777-1795)

Despite conflicting opinions on when and where the first iteration of the Stars and Stripes appeared, through the years it became clear that the citizens of the United States hold the flag in an elevated position (pun potentially purposeful) and that it deserves certain respect in its handling and display. It is important that people invoking patriotism with the flag understand and follow through with the proper etiquette meant to foster that same patriotism and reverence.

Betsy Ross variant (1777-1795)

Officially enacted on 30 July 1947, Title 4 of the United States Code (U.S.C.), begins with Chapter 1 – The Flag. Within this chapter are various specifications governing design, proportions, and treatment of the flag. In reading the flag code, it is interesting to note how many of its provisions are often ignored today. For instance, according to Title 4, Chapter 1, Sec.8 (c): “The flag should never be carried flat or horizontally, but always aloft and free.”

20-Star Great Star Flag of the United States (1818-1819)

Similarly, Title 4, Chapter 1, Sec.6 (a) states: “It is the universal custom to display the flag only from sunrise to sunset on buildings and stationary flagstaffs in the open. However, when a patriotic effect is desired, the flag may be displayed 24 hours a day if properly illuminated during the hours of darkness.” And according to Title 4, Chapter 1, Sec.6 (c): “The flag should not be flown during inclement weather, except when an all-weather flag is displayed,” Perhaps my favorite is the reminder, located in Title 4, Chapter 1, Sec.8 (d): “The flag should never be used as wearing apparel, bedding, or drapery…”

 

38-Star Flag of the United STates (1877-1890)

And so, as we take a moment to honor Flag Day, just remember to call the authorities if you see the flag being used in advertising, because anyone engaged in such an action “shall be deemed guilty of a misdemeanor and shall be punished by a fine not exceeding $100 or by imprisonment for not more than thirty days, or both, in the discretion of the court.” (Title 4, Chapter 3)

 

50-Star Flag of the United States (1960-Present)

If you are interested in finding out more about the history of the flag of the United States, or the people responsible for it, visit our online catalog, ABIGAIL, and search for “flags” as a subject.

To see the Flag Code in its entirety, visit http://www.gpo.gov/fdsys/pkg/USCODE-2011-title4/pdf/USCODE-2011-title4-chap1.pdf

 

 

All flag images from https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flag_of_the_United_States

 

 

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“We are doing a great deal here”: The Letters of Civil War Sharpshooter Moses Hill, Part 3

By Susan Martin, Collection Services

I hope you’ve been enjoying the letters of Moses Hill as much as I have. After last month’s installment, we pick up his story in April 1862 at the beginning of the siege at Yorktown, Va. Moses anticipated a hard fight: “I dred it for I know there must be a great loss of life on both sides.”

Now eight months into his service, Moses wrote candidly about the realities of war, describing some of the fighting in wrenching detail. Sharpshooters played an important role in battle by picking off enemy soldiers from a distance to provide cover for their own troops. Moses told his wife Eliza how, at Yorktown, he and his company kept the Rebels from reloading their guns by firing at them every time they rose above the fortifications. While he was proud of his company’s skill, he refused to kill gratuitously:

I do not shoot Rebels for money or by the head. I shal not nor I have not shot any one unless it is agoing to do some good for the Countery. I have had balls come around me very close when I did not return a shot for as to slowtering men when it does no good I cannot do. When we fight for a victory then is my time if any. Some take pride in going out and shoot a man from the Rebel brest work when it does now good at all, but I cannot slawter in that way nor I will not.

Moses also disapproved of his fellow soldiers’ predilection for drinking, gambling, and swearing. He felt too much was at stake to tolerate poor discipline, with the enemy so close and an attack expected at any moment. He described sleeping with his rifle by his head and frequently waking in the middle of the night to the “rower [roar] of musketery.”

The most poignant and evocative passages in Moses’s letters are those juxtaposing these combat experiences with peaceful memories of his home in Medway, Mass. He painted vivid pictures of life after the war:

Eliza you do not know how much I think of home you and the Children. It seems as if the summer could not pass off without my seeing home. Tell Asahell Lovell that I would like to be at home so I could go a fishing with him this spring but I cannot. I would like to go down on the River bank where all is still and where I should not be oblige to look on all sides to see if some Rifle or a musket was pointing at me, or to not listen to here if there was a shell coming over my head so that I could drop on the ground before it bursts, or to lay myself down at night to sleep where I knew I should not be attacked before morning….There is cannonading now within a 1/4 of a mile of us. I stop my pen to listen to here where the shells burst.

The sound of gunfire was nearly constant, but all around him were signs of spring. Moses was sitting under a blossoming apple tree when he wrote: “If I ever come home…I shal know how to apreaceate home more then I ever did before. Men living in Mass dont know what home is.”

Confederate forces withdrew from Yorktown during the night of May 3-4, and Union troops, including the 1st Massachusetts Sharpshooters, followed them west to Richmond. Come back to the Beehive.

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