Join Us for Our Open House!

By Elaine Grublin

Join us on Saturday, 16 June from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM at our annual Open House featuring a preview of our summer exhibition Mr. Madison’s War: The Controversial War of 1812. Visitors are invited to participate in tours; listen to exhibition talks; enjoy refreshments; and learn more about the Society’s collections, programs, and services.

Here is a preview of the day’s activities:

  • 10:00 AM — A guided tour of the Society’s public rooms departs the front lobby
  • 11:00 AM — “Frederic Baury’s Extraordinary War,” a gallery talk offering a detailed description of the brief but illustrious Naval career of a Midshipman during the War of 1812
  • 12:00 PM — A guided tour of the Society’s public rooms departs the front lobby
  • 1:00 PM — “War and Peace: John Quincy Adams in St. Petersburg and at Ghent, 1809-1814,” a gallery talk focusing on John Quincy Adams’ detailed letters to his parents and voluminous diary accounts documenting his observations of the events leading up to the War of 1812 in America, and the “other” War of 1812, the titanic French invasion of Russia.
  • 2:00 PM — A guided tour of the Society’s public rooms departs the front lobby

Throughout the day visitors can view Mr. Madison’s War: The Controversial War of 1812 and examine the controversial nature of the war in Massachusetts and the struggles between the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, enjoy refreshments in our 19-century gentleman’s library, and visit our information table to learn about MHS resources, upcoming programs, and how to become a member. 

For more information e-mail rsvp@masshist.org.

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History’s Mysteries: Building a Family Tree

By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

The protagonist of my favorite mystery novel series, Maisie Dobbs, creates a map of each case she works on. A London detective in the 1930s, she pins down a large piece of paper and writes down every bit of information she discovers, drawing lines to connect the pieces as the case evolves. Recently the staff of the Society’s Publications Department took a page out of Maisie Dobbs’s book and created a “map” to solve our own mystery regarding family connections and progeny.

Ondine LeBlanc Building the Shattuck Family Tree on a White Board in the publications officeWe are working on a book to coincide with the Society’s upcoming exhibition on mourning jewelry. The book, titled In Death Lamented: The Tradition of Anglo-American Mourning Jewelry, features mourning jewels from the Society’s collection and from the private collection of the author, Sarah Nehama.

Several mourning jewels used in the book were donated to the Society by Dr. George Cheever Shattuck in 1971, and although some of the people those jewels honored shared last names, we could not initially discern how they were all related. Many prominent families in 18th- and 19th- century Boston intermarried and used the same names throughout generations, making it difficult to differentiate mothers, sisters, and cousins. Many parents also named their children after close family friends, confounding things further for any genealogist.

With one woman in particular we struggled – Elizabeth Cheever. The inscription on her mourning ring had been transcribed as “Elizabeth Cheever obt. 28 June 1814 Aet 72,” indicating that she was 72 and died on June 28, 1814. Even with these details we could not find biographical information on her anywhere. That is, until we had the help of a great MHS volunteer. Kathleen Fox, who is assisting with this project, discovered that the date of death we had for Elizabeth Cheever had been transcribed incorrectly. Rather than 1814, it was 1802! With this new date we were able to find Elizabeth Cheever using the Town Vital Records Collections of Massachusetts on Ancestry.com. Formerly Elizabeth Edwards, she was born in 1730 and married William Downes Cheever.

From this new information we were able to link Elizabeth Cheever to Mary Cheever (her sister-in-law), William Cheever (her son), and so on. We created a family tree, researching each family member until we had connected seven generations of Cheevers, Davises, and Shattucks. The family tree includes those commemorated by all of the jewels Dr. George Cheever Shattuck contributed to the MHS. No mean feat. But we’re not done yet. We still need one confirmation on a Hannah Davis. The mapping – and mystery – continues. Sometimes working at a historical society is just like being a detective.

For more information on the Cheever, Davis, and Shattuck families, read this earlier post on the discovery of Elizabeth Cheever (Davis) Shattuck’s travel diary. She appears in the family tree, and In Death Lamented features a mourning ring commemorating her.

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The New Riding Club of Boston

By Daniel Hinchen, Reader Services

The Boston area is known for some very famous examples of architecture. Photograph of 52 Hemenway Street, front of buildingJust think of the variously colored steeples that dot the campus of Harvard in nearby Cambridge; the golden dome of the State House; and of course, the grand brownstones that line Newbury and Beacon Streets and Commonwealth Avenue. One architectural style that is not well represented in Boston, though, is the Tudor Revival style. And yet, just around the corner from the MHS, among the rows of stone and brick apartment buildings, is a fine example of that style.

At 52 Hemenway Street there stands a three-storied building with a steeply pitched roof, high chimneys, dormer windows, and just a touch of the half-timbered feature that makes the Tudor Revival style so noticeable. While it may be missing the herringbone brickwork and mullioned windows of most structures in this style, it is nonetheless distinguishable as a Tudor Revival building.

The building has served as a home to two very different organizations. And while it may look out of place in its neighborhood, it has been standing for 120 years and has a spot on the National Register of Historic Places.

Designed by Willard T. Sears, 52 Hemenway was first home to the New Riding Club of Boston. Photo of side of 52 Hemenway StreetA quick look at the building’s exterior shows one repeated feature that hints to its original use: around the building are several large portals — some arched — resembling modern-day garage doors giving the viewer the impression of stables. 

Built in 1891, it allowed for easy access to the bridle paths in the nearby Back Bay Fens, which had recently been completed by Frederick Law Olmsted. Inside the building there were several stables for horses, as well as a riding ring. It retained this make-up until 1934 when it was acquired by the Badminton and Tennis Club.* After the take-over, the riding ring was converted to tennis courts. Finally, in 1985 the remaining stables were converted into residential apartments.

The MHS does not hold  much original material relating to either of these organizations in our collections. We do hold original copies of the published by-laws and rules of the New Riding Club, from 1920 and 1924. Interested neighbors may view these items in our library.

 

*The Badminton and Tennis Club is affiliated with the Boston Tennis and Racquet Club whose home is in the Back Bay at 939 Boylston St. which was built in 1902 and contributes to the area’s designation as a National Register Historic District.

 

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This Week @ MHS

By Elaine Grublin

There is much happening at the MHS this week. Be sure to check out our online calendar for more information about these and other upcoming programs. 

Do not miss your chance to learn more about the fenced in gardens on the Fenway and to join in celebrating the 70th anniversary of the Fenway Victory Gardens.  Tuesday, 5 June, join us at 1154 Boylston Street to view items from the Fenway Garden Society’s collections, held by the MHS, and to stretch your legs with a walk through the gardens. This program is co-sponsored by the Fenway Garden Society. 

Wednesday, 6 June, at noon join us for a Brown-bag lunch program. Researcher Jared Hardesty, Boston College, will present his project The Origins of Black Boston, a project that examines the formation of a slave community in pre-Revolutionary Boston and argues that historians have overstated the significance of freedom as a motivating factor for slaves. Come listen to Jared’s presentation, and then join in the Q & A session.

Saturday, 7 June, stop in for our tour “The History and Collections of the MHS.”  The 90-minute guided tour departs the front lobby promptly at 10:00 AM. 

 

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Stephen Greenleaf Bulfinch, Post 14

By Elaine Grublin

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

Thursday, June 19th, 1862

Of public events the chief worthy of record is the sudden irruption of the rebel force into central Virginia, occasioning the retreat of Gen. Banks, & an instant rally to arms in this state and elsewhere. The first personal acquaintance I have lost in this war (as far as I yet know) was killed in the encounter, at Port Royal, with Jackson’s Force, – Capt. Wm. P. Ainsworth of Nashua, a fine young man of my former parish.

Come back to read Bulfinch’s July entry where he reflects on the increasing loss of life in battle and Lincoln’s call for 300,000 new volunteers. 

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A Boylston Family Mystery

By Susan Martin, Collection Services

Boylston Street, the address of the MHS, is named for Boston philanthropist Ward Nicholas Boylston (1749-1828). No full-length biography of Boylston has been written, but what we know about his life is intriguing. He was born Ward Nicholas Hallowell and changed his surname in 1770 as a condition of his inheritance from his uncle. Although he was a Loyalist during the American Revolution and lived in London between 1775 and 1800, his first wife was the daughter of an American revolutionary, and his second cousin was President John Adams. He was estranged from his oldest son Nicholas (for unknown reasons) and bequeathed him a small annuity in his will…as long as Nicholas never returned to live in Massachusetts.

 Now, staff here at the MHS have come across another Boylston family plot twist.

One of the editors on the Adams Papers Editorial Project recently found what seemed to be an error in a footnote: the birth dates of Ward Nicholas Boylston’s two younger sons. Records indicate that Thomas and John Lane Boylston were born in 1785 and 1789, respectively. However, Boylston’s first wife Ann died in 1779, and he didn’t re-marry until 1807. So who was the mother of Thomas and John?

The most likely explanation was that one of the dates was wrong. But a careful look through the MHS collection of Boylston family papers confirmed that Ann (Molineux) Boylston died in 1779 on a voyage to America, and that Ward married Alicia Darrow, or Darrham, at Boston’s Trinity Church in 1807. Had he been married in London during the intervening years? If so, we have no record of it.

One letter in the collection suggests an answer to the mystery. The letter was written by Robert Bentham, the uncle of Boylston’s grandson Henry, on 23 Mar. 1840. It relates to Henry’s inheritance.

My nephew claims an Interest in this property as the only surviving Son of Nicholas Boylston (now deceased) the eldest Son (indeed the only lawful Son) of Ward Nicholas Boylston…. I pass over the doubt which exists & has for many years existed, as to the marriage of the present Mrs. [Alicia] Boylston (the styled widow of Ward Nicholas Boylston) or the legitimacy of her children. When I first became personally acquainted with the family she went by the name of Davis. All her elder children went by the name of Davis…. The fact was notorious in the neighborhood.

On this statement various & important questions must of course arise, which I shall not be so indelicate to propose, & far less to obtrude an observation on, or answer thereto….

His implication is clear. Assuming that Thomas and John were Alicia’s sons, they were born before she was Boylston’s lawful wife. It’s possible that Alicia had been previously married, to a Mr. Davis, but Bentham had no knowledge of it.

The historical record is often fragmentary and misleading, and we may never know the truth behind Bentham’s claims. Unfortunately, the Boylston collection contains very little personal correspondence between the family members directly involved. A thorough search through the papers of Boylston’s contemporaries might shed some light on the subject. I’m told Louisa Catherine Adams had an appetite for gossip. Maybe one of our intrepid researchers will take up the challenge…?

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New Biography Illuminates Life of Clover Adams

By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

For all the importance and notoriety of Henry Adams’s book The Autobiography of Henry Adams, it contains one glaring omission: Henry’s wife Clover Adams is not mentioned once. Natalie Dykstra’s new biography, Clover Adams: A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life, attempts to rectify this by shedding light on the life and work of a remarkable 19th-century woman. This is no dry, esoteric biography, but an engaging, enjoyable read for the scholar or layperson alike.

Marian Hooper Adams was nicknamed “Clover” by her mother, who felt that her daughter’s birth was a lucky occurrence. Born into a wealthy, prominent Boston family, Clover was raised in privilege and highly educated. Her mother died when she was five, but Clover remained very close to her father for the rest of her life. In 1872, at the age of 28, she married the historian Henry Adams, who was teaching at Harvard. After five years they moved to Washington, DC, residing near the White House, and began hosting an exclusive salon of politicians, writers, and thinkers. Despite this stimulation, Clover and Henry were bored, and the spark went out of their marriage. Their problems intensified due to the fact that they were unable to have children.

Clover had always been interested in art and she found an outlet for her frustrations in a new camera in 1883. She learned the painstaking development process and began to take photographs of people, landscapes, and animals (she was a great lover of dogs and horses). Although a few of her photographs show traces of humor, including those of her dogs posed at a table set for tea, many of Clover’s photographs convey the melancholy and isolation of her own experience.

In the spring of 1885, Clover’s father died, and her emotional state worsened. In December of that year she took her own life by drinking a chemical used in processing photographs. She was 42 years old. Although Henry Adams rarely spoke of his wife after her death, he commissioned the sculptor Augustus Saint-Gaudens to produce a memorial at her gravesite in Rock Creek Cemetery. Saint-Gaudens created a sculpture of a mysterious shrouded, seated figure, which still receives many visitors today and helped inspire Natalie Dykstra to begin researching this book.

Dykstra is an associate professor of English at Hope College in Holland, MI, and she received a National Endowment for the Humanities fellowship for her work on Clover Adams. A Fellow of the Massachusetts Historical Society, Dykstra did much of the research for her book at the Society, and she guest-curated the Society’s current exhibit, A Gilded and Heartbreaking Life: The Photographs of Clover Adams. The exhibit is free and open to the public and runs through June 2nd.

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Excursion to the Pacific: Rail Travel Then and Now

By Andrea Cronin, Reader Services

 

On 23 May 1870, the first transcontinental train left Boston for San Francisco. Here are a few of George Gordon Byron DeWolfe’s words celebrating its departure, as captured on a broadside held by the MHS:

The train left St. James Park in the “Hub,” also known as Boston, on a Monday morning at a quarter past nine o’clock. The eight-car train arrived in San Francisco on Saturday, 28 May, but the entire trip lasted approximately 39 days. The group returned to Boston on 2 July 1870.

What a train ride! Consider it against modern rail travel. In the present, you can travel via train from Boston to San Francisco in approximately 86 hours (3.5 days), which excludes wait time at stations. Boston-San Francisco is approximately 3,000 miles or a 50-hour drive via car. A 6-day journey in 1870 – that’s pretty good timing for the first transcontinental train! Some of you readers are, no doubt, thinking, “Why do that now when you can just fly?”

But there is something so captivating about trains. George Pullman, inventor of the Pullman sleeping railcar, designed this eight-car train for the journey. The train cars included the following: a baggage car, a smoking car, two commissary cars (the St. Charles and the St. Cloud), two hotel and drawing room cars (the Revere and the Arlington), and two saloon cars (the Palmyra and the Marquetta). Note to Amtrak: start naming the train cars things like Revere, Arlington, Boylston, Fenway, etc. Those names are much more appealing than train car no. 2106. The café car could be named Batali, Lagasse, or Oliver! Although that may be a little misleading; microwaved hot dogs are not haute cuisine. This train was clearly finely-made and comfortable for travel, as DeWolfe mentions.

So who was aboard this tricked-out train? Members of the Boston Board of Trade and their families made this journey, spending a few weeks in California. They planned to visit Yosemite National Park, and the itinerary for the return journey included  stops in Salt Lake, Omaha, Chicago, and Niagara. Among the families on board were well-known names in the Boston area like Peabody, Forbes, Houghton, Rice, Prentiss, Dana, Farnsworth, Hunnewell, Warren, and many more. The list of passengers on the broadside suggests approximately 125 persons traveled on this train. If that sounds a little crowded to you, just think of the commuter rail in rush hour. Eight cars for 125 people sounds spacious in comparison.

If you’d like to find out more about this particular journey, transcontinental railways, or rail travel in Massachusetts, please visit our online catalog, ABIGAIL. The broadside shown here is the “Excursion to the Pacific” by George G. B. DeWolfe. Plan a visit to the library to view it in person.

 

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A Classroom with an Ocean View

By Kathleen Barker, Education Department

Summer is an exciting season for the MHS education department. Over the next three months, hundreds of teachers from nearly 40 states and the United Kingdom will visit the Society to take part in workshops on topics including the American Revolution, anti-slavery and abolition efforts, 19th-century immigration, and American imperialism. Many of these programs also include excursions to local landmarks like Faneuil Hall in the heart of Boston or the Old North Bridge in Concord. One particular workshop, however, will take participants to a stunning seaside setting: the new Thomas Jefferson Memorial Center at Coolidge Point in Manchester, Massachusetts.

In this workshop, participants will explore the challenges faced by the new nation in the years after the American Revolution. They will examine five sets of documents selected from the Society’s collections that shed light on key issues, including the rights and responsibilities of a new government, the needs of a diverse citizenry, slavery, women’s roles, and America’s relationship with the world. For example, using sources such as Thomas Jefferson’s draft of the Declaration of Independence and the correspondence generated by St. George Tucker’s Queries on Slavery in Massachusetts, teachers can analyze the ways in which America’s founding mothers and fathers attempted to negotiate the complex issue of slavery and its place in the new republic.

A $50 registration fee covers three lunches, one dinner, and all snacks. All materials, instruction, and admissions are included. Participants will receive 30 Professional Development Points, as well as the opportunity to earn graduate credit at Framingham State University. For more information, please contact the education department at education@masshist.org or (617) 646-0557.

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A Yankee in King George’s Court

By Amanda A. Mathews, Adams Papers

This year Great Britain celebrates Queen Elizabeth II’s Diamond Jubilee year, and here at the Adams Papers our forthcoming volumes, Adams Family Correspondence, Volume 11 and Papers of John Adams, Volume 17, provide a glimpse at America’s earliest diplomatic meetings with the monarchy.

On June 1, 1785, John Adams entered the Court of St. James for a private audience with King George III. He made three bows and presented himself as the first minister of the newly independent United States. After a moving exchange of formalities, the king mentioned the rumor that Adams was not particularly fond of France. Adams found the perfect reply that neither praised nor insulted France or England. “I must avow to your Majesty, I have no Attachments but to my own Country.” To which the King replied “An honest Man will never have any other.” After the encounter, Adams confidently reported to Congress, that he had been treated precisely as all other foreign ministers were.

Ten years later John Quincy Adams, sent by Congress on a special errand over from The Hague, was led through the same procedures of etiquette for his audience. He recorded his experience in his diary. When asked by King George if it was his father who was currently governor of Massachusetts (that was Samuel Adams), Adams, no doubt with a bit of pride, replied, “No Sir, he is Vice-President of the United States.”

These events, full of pomp and circumstance, are illustrative of the complicated view Americans have of the monarchy, which they find both absurd and fascinating. The difficulty of embracing this unique opportunity without getting caught up in the extravagance is evident in the Adamses’ writings. Abigail Adams, for example, though fatigued by the occasion, nevertheless paid close attention to the details, as she described the ceremony of her own presentation at Court to her sister. Such sentiment seems to have become a staple in American life. The mixture of excitement and cynicism with which Americans met last year’s wedding of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge (better known as William and Kate) reveals the likelihood that our conflicted sensibilities regarding monarchy are also not going away soon.

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