This Week @ MHS

By Elaine Grublin

It is an unusually quiet week at the MHS.  While we do not have any public programs to offer this week, if you are in the neighborhood you can stop in any day this week to view our current exhibition History Drawn with Light: Early Photographs from the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.  The exhibition is open Monday through Saturday from 10:00 AM to 4:00 PM. Guests to the exhibition are also invited to view the portraits currently on display in our portrait gallery and to view the Dowse Library, one of the treasures of the MHS.  

On Wednesday, 11 May, at 5:00 PM the elected fellows of the MHS are invited to the MHS’ Annual Meeting. Fellows can register for the event here, or by calling 617-646-0552.  

And on Saturday all are welcome to join us for our weekly building tour.  The ninety minute tour, led by an MHS docent, departs the lobby promptly at 10:00 AM.

 

Two New Volunteers Join the Reader Services Team

By Elaine Grublin

In May two volunteers, Beth Hirsch & Liz Francis, joined the library reader services team.  The two women, both currently students at Simmons College’s Graduate School of Library and Information Science, will assist with the selection of documents to be featured in Looking at the Civil War: Massachusetts Finds Her Voice on the MHS website. The web-presentation features one document per month selected from the MHS’ own collections & written 150 years prior by a Massachusetts resident reflecting on some facet of the Civil War.  For more information about the overall project, click here.

Beth’s first assignment is to canvas a variety of collections looking for a document to be featured in June 2011 — meaning the document must have been written in June 1861.  We are hoping to find a document that allows for a woman’s voice to be heard.  Right now we are looking at a number of likely candidates.  Once the final selection is made Beth will complete a transcription of the document and research & write a contextual essay to accompany the digitized images of the document on our website (see our April document for an example of what this looks like).  After completing her work with the June document, Beth will likely dive right into collections containing letters written by Massachusetts soldiers who participated in the Battle of Bull Run in search of an item to feature in July. 

Liz’s first task is to complete a survey of a body of letters written by Hannah Elizabeth Stevenson contained in the larger Curtis-Stevenson Family Papers.  Hannah served as a nurse in various Union hospitals in Virginia, Maryland, and Washington from July 1861 through October 1862. Liz is challenged to identify and summarize all letters of particular interest, which may be used in a number of different MHS projects over the course of the sesquicentennial of the Civil War, and also to select one single letter from the collection to be featured in Massachusetts Finds Her Voice in the coming months.  Again, once a selection is made Liz will be working on the transcription and contextual essay to support the document when it is added to the web-presentation. 

While our summer spots filled up fast, there will likely be additional opportunities for volunteers in the fall.  Please contact Elaine Grublin if you would like further information about volunteering for this project.

 

This Week @ MHS

By Elaine Grublin

This week we offer two public programs and a tour of the MHS building.  Enjoy a walk in the Back Bay and stop by 1154 Boylston Street for:

Wednesday, 4 May MHS research fellow (and guest blogger) Laura Prieto of Simmons College will present her research, New Women in an American Empire, 1898-1910, at a brown-bag lunch program.  The one hour program begins promptly at 12:00 PM.  You bring your lunch, we provide the drinks. 

Thursday, 5 May at 5:15 PM Owen Stanwood of Boston College presents his paper “Murder in Hadley: Crime and Community on the New England Frontier” as part of the Boston Early American History Seminar series.  Richard D. Brown of University of Connecticut will give the comment.  Advance copies of the seminar paper can be obtained, for a small subscription fee, through the MHS website.  The program is free and open to the public.

Saturday, 7 May the weekly building tour The History and Collections of the MHS will depart the lobby at 10:00 AM for a ninety minute tour of the building.  

Forbes House Museum Visits MHS Library

By Elaine Grublin

On Tuesday, April 26, eight women from the Forbes House Museum in Milton, MA, visited the library at the MHS for an introductory tour.  The visitors, a mix of docents, staff, and trustees from the museum spent the morning learning about how to access the MHS collections (both in the library and online), taking a tour of the library, and getting up-close to some specially selected documents from the Robert Bennet Forbes Papers, the Forbes Family Papers, and the Thomas Handasyd Perkins Papers.

The group posed for a picture on their library tour

The MHS is home to a number of manuscript collections, including but not limited to those listed above, with strong connections to the Forbes House Museum.  This visit, organized by the efforts of Robin M. Tagliaferri, executive director of the museum, was a step in developing a stronger connection between the MHS staff and the Forbes House Museum docents, preparing them to conduct research in the MHS collections in support of projects and other initiatives undertaken by the museum. 

Looking at documents with Librarian Peter Drummey

We look forward to a long and productive relationship with the Forbes House Museum docents and staff.  Our first major collaboration, Three Days, Three Viewpoints: The Worlds of Thomas Hutchinson, is a workshop scheduled for July 12 – 14.  The workshop, which is open to the general public with special added sessions for K-12 teachers, travels from the MHS through downtown Boston, and out to the Forbes House in Milton (which is on property that once comprised Hutchinson’s 95-acre country estate) over the course of the three days.  Please contact Kathleen Barker at the MHS if you are interested in more information about the workshop.  And thank you to the folks at Forbes House Museum for such a wonderful visit. 

 

2011-2012 Research Fellows Announced

By Elaine Grublin

Each year the MHS grants a number of research fellowships to scholars from around the country.  For more information about the different fellowship types, click the headings below. 

As you can see the fellowship program brings a wide variety of researchers working on a full range of topics. If any of the research topics are particularly interesting to you, keep an eye on our events calendar over the course of the upcoming year, as all research fellows present their research at brown-bag lunch programs as part of their commitment to the MHS. 

MHS-NEH Long-Term Research Fellowships:

Joshua R. Greenberg, Associate Professor of History, Bridgewater State University, “Face to Face: American Engagement with Paper Money in the Early Republic’

Joanne Pope Melish, Associate Professor of History, University of Kentucky, “Making Black Communities: White Laborers, Black Neighbors, and the Evolution of Race and Class in the Post-Revolutionary North”

Margot Minardi, Assistant Professor of History and Humanities, Reed College, “American Citizens of the World: The Political Culture of Peace Reform, 1812-1865”

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Research Fellowship On the Civil War, Its Origins, and Consequences (with the Boston Athenaeum):

Jordan Watkins, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Nevada, Las Vegas, “The Place of the Past in the American Civil War”

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC) Awards (with 16 other institutions)

Lisa Brooks, Assistant Professor of History and Literature and Folklore and Mythology, Harvard University, “Turning the Looking Glass on King Philip’s War.”  Colonial Society of Massachusetts Fellow

Kathleen Daly, Ph.D. Candidate in American and New England Studies, Boston University, “Shapely Bodies: The Material Culture of Women’s Health, 1850-1920”

Jennifer Egloff, Ph.D. Candidate in History, New York University, “Popular Numeracy in Early Modern England and British North America”

Hannah Farber, Ph.D. Candidate in History University of California, Berkeley, “The Insurance Industry in the Early Republic”

Kara French, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Michigan, “The Politics of Sexual Restraint: Debates Over Chastity in America, 1780-1850”

Mazie Harris, Ph.D. Candidate in Art History, Brown University, “Photography and American Property Law in the 1850s”

Caroline Hasenyager, Ph.D. Candidate in History, College of William and Mary, “Peopling the Cloister: Women’s Colleges & the Worlds We’ve Made of Them”

Carrie Hyde, Ph.D. Candidate in English, Rutgers University, “Alienable Rights: Negative Figures of U.S. Citizenship, 1787-1868”

Sarah Kirshen, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Columbia University, “The Family’s Values: Marriage, Statistics, and the State, 1800-1909.”  Bostonian Society/New England Women’s Club Fellow

Robyn McMillin, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, “Science in the American Style, 1680-1815: A School of Fashion and Philosophy, of Liberty and People”

Hari Vishwanadha, Professor of English, Santa Monica College, “Passages to India”

Marjorie E. Wood, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Chicago, “Emancipating the Child Laborer: Children, Freedom, and the Moral Boundaries of the Market in the United States, 1853-1938”

 

MHS Short-Term Research Fellowships:

African American Studies Fellow

Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Michigan, “Not as Supplicants but as Citizens: Race, Party, and African American Politics in Boston, Massachusetts, 1864-1903”

Alumni Fellow

Megan Prins, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Arizona, “Winters in America, 1880-1930”

Andrew Oliver Fellow

Mary Katherine Matalon, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Texas, Austin, “From Painting to Porcelain: American Women Collectors, c. 1780-1915”

Andrew W. Mellon Fellows

Sean Adams, Associate Professor of History, University of Florida, “Home Fires Burning: Keeping Warm in the Industrializing North”

Jane Fiegen Green, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Washington University, St. Louis, “The Boundary of Youth: Employment, Adulthood, and Citizenship in the Early United States”

Kerima Lewis, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of California, Berkeley, “Atlantic Fires Burning: Arson as a Weapon of Slave Resistance in the British American Colonies, 1675-1775”

Andrew Lipman, Assistant Professor of History, Syracuse University, “The Saltwater Frontier: Indians, Dutch, and English on Seventeenth-Century Long Island Sound”

Bonnie Lucero, Ph.D. Candidate, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill, “Race, Space, and Nation: Social Change amidst Imperial Transition in Cienfuegos, Cuba, 1895-1906”

Patricia Roylance, Assistant Professor of English, Syracuse University, “Anachronisms: The Temporalities of Early American Media”

Nancy Siegel, Associate Professor of Art History, Towson University, “Political Appetites: Revolution, Taste, and Culinary Activism in the Early Republic”

Jared Taber, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Kansas, “Last Dams Standing: Environmental Perspectives on Deindustrialization in Twentieth-Century Massachusetts”

Ben Wright, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Rice University, “Early American Clergy and the Transformation of Antislavery: From the Politics of Conversion to the Conversion of Politics, 1770-1830”

Benjamin Franklin Stevens Fellow

Randi Lewis, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Virginia, “To ‘the most distant parts of the Globe’: Trade, Politics, and the Maritime Frontier in the Early Republic, 1763-1819”

W.B.H. Dowse Fellows

Robyn McMillin, Oklahoma City, Oklahoma, “Science in the American Style, 1680-1815: A School of Fashion and Philosophy, of Liberty and People”

Tyler Boulware, Assistant Professor of History, University of West Virginia, “Next to Kin: Native Americans and Friendship in Early America”

Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellow

Amy Morsman, Associate Professor of History, Middlebury College, “Reading, Writing, Race & Respectability: ‘Yankee Schoolmarms,’ Race Reform, and Northern Views on Reconstruction”

Marc Friedlaender Fellow

Jonathan Beecher  Field, Associate Professor of English, Clemson University, “Antinomian Idol: Anne Hutchinson & American Historiography”

Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellow

Trenton Jones, Ph.D. Candidate in History, Johns Hopkins University, “‘Deprived of Their Liberty’: Prisoners of War and American Military Culture”

Ruth R. and Alyson R. Miller Fellows

Kathryn Goetz, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Minnesota, “A Consuming Femininity: Gender, Culture and the Material Worlds of Young Womanhood, 1750-1850”

Jessica Linker, Ph.D. Candidate in History, University of Connecticut, “‘It is my wish to behold Ladies among my hearers’: Early American Women and Practices of Natural History, 1720-1860”

 

Congratulations to all the fellowship recipients.  We look forward to seeing you all in the library!

A Patriotic Shawl for Mrs. Andrew

By Elaine Grublin

On Wednesday, 24 April 1861. the following story ran in the third column of page two of the Boston Evening Transcript  (Vol. XXXII, no. 9507):

“APPROPRIATE PRESENTATION TO MRS. GOV. ANDREW. A large and elegantly wrought shawl, patriotic in every feature, was this morning presented to Mrs. Gov. Andrew, by Messrs. R. H. Stearns & Co., Summer street. It is of the finest worsted, in red, blue and white stripes, with thirty-four stars and the Union shield of the same material, so arranged as to give the whole a symmetrical appearance and an exceedingly fine effect. It was designed and executed by a lady in Newton, and for its novelty and appropriateness to the times is well worthy of examination. It may be seen for a few days in Messrs. R. H. Stearns & Co.’s window, 15 Summer street.” (View the original page online through Google News.)

In May 1922, Edith and Henry Hersey Andrew, the children of Gov. & Mrs. Andrew, gave the shawl described in the Transcript to the MHS and it has been part of our collections since that time.  Currently Anne Bentley, our art curator, is preparing the shawl to be loaned to the American Textile History Museum in Lowell, Massachusetts. The shawl, along with other MHS artifacts, will be displayed as part of the ATHM’s upcoming exhibition Homefront & Battlefield: The Civil War through Quilts and Context, which is scheduled to open in spring/summer 2012.  Anne’s recent work with the shawl has given many MHS staff members a chance to view the item up close.  It is an interesting and intricate piece, as you can see in the detail photograph below. 

 

You can contact the library staff if you are interested in making an appointment to view the item at the MHS.  Naturally it will not be available for viewing here during the time it is out on loan, but can otherwise be made available to researchers on an appointment basis.

Photography by Anne Bentley, Curator of Art

 

 

This Week @ MHS

By Elaine Grublin

This week we have two evening events: a special event for MHS members and fellows and a seminar. Plus the exhibition hall and portrait gallery are open daily.  

On Tuesday, 26 April at 5:30 PM there is a special Behind-the-Scenes Tour for MHS members and fellows.  The event does require an advance RSVP and space is limited.  Call 617-646-0554 with questions or to reserve your space.  This unique opportunity to glimpse the inner workings of a manuscript repository, and other special events scheduled throughout the year, is just one of the benefits of being an MHS member.  Visit our membership page for additional information.

On Thursday, 28 April at 5:15 PM you can join us for the next installment of the Boston Immigration and Urban History Seminar series.  This week Timothy B. Neary of Salve Regina University will present his paper “A Catholic ‘League of Nations’: Redefining Ethnic and Civic Identity in New Deal Chicago.”  The comment will be provided by Howard P. Chudacoff of Brown University.  Advance copies of the paper — and other papers in this series — are available through the MHS website for a small subscription fee. 

And do not forget that our current exibition History Drawn with Light: Early Photographs from the Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society is open Monday through Saturday, 10 AM to 4 PM.  The exhibition runs through 3 June.  With May approaching quickly, June will be here before you know it! Do not miss your chance to view the exhibition. 

Finally please note that there will not a building tour on Saturday, 30 April.  The tour will return on Saturday, 7 May. 

 

 

 

Guest Post: Research Fellow Finds More Than She is Looking for in Sarah Louisa Guild’s Diary

By Laura Prieto, Simmons College

I have come across several surprises in the reading room recently, as is entirely typical in manuscript research. One archival pleasure is finding what we hope is there, but another is encountering the unexpected.

I eagerly opened Sarah Louisa Guild’s diary for 1898 anticipating some insights on the Spanish-American War, as the MHS catalog promised. I was seeking a woman’s personal view of that conflict and Guild did not disappoint me. Her observant, intelligent entries demonstrate how avidly she followed news on the war as well as on local politics. She decried the “wretched Mugwumps who cry ‘down with imperialism’. . . .  Mugwumps seem to always pull down but never build up.” Her partisan interests were likely influenced by her older brother Curtis; “Curty” had volunteered to fight and had political ambitions, supported by his family. But the passion with which she wrote about political candidates and issues suggests that “Lulu” would have been engaged by them anyway.

I feel fortunate to have Guild’s careful, candid thoughts on what was happening around her. As is the case with most war correspondence, her “homefront” letters did not make it into the archive, even though her brother’s letters from Army camp are preserved. Without her diary, we’d have no trace of what Sarah Louisa made of the war or of her relationship to it.

But her diary is much richer than just political commentary. Guild wrote about her love of music and included capsule reviews of the concerts she attended. Sometimes I’d turn a page and find a pressed flower, or a four-leaf clover. One tiny pansy came from a bouquet sent to comfort her upon the death of her mother. Guild always appreciated such tokens of affection; she especially noted how one gift of flowers came from a friend who hadn’t much money. (Guild later sent that friend a ticket to the Boston Symphony.) The diary is also a record of Guild’s mourning and her declining health. She consulted doctors and tried bromides and tonics to no avail. She wrote the last entries from a sanatorium in Connecticut that specialized in treating nervous diseases.

On occasion, Guild trained her sights on others in her social set. One unusually acerbic entry remarked upon the death of Isabella Stewart Gardner’s husband in 1898:

Mr. Jack Gardner was seized with apoplexy at noon at the Somerset. He was carried to his Beacon St home and died at 9 P.M. Good natured clumsy man! Wonder if his nervous & fashion loving wife will marry again. He was like a Newfoundland dog at her heels.

Guild’s judgment reminds us that late nineteenth-century women continued to be the makers and breakers of reputation among the privileged classes. Such barbs could sting deeply, as any fan of Edith Wharton knows. Gardner no doubt could wield mighty social muscle in her own defense.

Pressed flowers and sharp-tongued gossip: it’s just such unexpected interruptions that helpfully unsettle what we think we’re researching.  I opened her diary searching for a “good source,” but find the privilege of glimpsing Sarah Louisa Guild, a complete, complicated human being who is more than the sum of her words.

 

Laura Prieto is currently working at the MHS as a Ruth R & Alyson R. Miller Fellow.

2011 Pulitzer Prize Finalists Have MHS Connections

By Elaine Grublin

On Monday, 18 April, the Pulitzer Prize Board announced the winners of the 2011 Pulitzer Prize.   Included on the list of finalists were two authors with ties to the MHS.  Michael O’Brien was named a finalist for the prize in biography for his project Mrs. Adams in Winter: A Journey in the Last Days of Napoleon, and Michael Rawson was named a finalist for the history prize for his project Eden on the Charles: The Making of Boston.

In crafting Mrs. Adams in Winter, a lively combination of biography, travel literature, European cultural history, and Adams family history, Michael O’Brien used a number of MHS resources, including the the microfilm edition of the Adams Family Papers, the online edition of the John Quincy Adams diaries, and the published editions of the Adams Papers.  He also spent time at the MHS researching Louisa Catherine Adams’ correspondence and other writings. While researching at the MHS, O’Brien presented a brown bag lunch program recounting what he learned as he retraced Louisa Catherine Adams’ route from St. Petersburg to Paris. And on 31 March 2010, many MHS friends and members had the pleasure of attending a lecture and book signing for the Mrs. Adams project.  

Mike Rawson, a native of Medford, MA, did his graduate work at the University of Wisconsin.  In 2002, he received one of the MHS’ short-term fellowships to work on his dissertation, which was the basis of Eden on the Charles.  Rawson presented a portion of his research at our Boston Environmental History Seminar in 2004 and another portion at our conference on the environmental history of Boston in 2006.  The latter piece appeared in a collection of essays originally offered at the conference, Remaking Boston: An Environmental History of the City and Its Surroundings, ed. Anthony N. Penna and Conrad Edick Wright (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2009).

The MHS was thrilled to see both of these authors and their projects recognized by the Pulitzer Prize Board.  Congratulations to all of this years’ winners and finalists. 

This Week @ MHS

By Elaine Grublin

While the Monday holiday leaves plenty of time for you to look over Paul Revere’s deposition recounting the events of 19 April 1775, it also means we have less time for public programs this week.  We are offering two great programs, providing excellent opportunities for folks to visit the MHS.  And be sure to check out our online calendar for other upcoming events. 

On Thursday, 21 April, at 5:30 PM the Boston Seminar on the History of Women and Gender brings Dayo Gore of the University of Massachusetts – Amherst to the MHS to discuss the paper “Engendering and Internationalizing the Long Black Freedom Struggle.”  Ruth Feldstein of Rutgers University at Newark will give the comment.  This program is free and open to all.  Advance copies of the seminar paper are available, for a small subscription fee, through the MHS website

On Saturday, 23 April, at 10.00 AM our weekly building tour, The History and Collections of the MHS, departs our front lobby for a ninety minute tour of the building’s public spaces.