By Tracy Potter

Continuing our series on the Henry Cabot Lodge & and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. collections, let us look at how the Cabot and Lodge families connect to Massachusetts and each other.

The elder Henry Cabot Lodge was the son of John Ellerton Lodge and Anna Sophia Cabot, a marriage that brought together two prosperous families. Anna Cabot descended from a John Cabot who emigrated from England at the beginning of the 18th century, married into a prominent family, settled in Salem, Mass., and built a fortune in shipping. Later generations of this family line expanded into Beverly and continued to prosper as cotton merchants. George Cabot of Beverly, the great-grandfather of Henry Cabot Lodge, served his country – and his own fortunes — during the Revolutionary War as a “patriot privateer,” and was later elected to the convention to form the constitution of Massachusetts. In 1791 he was appointed to the U.S. Senate, and had some influence on the creation of the Treasury Department.

The Lodges arrived in Boston quite by accident in 1791, almost a century after the first Cabots arrived. Giles Lodge, a London merchant (and future the grandfather of Henry Cabot Lodge), was traveling on business in Santo Domingo in 1791, when the Haitian Revolution broke out. He was able to find safe passage off the island on an American vessel, which brought him to Boston. Realizing the business opportunities in the city, he chose to settle in Boston and prospered, never returning to England again. In 1842 his son, John Ellerton Lodge – who it is said built one of the largest fortunes in Massachusetts at that time – married Anna Sophia Cabot, uniting the Lodge and Cabot names.

Henry Cabot Lodge was the second child of John Ellerton Lodge. His sister Elizabeth was seven years older. Cabot followed in his great-grandfather’s footsteps, obtaining political renown as a U.S. senator. He was also a noted historian and close friend and confidant of President Theodore Roosevelt.

The MHS holds several collections related to the early Lodge family including:

John Ellerton Lodge letterbooks, 1844-1861; Microfilm: P-33, 6 reels

George Cabot Lodge papers, 1873-1909; Microfilm: P-317

Be on the look out — the next installment in the Lodge series will appear on February 23rd.

By Tracy Potter

We librarians often notice when a trend takes shape in materials researchers request in the library. Two summers ago a large number of researchers requested material from the Edward Atkinson Papers. Last summer the Old North Church Records where in unusually high demand. And this winter researchers are clamoring for the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. Papers, 1920-1982 and the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers II, 1920-1985.

There are a few reasons I find this trend interesting. For one, 20^th century collections are sometimes thought of as outside our scope. Many think of the MHS as holding early American and Civil War era materials, but do not think of us as a repository for modern collections. While the strength of our collections is material from the 18^th and 19^th centuries, we are still actively collecting material and hold a (growing) number of collections containing 20^th century material. Seeing the demand for the Lodge, Jr. collections demonstrates to me that the modern collections in our holdings are not being entirely overlooked.

Also interesting, and possibly the reason I noticed this recent trend, is that these particular collections often cause researchers much confusion, requiring them to contact the library staff in advance of their visit. The fact that there are two Lodge, Jr. collections — one held onsite on microfilm, the other in offsite storage — coupled with the fact that we also hold a collection of papers belonging to his grandfather, Henry Cabot Lodge , leads to many questions about how to access the collections, why the collections are separated they way they are, and which Lodge (both served as U.S. senators in their own lifetime) the researcher is actually interested in researching.

All this got me thinking about the importance of our Lodge collections. They all contain an extraordinary amount of interesting material from turbulent times in American and world history. For example the Lodge, Jr. collections hold material related to his service in the U.S. Senate, his tours of duty in Africa and Europe in World War II, and his tenure as both the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations (1953 to 1960) and ambassador to Vietnam (1963-1967).

So I decided to do a blog series to highlight the collections of Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. and his grandfather Henry Cabot Lodge. Look for the series on the 2^nd and 4^th Wednesday of the month through February, March, and April. The series will start Wednesday, February 9, with a post on the background of the Cabot and Lodge families, and will continue with posts about the lives and careers of both Henry Cabot Lodge and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr., how these collections came to be at the MHS, what types of materials can be found in the collections, how to access the collections, and what other materials related to the Cabot and Lodge families can be found at the MHS.