Hannah Mather Crocker’s “Reminiscences”: Lunch Talk Recap

By Anna Cook

On Wednesday, 20 January, Eileen Hunt Botting from the University of Notre Dame spoke about her current project: a scholarly edition of Hannah Mather Crocker’s Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston, written between 1826-1829 shortly before Crocker’s death. Botting describes Reminiscences as “tripartite” in structure: two versions of Crocker’s history of Boston and an appendix of primary source material, including more than one hundred poems, often political in nature, authored by Crocker, some of which were published during her lifetime. The first, and longer, version of Crocker’s history is organized geographically and thematically, focusing on the people and places Crocker knew from a lifetime living in Boston. The second version is a shorter, edited version that Botting theorizes may have been drafted with publication in mind – possibly in the MHS Collections. 

Botting opened her talk with a brief biographical sketch of Crocker herself, a descendent from both the Mather and Hutchinson families of Boston. What little is known of Crocker suggests that she strongly identified with the Mather side of her family and was also deeply affected by her experience as a young woman coming of age in the midst of the American Revolution. As a daughter of the new Republic she saw herself as the “female heir” of the Mather tradition of ministry, writing persuasive poetry and in 1818 the first American-authored book-length tract on women’s rights, “Observations of the real rights of women, with their appropriate duties, agreeable to Scripture, reason and common sense.” Crocker was, Botting argues, the American equivalent of Mary Wollstonecraft, although her work was derided by later nineteenth-century feminist leaders as too conservative in her political demands. 

Reminiscences is the largest repository of Crocker’s extant writing and drew upon the Mather family library as well as Crocker’s personal connections to the Massachusetts Historical Society and the American Antiquarian Society. Crocker also draws upon oral remembrances shared among her circle of family and friends, providing valuable first-hand accounts of Boston during the Early Republic.   

Conversation among attendees at the presentation centered around Crocker’s methodology as a writer of history, particularly in the context of other female historians of her day (such as Hannah Adams and Mercy Otis Warren). There was also discussion about her religious ties (Botting describes her as a “an open-minded Congregationalist”) and speculation about the financial pressures that may have led her to begin writing and publishing after her husband’s death in the 1790s when she was left with about three hundred dollars to her name and seven surviving children (out of ten pregnancies!) to support. 

We look forward to the forthcoming Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston as a valuable addition to Boston and American women’s history, and hope it will be of use to future generations of scholars in a variety of fields.

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The Thomas Shepards and Their Books [Part 2]

By Jeremy Dibbell

Picking up right where we left off yesterday, this post continues the saga of the Shepard library biblio-sleuthing expedition. As I wrote, I thought it might be worth checking to see whether we had any Shepard family books here at MHS, and if so whether they exhibited any of the marking patterns seen in the copies at Princeton. Our various catalogs resulted in the discovery of six books with Shepard provenance (and I suspect there may be a few more lurking in the stacks that I’ve yet to find). The titles we know so far are:

1. Thomas Goodwin, The returne of prayers: a treatise vvherein this case, how to discerne Gods answers to our prayers, is briefly resolved : with other observations upon Psal. 85.8 concerning Gods speaking peace, &c. (London: Printed for R. Dawlman, and L. Fawne at the signe of the Brazen serpent in Pauls Church-yard, 1636).

Notes: On front pastedown: MHS bookplate, noting Gift of “Miss Susan Minns, May 1, 1931”; inscribed below bookplate, “W. Beaman [?] 1905”; inscribed on title page [A2r]: “price 1s 4d”; inscribed on verso of title page [A2v]: “Thomas Prince Charlestown 1707 / [1?]s 4d silver.”; inscribed sideways on A3r, in ornate script: “Thomas Shepard me dedit 1652”; inscribed at top margin, A3r: line of shorthand, above which “Prince” (partially obliterated); inscribed on p. 396, sideways: “Thomas Shepard me tenet [?] and several shorthand marks at foot of page. Contains the “TS” stamp on the top edge.

2. William Gouge, A learned and very useful commentary on the whole epistle to the Hebrews : wherein every word and particle in the original is explained … : being the substance of thirty years Wednesdayes lectures at Black-fryers, London by that holy and learned divine Wiliam Gouge … : before which is prefixed a narrative of his life and death: whereunto is added two alphabeticall tables (London: Printed by A.M., T.W. and S.G. for Joshua Kirton, 1655). Second volume.

Notes: Inscribed on front flyleaf: “Tho: Shepards Booke / 1659: May. 19 / prot. 40s”; below same: “Warham Williams his Book 1738”; in pencil further down on page: “From J.B. Thayer / Feb. 1886”; inscribed on title page: “Warham Williams 1738 25/”. Contains a very clear “TS” mark on the top edge (pictured below).

3. Christopher Airay, Fasciculus praeceptorvm logicorum: In gratiam juventutis Academicae compositus & typis donatus (Oxoniae: Excudebat H.H. Impensis Jos. Godw., 1660).

Notes: Inscribed on front pastedown: “Presented to the Mass Hist’l Soc’y by Horatio G. Somerby”; inscribed on title page: “Thomas Shepardus [ejus?] liber prst[?] / 18 . 8’o 1674”; inscribed on verso of title page: “Edward Michesson [?] / His Book / 69”; inscribed on page *3, upside down at foot: “John green His Book / 1670”. Contains several glosses in text. Smudged/unclear “TS” mark on top edge.

4. John Cotton, Some treasure fetched out of rubbish: or, Three short but seasonable treatises (found in an heap of scattered papers) which providence hath reserved for their service who desire to be instructed, from the Word of God, concerning the imposition and use of significant ceremonies in the worship of God (London: [n.p.], 1660).

Notes: Inscribed sideways on title page: “Thomas Shepards booke 1660 5s [?]”; additional notes on title page; scattered shorthand and plaintext glosses through p. 15. No “TS” mark on top edge (too thin).

5. John Cotton, Of the holinesse of church-members (London: Printed by F.N. for Hanna Allen, and are to be sold at the Crown in Popes-head Alley, 1650).

Notes: Title inscribed on front flyleaf in an early hand; below this, “Wm Jenks A’o 1814.”; inscribed on second front flyleaf, long paragraph in shorthand with short plaintext gloss; inscribed on title page: “Thomas Shepard’s Book”; further note on verso of title page; inscribed on last leaf (blank): “Thomas Shepard’s Book 1660”; below this, notes referring back to pp. 42, 90. No “TS” mark on top edge (too thin).

6. [Synopsis purioris theolgiæ: disputationibus quinquaginta duabus comprehensa, ac conscripta per Iohannem Polyandrum, Andream Rivetum, Antonium Walæum, Antonium Thysium (Lvgduni Batavorvm: Ex officina^ Elzeviriana, 1632).]

Notes: Missing title page. On front pastedown: MHS bookplate noting gift of “Horatio G. Somerby / Nov. 1 1843”; inscribed on first blank: “Thomae Shepardi liber / 21. 3’o 1677”; inscribed below: “Edwardi Parsoni / Liber ex dono superscripti quondam possesoris / 1677” Lightly next to this, “Pret 3s-6d.”; inscribed below this: “Sam’th Parson / 1714”; various pen tests (mostly ggggg) around page. Later notes (librarian’s) on verso of ffep given title information (suggesting this is the 1652 edition, with later penciled note suggesting 1625). Insribed on last full leaf: additional note about Somerby gift to MHS, 1843, and some partially torn away earlier notes on the verso. No “TS” mark on top edge.

Beyond these books at MHS, we’ve also been able to confirm a few other Shepard titles at other libraries, including six that ended up in the Mather collection now at the American Antiquarian Society (I think before we’re done we’ll discover that they have a few more Shepard books, too); one at the John Carter Brown Library; and one at the Morgan Library. Those at the AAS all have the “TS” mark on the top edge (look for a blog post from them on this topic too), and our former MHS colleague Kim Nusco who’s now at the JCB reports that their book was rebound and gilded, probably destroying any edge-mark that used to be there (there’s a glimmer of hope that a trace of the mark might remain).

These discoveries seem to indicate that at least some of the Shepard books probably left the family and did not travel the same path as the Princeton books did, although we’ve yet to determine exactly how they made their way down through the centuries. That remains to be explored, but the names gathered from our copies (i.e. Thomas Prince, Warham Williams, William Jenks, Edward Parson) offer some interesting leads and points of exploration, some of which will be explored in future posts. In the meantime, if you know of any additional Shepard books, please let us know!

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The Thomas Shepards and Their Books [Part 1]

By Jeremy Dibbell

Biblio-sleuthing is one of my very favorite things to do, so it was fun to be able to spend some time last Thursday working on a really interesting project in collaboration with Stephen Ferguson, Curator of Rare Books at Princeton University; Diann Benti, Assistant Reference Librarian at the American Antiquarian Society; and staff at the New England Historic Genealogical Society (NEHGS).

The project got underway when, as Stephen Ferguson noted in a blog post, they found at Princeton more than twenty books from the library of the Thomas Shepards. That’s three generations of early (and famed) New England ministers, each named Thomas Shepard. Or as we’ve taken to calling them, TS1 (1605-1649); TS2 (1635-1677); and TS3 (1658-1685). Most of the Shepard books, Ferguson found, were each “branded” or stamped on the top edge with a “TS” monogram (quite an uncommon practice in early New England, as far as we’ve been able to discover so far). In a follow-up post, Ferguson notes some of the most interesting finds.

Steve called me to see if I could find out a little about the wills and probate inventories of the Shepards, to see if there might be a list of the libraries included there, so off I went to NEHGS and looked through their microfilm copies of the seventeenth-century Middlesex County probate records. Frustratingly, the Shepard probate documents are vague (as so many are) about the contents of the library. TS1’s will leaves to his son Thomas “all my Bookes, manuscripts & paper which last named, viz: bookes, manuscripts & papers, although be propriety of my sonne Thomas yet they shall bee for the use of my wife and my other children.” The inventory lists, as the final item “about two hundred and sixty printed bookes” valued at £100, reiterating that they are to go to TS2.

TS2’s 1677 will leaves to “my son Thomas my whole library, both printed books &  writings, which though the property of my son, shall be also, occasionally, for the use of my wife, & daughters, as they may need, and desire the perusal thereof.” The inventory lists “his Library”, again valued at £100.

TS3, who died in his mid-twenties, left no known will or inventory. His widow Mary (nee Anderson) later married Rev. Samuel Hayman. Hayman died in 1712; his will doesn’t mention a library, and there is no inventory. Mary died in 1717; her will also doesn’t mention a library. Thomas and Mary had one surviving child, a daughter Hannah (or Anne) who married Rev. Henry Smith of New York. Steve has some ideas about how the books now at Princeton made their way there, which I’m sure he’ll share in good time, and he’s also found some good evidence to prove a statement Cotton Mather made about TS3 in his Magnalia Christi Americana (Volume II, p. 124 of the 1820 edition): “… his piety was accompanied with proportionable industry, wherein he devoured books even to a degree of learned gluttony; insomuch, that if he might have changed his name, it must have been Bibliander. … he had hardly left a book of consequence … in his library (shall I now call it, or his laboratory) which he had not so perused as to leave with it an inserted paper, a brief idea of the whole book, with memorandums of more notable passages occurring in it, written in his own diligent and so enriching hand.”

When I got back to MHS from NEHGS, I decided to take a peek through our “manuscript catalog,” which sometimes lists annotations or signatures found in books. Jackpot! I quickly discovered a few Shepard titles in our collections here at MHS … and I look forward to sharing those with you tomorrow. Did those here also have the “TS” mark on the top edge? Where’d they come from? Stay tuned! And what other institutions have Shepard books today?

Posted in From Our Collections

This Week @ MHS

By Jeremy Dibbell

Join us on Wednesday, 20 January at 12 noon for a brown-bag lunch talk with research fellow Eileen Botting. Eileen will discuss her current project, “Hannah Mather Crocker’s Reminscences and Traditions of Boston.” There’s a bit more about the project here, via J.L. Bell’s Boston 1775 blog. And if you happen to know of an image of Hannah Mather Crocker, please let Eileen know!

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Holiday Closure Notice

By Jeremy Dibbell

The MHS, including the library, will be closed on Monday, 18 January in observance of Martin Luther King, Jr. Day.

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This Week @ MHS

By Jeremy Dibbell

Join us on Wednesday, 13 January at 12 noon for a brown-bag lunch with research fellow Rachel Shelden. Rachel will speak on her current project, “Washington Brotherhood: Friendship and Politics in the Civil War Era.”

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New Collection Guide: Edward Atkinson Papers

By Peter Steinberg

A new guide to the Edward Atkinson papers, 1819-1920, is now available on the Massachusetts Historical Society website  (http://www.masshist.org/findingaids/doc.cfm?fa=fa0016). Previously only minimally described, the newly processed collection and finding aid contribute to a fuller understanding of the breadth of Edward Atkinson’s business affairs.

Edward Atkinson was born on 10 February 1827 in Brookline, Massachusetts. He began working as a teenager and became a very well-known and respected authority in a number of business fields and social causes including cotton manufacturing, anti-slavery, fire prevention and insurance, and the science of nutrition, to name but a few.

The loose correspondence has been reorganized, and where applicable, separate series of correspondence have been created. We hope this will save researchers some time as they look for letters from many of Atkinson’s most frequent correspondents, including Wilbur Olin Atwater, Thomas F. Bayard, Jonathan Chace, John Murray Forbes, Franklin L. Ford, Charles Nordhoff, Charles Eliot Norton, John Ott, Ellen H. Richards, or David Ames Wells. 

Additionally, the 79 letterbooks have been re-indexed as part of the project; the new cumulative index can be found at the bottom of the collection guide. Outside of the above named separate series, there is no name index to the loose correspondence, but the index to the letterbooks can be used as a guide to narrow down a potential date or date range of Atkinson’s incoming mail. In the finding aid, each letterbook is also described separately with a list of selected subjects discussed and frequent recipients.

Indexing the letterbooks proved challenging as over the years, in at least two purges, letters were removed either by Atkinson or his descendants prior to the collection’s arrival at the Historical Society, and in creating the new index we found instances where letters were removed after the handwritten indexes were made. While the cumulative indexes do not include entries for the letters removed from the letterbook volumes, the original handwritten indexes remain available at the beginning of each letterbook. We took care to catch each instance, and often mourned the loss of letters which promised to be interesting or quirky, such as Atkinson’s letter to the Department of Lost Umbrellas.

Contributions to the creation of the finding aid were made by Kimberly Kennedy, Kyle Hudgins, Rebecca Hecht, Susan Martin, and Peter K. Steinberg. Support for this project was provided by the FM Global Foundation.

Please note that the Edward Atkinson papers are stored offsite and must be requested at least one business day in advance. Contact the Library at library@masshist.org or (617) 536-1608 to request materials. Please discuss your request with the reading room staff before requesting cartons by barcode.

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Coming Full Circle: Our 100th Object of the Month

By Jeremy Dibbell

To mark the 100th Object of the Month, we’ve decided to go back to our very deepest roots, highlighting one of the first published documents produced by the MHS (and probably my personal favorite of all the things under the roof). It’s the “Circular Letter, of the Historical Society“, in which Jeremy Belknap and the other founders lay out their goals for the organization: “to collect, preserve, and communicate, materials for a complete history of this country.”

Read more about the Circular Letter, Belknap, and the founding of the MHS in Library Assistant Rakashi Chand’s Object of the Month essay. You can also find high-quality scans and a transcription of the Letter there.

You can browse all 100 Objects by clicking here.

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This Week @ MHS

By Jeremy Dibbell

Join us on Wednesday, 6 January at 12 noon for a brown-bag lunch with MHS Digital Projects Coordinator Nancy Heywood and Web Developer Bill Beck, “From Sealing Wax to a Website: The MHS Presents Jefferson’s Manuscript of Notes on the State of Virginia.” More info here.

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Summing Up 2009

By Elaine Grublin

It looks like 2009 was a busy year in the MHS library. We previously reported that this past July was the busiest month on recent record in our reading room. The trend continued through most of the calendar year. All told we had over 1,450 researchers visit the library over the course of the year, for a total of 2,851 daily uses. We had over 740 first time visitors this year, a good indication that both our website and our public and educational programs are reaching out to new users. It is also a good indicator that people are still interested in using libraries.

In addition to the people that visited the library in person, our reference staff engaged in over 1,500 email correspondences with researchers seeking assistance, answered 62 posted letters, and fielded over 1,100 reference-related phone calls.

In servicing our researchers the staff made over 13,000 photocopies of MHS documents, and paged over 5,600 call slips. Because researchers can request multiple volumes and/or boxes from manuscript collections on a single call slip, it is difficult to gauge just how many individual items were retrieved and returned to the stacks, but I would wager it is a safe bet to say that it was well over 10,000 items.

You may be wondering where all those researchers come from. Given the size and scope of our collection is it not surprising that researchers come from near and far to visit the MHS reading room.

Local visitors, (individuals with Massachusetts addresses), make up about 44% of our researcher population. A person in Pittsfield, MA may argue that he is less of a local than a resident of Providence, RI or Portsmouth, NH, so that number may be a bit of an unfair representation of the ‘local’ population. It would be interesting to see what percentage of our Massachusetts visitors are from the greater Boston area. Perhaps we will track that data in 2010.

The largest percentage of our researcher population, about 50%, is comprised of United States residents living outside of Massachusetts. In 2009 the MHS reading room was visited by individuals traveling from 44 of the 50 states, plus researchers from both Washington, D.C. and Puerto Rico. The only states not represented by researchers visiting the library this year were Hawaii, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nevada, North Dakota, and West Virginia. Incidentally, West Virginia is the only state in the nation not represented in our current researcher database. This means that we have not had a visitor to our library from West Virginia in the 21st century (the new database was started in 1999). If you know of any West Virginian historians, please send them our way!

Our researchers do reach well beyond the borders of the United States, though. In 2009 we had visitors from more than 12 foreign nations, including Portugal, Japan, Croatia, Poland, Israel, Australia, Ireland, and Russia. The majority of our international visitors are from the nations of the United Kingdom and Canada, a trend that continues from year to year. It is also interesting to note, although not at all surprising, that our international visitors tend to visit the reading room on multiple consecutive days, more so than researchers from the United States.

Hopefully 2010 will prove to be an even bigger year for the library staff and our researchers, and with any luck at all we’ll add a West Virginian to our reader database!

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