2009-2010 Research Fellows Announced

By Jeremy Dibbell

The MHS awards a wide variety of research fellowships each year. Those for the 2009-2010 season were recently announced. Please pardon the lengthy list (impressive, isn’t it?). For more information about each type of fellowship, click the link in the heading.

MHS-NEH Long-Term Research Fellowships:

– Crystal Feimster, Assistant Professor, Department of History, University of North Carolina, Sexual Warfare: Rape and the American Civil War (four-month award)

– Linford Fisher, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Brown University, The Indian Great Awakening: Religion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early America (ten-month award; deferred to 2010-2011)

– April Haynes, Post-Doctoral Fellow, Massachusetts Historical Society and American Antiquarian Society, Riotous Flesh: Gender, Physiology, and the Solitary Vice, 1830-1860 (four-month award)

MHS Short-Term Research Fellowships:

– Karen Woods Weierman, Associate Professor, Department of English, Worcester State College, The Case of the Slave-Child, Med: The Geography of Freedom in Antebellum Boston (African American Studies Fellow)

– Mazie Harris, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of the History of Art and Architecture, Brown University, “To Feast Our Bodily Eyes”: Nineteenth-Century American Portrait Vignettes and Card Albums (Andrew Oliver Research Fellow)

– Carol Bundy, Independent Scholar, McClellan’s Visit to Boston, January 28-February 8, 1863 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Jan Cigliano, Independent Scholar, John Hay: Genius of Diplomacy (1838-1905) (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Lindsay DiCuirci, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of English, The Ohio State University, History’s Imprint: The Colonial Book and the Writing of American History in the Nineteenth Century (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Jim Downs, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Connecticut College, Sick from Freedom: The Unexpected Consequences of the American Civil War (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Caroline Frank, Visiting Lecturer, Department of American Civilization, Brown University, Native American Enslavement in Southern New England, 1630-1730 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Elizabeth Kelly Gray, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Towson University, Worlds of Pain: Opium and Early America (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Matt Hudock, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Delaware, African American Colonization and Identity (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Whitney Martinko, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Virginia, Progress through Preservation: History on the American Landscape in an Age of Improvement, 1790-1860 (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Rachel Shapiro, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Virginia, Washington Brotherhood: Friendship and Politics in the Civil War Era (Andrew W. Mellon Fellow)

– Lori Veilleux, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of Religious Studies, Brown University, Religion, Science, and Boston’s 1832 Cholera Epidemic (Benjamin F. Stevens Fellow)

– Alea Henle, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Connecticut, Preserving the Past, Making History: Historical Societies, Editors, and Collectors in the Early Republic (Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellow)

– Matthew Hale, Assistant Professor, Department of History, Goucher College, The French Revolution and American National Identity (Marc Friedlaender Fellow)

– Jeffrey Kosiorek, Visiting Assistant Professor, Department of History, Hendrix College, The Power of Our Patriot Fathers: Memory, Commemoration, and the American Revolution in the Nineteenth Century (Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellow)

– Sara Lampert, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Michigan, The Public Woman: Taking the Stage in Nineteenth-Century America (Ruth R. and Alyson R. Miller Fellow)

– Deborah McNally, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Washington, Within Patriarchy: Puritan Women in Massachusetts’s Congregational Churches, 1630-1715 (Ruth R. and Alyson R. Miller Fellow)

– Derek Attig, Ph.D. Student, Department of History, University of Illinois, Race, Religion, and the Idea of America in Twentieth-Century Bookmobility (Twentieth Century History Fellow)

– Justin Pope, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, The George Washington University, Whispers and Waves: Insurrection, Conspiracy, and the Search for Salvation in the British Atlantic, 1729-1742 (W.B.H. Dowse Fellow)

– Richard Rath, Associate Professor of History, University of Hawai’i at Manoa, The Disenchantment of America: Mediating the Senses in the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic World (W.B.H. Dowse Fellow)

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Research Fellowship (with the Boston Athenaeum):

– Kathryn Shively Meier, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of HIstory, University of Virginia, “Under the Siege of the Blue”: Environmental Effects on Civil War Mental and Physical Health in Virginia, 1862

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

– Elizabeth Blackmar, Professor, Department of History, Columbia University, Land, Capital, and the Ethos of Preserving Family Property

– Michael Block, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Southern California, New England Merchants, the China Trade, and the Origins of California

– Eileen Botting, Associate Professor, Department of Political Science, University of Notre Dame, Reclaiming a Lost Text of Early American History and Political Thought: Hannah Mather Crocker’s “Reminiscences and Traditions of Boston” (Colonial Society of Massachusetts Fellow)

– Sean Harvey, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, College of William and Mary, American Languages: Indians, Ethnology, and the Empire for Liberty

– Alea Henle, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Connecticut, Preserving the Past, Making History: Historical Societies, Editors & Collectors in the Early Republic

– Whitney Martinko, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Virginia, Progress through Preservation: History on the American Landscape in an Age of Improvement, 1790-1860

– Amber Moulton-Wiseman, Ph.D. Candidate in African and African-American Studies, Harvard University, Marriage Extraordinary: Interracial Marriage and the Politics of Family in Antebellum Massachusetts (Bostonian Society/New England Women’s Club Fellow)

– Alan Rogers, Professor, Department of History, Boston College, Smallpox and Skeptics: The Battle Over Compulsory Vaccination in Massachusetts

– D. Jamez Terry, B.A. Candidate, Department of History, University of Maine at Farmington, Cultural Constructions of Charles Guiteau

– John Wong, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, Harvard University, Global Positioning: China Trade and the Hong Merchants of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries

– Helen York, Ph.D. Candidate, Department of History, University of Maine at Orono, Sound and Silence: Enfranchised and Disenfranchised Radio in New England

* Note: not all of the NERFC fellows will be researching at MHS as part of their NERFC award.

Teacher Fellowships:

– Richard Gallagher, Hartford Memorial Middle School, White River Junction, VT (Adams Fellow)

– Adam Zilcoski, W. L. Chenery Middle School, Belmont, MA (Adams Fellow)

– Danielle Fernandex, North Quincy High School, Quincy, MA (Swensrud Fellow)

– Sean Irwin, Boston College High School, Boston, MA (Swensrud Fellow)

– Edward Davey, Jonas Clarke Middle School, Lexington, MA (Kass Fellow)

– Charles Newhall, St. John’s Preparatory School, Danvers, MA (Kass Fellow)

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New Publications from MHS Friends

By Jeremy Dibbell

One of the things I’ll try to keep track of here at The Beehive is new and recent publications based on MHS collections. The only promise I can make about this is that I won’t be able to be comprehensive (I try to keep a pretty close eye on these things, but it would be a vast overstatement of my abilities to suggest that I could catch them all), so if you’re a current or former MHS fellow or researcher, please feel free to email me (beehive@masshist.org) with information on your work and I’ll be happy to mention it here as time and space permit.

Bryan Waterman, associate professor of English at NYU, was a 2007-08 Andrew W. Mellon research fellow at the MHS. His article “Elizabeth Whitman’s Disappearence and Her ‘Disappointment'” appears in the April 2009 issue of William & Mary Quarterly (3d Series, Volume LXVI, Number 2, pp. 325-364. Waterman’s research at the MHS included examinations of the diary and correspondence of Jeremy Belknap (who played a fascinating role in the dissemination of the Whitman story), the Nathan Webb diary, and other collections. Elizabeth Whitman, the subject of the article, is best known as the inspiration for Hannah Webster Foster’s 1797 The Coquette; Waterman explores the different, competing versions of Whitman’s story (including Foster’s, Belknap’s, and others).

Incidentally, Waterman is also the co-editor of the current special issue of the e-journal Common-place, “Who Reads an Early American Book?” His preface provides some background information on the Whitman story and the continuing vitality of both The Coquette and its historical inspiration.

Also in this issue of Common-place, two MHS connections are present, in a feature in which historians discuss books revelant to America that they teach or study. Current NEH long-term fellow Carolyn Eastman, assistant professor of History at the University of Texas at Austin, recommends Alexandre Exquemelin’s Bucaniers of America, while James Sidbury, professor of History also at UT-Austin, goes for John Kizell’s “Apology for For the Conduct of John Kezell And His associates Occasioned By the Strictures And Denunciations by the Rev. Daniel Coker In His Journall Letters and Informations In the fourth Annual Report,” a manuscript pamphlet in the Ebenezer Burgess papers here at MHS.

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MHS Proceedings & MHR Now Available on JSTOR

By Jeremy Dibbell

I’m very pleased to report that the Proceedings of the Massaschusetts Historical Society (1791-1997) and the Massachusetts Historical Review (1999- ) are now available digitally through the subscription database JSTOR. Most universities and large public libraries (including the Boston Public Library) offer access to JSTOR content, which means our publications are now much more widely accessible to scholars and researchers around the world.

The search capability provided by JSTOR is a real treat – just yesterday I was looking for something in the Proceedings and rather than browsing through several different index volumes, I just ran a full-text search across all the volumes and had the answer in no time.

Note: Many volumes of the Proceedings are also freely available via Google Books, but not in a systematic way.

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Today @ MHS: Nelson Brown-Bag

By Jeremy Dibbell

Join us today (Wednesday) at 12 noon in the Dowse Library for a brown-bag lunch with Megan Kate Nelson, Assistant Professor of History at California State University, Fullerton. Nelson will discuss the cultural and environmental frameworks that inform her book project, Ruin Nation: The Destruction of the South and the Making of America during the Civil War Era. She will explain how and why Americans destroyed southern cities, plantations, forests, and men, and how both soldiers and civilians responded to these different kinds of ruins between 1861 and 1900. Dr. Nelson will also talk about the importance that letters and diaries of New Englanders play in her research, with examples drawn from the collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society.

Nelson received five fellowships – including the Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship in the Study of the Civil War and the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Award – to support the research and writing of Ruin Nation in 2008-2009 and has presented her work as part of the Boston Environmental History Seminar Series at the Massachusetts Historical Society (10 Februrary 2009) and the Weirding the War Conference at the University of Georgia.

This event is free and open to the public.

Posted in This Week @MHS

Meet & Greet: Reader Services

By Jeremy Dibbell

Over the next few weeks, I’ll be posting occasional pieces designed to introduce the various departments responsible for the wide range of activities that go on at 1154 Boylston Street. I thought it only fair to begin with my own department, since we in Reader Services are the folks you’re most likely to see when you come in to use the library. We’re the ones who staff the reception desk, the reading room and the reference desk, and who answer your reference questions by email, phone, or letter (yes, we still get a few). We’re responsible for retrieving and returning the materials our readers ask to see every day, and for enforcing the library’s policies and procedures. Reader Services staff also manage rights and reproduction requests submitted by authors, filmmakers and others who wish to cite material or use an image from our collections; coordinate incoming and outgoing loans; and curate the Society’s public exhibits.

Reader Services staff members include:

Peter Drummey, Stephen T. Riley Librarian
Anne Bentley, Curator of Art
Elaine Grublin, Reference Librarian
Tracy Potter & Jeremy Dibbell, Assistant Reference Librarians
Heather Merrill, Sara Georgini, Caitlin Corless, Anna Cook, & Rakashi Chand, Library Assistants

We also are frequently joined by an intern or two from the archives program at Simmons College. Our most recent, Jocelyn Gould and Daniel Hinchen, have just finished their semester with us.

If you have a general question for our department, or if you need to reach any one of us, you can find our complete contact information here.

 

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The Sun Never Sets …

By Jeremy Dibbell

Here’s a perfect example of the far-reaching influence of the MHS. Cuiyun Li, a professor at the College of Foreign Languages and Culture at Inner Mongolia University in China, has recently published a book which draws heavily on the collections and publications of the Historical Society: John Winthrop: A Pioneer of American Civilization (Inner Mongolia University Press, 2008). Li is at Harvard University on a Fulbright scholarship this academic year, and has paid several visits to the MHS in recent weeks. On her first visit, she presented us with a signed copy of her book, which will soon be among the books on display in the Saltonstall Reference Room (for those readers who can read Mandarin Chinese).

Li, who shares a birthday with Winthrop, told me that she will use her book in teaching graduate students at her home institution about John Winthrop and the important role he played in American history. “He is very special,” she said. “Too many people don’t know him.”

Li, holding a volume of John Winthrop’s journal

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Behind the Title: Why The Beehive?

By Jeremy Dibbell

If you’ve ever looked closely at the woodwork over the fireplace in Ellis Hall (better known as the Reading Room), you may have noticed there the seal of the Society, which also appears in the masthead of this blog, and on the title pages of various Society publications. The design features a beehive with several honeybees buzzing around it; an inscription above reads “Sic Vos Non Vobis” (which translates roughly to “you work, but not for yourselves”).

Our seal dates from late 1833, when MHS President John Davis was charged by the members to “prepare a device for a seal for the Society.” Davis obliged, presenting the design in its current form on 27 February 1834. The quote is from the Roman poet Virgil’s response to another poet, Bathyllus, who had claimed credit for a pro-Caesar verse penned (and posted anonymously) by Virgil.

The entire rejoinder reads:

Hos ego versiculos feci, tulit alter honores; / Sic vos non vobis fertis aratra boves; / Sic vos non vobis mellificatis apes; / Sic vos non vobis vellera fertis oves; /Sic vos non vobis nidificatis aves.

That is, I wrote these lines; another has borne away the honor; / Thus do ye, oxen, for others bear the yoke; / Thus do ye, bees, for others make honey; / Thus do ye, sheep, wear fleece for others; / Thus do ye, birds, for others make nests.

As former MHS director Stewart Mitchell wrote in 1949, it would hardly have done to compare the members of the Society to oxen, sheep, or birds … “but bees had always had a good reputation for the sweetness and light of their honey and their wax,” and made a fitting symbol for the Society’s mission. And according to MHS member Charles Deane’s remarks at a March 1877 meeting of the Society, Virgil’s line “has always been regarded as a favorite motto for quotation, to indicate devoted and disinterested labor, that is to say, for the good of others …”.

Judge Davis’ seal has stood the tests of time, although the members briefly considered abandoning it in 1857 in favor of a new design. It was decided that “to discard [the seal] for a new one, merely because the latter is better suited to the present advanced state of art, would afford a precedent for continued changes, in order to keep pace with the progress of improvement. Such changes weaken the confirmative proof derived from a corporate seal and might even bring its identity or genuineness into question, to the detriment or hazard of corporate interests. There is, besides, a certain degree of respect, commonly entertained for the antiquity of a seal, which should be cherished by a Society like ours.” The source of the motto was called into question in 1881, when member Henry Haynes presented a paper challenging Virgil’s authorship of the poem. Haynes concluded “I fear that [our motto’s] paternity, instead of being as respectable as has been imagined, is in fact rather dubious.” Haynes’ argument does not seem to have gained much traction, however, and the MHS (along with the rest of the world) continues to attribute the verse to Virgil.

There is some question, however, of Davis’ inspiration for the seal’s design. As early as 1791 MHS founder Jeremy Belknap had beehives on the brain: among his papers is a note pertaining to a seal: “For the Historical Society a Beehive – supported by two Beavers” with the motto “Nil magnum sine labore” (“nothing great is done without labor”). (It should be said that Belknap later mused about a seal which would feature “a flying eagle – a ranging wolf – and a shark – all seeking their prey.”) Belknap never formally proposed either of his ideas, and it is not known whether Davis knew of them in the 1830s.

Several other precedents for the MHS device are known, as Mr. Deane noted way back in 1877. In John Dunton’s literary periodical The Compleat Library (1692-94) a device on the title page (below left) includes a beehive and the bannered inscription “Sic nos non nobis mellificamus apes” (the line containing our motto, converted to first person). And on the frontispiece to the eighth volume of John Nichols’ Literary Anecdotes (1814), another beehive (below right), this one with the exact inscription later used for the MHS seal.

Coincidence?? You be the judge.

Regardless of where it came from, there you have it: the story behind The Beehive. I think the image really does capture what we’re all about here at the MHS. Just as the Society’s members always have, those of us who work here today labor not for ourselves, but for others.

 

For further reading:
– Proceedings of the Massachusetts Historical Society Volume 1 (1791-1835), pp. 483-488.
– Charles Deane, “Remarks on the Seal of the Society.” Proceedings Volume 15 (1876-1877), pp. 256-258.
– Henry Haynes, “[On the authorship of the Society’s motto.]” Proceedings Volume 18 (1880-1881), pp. 402-404.
– Stewart Mitchell, Handbook of the Massachusetts Historical Society, 1791-1948. Boston: MHS, 1949, p. 8.
– Louis Leonard Tucker, The Massachusetts Historical Society: A Bicentennial History, 1791-1991. Boston: MHS, 1995, pp. 58-61.

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Welcome to The Beehive!

By Jeremy Dibbell

Greetings! On behalf of the staff of the Massachusetts Historical Society, I’d like to welcome you to our new blog, The Beehive. I’m Jeremy Dibbell, an Assistant Reference Librarian here at the Society, and I’ve been offered the chance to facilitate this little foray into the blogosphere, but you’ll soon see others from around the building contributing as well. We’ll be using this blog as an informal, interactive way to “get the word out” about the goings-on at 1154 Boylston Street. Some of the things you can expect to find here are (in no particular order):

– notices of upcoming public events and programs
– profiles of MHS research fellows and visitors
– announcements of new library resources (acquisitions, digital finding guides, &c.)
– summaries and descriptions of our manuscript collections and other resources
– notes, quotes and anecdotes from the Society’s past (and present)
– news and happenings from the various MHS departments
– discussions of issues facing the library and historical society community

My goal is to provide approximately two or three posts per week (some may be short), and I hope you’ll stop by and visit often. You can bookmark this site at http://www.masshist.org/blog, or add the RSS feed to your Google Reader or other aggregator (you also can do this by clicking the “Subscribe” button on the sidebar). Please email me at beehive@masshist.org with any corrections, comments or suggestions for future posts, and soon we’ll have a comments feature ready to go.

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