By Susan Martin, Processing Archivist & EAD Coordinator

My work as a processing archivist here at the Massachusetts Historical Society involves not only cataloging new manuscript collections, but also improving descriptions and access for collections that have been sitting on our shelves for some time. Case in point: the Tufts family papers, which was recently brought to my attention by Laura Wulf, the MHS’s photographic and digital imaging specialist. While working on digital images from that collection, she noticed an oversight in our online catalog ABIGAIL.

The collection consists of correspondence, diaries, logbooks, and other papers of the notable Tufts family of Charlestown, Mass. Included are two logbooks dating from the mid-1850s, kept by brothers George and Alfred Tufts. Normally, logbooks that are part of a larger collection are individually cataloged to allow for more detailed subject access. As Laura discovered, Alfred’s had been cataloged, but George’s was nowhere to be found.

The oversight was understandable—the brothers were actually traveling together on the same ship, the Ocean Pearl, and it’s pretty easy to make a mistake about who kept which volume if you don’t have time to examine them closely. But George deserved his due, and I was sorry to see him overshadowed by his younger brother like that! So the first thing I did was create a new, separate catalog record for his log.

I enjoy doing this kind of clean-up, not only because it makes our catalog more useful and our collections more discoverable for researchers, but also because it gives me the opportunity to add more detail to ABIGAIL and to familiarize myself with our older collections. The Tufts family papers were donated to the MHS back in 1962, and I don’t think I’ve ever had reason to look at them before. It’s a really fun and interesting collection.

In their logbooks, George and Alfred kept the usual navigational records—longitude, latitude, wind, course, temperature, etc.—but they didn’t stop there. The logs are also journals, fleshed out with long-form descriptions of daily life on a ship, including who got seasick (George), who lost his hat overboard (Alfred), who got drenched (pretty much everybody at some point), what Mr. and Mrs. Baldwin were arguing about (the window shutter), and what was really going on between Capt. Sears and Mrs. Whitney (who knows?). The two volumes complement each other; the brothers recount the same events, often in very similar language, although Alfred’s entries tend to be longer. Both logs also contain sketches of icebergs, islands, and other sights.

The Ocean Pearl sailed from Boston on 28 November 1854, around Cape Horn at the southern tip of South America, and landed at Honolulu, Hawaii. There, it turns out, the brothers split up—Alfred continued on the Ocean Pearl to the Far East, but George stayed in Hawaii for six months, where he wrote terrific descriptions of the islands’ natural and cultural wonders. On 26 September 1855, George embarked for San Francisco, overlapping with the tail end of the California Gold Rush, then sailed across the Pacific to Hong Kong and other points in Asia. Adding insult to injury, these voyages had been mistakenly attributed to Alfred, too!

After straightening out the catalog records for both logbooks, I noticed the collection contained another journal kept by George in 1850. On closer inspection, I found it described a trip up the Mississippi and Ohio Rivers via steamboat, so I added some detail to that catalog record, as well. Like the logbooks, there’s a lot more to this volume than meets the eye. For example, here’s one of George’s entries from June of that year:

In the afternoon went in a canoe to Crow wing village 6 miles below St Paul. I had seen the indians among the whites, but here they were by themselves on their own soil doing things in their own way. When I arrived at the village they had just been dancing the scalp dance, over the scalps they had taken this spring from the Chippeways. When the scalps were taken they made a mark on the knee & are to dance every other day till the grass gets to that height. A group of them were sitting on the ground playing a game with moccasins accompanied with singing, drumming & yelling with “variations.” I heard their noise when two miles from the place. Their burial ground is on a hill back of the town. The bodies are mounted on a scaffold with the articles used by the deceased in his life time hanging about it. Also the clothing & locks of hair. They leave them in this way about 6 weeks & then bury them.

High-quality digital images of the Ocean Pearl logbooks of George and Alfred Tufts, as well as material from related collections at the MHS and other repositories, are available as part of the China, America and the Pacific online resource, published by Adam Matthew Digital. You’ll have to visit our library in person (or another participating library) to use this subscription database, and we hope you will. If you have questions about any of our collections, please don’t hesitate to contact our reference staff.

By Rakashi Chand, Reader Services

Christmas of 1918 should have been jubilant–the war was over, soldiers were starting to come home and women were on the verge of gaining suffrage. But sadly, dark shadows loomed over festivities and revelry that year, as the aftermath of the war and the widespread Influenza and tuberculosis left hundreds of thousands dead, sick or wounded. The Nation’s central relief organization was the American Red Cross, which desperately needed funding, so they launched a membership drive called the ‘Christmas Roll Call’ from 16 through 23 December, 1918.

“When the United States entered the World War the people appointed the Red Cross as its steward to minister to the wants of human beings in distress whenever aid and succor were needed.

… This is in brief the service work of the Red Cross expressed in unemotional statistics. The real work of aiding suffering humanity, of nursing the ill, and ministering to those in want – the service of relieving the worries of our men overseas- the thousand and one things done in a day’s work- all that can not be told in numerals.

But to continue this work for humanity, to serve as steward for the American people, will require the united support of all Americans. With this end in view, the Red Cross will hold it’s second annual Christmas Roll call during the week of December 16 to 23^rd, when it is hoped that every one will renew the nation-wide pledge of last year to uphold the flag – a vow taken by 22,000,000 million adults and 8,000,000 children.

Some day, and that day seems near at hand, the world will wish to spend as much effort and gold for the prevention of war as it does now for the amelioration of its infinite ills. At this hour, however, the American Red Cross is the sacrament oT the nations, the visible expression of the mother-heart of the race, the beacon and the hope of the world’s wounded and storm-tossed everywhere. Membership in the American Red Cross defines and honors the members and scatters healing where healing is sorely needed.” said the Advocate of Peace in December of 1918.

The Broadsides created to promote the ‘Christmas Roll Call’ or Membership drive of 1918 are some of the most beautiful pieces of 20^th century ephemera. The MHS houses some of the famous broadsides (or posters) created for the Roll Call. The posters’ popularity eclipsed the roll call itself–they are perhaps the most beautiful images ever associated with the Holiday Season. The artists that created these images were some of the best of the time, working pro-bono for the Red Cross effort, such as Harrison Fisher, who created a new stereotype for American woman as bold and beautiful, known as the “Fisher girls.

Christmas a century ago reminds us to be thankful for our blessings, and to continue to support those who work tirelessly to end suffering and alleviate pain, towards the betterment of all humans and life on this shared earth.

The MHS will be closed from 24 December through 1 January, but we welcome you to visit the Library during regular hour through Saturday, December 22^nd to enjoy exploring our collections including our wonderful Ephemera collection of broadsides, posters and greeting cards.

By Susan Martin, Processing Archivist & EAD Coordinator

In June 1854, the Boston City Missionary Society appointed a Methodist Episcopal clergyman named Luman Boyden to serve as missionary to the poor in East Boston. The 48-year-old Boyden (pictured above, about ten years later) had had a distinguished 20-year career as a minister in Sudbury, Oxford, Dorchester, Chelsea, Fitchburg, Holliston, Spencer, Roxbury, Salem, and Waltham. The Society offered him a salary of $650 a year, and he would earn an additional $200 preaching at Union Chapel in East Boston.

Earlier this year, the MHS acquired four manuscript journals Boyden kept during this time, 1854-1863, primarily documenting his missionary work. He wrote in them every day and described, in compelling detail, the poverty in East Boston, as well as the ravages of alcoholism, domestic violence, other crimes, suicides, and illnesses such as tuberculosis, smallpox, and typhoid fever. Boyden visited the homes of Protestant, Irish Catholic, African American, and immigrant families, many suffering from terrible privation. His journals are a fascinating social history of the city and a record of 19th-century urban life in general.

Rev. Boyden hit the ground running. His first day on the job was 1 July 1854, and just 17 days in, he was attending the family of a Mr. Rose, who had attempted to kill himself by cutting his own throat with a razor blade. Two days later, Boyden visited a woman “putrid with disease,” a young woman dying of consumption, and the family of a suicide victim. He was shocked and horrified by the things he saw. When three people he’d met were arrested for murder, he wrote disbelievingly, “Did not think Monday that I was talking with those who would so soon be considered murderers.”

The pages of Boyden’s journals are filled with daily tragedies. He visited multiple families a day, and while his compassion for the poor was clearly genuine, he was not a disinterested party. One of his primary goals was conversion, and he distributed Bibles and religious tracts and proselytized about sin and salvation. He used language like “den of pollution” and “hive of iniquity” to describe some homes. About others, he simply wrote, “There Satan appears to reign.” As you can imagine, he encountered resistance from Irish Catholic residents, the dominant immigrant group in the neighborhood.

The journals contain a wealth of information, including names and addresses, and some entries go on for multiple pages. In one, Boyden paints a vivid picture of a tenement building as he moves floor to floor, and you also get a sense of his attitude toward the tenants.

Went into Bee Hive No 2 on Havre Street. It is a large old building in the rear of Bee Hive No 1. In each house 16 Tenements which rent for 1 ¼ dollar each week or $65.00 a year. The amount of rent for each year 1040.00. The Hive No 2 is not worth beside land $400.00. […] The houses are owned by a shoe firm in the city & the Tenants make shoes for the firm so the rent is secure & to obtain work the Tenements are filled. […] As I descended flight after flight I found others of the same class, poor, ignorant, depraved & who must be saved or lost forever.

Boyden reserved his fiercest animosity for alcohol. In the margins alongside his text, he scribbled headings like “Rum & Poverty,” “Rum & Beggary,” “Rumsellers Abomination,” etc. Other headings include “Motherless Boy,” “Barefoot Family,” “Poor & Proud,” “Blind Girl in Waltham,” “Furious Woman,” “Singular Case,” and “Children Under Table.”

Speaking of children, many of those Boyden met on his rounds did not attend or had never attended school. Boyden strongly advocated for the education of all children. On 28 September 1854, he wrote about the Nute family.

House kept quite neat, children dressed neatly but in consequence of being colored they are suffering by a most oppressive arrangement. Their children are allowed to attend the primary school with white children but as soon as they become qualified to enter the grammar school, they are not admitted to the schools in E. Boston, but go to the colored school [the Abiel Smith School] in Belknap St about 2 miles from home. In doing this they are obliged to cross the Ferry & pay two cents toll each way. They have three who attend the school in Belknap St at an expense of ferriage of 12 cents a day. […] They feel afflicted that while the dirtiest, vilest white children are admitted that theirs are excluded. Say they have applied to the General School Com[mitte]e but have accomplished nothing. I am resolved to plead their cause.

Incidentally, less than one year later, the Massachusetts legislature passed the first law in the United States prohibiting segregation in public schools. The campaign was led by Benjamin F. Roberts, whose children had also been excluded from the white schools near their home. Roberts had previously lost his case at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Roberts v. City of Boston (1850).

In his journals, Boyden often recorded follow-up visits, so we know how some of the stories developed, who lived and who died, who went to jail or the almshouse, who converted, who repented, and who didn’t. For example, here’s an amazing passage that caught my eye. On 20 March 1857, Boyden visited an African American family on Bennington Street, consisting of Mrs. Russell, her adult daughter, and the daughter’s two children.

[The daughter] is very black & I noticed the infant in her arms was far from being black. I asked if her husband was a pious man? She said I may as well tell the truth, I have no husband. I inquired is not the father to that child a white man? She made no reply, excepting a coarse laugh. I told her that it belonged to the father of the child to support it & I could not help her till he had been seen & if he had anything compelled to aid. […] She has another child about 6 years old the same color. I spoke to her plainly of her wickedness. She said with apparent anger, it is Gods will or it would not be so. The old Lady seemed to feel deeply the ruin of her only child.

Miss Russell told Rev. Boyden the name of her baby’s father, who was white and had a wife and other children. Boyden said he would visit the man, although I couldn’t determine if he ever did. Unfortunately, when he returned to the Russell home about a month later . . .

Her daughter in quite a rage because several weeks since I reproved her as she think[s] to[o] severely. She then said it was the Lords will. I told her it was the work of the devil. She replied that she knew that the Lord made her & he did every child. Today she said the child died several weeks ago.

While most entries relate to Boyden’s missionary and ministerial work, some give us glimpses into his personal life. He and his wife Mary had two children—at the start of the first journal, Helen Maria was 24 and Jeremiah Wesley 15. There had been another daughter, Mary Elizabeth, but she died in 1837 at the age of three. Boyden wrote about her several times.

Luman Boyden died in 1876 at the age of 70. His wife Mary lived until 1897. Both parents outlived their son Jeremiah, who served as a U.S. Navy surgeon in the Civil War before dying of yellow fever at 27. Daughter Helen worked as a teacher, married Thomas Warren Thayer, and died in 1922 at 92 years old.

P.S. Interestingly, Boyden frequently referred in his journals to another missionary for the Boston City Missionary Society, Armeda Gibbs. Gibbs was an abolitionist who helped freedom seekers and is probably best known as the first female nurse for the Union army during the Civil War. Sure enough, Boyden noted on 6 August 1862, “Heard Miss Gibbs offered to go as nurse in the army.”