Digitizing Dorr’s Annotated Newspapers

By Laura Wulf, Collection Services

This is the third online post about our collection of pre-Revolutionary War newspapers annotated by Boston shopkeeper Harbottle Dorr, Jr. In the first post Nancy Heywood introduced you to Dorr. In the second post Peter Steinberg highlighted some of the more humorous phrases we ran across in Dorr’s indexes. In this post, I thought I would share a behind-the-scenes look at the work that went into creating the digital images that will appear on our website in early 2013.

The four volumes that make up this collection began their digitization journey in the conservation lab where they were cleaned and rehoused in individual acid-free folders to insure their longevity. You can read about the conservation work in our Spring 2012 issue of the Society’s newsletter Miscellany.

Once the conservation work was complete, the four-volume set, containing 3,674 pages, moved into the hands of the MHS Digital Projects team. Our very first task was to create spreadsheets itemizing each page so that we could standardize the digital file names, organize the sequencing, and track and account for every page of every newspaper.

Next, volumes 1 and 2 were delivered to the Digital Services Department of the Boston Public Library (BPL) for imaging. As a member of Digital Commonwealth (a Web portal and fee-based repository service for online cultural heritage materials held by Massachusetts libraries, museums, historical societies, and archives), the MHS is eligible for free digitization services provided by the BPL as part of a grant funded by the Library Services and Technology Act (LSTA) and administered by the Commonwealth of Massachusetts Board of Library Commissioners (MBLC).

The BPL’s photography studio is equipped with 3 high-end digital camera systems, a copystand, and a vacuum table that holds items flat and perfectly parallel to the camera sensor. This equipment allows the technicians to create much higher quality digital images of the newspapers than we could create with our digital single lense reflex (DSLR) camera and copystand. Here’s what the set-up at the BPL looks like. Notice how, before the vacuum table is turned on, the corners of the newspaper are curled up:

And here is the same set up with the vacuum table turned on and the newspaper held down flat by the suction. Without the suction of the table the technicians would have to place a large piece of glass on top of the newspaper to hold it down flat, which is cumbersome, slows production and creates glare problems from the light source:

The BPL spent close to three weeks completing the digitization and file preparation. Volumes 1 and 2 were then returned to MHS along with a hard drive holding 1627 high resolution TIFF files, one for each page. We are currently working on figuring out what size images will work best on our website (given the capacity of our server, the large number of images to be presented, and the need for clear, readable text), what size repository statement will make it clear that the images come from our collection but not interfere with the online users’ ability to read the material, how to structure the website so that it will work efficiently, and how to design the interface so that it will be easy for people to use.

Once we have made these decisions, we will begin the process of creating the smaller images for display, uploading them onto our server, fine-tuning the website based on feedback from usability testing, and documenting our procedures so that the remaining images of volumes 3 and 4 can be created the same way for a consistent and high quality online presentation. The project is time consuming and labor intensive but we’re excited about this most unusual collection and hope that you’ll take the time to enjoy it once it’s up and running early next year.

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Interview: Spotlight on Education at the MHS

By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

On Wednesday Assistant Director of Education and Public Programs Kathleen Barker wrote about the recent teacher workshops held at the MHS. The week-long workshops, titled “At the Crossroads of Revolution: Lexington and Concord in 1775,” engaged 80 teachers from across the country, who will return to their classrooms with exciting material for their students. After the successful workshops, Barker sat down to talk with me about the Society’s ongoing educational work.

 

  1. Tell me about the history of education efforts at the MHS.

About 12 years ago MHS fellow David McCullough, whose son is a teacher, expressed an interest in developing educational efforts for teachers at the MHS. That led to the Society offering the Swensrud Fellowships for teachers beginning in 2001. That program continues today, in addition to other efforts. We have curriculum ideas available for teachers based on the materials in our collections. We also offer seminars where teachers have the opportunity to examine primary sources from our collections and take their discoveries back to their students. And we offer workshops for students and parents.

 2. You recently completed two week-long summer workshops for teachers. What were the goals of these workshops?

The workshops were part of the Landmarks of American History and Culture project funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, and the idea was to get teachers out into the landscapes where historical events happened. Our workshop was about Lexington and Concord during the Revolutionary War, so we took the teachers to those places. They were not in classrooms, but in barns, historic houses, and in Minute Man National Historic Park. We also spent time at the MHS and gave context to these places.

3. How have teachers been impacted by coming to educational events at the MHS?

Teachers from these recent workshops told us that they see history differently after being in the places where events took place, and they bring that to the classroom. Many teachers have told us they use our website in their classrooms, and they encourage their students to learn from documents from our online collections.

4. Why is it important that the rich materials in the Society’s collections reach young students?

The historical evidence in our collections helps students to develop critical thinking skills. Instead of taking the interpretation of their teacher or textbook at face value, they are able to examine original documents and form their own ideas. It’s also important to develop students’ interest in history, because they are the preservationists of tomorrow. If we want people to continue supporting historical work we need to foster a passion for history in today’s young people.

5. What are your plans for upcoming educational events at the MHS?

In the spring the Society will be cosponsoring National History Day. We’ll be holding workshops for both teachers and students for this event. Coming up on November 17th we have our Family Day, when the Society will be hosting a program for students and parents about the Revolutionary War. The Society also is planning the launch of a new website, so keep an eye out for updated curriculum help and program announcements in the Education section.

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MHS Begins Its 4th Year Tweeting JQA’s Line-a-day Diaries!

By Nancy Heywood, Collection Services

Three years ago, on 5 August 2009, MHS staff began posting JQA’s line-a-day diary entries on Twitter, exactly 200 years after the day described. (Read about the projects launch in a post from July 2009.) JQA’s followers on Twitter received daily updates about his long voyage to Russia (he arrived in St. Petersburg on 23 September 1809) and since then have been reading JQA’s brief descriptions of his official duties, aspects of his family life and recreational activities such as frequent walks.  JQA’s diplomatic duties included many meetings with Russia’s Foreign Minister, Count Rumyantsev (JQA usually spelled his name, “Romanzoff”), diplomats from many European countries, and interactions with Levett Harris, the U. S. consul in St. Petersburg.  For example JQA’s line-a-day entry from 6 August 1810:

Interview and Conversation with Romanzoff. Call on Harris. Dined at Blome’s. Mrs Colombi here; and Jones.

Two hundred years ago (early August 1812), from his location in St. Petersburg, JQA monitored a war between France and Russia (Napoleon’s Grand Army invaded Russia in June 1812) and JQA anticipated hearing about a war between the U. S. and Great Britain.  It took a long time for news to travel across the globe, but JQA received a note on 5 August 1812 officially confirming the war between the U. S. and Britain, even though the U. S. declared war on 18 June 1812.  JQA’s line-a-day entry from 5 August 1812:

At the sale of de Bray’s furniture. Claude Gabriel here. Note from Proud. War declared 18 June by U.S. against G.B.

MHS enjoys sharing JQA’s succinct diary via tweets, and we were thrilled to get some favorable replies to a recent post mentioning his recent anniversary on Twitter:

I signed up for a Twitter account just so I could follow JQA. Thought it was a wonderful idea – still follow, still do!  (from @JoanCiolino)

@JQAdams_MHS a must follow for history geeks! (from @kristinmachina)

@JQAdams_MHS keep it up, it’s great! (@steveb7)

Those who have Twitter accounts can choose to follow (subscribe) to JQA’s twitter posts although the tweets are also available to anyone who visits the following web page: http://twitter.com/JQAdams_MHS.

The MHS provides access to digital images of every single page of John Quincy Adams’s diaries.  One benefit of the ongoing JQA Twitter Project is that MHS adds  transcriptions of the line-a-day diaries entries to the JQA diaries website after they are shared via JQA’s twitter account;  for example, please see the display of June 1812: http://www.masshist.org/jqadiaries/doc.cfm?id=jqad23_252.

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Interview with Author and NEH Fellow Martha Hodes

By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

Martha Hodes, author of The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century, is the recent recipient of an NEH fellowship to conduct research at the Massachusetts Historical Society. The Sea Captain’s Wife was a finalist for the Lincoln Prize and was named a Best Book of 2006 by Library Journal. Hodes, who teaches at New York University, took the time to talk with us about the book, her past research, and her current project.

1. How did you come to know the Society and become involved in research here?

I first conducted research at MHS while I was writing my second book, The Sea Captain’s Wife: A True Story of Love, Race, and War in the Nineteenth Century. The book’s protagonist, Eunice Connolly, is a white, working-class woman from New England whose husband fought and died for the Confederacy – after which she married a black sea captain from the Caribbean. Manuscript collections at the MHS illuminated important context, including anti-slavery sentiments in the New Hampshire town where Eunice lived during the Civil War, and anti-Irish sentiments in the cotton mills (where Eunice worked). Eunice lived in Lowell when the war was ending, so I also invoked a Lowell woman’s personal response to Lincoln’s assassination from the Martha Fisher Anderson Diaries at MHS. I had no idea then what my next book would be about.

 2. What is the focus of your research during your NEH fellowship?

I’m writing a book, Mourning Lincoln, about personal responses to Lincoln’s assassination, encompassing northerners and southerners, African Americans and whites, soldiers and civilians, men and women, rich and poor, the well-known and the unknown, those at home and abroad. I’m specifically searching beyond the public and ceremonial record in order to move beyond the static portrait of a grieving nation that we find in headlines and sermons. The idea is to understand a transformative event on a human scale — access to the hearts and minds of individual Americans across the spring and summer of 1865 tells us so much more than we thought we knew.

 3. How did you become interested in history and decide to enter this field?

I went to college sure I’d be an English major. At Bowdoin, I ended up creating a double major in Religion and Political Theory. Then I continued my studies in comparative religion by getting an MA at Harvard Divinity School. During those years, my work-study job was at Radcliffe’s Schlesinger Library on the History of Women in America, and that was where I came to see that I was happier immersed less in abstract ideas and more in the workings of people’s daily lives. That’s when I applied to PhD programs in History.

 4. What inspired you to write The Sea Captain’s Wife? Did you discover anything unexpected while writing it?

While writing my dissertation at Princeton, I came across an amazing collection at Duke University – the letters of Eunice Connolly’s family. They didn’t belong in my dissertation and first book (White Women, Black Men: Illicit Sex in the Nineteenth-Century South), because Eunice’s story wasn’t a southern one, and I hoped no one else would discover the collection before I got to it. Lucky for me, no one did. And the letters did indeed yield unexpected discoveries — about race and racial classification. I found that when Eunice worked as a laundress during the Civil War (that was the lowest of lowly domestic work, reserved for Irish immigrants and black women), her New England neighbors barely thought of her as a white woman, and her subsequent marriage to a man of color further justified her exclusion from white womanhood. Then, when Eunice married the sea captain and went to live in the Cayman Islands, her neighbors there came to think of her as a woman of color, but in a very different way. In the Caribbean racial system, where the category of “colored” lay closer to whiteness than to blackness, Eunice’s status — as the wife of a well-to-do sea captain of African descent — rose beyond anything she had known as a poor white woman in New England. All in all, Eunice’s life story illuminates not only how malleable are racial categories and their meanings, but also how much power those classifications can hold. I didn’t know any of that when I began to write her story from the letters.

5. A number of professors have used The Sea Captain’s Wife in undergraduate and graduate-level courses. How do you feel about your work being taught and what do you look for in selecting materials for your own students?

I wrote The Sea Captain’s Wife for readers both within and beyond the academy, and I’m equally thrilled when professors assign it in their classes as I am when it’s chosen by, say, a women’s reading group. In my own classroom, whether I’m teaching conventional courses (like the Civil War or Nineteenth-Century U.S. History) or less conventional courses (like Biography as History or History and Storytelling), I strive to assign books that both impart good history and illuminate people’s lives, by asking — or prompting the students to ask — big questions about both the past and the present. I’m happy if The Sea Captain’s Wife can accomplish some of that. It’s what I hope to accomplish, too, in Mourning Lincoln.

 

 

 

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An Interview with MHS Conservation Technician Oona Beauchard

By Emilie Haertsch, Publications

Photograph of Oona Beauchard leaning on light table in conservation lab

What does a conservation technician do?

My work consists of repairing and cleaning historic documents. I dry clean them by first removing the surface dirt, then testing the ink for solubility, and soaking the pages in purified water. After the soak, I de-acidify the pages and repair any damage with Japanese tissue paper and wheat starch paste that I make myself. 

 

How do you interact with manuscripts and objects in different ways than historians?

The main difference is that I view the documents as physical objects. I don’t focus on the intellectual content, but on the physical aspect of manuscripts.

What does a typical work day look like for you?

My days usually follow a routine, and involve a lot of multi-tasking. I come in, prepare the wheat paste, and begin soaking paper in the sink. Then I’ll dry clean the next batch, or trim excess repair paper while I’m waiting for the paper to finish soaking. Once in a while I’ll get unusual things in the lab that break up the routine. I once worked on cleaning glass plate negatives, and another time I cleaned a very large Civil War banner for an exhibition. The work is always interesting!

What are some common misconceptions about your job?

People always think I get to read all the manuscripts, but if I read every page I would never finish my work! Many also are shocked that I wash the paper. They think that that would ruin the documents, but it’s an important part of the conservation process.

What are you working on right now?

I’m currently working on conserving the final volume of Harbottle Dorr’s annotated Revolutionary-era newspapers (read more about that acquisition here). Dorr, a shopkeeper, collected Boston area newspapers in the years leading up to the Revolutionary War, indexing the contents and making his own notes. It’s a very interesting project because, as with most historic documents in need of conservation, much of the damage is on the edge of the pages. That’s also where Dorr wrote his notes, so the conservation is preventing very valuable information from being lost.

What are some of your favorite projects and why?

I’ve really enjoyed working on the Dorr newspapers. Another one of my favorites was the Sarah Gooll Putnam diaries. She started keeping a diary at a young age and continued until her death. She was an artist, so her diaries contained sketches and fabric swatches – a lot of interesting things for me to look at while I did the work.* I also am a big fan of Thomas Jefferson, so I love working on any documents authored by him.

 

 

*See an entry from Sarah Gooll Putnam’s diary here.

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Massachusetts Goes to Nationals

By Kathleen Barker, Education Department

Early on the morning of June 10, 2012, I found myself standing in a parking lot in Woburn, Mass., with dozens of bleary-eyed middle- and high-school students. Despite the early hour there was a touch of excitement in the air, for these talented young ladies and gentlemen were waiting for the buses that would take them to the National History Day (NHD) finals at the University of Maryland in College Park. The 2012 contest was the largest ever in NHD history, and while 2,794 students participated in this year’s national competition, that number represents only a fraction of the students who participated in National History Day during the 2011-2012 school year.

For the students gathered in College Park, the national competition represented the zenith of a process that began nearly nine months earlier. Soon after the 2012 theme, “Revolution, Reaction, Reform in History,” was announced, students began investigating potential topics, exploring local (and not-so-local) libraries and archives, and creating exhibits, performances, documentaries, websites, or papers. Students from across the United States consulted collections at the Massachusetts Historical Society for this year’s competition. The Library Reader Services staff fielded reference calls and emails on topics such as the Boston Tea Party, the Battle of Bunker Hill, Horace Mann and nineteenth-century school reform, Dorthea Dix, and the abolition of slavery.

Panaromic shot of opening ceremony at National History Day in College Park MarylandI was fortunate enough to travel with the Massachusetts delegation to this year’s national competition. The festivities began on the evening of Sunday, June 10, with a rousing opening ceremony on the lawn at McKeldin Library. Imagine thousands of students, parents, and teachers cheering, chattering, and trading pins and you’ll have a good sense of what the opening ceremony was like. The competition got down to business on Monday morning, and while in College Park I had the opportunity to serve as a judge along with more than 300 other historians and other education professionals. Anyone who has ever judged at a history day competition can tell you what an amazing experience this is. I met with many talented and enthusiastic students over the course of the three-day competition. They taught me a great deal about topics as diverse as Levittown, the use of helicopters in the Vietnam War, and Nicola Tesla. Thanks to a very well illustrated project on Civil War hospitals, I also have new appreciation for modern medicine.

Alas, the contest did eventually come to end. After three days of intense but rewarding competition, winners were announced at a ceremony at the University’s Comcast Center on June 14, 2012. The event Massachusetts students entering auditorium for awards ceremonybegan with the best parade I’ve ever seen: a parade of participating students across the floor of the arena. I watched over 2,000 students circle the arena with everything from state flags to inflatable lobsters! Throughout the morning, dozens of students were singled out for awards and special prizes, and the boisterous crowd made sure that each winner was duly appreciated. Prizes were sponsored not only by NHD but by friends of history like the National Endowment for the Humanities, the History Channel, and the National World War II Museum. Several students from Massachusetts took home special prizes, but a special congratulations goes to our lone award winner, Chad Nowlan of Holyoke Catholic High School, who placed second in the Individual Performance category for his project, “From Revolution to Constitution, Shays’ Rebellion.” (You can find a complete list of winners on the NHD website.)

It takes a cast thousands to make History Day happen every year. Kudos to the national staff for making NHD a successful enterprise for more than 30 years! A special thanks to the Massachusetts History Day co-coordinators, Bill Szachowicz and Bob Jones, as well as all the members of the Massachusetts History Day board, who volunteer many hours to make History Day happen in Massachusetts. Thank you to all of the teachers, librarians, archivists, parents, and other mentors who shepherded students through the historical research process. Last, but certainly not least, a hearty congratulations to all of the students who participated in National History Day this year. These dedicated students gave up their evenings, weekends, and even school vacations to engage with the past. In the end, they are ALL winners!  

If History Day sounds like tons of fun (and it is), learn more about the 2012-2013 contest theme, “Turning Points in History” at the NHD website. Visit the Massachusetts History Day website for information about participating in contests in the Commonwealth. Finally, come back to the MHS website in September 2012 to find out how the Society can help you with your History Day research.

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An Independence Day Message for the World

By Amanda A. Mathews, Adams Papers

Here at the Adams Papers we receive calls on occasion from the media looking for information on John and John Quincy Adams. This past month, Gregg Lint, Series Editor for The Papers of John Adams, and Jim Taylor, Editor-in-Chief, fielded a somewhat more unusual request. Voice of America, Korea, interviewed them as a part of a series they are doing on American presidents (the interviews can be found here). These interviews posed an interesting question—what would you most want to convey about these two American presidents to an audience unfamiliar with American history?

Gregg Lint highlighted three aspects of John Adams’s career: his writing of the Massachusetts Constitution and its influence on the federal Constitution, his diplomatic career, and his success in keeping the country out of war with France during his presidency.

John Quincy Adams, Jim Taylor emphasized, was well prepared to be president by his legal, political, and diplomatic careers, however, partisanship and changing American democracy prevented him from accomplishing much while in office, leaving his most significant achievements before and after the presidency.

As Independence Day approaches, we think more about these two presidents. John Adams’s connection with the holiday is well known: the “Atlas of Independence” who famously died on the 50th anniversary of that historic event.

John Quincy Adams also has an important Independence Day connection. On July 4, 1821, he gave a speech before the House of Representatives, which later became the basis for the Monroe Doctrine. The Declaration of Independence, John Quincy Adams affirmed, “stands and must forever stand alone, a beacon on the summit of the Mountain, to which all the Inhabitants of the Earth may turn their eyes for a genial and saving light, till Time shall be lost in Eternity and this Globe itself dissolve nor leave a wreck behind.— It stands forever, a light of admonition to the rulers of men; a light of salvation and redemption to the oppressed.”

With this message of liberty to the world, there is no doubt that John and John Quincy Adams would have been well pleased to find the stories of their lives and their steadfast belief in liberty broadcast to people around the world.

 

 

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Join Us for Our Open House!

By Elaine Grublin

Join us on Saturday, 16 June from 10:00 AM to 3:00 PM at our annual Open House featuring a preview of our summer exhibition Mr. Madison’s War: The Controversial War of 1812. Visitors are invited to participate in tours; listen to exhibition talks; enjoy refreshments; and learn more about the Society’s collections, programs, and services.

Here is a preview of the day’s activities:

  • 10:00 AM — A guided tour of the Society’s public rooms departs the front lobby
  • 11:00 AM — “Frederic Baury’s Extraordinary War,” a gallery talk offering a detailed description of the brief but illustrious Naval career of a Midshipman during the War of 1812
  • 12:00 PM — A guided tour of the Society’s public rooms departs the front lobby
  • 1:00 PM — “War and Peace: John Quincy Adams in St. Petersburg and at Ghent, 1809-1814,” a gallery talk focusing on John Quincy Adams’ detailed letters to his parents and voluminous diary accounts documenting his observations of the events leading up to the War of 1812 in America, and the “other” War of 1812, the titanic French invasion of Russia.
  • 2:00 PM — A guided tour of the Society’s public rooms departs the front lobby

Throughout the day visitors can view Mr. Madison’s War: The Controversial War of 1812 and examine the controversial nature of the war in Massachusetts and the struggles between the Federalists and Jeffersonian Republicans, enjoy refreshments in our 19-century gentleman’s library, and visit our information table to learn about MHS resources, upcoming programs, and how to become a member. 

For more information e-mail rsvp@masshist.org.

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2012-2013 Research Fellows Announced!

By Elaine Grublin & Kate Veins

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. 

Our fellowship programs bring a wide variety of researchers working on a full range of topics into the MHS. If any of the research topics are particularly interesting to you, keep an eye on our events calendar. All research fellows present at brown-bag lunch programs as part of their commitment to the MHS.

MHS Short-term Fellowships
African-American Studies Fellowship
Heather Cooper, University of Iowa
“Representing the Race: African American Performances of Slavery and Freedom in the Nineteenth Century”

Alumni Fellowship
Lauri Coleman, William and Mary
“Interpretations of New England Weather in the Revolutionary Era”

Andrew Oliver Fellowship
Katelyn Crawford, University of Virginia
“Mobility and Portrait Painting in the Late Eighteenth-Century British Atlantic World”

Andrew W. Mellon Fellowship
Frances Clarke, University of Sydney                                                                           
“Minors in the Military: A History of Child Soldiers in America from the Revolution to the Civil War”                                                                  

Eberhard Faber, Princeton University
“‘Everybody Talks of Visiting That Country’: New England Reactions to the Louisiana Purchase, Territorial Rule, and Louisiana Statehood, 1803-1812”

Michael Hevel, University of Iowa
“‘Betwixt Brewings’: A History of College Students and Alcohol”

Ann K. Johnson, University of Southern California
“Cabinets of Miscellany and Meaning: Managing Information in Antebellum America”

Greta LaFleur, University of Hawai’I at Manoa
“American Insides: Popular Narrative and the Historiography of Sexuality, 1675-1815”

Jen Manion, Connecticut College
“Crossing Gender; Female Masculinity in the 18th and 19th Centuries”

Brooke Newman, Virginia Commonwealth University
“Island Masters: Gender, Race, and Power in the Eighteenth-Century British Caribbean”

Benjamin Park, University of Cambridge
“Localized Nationalisms in Post-Revolutionary America”

Brad Snyder, University of Wisconsin
“The House of Truth: The Men Who Created Modern Progressivism”

Benjamin F. Stevens Fellowship
Sarah Sutton, Brandeis University
“Industrializing the Family Farm: Dairy Farming, Milk Consumption, and the New England Landscape”

Cushing Academy Fellowship in Environmental History
Jennifer Staver, University of California Irvine
“Energy, Work, and Power along the Pacific Coast of North America, 1768 to 1820” 

Malcolm and Mildred Freiberg Fellowship
Katherine Grandjean, Wellesley College
“‘Terror ubique tremor’: Communicating Terror in Early New England, 1677-1713”

Marc Friedlaender Fellowship
Rick Kennedy, Point Loma Nazarene University                                                          
“Cotton Mather Biblia Americana Volume 8”

 Massachusetts Society of the Cincinnati Fellowship
Holger Hoock, University of Pittsburgh
“Scars of Independence: Practices and Representations of Violence in the American Revolutionary War”

Ruth R. & Alyson R. Miller Fellowship
Bonnie Lucero, University of North Carolina Chapel Hill                                            
“Privates, Prostitutes, and Pardos: Women and Racial Conflict in Cienfuegos, Cuba, circa 1898”

Lindsay Moore, Boston University
“Women, Power, and Litigation in the English Atlantic World, 1630-1700”

W. B. H. Dowse Fellowship
Nichole George, University of Notre Dame
“Riots and Remembrance: America’s Idols and the Origins of American Nationalism”

Reiner Smolinski, Georgia State University
“Cotton Mather: The Life of a Puritan Intellectual”

Suzanne and Caleb Loring Fellowship
Ann K. Holder, Pratt Institute
“‘Making the Body Politic’: Sexual Histories, Racial Uncertainties and Vernacular Citizenship in the Post-Emancipation U.S.”

MHS-NEH Long-term Fellowships
Megan Bowman, University of California Santa Barbara
“Networking for Global Perfection: The International Dimension of Nineteenth-Century Fourierism”

 Kristen Collins, Boston University School of Law
“Entitling Marriage: A History of Marriage, Public Money, and the Law”

Matthew Dennis, University of Oregon
“American Relics and the Material Politics of Public Memory”

Martha Hodes, New York University
“Mourning Lincoln: Personal Grief and the Meaning of the American Civil War”

New England Regional Fellowship Consortium Fellows
*Denotes scholars whose itineraries include the MHS

Kelly Brennan Arehart, College of William and Mary
“Give Up Your Dead: How Business, Technology, and Culture Separated Americans from their Dearly Departed, 1780-1930”

Justin Clark, University of Southern California*
“Training the Eyes: Romantic Vision and Class Formation in Boston, 1830-1870”

Michael Cohen, Tulane University
“Jews in the Cotton Industry: Ethnic Networks in 19th Century America”

John Dixon, Harvard University*
“Found at Sea: Mapping Ships’ Locations on the Eighteenth-Century Atlantic”

Moira Gillis, University of Oxford*
“The Unique Early Modern American Corporation”

Jared Hardesty, Boston College*
“The Origins of Black Boston, 1700-1775”

Benjamin Hicklin, University of Michigan Ann Arbor*
“‘Neither a Borrower nor a Lender Be’?: The Experience of Credit and Debt in the English Atlantic World, 1660-1750”

Allison Lange, Brandeis University*
“Pictures of Change: Transformative Images of Woman Suffrage, 1776-1920”

Jason Newton, Syracuse University
“Forging Titans: Myth and Masculinity in the Working Forests of the American Northeast, 1880-1920”

Ana Stevenson, University of Queensland*
“The Woman-Slave Analogy: Rhetorical Foundations in American Culture, 1830-1900”

Gloria Whiting, Harvard University
“‘Endearing Ties’: Black Family Life in Early New England”

 

 

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The MHS on a Television Near You . . .

By Elaine Grublin

The Sunday, 8 April 2012, episode of the PBS program Finding Your Roots with Henry Louis Gates, Jr. has a strong “connection” to the MHS. Several items from our collection are featured in the program, which highlighted the genealogy of Hollywood couple Kyra Sedgwick and Kevin Bacon. Kyra Sedgwick is a descendant of Theodore Sedgwick, a man whose family is well represented in the MHS collections. Watch the episode to learn the story of Theodore Sedgwick and the important role he played in Massachusetts history.

While you are watching, keep your eyes peeled for MHS librarian Peter Drummey, along with documents and images from the MHS collection intergral to telling the story of Kyra Sedgwick’s family. Those familiar with our buiding at 1154 Boylson Street will also recognize the Dowse Library as the back-drop in many scenes. 

Minature portrait of Elizabeth FreemanIf you are interested in learning more about the end of slavery here in Massachusetts, visit our web feature African Americans and the End of Slavery in Massachusetts. You can learn more about the life of Elizabeth Freeman (“Mumbet”) reading a manuscript draft of the article “Slavery in New England,” published in Bentley’s Miscellany in 1853. The author, Catharine Maria Sedgwick, was the daughter of Theodore Sedgwick. And for those with the time and inclination to dive into a study of the Sedgwicks, the Sedgwick Family Papers, Catharine Maria Sedgwick Papers, and a number of other related collections are all available to researchers in the MHS library. 

 

 

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