Calendar of Events

The Furniture of Isaac Vose & Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825
Open 11 May to 14 September 2018 Details
April
The MHS is CLOSED in observance of Patriots' Day.
MoreAll high school students in the United States study American history, and many of them seek mastery in the subject, which is the second most popular at the Advanced Placement level. Yet relatively few female actors appear in high school textbooks, and graduates arrive on college campuses with widely varying levels of exposure to the history of women, gender, and sexuality in America, especially prior to the 1990s. This panel discussion, featuring university faculty, secondary educators, and activist curriculum specialists, aims to seed an ongoing discussion between high school and post-secondary instructors of American history about gendering the U.S. History curriculum. What topics in women’s and gender history and in the history of sexuality get covered when, where, and how? How can college- and university-based scholars do more to connect their work with high school classrooms? How are secondary educators—and their students—advancing and reshaping the field?
This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 10 PDPs with the completion of a lesson plan.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
MoreWhat fuels a family’s compulsion for philanthropy? Charitable giving is an intrinsic part of our culture and its story can be told through a colorful, multifaceted family whose actions mirror America’s attitudes towards giving. Between 1638 and today, the Browns of Rhode Island have provided community leaders, endowed academic institutions, and transformed communities through art and architecture. However, they also have wrestled with society’s toughest issues slavery, immigration, child labor, inequality and with their own internal tensions. Sylvia Brown, of the family’s 11th generation, and Edward Widmer will explore this story.
MoreTo allow for system maintenance, the Society's online catalog ABIGAIL will be unavailable on Saturday, 21 April from 9:00AM to 4:00PM. Manuscript and photograph collection guides should remain accessible via the MHS website at http://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/.
The library will be open on Saturday and requests from the catalog placed via a portal Portal1791 account prior to 9:00 AM will be able to be processed throughout the day.
MoreIn 1628, King Charles the 1st made a royal grant of what is now the entire state of Massachusetts (not including Plymouth) to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Remarkably, ALL of this territory had previously been granted to others. In four separate actions between 1621 and 1623, this land had been granted, by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, President of the Council for New England, to himself and to his associates, and colonized. However, the King's Charter overrode their charters and boundaries.
At this Partnership of Historic Bostons discussion group at MHS, we will replay the struggles and strategies the Mass Bay Colony used to defend, and expand, its land grant against Gorges' accusations of usurpation, sedition, and religious non-conformity, and the efforts to recapture his lost territory by Gorges and his supporters.
There are five readings (portions of original documents and maps), and a sixth suggested reading. These will be emailed to everyone who registers thru MHS by Wednesday evening, April 18, and a few copies will be available at the meeting.
MoreCharles Manson made national news in 1969 when several “Family” members were arrested for murder, but by then he was well-established in Los Angeles. This paper explores the cultural fluidity that allowed Los Angeles’s hip aristocracy to mingle with marginal figures like Manson, but also the backlash which turned the Manson Family into a warning for the dangers of migration and the promiscuous cultural mixing that could follow.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
More
Massachusetts has undertaken large scale preservation of open space by government entities. The Boston Public Garden, the Emerald Necklace, the first American public beach in Revere, the banks of the Charles River, and a network of state forests were all significant contributions to keeping open land available to the public. Were these projects pioneering? Have they shaped national discussions? Are similar projects possible today or will projects like the Community Preservation Act offer equivalent impacts?
MHS is proud to partner with the Trustees of Reservations, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center to plan this programming.
This program is supported by the Barr Foundation.
MorePart of a larger book project, this paper argues that the seemingly distinct conflicts across the English colonies in the 1670s were actually connected by the political initiatives of the scattered Susquehannock Indians. The dispersion of the Susquehannocks caused instability in surrounding Native American and colonial societies, drawing them into a spiral of violence interrupted only by Susquehannock success, which brought stability to the northeast and shattered the southeast.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
More
The Boston metropolitan area is in the enviable spot of having more people who want to live and work here than there is space for. Real estate regularly sells for prices that would have seemed inconceivable twenty five years ago. This situation puts more funds in municipal coffers, but what will this increased demand and density do to plans to preserve open space? How will climate change impact our priorities for preserving open space and how might it limit our options?
MHS is proud to partner with the Trustees of Reservations, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center to plan this programming.
This program is supported by the Barr Foundation.
MoreThis workshop is FULL and registration has closed. Please contact Kate Melchior at kmelchior@masshist.org with any questions.
Known as the “master of the art of narrative history,” David McCullough is the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. He will join us to discuss his perspective on history, education, and American legacy.
This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 22.5 PDPs or one graduate credit (for an additional fee).
Note: Due to high demand, this workshop is currently restricted to K-12 educators ONLY. This includes both classroom educators and museum/heritage institution educators.
If you have any questions, please contact Kate Melchior at kmelchior@masshist.org or 617-646-0588.
MoreThe library is CLOSED to make way for a teacher workshop. Normal hours resume on Monday, 7 May. Exhibition galleries remain open, 10:00AM-4:00PM.
More
Ann Hulbert and Megan Marshall will discuss Hulbert’s new book, which examines the lives of children whose rare accomplishments have raised hopes about untapped human potential and questions about how best to nurture it. The conversation will draw on a range of examples that span a century—from two precocious Harvard boys in 1909 to literary girls in the 1920s to music virtuosos today. Hulbert and Marshall will explore the changing role of parents and teachers, as well as of psychologists, a curious press and, above all, the feelings of the prodigies themselves, who push back against adults more as the decades proceed.
MoreWhile historians have analyzed the rise of companionship and romance in marriage, they have overlooked a critical continuity: marriage continued to serve vital financial functions. This talk briefly sketches the economic importance of marriage and families’ strategies for managing wealth across generations.
MoreMHS Fellows and Members are invited to a special preview and reception for Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose &Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825.
Virtually forgotten for 200 years, Isaac Vose and his brilliant furniture are revealed in a new exhibition and accompanying volume. Beginning with a modest pair of collection boxes he made for his localBoston church in 1788, Vose went on to build a substantial business empire and to make furniture for the most prominent Boston families. The exhibition and catalog restore Vose from relative obscurity to his rightful position as one of Boston’s most important craftsmen. Opening at the MHS on May 11, the exhibition will be on view through September 14.
Become a Member today!
Image: Couch, Isaac Vose & Son, with Thomas Wightman, carver, Boston, 1824. Historic New England, Gift of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1923.507); photograph by David Bohl.
More
Virtually forgotten for 200 years, Isaac Vose and his brilliant furniture are revealed in a new exhibition and accompanying volume. Beginning with a modest pair of collection boxes he made for his localBoston church in 1788, Vose went on to build a substantial business empire and to make furniture for the most prominent Boston families. The exhibition and catalog restore Vose from relative obscurity to his rightful position as one of Boston’s most important craftsmen. Opening at the MHS on May 11, the exhibition will be on view through September 14.
The complementary book, Rather Elegant Than Showy (May 2018), by Robert Mussey and Clark Pearce, will be available for sale at the MHS.
Image: Couch, Isaac Vose & Son, with Thomas Wightman, carver, Boston, 1824. Historic New England, Gift of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1923.507); photograph by David Bohl.
More
Feast, sip, and celebrate history at the eighth Cocktails with Clio!
Thursday, 17 May 2018
6:30 PM
Fairmont Copley Plaza
Boston, Massachusetts
We invite you to join us for a festive evening in support of the Center for the Teaching of History at the MHS featuring Harvard President Drew Faust in conversation with MHS President Catherine Allgor. The evening will begin with a cocktail reception. A seated dinner will follow.
Tickets are $300 per person. Purchase tickets today!
MoreThis talk examines the religious critique of manifest destiny put forth by New Englanders from 1848-1871. Although manifest destiny is often portrayed as an ideology rooted in Puritan theology, this talk explores how opponents of expansion in New England used religion to castigate and separate themselves from this ideology.
MoreThe MHS library is CLOSED. The exhibition galleries remain open, 10:00AM-4:00PM.
MoreThe MHS library and exhibition galleries are CLOSED for Memorial Day.
MoreBlack Americans did not just pray for emancipation, they conjured it. This project examines the political work of revival in wartime refugee camps and envisions emancipation as a religious event. It reckons with religion as a mediating force between the enslaved and the state, asking "Who belongs and how?" for those negotiating statelessness and peoplehood in the midst of self-emancipation.
MoreThe MHS library and exhibition galleries are CLOSED for Independence Day.
MoreThe MHS is CLOSED in observance of Patriots' Day.
closeAll high school students in the United States study American history, and many of them seek mastery in the subject, which is the second most popular at the Advanced Placement level. Yet relatively few female actors appear in high school textbooks, and graduates arrive on college campuses with widely varying levels of exposure to the history of women, gender, and sexuality in America, especially prior to the 1990s. This panel discussion, featuring university faculty, secondary educators, and activist curriculum specialists, aims to seed an ongoing discussion between high school and post-secondary instructors of American history about gendering the U.S. History curriculum. What topics in women’s and gender history and in the history of sexuality get covered when, where, and how? How can college- and university-based scholars do more to connect their work with high school classrooms? How are secondary educators—and their students—advancing and reshaping the field?
This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 10 PDPs with the completion of a lesson plan.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
closeWhat fuels a family’s compulsion for philanthropy? Charitable giving is an intrinsic part of our culture and its story can be told through a colorful, multifaceted family whose actions mirror America’s attitudes towards giving. Between 1638 and today, the Browns of Rhode Island have provided community leaders, endowed academic institutions, and transformed communities through art and architecture. However, they also have wrestled with society’s toughest issues slavery, immigration, child labor, inequality and with their own internal tensions. Sylvia Brown, of the family’s 11th generation, and Edward Widmer will explore this story.
closeThe mounting political tensions that ignited the battles of Lexington and Concord are critical to the narrative of the American Revolution. However, the economic forces that propelled these iconic battles are another vital part of this history. When Benjamin Franklin wrote home describing the living conditions in Britain and Ireland, his country men were appalled. Could the Crown’s motive be to reduce the prosperous American colonies to such serfdom? This threat inspired the vast turnout of Patriot militiamen that so shocked the British and led the colonists to victory in the first armed conflictsof the War of Independence.
To allow for system maintenance, the Society's online catalog ABIGAIL will be unavailable on Saturday, 21 April from 9:00AM to 4:00PM. Manuscript and photograph collection guides should remain accessible via the MHS website at http://www.masshist.org/collection-guides/.
The library will be open on Saturday and requests from the catalog placed via a portal Portal1791 account prior to 9:00 AM will be able to be processed throughout the day.
closeIn 1628, King Charles the 1st made a royal grant of what is now the entire state of Massachusetts (not including Plymouth) to the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Remarkably, ALL of this territory had previously been granted to others. In four separate actions between 1621 and 1623, this land had been granted, by Sir Ferdinando Gorges, President of the Council for New England, to himself and to his associates, and colonized. However, the King's Charter overrode their charters and boundaries.
At this Partnership of Historic Bostons discussion group at MHS, we will replay the struggles and strategies the Mass Bay Colony used to defend, and expand, its land grant against Gorges' accusations of usurpation, sedition, and religious non-conformity, and the efforts to recapture his lost territory by Gorges and his supporters.
There are five readings (portions of original documents and maps), and a sixth suggested reading. These will be emailed to everyone who registers thru MHS by Wednesday evening, April 18, and a few copies will be available at the meeting.
closeSubscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers. 24 April 2018.Tuesday, 5:15PM - 7:30PM Jeffrey Melnick, UMass-Boston Comment: Gretchen Heefner, Northeastern University
Charles Manson made national news in 1969 when several “Family” members were arrested for murder, but by then he was well-established in Los Angeles. This paper explores the cultural fluidity that allowed Los Angeles’s hip aristocracy to mingle with marginal figures like Manson, but also the backlash which turned the Manson Family into a warning for the dangers of migration and the promiscuous cultural mixing that could follow.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
close
Massachusetts has undertaken large scale preservation of open space by government entities. The Boston Public Garden, the Emerald Necklace, the first American public beach in Revere, the banks of the Charles River, and a network of state forests were all significant contributions to keeping open land available to the public. Were these projects pioneering? Have they shaped national discussions? Are similar projects possible today or will projects like the Community Preservation Act offer equivalent impacts?
MHS is proud to partner with the Trustees of Reservations, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center to plan this programming.
This program is supported by the Barr Foundation.
closeSubscribe to receive advance copies of the seminar papers. 1 May 2018.Tuesday, 5:15PM - 7:30PM Matthew Kruer, University of Chicago Comment: Linford Fisher, Brown University
Part of a larger book project, this paper argues that the seemingly distinct conflicts across the English colonies in the 1670s were actually connected by the political initiatives of the scattered Susquehannock Indians. The dispersion of the Susquehannocks caused instability in surrounding Native American and colonial societies, drawing them into a spiral of violence interrupted only by Susquehannock success, which brought stability to the northeast and shattered the southeast.
To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.
close
The Boston metropolitan area is in the enviable spot of having more people who want to live and work here than there is space for. Real estate regularly sells for prices that would have seemed inconceivable twenty five years ago. This situation puts more funds in municipal coffers, but what will this increased demand and density do to plans to preserve open space? How will climate change impact our priorities for preserving open space and how might it limit our options?
MHS is proud to partner with the Trustees of Reservations, the Department of Conservation and Recreation, Mount Auburn Cemetery, the Emerald Necklace Conservancy, and the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center to plan this programming.
This program is supported by the Barr Foundation.
closeThis workshop is FULL and registration has closed. Please contact Kate Melchior at kmelchior@masshist.org with any questions.
Known as the “master of the art of narrative history,” David McCullough is the winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, two National Book Awards, and has received the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian award. He will join us to discuss his perspective on history, education, and American legacy.
This program is open to all K-12 educators. Teachers can earn 22.5 PDPs or one graduate credit (for an additional fee).
Note: Due to high demand, this workshop is currently restricted to K-12 educators ONLY. This includes both classroom educators and museum/heritage institution educators.
If you have any questions, please contact Kate Melchior at kmelchior@masshist.org or 617-646-0588.
closeThe library is CLOSED to make way for a teacher workshop. Normal hours resume on Monday, 7 May. Exhibition galleries remain open, 10:00AM-4:00PM.
close
Ann Hulbert and Megan Marshall will discuss Hulbert’s new book, which examines the lives of children whose rare accomplishments have raised hopes about untapped human potential and questions about how best to nurture it. The conversation will draw on a range of examples that span a century—from two precocious Harvard boys in 1909 to literary girls in the 1920s to music virtuosos today. Hulbert and Marshall will explore the changing role of parents and teachers, as well as of psychologists, a curious press and, above all, the feelings of the prodigies themselves, who push back against adults more as the decades proceed.
closeWhile historians have analyzed the rise of companionship and romance in marriage, they have overlooked a critical continuity: marriage continued to serve vital financial functions. This talk briefly sketches the economic importance of marriage and families’ strategies for managing wealth across generations.
closeMHS Fellows and Members are invited to a special preview and reception for Entrepreneurship & Classical Design in Boston’s South End: The Furniture of Isaac Vose &Thomas Seymour, 1815 to 1825.
Virtually forgotten for 200 years, Isaac Vose and his brilliant furniture are revealed in a new exhibition and accompanying volume. Beginning with a modest pair of collection boxes he made for his localBoston church in 1788, Vose went on to build a substantial business empire and to make furniture for the most prominent Boston families. The exhibition and catalog restore Vose from relative obscurity to his rightful position as one of Boston’s most important craftsmen. Opening at the MHS on May 11, the exhibition will be on view through September 14.
Become a Member today!
Image: Couch, Isaac Vose & Son, with Thomas Wightman, carver, Boston, 1824. Historic New England, Gift of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1923.507); photograph by David Bohl.
close
Virtually forgotten for 200 years, Isaac Vose and his brilliant furniture are revealed in a new exhibition and accompanying volume. Beginning with a modest pair of collection boxes he made for his localBoston church in 1788, Vose went on to build a substantial business empire and to make furniture for the most prominent Boston families. The exhibition and catalog restore Vose from relative obscurity to his rightful position as one of Boston’s most important craftsmen. Opening at the MHS on May 11, the exhibition will be on view through September 14.
The complementary book, Rather Elegant Than Showy (May 2018), by Robert Mussey and Clark Pearce, will be available for sale at the MHS.
Image: Couch, Isaac Vose & Son, with Thomas Wightman, carver, Boston, 1824. Historic New England, Gift of the Massachusetts Historical Society (1923.507); photograph by David Bohl.
close
In 1805 and 1806, former vice president Aaron Burr traveled through the trans-Appalachian West gathering support for a mysterious enterprise, for which he was arrested and tried for treason in 1807. The Burr Conspiracy was a cause célèbre of the early republic-with Burr cast as the chief villain of the Founding Fathers—even as the evidence against him was vague and conflicting. James Lewis will explore how Americans made sense of the reports of Burr’s intentions and examine what the crisis revealed about the new nation’s uncertain future.
close
Feast, sip, and celebrate history at the eighth Cocktails with Clio!
Thursday, 17 May 2018
6:30 PM
Fairmont Copley Plaza
Boston, Massachusetts
We invite you to join us for a festive evening in support of the Center for the Teaching of History at the MHS featuring Harvard President Drew Faust in conversation with MHS President Catherine Allgor. The evening will begin with a cocktail reception. A seated dinner will follow.
Tickets are $300 per person. Purchase tickets today!
close
In 1824 and 1825 General Lafayette made a farewell tour of the United States. The 67-year-old hero was welcomed in an adoring frenzy. The visit to Boston of the sole surviving major general of the Continental Army was one of the largest celebrations the city had ever seen. A “Committee of Arrangements” was organized to rent and furnish an appropriate home and all of the furniture was purchased from Isaac Vose & Son. Alan Hoffman will recount the general’s visit and discuss his translation of Lafayette’s private secretary’s journal.
This talk examines the religious critique of manifest destiny put forth by New Englanders from 1848-1871. Although manifest destiny is often portrayed as an ideology rooted in Puritan theology, this talk explores how opponents of expansion in New England used religion to castigate and separate themselves from this ideology.
closeThe MHS library is CLOSED. The exhibition galleries remain open, 10:00AM-4:00PM.
closeThe MHS library and exhibition galleries are CLOSED for Memorial Day.
closeBlack Americans did not just pray for emancipation, they conjured it. This project examines the political work of revival in wartime refugee camps and envisions emancipation as a religious event. It reckons with religion as a mediating force between the enslaved and the state, asking "Who belongs and how?" for those negotiating statelessness and peoplehood in the midst of self-emancipation.
close
As Founding Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, Thomas Paine, and James Monroe risked their lives and their liberty for American independence, and as reformers, each rejoiced at the opportunity to be part of the French Revolution, praying that it in turn would inspire others to sweep away Europe’s monarchies and titled nobilities. But as the 18th century unfolded, these three embarked on different routes to revolution. As writers, soldiers,and statesmen, these three men reshaped their country and the Western world.

Few are familiar with Massachusetts’s role at the center of the national struggle for woman suffrage. Lucy Stone and other Massachusetts abolitionists were some of the first figures who vocally opposed women’s exclusion from political life. Demanding the vote and other reforms, they launched the organized women’s movement at the first National Woman’s Rights Convention, held in Worcester in 1850.Barbara Berenson gives Massachusetts suffragists the attention they deserve in this engaging story and discusses the battle over historical memory that long obscured the state’s leading role.
American Cookery (1796) by Amelia Simmons is known as the “first American cookbook”and has attracted an enthusiastic modern audience of historians, food journalists, and general readers. Yet until now American Cookery has not received the sustained scholarly attention it deserves. Keith Stavely and Kathleen Fitzgerald’s United Tastes fills this gap by providing a detailed examination of the social circumstances and culinary tradition that produced this American classic.
Chateau Higginson is a vivid and absorbing account of one man’s efforts to construct a building that would create “a new way for Bostonians—and Americans—to live.” Henry Lee Higginson is best known for founding the Boston Symphony Orchestra, but exploring his housing gamble helps bring him to life, as well as a whole social class in 19th-century urban America.
The MHS library and exhibition galleries are CLOSED for Independence Day.
close