Boston's Favorite Fighting Frenchman (episode 163)
Dec 15, 2019
Show notes
At just 19 years old, Gilbert du Motier, the Marquis de Lafayette joined our American Revolution. Commissioned as a Major General in 1777, he served with distinction as an aggressive combat commander and trusted adviser to George Washington. Nearly a half century later, the aging general would return to his beloved United States for a nationwide tour, and his first and urgent destination after arriving on this continent was Boston. In the summer of 1824, he arrived in our city as the greatest celebrity it had yet seen. He was received by Governor William Eustis, former President John Adams, and Boston mayor Josiah Quincy before launching his national tour. The next spring, he returned, presiding over the dedication of the Bunker Hill monument on the 50th anniversary of the battle.
An article by Christian McBurney in the Journal of the American Revolution gives more context on the 1778 Bread Riot in Boston where a French officer was beaten to death.
City of Boston records with accounts of Lafayette’s 1781 and 1784 visits to Boston, plus planning for 1824.
Lafayette at Bunker Hill by Henry Cheever Pratt
A reproduction of Lafayette’s L’Hermione
Peacefield
Bunker Hill Monument
Boston Book Club
The December 6 issue of the Boston Globe Magazine included a feature called “The Forgotten Story of ‘America’s Most Famous Tool,” by Michael Fitzgerald. When you picture a pipe wrench, the first words you associate with it probably aren’t technological breakthrough at the forefront of high tech innovation, but 150 years ago, that’s what the Stillson Wrench was.
You may have never heard of a Stillson Wrench before, but you’ve certainly seen one. Even if you don’t own a toolbox, you’ve seen them emblazoned on the side of a white van or business card as part of a plumbing business’s logo, or you’ve seen them drawn in the panels of a cartoon either to indicate that a character is a blue collar worker or to be employed as a blunt force weapon by hero or villain. It’s the heavy wrench that consists of one long, often L-shaped piece of steel topped by another L-shaped piece of steel. A thumbscrew allows the one on top to be adjusted up or down to accommodate different sized pipes, and where the insides of the short legs of the L meet, there are teeth to grip the pipe.
In the mid-19th century, Boston was quickly adopting one of the most sophisticated systems of indoor plumbing in the country. As we heard in episode 161, about the deadly 1849 cholera epidemic in Boston, we got a solid fresh water source starting in 1848, but the sewage system lagged years behind. Nevertheless, the quick adoption of a municipal water source meant that Boston was one of the most exciting places to be in the plumbing business. One of the most successful workers in that industry was Daniel Stillson.
Stillson had worked at the Charlestown Navy Yard, then as a machinist in the Navy during the Civil War. By the late 1860s, he was an engineer at the JJ Walworth corporation in Boston, which the Globe Magazine article describes as “the Boston company that brought steam heating systems to the world in the 1840s. It had to create much of what it needed to build these systems, such as valves and fittings and radiators and, 150 years ago, Stillson’s pipe wrench.”
With the proliferation of different size pipes, each with uniquely shaped valves and fasteners, Stillson saw an opportunity to create a single tool that could tackle nearly all the jobs in the steam industry, and by extension in household plumbing. The article continues,
He envisioned a tool made expressly for round metal pipe. Its jaws would have angled teeth facing opposite directions, allowing them to grip more effectively than its predecessors. The head would be loose, which would help it clamp down ever more tightly on a pipe when a worker turned its handle, but also easily release.
Stillson whittled the first prototype of his new pipe wrench out of wood, and brought it into work. His bosses were intrigued, and had him get the company’s workshop to make a steel version of it, then prove it was strong enough to tear a 1 ¼-inch pipe. As the story goes, Stillson, who had a sailor’s penchant for profanity, swore roundly before going off to test the wrench. He came back with the broken pipe and the wrench intact. It worked.
His patent was issued in 1870, and the company let him keep it. The Stillson wrench quickly became one of the best selling tools in history. Before he died in 1899, he had made about $80,000 in royalties, which would translate to about $2.2 million today. Check out the article for more on Stillson and his wrench, the many knockoff wrenches that were soon being manufactured around Boston and around the country, and what happened to Walworth and similar factories that used to dot the Boston landscape.
Upcoming Event
And for our upcoming event this week, we’re taking you to the main branch of On January 14th, the Boston Public Library’s Leventhal Map Center will be presenting a talk titled “Witnesses: Re-reading the cartographies of dispossession.” Here’s what’s in store for you at the talk, according to the library website:
The United States achieved its 19th-century policy of expansionism across the midwestern and western regions of the continent by aggressively enacting policies of dispossession and genocide at the state and federal level against Indigenous people. Maps were both the mechanisms for, and witnesses to, the betrayals of justice that made the violence of dispossession and extermination possible. Margaret Pearce, independent cartographer and Faculty Associate at the University of Maine, asks us to stand in witness, look closely and listen to these stories in support of Indigenous people on whose lands we are guests.
Keep in mind that even though the Leventhal Map Center is sponsoring the event, it will actually be held in the Commonwealth Salon at the Copley branch of the BPL.
Separate but Equal in Boston (episode 162)
Dec 08, 2019
Show notes
The Supreme Judicial Court of Massachusetts ruled on Roberts v Boston 170 years ago this month. When five year old Sarah Roberts was turned away from the schoolhouse door in Boston simply because of the color of her skin, her father sued the city in an attempt to force the public schools to desegregate, in compliance with a state law that had been intended to do just that years before. Unfortunately, the suit was unsuccessful. Not only did the Boston schools remain segregated, but the court’s decision provided the legal framework of “separate but equal,” which would be used to justify segregated schools across the country for a century to come.
Published in 1827, the House Servant’s Directory, by Robert Roberts, is a detailed, indispensable guide for domestic servants, or as the author would have put it, “those entering into gentlemen’s service.” Written over a two year period while he was the head butler at Governor Christopher Gore’s Waltham estate, Roberts’ guide is considered one of the first books written by an African American author for a broad commercial audience. And the audience was truly broad, with three editions of the book selling out. Demand was high, not only among those in gentlemen’s service, but also with the ambitious and newly wealthy families who would employ domestic servants. Here’s how a review from the New England Historical Society describes it:
The job Robert Roberts described amounted to managing an entire household as head butler or steward. He advised the servant to display deference to the employer but to conduct himself with dignity and skill. He advised employers to only hire servants over 30 years old.
Throughout the day, the servant had to help his employer get dressed and keep his clothes in order, make and present drinks, supervise contractors, serve meals, supervise servants, light the fire, maintain the wine cellar and shop for food.
One of the servant’s most important duties was serving meals in a style befitting an aristocratic Bostonian. Historian Graham Russell Hodges notes the House Servant’s Directory served as ‘a precise manual of proper dining room conduct for an aspiring American elite.’
The book gives detailed instructions on serving dinner. Don’t bring the cheese out too early, because it might smell. Make as little noise as possible when changing plates. Make sure the side dishes line up straight on the table. Take a station a yard behind the person at the foot of the table and a little to the left. Never let your thumb be farther than the rim of the plate. Take off dish covers with your left hand. Have half as many candles as guests, with a flame should be 18 inches above the table.
Heating the house occupied a great deal of time in winter, and Roberts devotes 14 pages to making a fire of Lehigh coal, also known as anthracite or Rhode Island coal.
The House Servant’s Directory also includes many recipes, for polishes, cleaners, spot removers, jams, sauces, drinks and adhesives.
After Governor Gore died in 1827, Robert Roberts retired from service and bought a house on Beacon Hill. For the next 30 years, he worked tirelessly for the abolitionist cause and to advance civil rights for black citizens. The cause of integrating Boston’s public schools would be taken up by his granddaughter, Sarah, who was the plaintiff in the case at the heart of this week’s episode.
Shortly after the first Europeans arrived in 17th century New England, they began to enslave the area’s indigenous peoples and import kidnapped Africans. By the eve of the American Revolution, enslaved people comprised only about 4% of the population, but slavery had become instrumental to the region’s economy and had shaped its cultural traditions.
In this concise yet comprehensive history, Jared Ross Hardesty focuses on the individual stories of enslaved people in New England, bringing their experiences to life. He also explores the importance of slavery to the colonization of the region and to agriculture and industry, New England’s deep connections to Caribbean plantation societies, and the significance of emancipation movements in the era of the American Revolution.
While the talk is being put on by the Royall House, it’s actually being held at the Cabot Center at Tufts University, not far from Davis Square. There’s no charge for admission, but space is limited, so advanced registration is encouraged.
Boston in the Time of Cholera (episode 161)
Dec 01, 2019
Show notes
Cholera is a truly horrifying disease, with severe diarrhea causing death through dehydration, while the patient remains awake and in agony. The disease is carried by fecal bacteria, so it’s virtually unknown in highly developed countries today, because of our sophisticated sewage and drinking water systems. Back in 1849, Boston had just begun to address its drinking water needs, with the Cochituate aqueduct opening the year before. We had not, however, even begun to deal with our sewage. In most of Boston, raw sewage ran in open gutters down the sides of the street. When the first major cholera epidemic hit Boston in the summer of 1849, hundreds died. There were no antibiotics or IV rehydration to treat victims with. Instead, the city government took a public health approach that was focused on sanitation first.
Public Health in the Town of Boston, 1630-1822 is an extensive study of Boston’s battle against epidemic disease in the years between English colonization and incorporation as a city that was published in 1959 by Dr. John Blake. We didn’t even know this book existed until recently, but once we discovered it, we realized we had missed out on an important book. I can’t believe that we released two different episodes about the 1721 smallpox epidemic, not to mention the Spanish flu, without consulting this volume. It’s exhaustively researched, tying Boston’s struggles with smallpox, yellow fever, and dysentery to advances in medicine and broader historical themes.
Here’s how the Harvard University Press describes the book:
In this book, based almost exclusively on original source material, John Blake takes a detailed look at the public health history of the town of Boston. Historically, the author tells us, public health may be viewed as the science and art of preventing disease and promoting health through organized community activity. A significant part of this study is the insight it offers into the early attitudes toward disease and death as well as other basic political, social, and economic questions.
Dr. Blake outlines the development of public health practice from occasional emergency measures to a continuing program for the prevention and control of certain epidemic diseases. The introduction and increasing use of smallpox inoculation and later of vaccination are described and their importance evaluated. The book also discusses the further developments in the 1790s and the following two decades that resulted from a series of yellow-fever epidemics in northern seaports, including the establishment of a board of health and its efforts to prevent recurrence of this disease. The prevention of other endemic infectious diseases, though far more important in their effect on the community’s health, was largely neglected. Nevertheless, the principles of notification, isolation, and quarantine had been established and the need for governmental activity to protect the public health, for special public health officials, and for expenditure of tax money for public health purposes had been recognized.
This study, restricted in time to the period before Boston became a city (1630–1822), deals with the early years of the public health movement, a period that has been largely neglected. In comparing Boston’s experience with that of other colonies and England, Dr. Blake presents the European background in both the theory and practice of epidemiology and public health. The colonies themselves, whose differences caused many contemporaries to despair of their ever becoming a single nation, were yet bound by an essential homogeneity. “By and large they had the same language, the same religion, the same inheritance of British social and political ideals. And by and large they had the same diseases. Thus the history of public health in Boston becomes significant for the whole American experience.”
Upcoming Event
Back in 1773, colonists in Massachusetts were upset with Parliament, and the tax on tea had become a symbol of everything they were upset about. Before the Boston Tea Party became a symbol for far-right anti-government extremists, before the Boston Tea Party even became a tea party, the town of Lexington had its own tea protest. Three days before the destruction of the tea on Boston Harbor, Lexington residents brought their household tea out to the common and burned it in a giant bonfire. They issued a resolution saying that anyone in Lexington who continued to drink tea would be seen “as an enemy of this town and this country.” It also said, “Should the State of Our Affairs require it, We shall be ready to Sacrifice our Estates, and every thing dear in Life, Yea & Life itself, in support of the common Cause.”
Modern Lexington reenacts the tea burning every December. This year’s day-long Lexington Tea Burning will be held on December 8. There will be musket drills, tours of Buckman Tavern, fife and drum music, and the tea will be burned at 1:30pm. Festivities begin at 11am. The event is free and open to the public.
Over the River and Through the Wood (episode 160)
Nov 24, 2019
Show notes
We know the song “Over the River and Through the Wood” as a Christmas carol, but it was originally titled “The New England Boy’s Song about Thanksgiving Day.” Despite the song’s quaint themes of traditional New England holiday cheer, the woman who wrote it was anything but traditional. Medford native Lydia Maria Child had been a pioneering children’s author, but her increasingly radical positions on abolitionism, women’s rights, and freethinking jeopardized her earning power and helped galvanize a movement. Happy Thanksgiving, everyone!
We used Jared Ross Hardesty’s Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth Century Boston as a source for our discussion of the origins of slavery in early colonial Boston back in episode 74. Alongside Wendy Warren’s New England Bound and Margaret Ellen Newell’s Brethren by Nature, it’s part of a wave of recent scholarship that reexamines the practice of enslaving African Americans in New England. Hardesty’s book in particular looks at chattel slavery in the context of the rigid class hierarchy of Puritan Boston, and he looks at it as the bottom rung of a ladder of unfreedom that also included penal servitude for criminals, hiring out pauper children, and even apprentices and indentured servants. Here’s how the publisher describes the book:
Instead of relying on the traditional dichotomy of slavery and freedom, Hardesty argues we should understand slavery in Boston as part of a continuum of unfreedom. In this context, African slavery existed alongside many other forms of oppression, including Native American slavery, indentured servitude, apprenticeship, and pauper apprenticeship. In this hierarchical and inherently unfree world, enslaved Bostonians were more concerned with their everyday treatment and honor than with emancipation, as they pushed for autonomy, protected their families and communities, and demanded a place in society.
Drawing on exhaustive research in colonial legal records – including wills, court documents, and minutes of governmental bodies – as well as newspapers, church records, and other contemporaneous sources, Hardesty masterfully reconstructs an eighteenth-century Atlantic world of unfreedom that stretched from Europe to Africa to America. By reassessing the lives of enslaved Bostonians as part of a social order structured by ties of dependence, Hardesty not only demonstrates how African slaves were able to decode their new homeland and shape the terms of their enslavement, but also tells the story of how marginalized peoples engrained themselves in the very fabric of colonial American society.
Upcoming Event
You may remember William Monroe Trotter as a central figure in our episode about Black Boston’s opposition to the racist movie Birth of a Nation, when he organized protests, petitioned the state legislature, and eventually met with President Wilson. He was an author, a newspaper publisher, and a founder of the NAACP, but he has been largely forgotten by history, overshadowed by later activists. Dr. Kerri Greenidge’s new biography of Trotter, Black Radical: the Life and Times of William Monroe Trotter, puts him back into the center of the struggle for Black rights in the early 20th century as a radical counterweight to moderate figures like Booker T Washington.
Fannie Farmer's Cookbook (episode 159)
Nov 18, 2019
Show notes
Just in time for your fantasies about the perfect Thanksgiving meal, we’re going to introduce you to Boston’s matriarch of modern cooking this week. You probably thought that Julia Child was Greater Boston’s original top chef, but a generation before Julia launched her career, Fannie Farmer published a cookbook that revolutionized the way that recipes are presented, made cooking accessible to the average home maker, and put Boston at the center of kitchens across the nation.
As a side note, your humble hosts moved this weekend, so this episode will be on the shorter side, but we hope to be back next week in full force.
An obituary for Fannie Farmer from The New York Times’s “Overlooked No More” series, in which obituaries are written for significant historical figures, often women and People of Color, whose contributions were not recognized at the time of their death.
The podcast Documents that Changed the World covers Farmer’s cookbook.
Boston Book Club
Many of you probably have guests who will be visiting Boston this holiday season. It can be hard to find a walking tour in November and December, but on a mild day it is the perfect season to explore historic Boston. The Complete Guide to Boston’s Freedom Trail by Charles Bahne is our go-to for the Freedom Trail. It provides detailed walking instructions and just the right amount of history and context at each stop. It’s small enough to carry in a coat pocket, and if you order it right away, you can study up to impress your friends and family.
If you embark on the trail, you’ll want to make a few stops along the way to warm up. We recommend Boston Cream Pie at the Omni Parker House, a cup of chowder at the Union Oyster House, and a hearty lunch at the Warren Tavern in Charlestown. All of these sites are uniquely historic with delicious menus.
Upcoming Event
On Monday, December 16, experience one of the best ways to be part of Boston’s revolutionary history. Practice your colonial insults and curses for the annual Boston Tea Party Reenactment hosted by Old South Meeting House and the Boston Tea Party Ships & Museum.
The event website describes the evening:
It’s December 16th, and trouble is brewing in Boston. Join us to travel back in time and relive one of the most iconic public protests in American history– the Boston Tea Party!
First, gather at Old South Meeting House, the actual historic landmark where the colonists met in 1773, with Boston’s infamous rabblerousers like Samuel Adams, Paul Revere– and even some crown-loving Loyalists– to debate the tea tax and demand liberty from the British crown. Then, join the fife and drum led procession to Griffin’s Wharf, and line the shores of Boston Harbor with scores of colonists to “Huzzah!” the Sons of Liberty as they storm the Brig Beaver and toss that troublesome tea into the icy waters below!
The event schedule is as follows:
6:30pm “Meeting of The Body of the People” (TICKET REQUIRED) Ticket holders join an authentic, spirited, and theatrical colonial meeting at Old South Meeting House to protest the colonial tax on tea, just as unprecedented numbers of colonists gathered in this very building 245 years ago. (INSIDE PERFORMANCE REQUIRES TICKET)
6:30pm “Friends! Brethren! Countrymen!” (FREE TO THE PUBLIC)As the town meeting rages inside of Old South Meeting House, join the crowds outside and hear from a Town Crier and the women of Colonial Boston as they discuss news of this tea crisis. (OUTSIDE PERFORMANCE FREE TO THE PUBLIC)
7:30pm “Huzzah for Griffin’s Wharf” (FREE TO THE PUBLIC; TICKET HOLDERS GET PRIME PLACEMENT) Led by fife & drum corps, we’ll parade through the Financial District of Boston and down to the Waterfront where Griffin’s Wharf once stood. We’ll follow same route the original Patriots walked to Boston Harbor to destroy the tea!
8:00pm “Boston Harbor, A Teapot Tonight!” (FREE TO THE PUBLIC; TICKET HOLDERS GET GUARANTEED VIEWING) Stand side-by-side with the colonists as we line the shores of Boston Harbor. We’ll “Huzzah!” as the Sons of Liberty storm aboard the Brig Beaver to destroy chest after chest of East India Company Tea.
Advanced registration is required for the ticketed portion of the event, and tickets cost $30.
Harvard Harnesses the Heavens (episode 158)
Nov 10, 2019
Show notes
Since we “fell back” to Standard Time this past weekend, Boston has been forced to adjust to 4:30 sunsets. To help us understand why the sun sets so early in Boston in the winter and what we could do about it, we’re going to replay a classic episode about how the idea of time zones and standard time was born in Boston, with the help of the Harvard Observatory. And because we’re talking about the observatory, we have to share the story of the women who worked as human computers at the Harvard Observatory.
A Boston Globeeditorial arguing in favor of joining Atlantic Time
A Hartford Couranteditorial arguing against joining Atlantic Time
The report of the Massachusetts Time Zone Commission
Boston’s first time ball, on the Equitable building
Equitable building exterior
Equitable building exterior
Boston’s second time ball, on the Ames building
An 1879 railroad guide, listing dozens of time zones
An 1896 railroad guide, after standard time zones
My own graphic showing what our move to Atlantic Time could look like
Harvard’s Human Computers
Williamina Fleming
Henrietta Swan Leavitt
Annie Jump Cannon
Cecilia Payne-Gaposchkin
Harvard computers pose in 1918. Photo courtesy of the Harvard College Observatory.Henrietta Swan Leavitt (r) and Annie Jump Cannon (l) in 1913. Photo courtesy of the Harvard College Observatory.
Hat tip to the Self Rescuing Princess Society blog for first introducing us to Williamina Fleming and the Human Computers.
As long as we’re at it, some praise for the children’s book Rejected Princesses for sharing Annie Jump Cannon with the next generation.
Here’s that book by the Harvard physician who claimed that girls who are “apt to be quick, brilliant, ambitious, and persistent at study … need not stimulation, but repression.”
Annie Jump Cannon in Rejected Princesses
Annie Jump Cannon in a Wonder Woman comic
Boston Book Club
Two years ago, a legislative commission looked at what it would mean if Massachusetts moved to the Atlantic time zone, effectively keeping Daylight Saving Time year round. In the end, their conclusions were fairly optimistic for those of us who hate 4:30 sunsets. They said that Massachusetts residents would likely be happier, healthier, and wealthier than they are now, due to increased economic activity, opportunities for fitness activities, and evening sunlight. However, they stressed that we could only move to Atlantic time if the other New England states came along, as well. Read their report, and then listen to the episode to find out what the other states are up to.
Upcoming Event(s)
David J Silverman of George Washington University will be giving a presentation titled “This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving” in two different Boston events. Here’s how the event is described:
Ahead of the 400th anniversary of the first Thanksgiving, historian David J. Silverman offers a transformative new look at the Plymouth colony’s founding events, told for the first time with the Wampanoag people at the heart of the story, in This Land is Their Land: The Wampanoag Indians, Plymouth Colony, and the Troubled History of Thanksgiving. Silverman is a professor of Native and Colonial American history at George Washington University and has worked with modern-day Wampanoag people for more than twenty years. Through their stories, other primary sources, and historical analysis, Silverman sheds profound new light on the events that led to the creation, and bloody dissolution, of the alliance between the Wampanoag tribe and the Plymouth settlers. The result complicates and deepens our current narrative of the first Thanksgiving, presenting us with a new narrative of our country’s origins for the twenty-first century.
Girl in Black and White: the Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement, with Jessie Morgan-Owens (episode 157)
Nov 03, 2019
Show notes
We’re joined this week by Dr. Jessie Morgan-Owens, who called from New Orleans to discuss her book Girl in Black and White: The Story of Mary Mildred Williams and the Abolition Movement. Mary was born into slavery in Virginia, the child of an enslaved mother and father. Through the remarkable efforts of her father, the entire family was emancipated when Mary was 7 years old. Shortly thereafter, Mary caught the eye of Senator Charles Sumner. Her complexion was light enough for her to pass as white, making her a powerful political symbol for the abolitionist cause. The books details her life and deep ties to the Boston area.
Dr Jessie Morgan-Owens is a professional photographer and dean of Bard Early College in New Orleans. After stumbling across a mention of the famous daguerreotype of Mary Mildred Williams while doing unrelated research in 2006, she spent over 12 years researching Mary’s life and family. The result, Girl in Black and White, attempts to reconstruct the actual life of a little girl who was used by abolitionists for her symbolic value.
If you still need more convincing, here’s how the publisher describes the book:
When a decades-long court battle resulted in her family’s freedom in 1855, seven-year-old Mary Mildred Williams unexpectedly became the face of American slavery. Famous abolitionists Thomas Wentworth Higginson, Henry David Thoreau, and John Albion Andrew would help Mary and her family in freedom, but Senator Charles Sumner saw a monumental political opportunity. Due to generations of sexual violence, Mary’s skin was so light that she “passed” as white, and this fact would make her the key to his white audience’s sympathy. During his sold-out abolitionist lecture series, Sumner paraded Mary in front of rapt audiences as evidence that slavery was not bounded by race.
Weaving together long-overlooked primary sources and arresting images, including the daguerreotype that turned Mary into the poster child of a movement, Jessie Morgan-Owens investigates tangled generations of sexual enslavement and the fraught politics that led Mary to Sumner. She follows Mary’s story through the lives of her determined mother and grandmother to her own adulthood, parallel to the story of the antislavery movement and the eventual signing of the Emancipation Proclamation.
Girl in Black and White restores Mary to her rightful place in history and uncovers a dramatic narrative of travels along the Underground Railroad, relationships tested by oppression, and the struggles of life after emancipation. The result is an exposé of the thorny racial politics of the abolitionist movement and the pervasive colorism that dictated where white sympathy lay—one that sheds light on a shameful legacy that still affects us profoundly today.
During the episode, we talked with Jessie about an exhibit at Boston’s Museum of African American History that tried to highlight how Frederick Douglass used photography and his own likeness to white opinion about African American Men. While we were there, we bought a book called Picturing Frederick Douglass, which you might want to check out, in order to contrast his experience with that of Mary Williams.
Upcoming Event
For our upcoming event this week, we’re featuring a lecture in the Old North Speaker Series:
Vaccination Controversies Then and Now: Boston in 1721 and 1901. The lecture will be delivered by David Jones, a Professor of the Culture of Medicine at Harvard, and then followed by a community discussion facilitated by Tegan Kehoe, whom we had the pleasure to meet at History Camp. Here’s how they describe the event:
Immunization is one of the oldest and most effective medical technologies now in use. However, immunization has sparked fierce controversy throughout its history and remains controversial today. This talk will explore the public protests in Boston triggered by the inoculation against smallpox in 1721 and by compulsory vaccination against smallpox in 1901. In each case, opponents of the practice justified their resistance with a mix of arguments that spanned medical theory, religious faith, public safety, and individual rights. The controversy that began in Boston in 1901 reached the Supreme Court in 1905; the resultant ruling, Jacobson v. Massachusetts, still governs public health power today. These historical vignettes provide valuable perspective on modern vaccination controversies and suggest possible ways to move forward.
Afterwards, join us for a reception and Community Conversation with the speaker and Tegan Kehoe, Education and Exhibition Specialist for the Museum of Medical History and Innovation at MGH, for an intimate, open-minded discussion of the current vaccination/anti-vaccination debate in our society.
The event will be held at 6:30pm on November 13 at Old North Church. Ticket sales and more information via eventbrite.
The Atlas of Boston History, with Nancy Seasholes (episode 156)
Oct 27, 2019
Show notes
We’re joined this week by Nancy Seasholes, editor of the new book The Atlas of Boston History, which just came out on Thursday. It’s a historic atlas of Boston that covers the period from the last ice age, right up to the present day. It contains essays contributed by a wide range of well regarded local historians, as well as many written by Seasholes herself. However, what sets this book apart is its beauty. As the name Atlas indicates, it is richly illustrated with maps, charts, diagrams, infographics, historical photos, paintings, and more. It’s a book that I will use as a reference far into the future, and one that any of my fellow Boston history nerds will love.
Nancy Seasholes is a historian and a historical archaeologist. She’s the past author of Walking Tours of Boston’s Made Land and Gaining Ground: a History of Landmaking in Boston, which is a favorite reference for your humble hosts. Since the book has such a heavy emphasis on visual elements, you may want to follow along at the Atlas of Boston History website as you listen to our conversation this week. It includes sample pages from each of the book’s eleven sections, giving you a much better idea of why I’m so enthusiastic about this beautiful book.
Make sure to catch Nancy’s upcoming local appearances:
If you’re still on the fence, here’s how the publisher describes the Atlas:
Few American cities possess a history as long, rich, and fascinating as Boston’s. A site of momentous national political events from the Revolutionary War through the civil rights movement, Boston has also been an influential literary and cultural capital. From ancient glaciers to landmaking schemes and modern infrastructure projects, the city’s terrain has been transformed almost constantly over the centuries. The Atlas of Boston History traces the city’s history and geography from the last ice age to the present with beautifully rendered maps.
Edited by historian Nancy S. Seasholes, this landmark volume captures all aspects of Boston’s past in a series of fifty-seven stunning full-color spreads. Each section features newly created thematic maps that focus on moments and topics in that history. These maps are accompanied by hundreds of historical and contemporary illustrations and explanatory text from historians and other expert contributors. They illuminate a wide range of topics including Boston’s physical and economic development, changing demography, and social and cultural life. In lavishly produced detail, The Atlas of Boston History offers a vivid, refreshing perspective on the development of this iconic American city.
Upcoming Historical Event(s)
Douglas Egerton will give a lunchtime talk at the Boston Athenaeum on November 8, titled “Heirs of an Honored Name: the Decline of the Adams Family and the Rise of Modern America.” Anyone who’s been listening to our show for a while will realize that I’m a big admirer of the Adams family. I often use the letters of John and Abigail Adams as primary sources, we quoted passages from the letters and diaries of John Quincy in our show about early Charles River bridges, and we’ve even outlined how two of John Quincy’s brothers were involved in a riot at Harvard. John Quincy Adams’ son (and John Adams’ grandson) Charles Francis Adams was a respected historian in his own right, whom we’ve quoted in our episode about the epidemics that decimated Boston’s Native American population.
After those three generations, however, Professor Egerton would argue that the Adams family in America entered an irreversible decline, always living in the shadow of its famous past. Here’s how the Athenaeum describes his talk:
John and Abigail Adams founded a famous political family, but they would not witness its calamitous fall from grace. When John Quincy Adams died in 1848, so began the slow decline of the family’s political legacy. In Heirs of an Honored Name, award-winning historian Douglas R. Egerton depicts a family grown famous, wealthy, but also aimless. After the Civil War, Republicans looked to the Adamses to steer their party back to its radical 1850s roots. Instead, Charles Francis Sr. and his children-Charles Francis Jr., John Quincy II, Henry and Clover Adams, and Louisa Adams Kuhn-largely quit the political arena and found refuge in an imagined past of aristocratic preeminence. An absorbing story of brilliant siblings and family strain, Heirs of an Honored Name shows how the burden of impossible expectations shaped the Adamses and, through them, American history.
That talk will begin at noon on Friday, November 8 at the Boston Athenaeum on Beacon Hill. Advanced registration is required, but there’s no additional charge other than admission to the Athenaeum.
And because we recognize that not everyone can find time to attend a lunchtime talk, we also have a bonus event this week. On Thursday, November 7 at 6pm, Old South Meeting House will host an event in honor of the centennial of women’s suffrage, titled “Massachusetts Women at the Forefront of Change.” Here’s how they describe it:
Fredie Kay, Founder and President of Suffrage100MA, will provide an overview of the suffrage movement in American history, with special attention to Massachusetts activists who paved the way for womens suffrage, including African Americans and other marginalized groups.
The City State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865, with Mark Peterson (episode 155)
Oct 20, 2019
Show notes
We’re joined this week by Yale history professor Mark Peterson to talk about his new book The City State of Boston: The Rise and Fall of an Atlantic Power, 1630-1865. In the interview, Professor Peterson will tell us why he believes that, from its settlement a century and a half before the US Constitutional government was founded until the end of the US Civil War, Boston had a political, economic, and social identity completely independent from the rest of what is now the United States. He’ll also tell us surprising stories about money in early Boston, a French-born British army officer who embodied Boston’s relationship with Acadia, and what it meant for Boston to be a slave society where the enslaved people were kept out of sight.
In the vaunted annals of America’s founding, Boston has long been held up as an exemplary “city upon a hill” and the “cradle of liberty” for an independent United States. Wresting this iconic urban center from these misleading, tired clichés, The City-State of Boston highlights Boston’s overlooked past as an autonomous city-state, and in doing so, offers a pathbreaking and brilliant new history of early America. Following Boston’s development over three centuries, Mark Peterson discusses how this self-governing Atlantic trading center began as a refuge from Britain’s Stuart monarchs and how—through its bargain with slavery and ratification of the Constitution—it would tragically lose integrity and autonomy as it became incorporated into the greater United States.
Drawing from vast archives, and featuring unfamiliar figures alongside well-known ones, such as John Winthrop, Cotton Mather, and John Adams, Peterson explores Boston’s origins in sixteenth-century utopian ideals, its founding and expansion into the hinterland of New England, and the growth of its distinctive political economy, with ties to the West Indies and southern Europe. By the 1700s, Boston was at full strength, with wide Atlantic trading circuits and cultural ties, both within and beyond Britain’s empire. After the cataclysmic Revolutionary War, “Bostoners” aimed to negotiate a relationship with the American confederation, but through the next century, the new United States unraveled Boston’s regional reign. The fateful decision to ratify the Constitution undercut its power, as Southern planters and slave owners dominated national politics and corroded the city-state’s vision of a common good for all.
Peeling away the layers of myth surrounding a revered city, The City-State of Boston offers a startlingly fresh understanding of America’s history.
On October 30, the Massachusetts Historical Society will be hosting a Halloween-themed lunchtime talk. The 2015 movie The Witch, sometimes spelled The VVitch, is a favorite of your humble hosts. It takes the beliefs about witchcraft that early Puritans believed were real and treats them literally. The plot follows one deeply observant family, alone on the 17th century Massachusetts frontier, as they begin to wonder whether they have been cursed. Are they falling prey to hysteria, or are the devil’s minions stalking them among the forests and cornfields? Much of the drama centers around teenage daughter Thomasin’s role as an object of shameful desire for her brother and of jealousy for her mother, and the tension is ramped up by the appearance of an increasingly creepy cast of animals, from a rabbit, to a raven, to a goat named Black Phillip.
The VVitch (2015) visualizes historical oppression as an origin for present-day animalization and concordant disenfranchisement of women who operate outside of proscribed social norms. This talk connects MHS’s archives to The VVitch’s depiction of animality as both feminine and evil to demonstrate the legacy of patriarchal puritanism and possibilities for resistance.
The event will be held at noon on Wednesday, October 30. It’s free and open to the public, just bring a brown bag lunch to enjoy during the talk.
And because we know that not everyone can make it to the Back Bay in the middle of a weekday, we have a bonus event week. Next week, author Nancy Seasholes will be joining us on the podcast to discuss her new book The Atlas of Boston History, which is available to preorder now. By the time you hear our interview with her, the book will be out, and this coming Thursday, you can attend her book launch party at the main branch of the Boston Public Library. It’s like a record release party, but hopefully much, much nerdier. Here’s how the BPL website describes it:
Join us on the evening of October 24 to celebrate the launch of a landmark volume, The Atlas of Boston History: Tracing Boston’s Development through Maps. A reception will be held at 5pm at the Newsfeed Café , followed by a 6:30 presentation from the book’s editor, historian Nancy S. Seasholes, in Rabb Hall. The evening will conclude with a book signing by Nancy and other Atlas contributors. Attendance is free, and no RSVPs are required. We hope you will be able to join us.
Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston, with Millington Bergeson-Lockwood (episode 154)
Oct 13, 2019
Show notes
Historian Millington Bergeson-Lockwood, author of Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston, joins us this week to talk about the evolution of partisanship and political loyalty among Boston’s African American community, from just after the Civil War until the turn of the 20th century. It was a period that at first promised political and economic advancement for African Americans, but ended with the rise of lynching and codified Jim Crow laws. It was also a period that began with near universal support for Lincoln’s Republican party among African Americans, with Frederick Douglass commenting “the Republican party is the ship and all else is the sea.” However, after decades of setbacks and roadblocks on the path of progress, many began to question their support of the GOP, and some tried to forge a new, non-partisan path to Black advancement. Dr. Bergeson-Lockwood will tell us how the movement developed and whether it ultimately achieved its goals.
Dr. Millington Bergeson-Lockwood describes himself as a “historian of race, politics, and the law in United States history.” Though he completed his PhD at the University of Michigan, he became interested in Boston’s complex history of race and politics while living here as an undergraduate. He joined us from Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to discuss his book Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston.
Here’s how the UNC Press describes the book:
In late nineteenth-century Boston, battles over black party loyalty were fights over the place of African Americans in the post–Civil War nation. In his fresh in-depth study of black partisanship and politics, Millington W. Bergeson-Lockwood demonstrates that party politics became the terrain upon which black Bostonians tested the promise of equality in America’s democracy. Most African Americans remained loyal Republicans, but Race Over Party highlights the actions and aspirations of a cadre of those who argued that the GOP took black votes for granted and offered little meaningful reward for black support. These activists branded themselves “independents,” forging new alliances and advocating support of whichever candidate would support black freedom regardless of party.
By the end of the century, however, it became clear that partisan politics offered little hope for the protection of black rights and lives in the face of white supremacy and racial violence. Even so, Bergeson-Lockwood shows how black Bostonians’ faith in self-reliance, political autonomy, and dedicated organizing inspired future generations of activists who would carry these legacies into the foundation of the twentieth-century civil rights movement.
Upcoming Event
The Partnership of Historic Bostons is a local group focusing on the historical relationship between Boston, Massachusetts and Boston, Lincolnshire. Charter Day is celebrated on September 7, commemorating the day in 1630 when Boston, Dorchester, and Watertown were all officially named. The partnership has a series of lectures and walking tours throughout September and October as part of their celebration, which you can find at .
One of the last events in this year’s series is a talk by Peter Drummey of the Massachusetts Historical Society on October 23 called “PURITANS IN PRINT: Historiography of the Puritans in Literature.” I’ve seen Drummey present a few times at MHS on topics like the relationship between John Adams and Thomas Jefferson or the legacy of Abraham Lincoln in Boston, so this should be an event to look forward to.
Here’s how the Partnership describes this one:
From the 1630’s to the 1930’s, the Puritans were stigmatized and chastised in literature as dour, joyless and oppressing. H.L. Menckin’s epigram, “Puritanism is the haunting fear that someone, somewhere, may be happy,” summarizes much of the first 300 years of Puritan historiography. But against the background of the Great War, Depression and Prohibition, the heavens began to open and Puritan society was examined in a new light. In 1930, historian S.E. Morison wrote “My attitude toward seventeenth-century puritanism has passed through scorn and boredom to a warm interest and respect.” How did the literary portrayal of the Puritans change, and how does that change help us understand our national history?
Note that even though Mr Drummey works at the Mass Historical Society, that’s not where the talk is being held. It will be held in the Blue Sky Lounge and Commons at Suffolk Law School at 6pm on Wednesday, October 23. Advanced registration is required. While admission is free, donations are deeply appreciated.
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himself as a “historian of race, politics, and the law in United States history.” Though he completed his PhD at the University of Michigan, he became interested in Boston’s complex history of race and politics while living here as an undergraduate. He joined us from Kinshasa, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, to discuss his book Race Over Party: Black Politics and Partisanship in Late Nineteenth-Century Boston.
