by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

This will be my eighth and final post about the Perry-Clarke additions, and in the hot seat today is Susan Cabot (Lowell) Sohier (1823-1868). Her daughter Alice married into the Clarke family, which is how Susan’s papers became part of this collection.

The oldest child of John Amory Lowell, Susan was a scion of the famous Lowell family of Boston. She and her husband, William Sohier, had six children, three of whom tragically pre-deceased them. Susan herself died of tuberculosis at the age of 45.

But I’d like to end this blog series on a fun note. Susan’s papers include a manuscript volume entitled “Preferences,” a kind of guest book filled out by her friends and family members beginning in 1862. Among the contributors were noted Unitarian clergymen Edward Everett Hale, Henry Wilder Foote, and Robert Collyer.

Rather than just sign, individuals were asked to name a preference in each of 24 categories. The categories were: poet, prose writer, occupation, amusement, vacation destination, method of travel, “time of rising,” study, language, character in history, character in fiction, living preacher, animal, musical instrument, flower, system of government, name, dish, drink, extravagance, economy, proverb or quotation, novel, and “year of life to live over if forced to – this not penitentially.” (If there were a category for favorite question, the last one would be mine.)

Rules for the game included “You must tell the truth” and “Answer as if you had unlimited power of choice, and were in no fear of criticism or punishment.” Many contributors had fun with their responses. Here’s a selection:

Method of travel: “Cars when I’m not upset”; “Driving a 2 seated vehicle with 2 agreeable companions who shall do the talking”; “Balloon”

Time of rising: “After my second morning nap”; “I heartily enjoy getting up early in summer but dont do it”; “Just before breakfast”

Study: “The faults of others”

Language: “The language I speak, Yankee”

Character in history: “I hate history & all the characters in it”

Living preacher: “Anyone who can keep me awake”

Animal: “Almost all animals at a respectful distance”

System of government: “I haven’t any choice really” (from a woman); “Absolute Monarchy myself the Queen”; “Petticoat Government”

Names: “Clarissa Jane, for a boy decidedly Hezekiah”

Extravagance: “Gas bill”

Year of life to live over: “15 years ago” (from a 15-year-old); “25 as seen from 45”; “The year I fell in love”

There were a few consistent favorites. Popular authors included Sir Walter Scott, Baron Macaulay, Elizabeth Barrett Browning, Dickens, Shakespeare, and Charlotte M. Yonge. Horses, dogs, and cats topped the animal category. A few people listed the human voice as their preferred musical instrument.

This volume definitely reminds me of the early days of email and those questionnaires our friends forwarded to us. What would your answers be?

by Brandon McGrath-Neely, Library Assistant

When family and friends come to visit Boston, there are a few places we always visit. We wind through the North End’s narrow streets, grabbing treats at Bova’s Bakery. We stand at the site of the Boston Massacre and look up at the Old State House, with modern buildings soaring behind it. And in between those two stops, we always visit the Faneuil Hall Marketplace.

The Marketplace, which includes Faneuil Hall and its younger siblings—Quincy Market, North Market, and South Market—began when merchant and slave trader Peter Faneuil constructed Faneuil Hall in 1742. Over the next 283 years, the building would change in size, style and substance (and a name change is currently under discussion). The collections of the MHS were actually stored in its attic from 1793 to 1794! Luckily, our materials had moved elsewhere before a series of fires and expansions changed the building—especially an 1806 expansion by famed architect Charles Bulfinch. The three market buildings were added between 1826 and 1827.

As both the Faneuil Hall Marketplace and the city of Boston grew, the Marketplace fell into disrepair. In drastic need of revitalization, the architectural design firm Benjamin Thompson and Associates was selected in 1971 to breathe new life into the iconic landmark. When the project was completed in 1978, the Marketplace was closed to vehicles and instead emphasized foot traffic. Travelers from all over the world can now wander through everything the site has to offer. According to Newsweek, it is the 10^th most popular tourist attraction in the country. Each year, around 18 million visitors come to explore its food, stores, and attractions.

The records of this redesign project are held by the Massachusetts Historical Society in the Ben and Jane Thompson Faneuil Hall Marketplace Records. The rich set of materials help show how the older versions of the Marketplace have changed to become the gathering place we know and love today. Whether Faneuil Hall is on your bucket list, or you’ve been a thousand times, the records offer new ways to experience the market.

If you’re interested in architecture, you can browse the many designs and planning documents, including elevations, floorplans, and images of scale models. If you want to learn about advertising and marketing, you can explore the large number of press materials and see how Faneuil Hall Marketplace became the most visited location in Massachusetts. And if you just like looking at old photos of Boston, the rare images of Quincy Market under construction are a delightful peek behind the scenes.

The Faneuil Hall Marketplace Records are some of my favorite materials at the MHS, because they allow you to experience the iconic landmark in so many ways. They were also processed using the More Product, Less Process approach, described in this Beehive post, which makes the whole collection feel like finding hidden treasures tucked away for decades. So next time you bring a friend to Faneuil Hall, bring them by the MHS to see how it grew up!

by Susan Martin, Senior Processing Archivist

In previous Beehive posts, I’ve introduced you to several members of the Clarke family. Well, the Clarkes were related by marriage to the illustrious Boston Lowells, so the Perry-Clarke additions at the MHS also include papers from members of that family.

If there were prizes for the most prevalent 18th- and 19th-century Boston Brahmin names, “Anna Cabot Lowell” would have to be up there. Our catalog lists four of them, and that doesn’t even include married women or namesakes. The one I’d like to highlight today is Anna Cabot Lowell (1768-1810), a.k.a. Nancy.

Nancy was born in Newburyport, Massachusetts, on 30 March 1768, the oldest of Judge John Lowell’s nine children. Her biological mother, Sarah (Higginson) Lowell, died when Nancy was four years old, and her father re-married twice. Nancy herself never married or had children, and died of tuberculosis on 18 December 1810 when she was 42 years old.

But her family connections aren’t the reason I wanted to write about Nancy today; her letters are just really entertaining! To give you a sense of her style, here’s what she wrote about her friend Betsey Lee on 3 February 1799.

She still laughs & Rants, is rational & absurd in the same breath, & after exhausting the powers of the English language finds she cannot express herself – in short is the same extravagant, good, charming, provoking girl she ever was. […]

I went to one play with her, the Castle Spectre, with which we were highly entertained. We were told afterwards that we ought not to have been […] but we unluckily suffered ourselves to be pleased before we considered the propriety of being so and have been honest enough to own it.

A prolific correspondent with a wide social network, Nancy was one of those people who elevated letter-writing to an art. Her friends included Ann Bromfield (later Mrs. Tracy); Eliza Susan Morton Quincy, wife of Congressman Josiah Quincy; and Scottish author Anne MacVicar Grant. The Perry-Clarke additions contain many of her letters to Bromfield—like the one quoted above—and the MHS also holds a collection of her correspondence with Quincy and Grant.

Nancy’s letters are alternately funny, mournful, worried, silly, and philosophical, but always intelligent and well-written. The gossip also flew fast and furious, especially when it came to who was “paying attentions” to whom. In fact, some of the gossip may have been too much for Anna’s niece, another Anna Cabot Lowell (1808-1894), who compiled her aunt’s letters in 1881. In addition to adding a few explanatory annotations, this younger Anna was probably the one who scribbled out some apparently incriminating passages.

According to Eliza Quincy’s memoir, “For intellectual gifts and exalted character, Miss Lowell held an acknowledged pre-eminence among her contemporaries in Boston. Her writings, both in prose and verse, are stamped with genius.”

Quincy’s youngest daughter, named in her friend’s honor, also had a way with words and became a published poet.

by Alexandra Moleski, NHD Program Coordinator

kkʷey! In part 1, we explored the life of Pial Pol Osunkhirhine, author of the 1830 Wo̲banaki kimzowi awighigan that is held in the MHS archives. Now we are back with part 2 because it turns out that Osunkhirhine’s learning book is not quite written in the language we at the MHS thought it was. 

On ABIGAIL, the digital library catalog of the MHS, the learning book was categorized as a “spelling and reading book in the Penobscot dialect of the Abnaki language.” This description comes from Bibliography of the Algonquian Languages, an 1891 publication by ethnologist James Constantine Pilling that also resides in the MHS collections. However, Pilling’s categorization of Osunkhirhine’s native tongue proves inaccurate. My first clue that Osunkhirhine is speaking an Abenaki dialect other than Penobscot was his upbringing at Odanak.

Abenaki does not refer to a singular tribal nation, but a group of various bands, including the Penobscot, living across Wabanakik (“Dawnland”), or what is now the northeastern US and southern Canada. As we learned in my previous post, the traditionally nomadic Abenaki began settling in various regions in the late 17th century due to warfare and displacement by European colonizers. Some Abenaki settled in present-day Québec and established the communities of Odanak and Wôlinak, while the Penobscot established their primary community in what is now Maine. And the Odanak, Wôlinak, and Penobscot communities were not the only bands of Abenaki in the region–many bands historically lived across Wabanakik but as a result of colonization, were gradually absorbed by the surviving Abenaki nations. Despite their geographical distance, the Abenaki dialect spoken by those at Odanak and Wolinak is closely linked to the Penobscot dialect, though they do have their differences.

My suspicions that Osunkhirhine is not speaking the Penobscot dialect were confirmed by linguist John Dyneley Prince’s 1910 essay, “The Penobscot Language of Maine.” The Abenaki dialect spoken at Odanak and Wôlinak as well as the dialect spoken by the Penobscot both belong to the Algonquian language family. However, residents of Odanak and Wolinak speak a dialect of Western Abenaki–or Canadian Abenaki as Prince describes it–while Penobscot is a dialect of Eastern Abenaki.

In an earlier 1902 essay titled “The Differentiation between the Penobscot and the Canadian Abenaki Dialects,” Prince explains that Abenaki and Penobscot are sister dialects that evolved from a common language, Old Abenaki. The consonant system, grammar, and vocabulary are largely the same between the two dialects. The biggest differences between them are found in the vowel system and intonation. Penobscot has a complex system of intonation and has almost a musical quality to the way syllables are accentuated, similar to the Passamaquoddy language. Meanwhile, the intonation of Abenaki is more monotone–much like the French language the Abenaki were exposed to in New France, later Lower Canada.

With confirmation that Osunkhirine is speaking Western Abenaki rather than Eastern Abenaki, I reached out to our wonderful library team here at the MHS and they quickly updated the listing in our online catalog. Now when you visit Wo̲banaki kimzowi awighigan in ABIGAIL, it categorizes the learning book and Osunkhirhine’s mother tongue as Western Abenaki.

This research experience reminds me that history truly is a living, breathing thing that we are all continuously still learning to understand, whether you are a seasoned historian or a new National History Day student. It also perfectly exemplifies the importance of researching deeply and checking your sources as you work on your NHD projects!

wə̀liwəni!

Further reading:

Penobscot language resources 

“Neg8nsosakilal8mow8gan: the voice of our ancestors” – Abenaki language learning app

by Thomas A. Rider II, PhD Candidate: University of Wisconsin-Madison

      As darkness fell on August 16^th, 1775, 143 New England soldiers, of the colonial army besieging British-occupied Boston, quietly left their fortifications outside Cambridge and advanced into the mile-wide, no-man’s-land that separated the opposing lines.  This ad hoc force included officers and men from all six regiments of Brigadier General John Sullivan’s command, an arrangement that simplified assembling the detachment but ensured most of its troops were unfamiliar to each other.  Privates John Clark and Jason Russell, for instance, had probably never met prior to this mission.  But before the next sunrise, their destinies would collide violently, leaving Russell dead, Clark arrested, and their comrades starkly aware of the confusing and dangerous nature of nighttime operations between the lines.  

       The men were headed to Plowed Hill, a position overlooking the British defenses at Charlestown Neck.  After the fighting at Lexington, Concord, and Bunker Hill, the Americans had implemented a poor-man’s siege of Boston and Charlestown, constructing an arc of redoubts and entrenchments from Roxbury, through Cambridge, to the Mystic River.  While colonial troops regularly patrolled between these fortifications and the British lines, sometimes skirmishing with the enemy, they recognized the need to dominate this area if they were ever to advance their siege works.  By late July, soldiers of the Plowed Hill “picquet” occupied several fortified houses, only nine-hundred yards from their foe, to monitor redcoat activities and exert some control over the contested space between the lines.

       Taking positions so close to the enemy at night and in silence was difficult but upon reaching Plowed Hill an officer managed to emplace Clark and several other men as sentries, fifty yards forward of the outpost buildings.  Their orders were to challenge anyone they saw to their front.  If, after three attempts, they received no countersign, they were to open fire.  These sentinels had no idea that other Americans, including Russell, scouted closer to the British lines, further down Plowed Hill.

       After peering into the darkness for several hours, Clark saw movement.  He issued a challenge – there was no response.  He cried out again and again and “snapped his piece” as a warning.  One-hundred yards away, Russell and other patrolling soldiers heard Clark’s nervous calls but did not believe it was their party being hailed.  Still, Russell laid down next to a tree.  Clark witnessed Russell’s furtive movement just as troops manning the fortified houses implored him to fire.  Clark discharged his musket, killing Russell instantly.

       Seconds later, a sergeant rushed to Clark’s position, informing the “affrighted” private that he had shot a comrade, not a redcoat.  Clark was arrested, but a court of inquiry soon acquitted him of any misconduct and even praised him for “doing his duty as a good soldier” – words that probably did little to assuage his conscience.  The Americans had discovered that even in the absence of the enemy, duty between the siege lines could be deadly.  They had many more lessons to learn before they would drive the British from Boston.  

Materials Referenced:

John Sullivan’s Brigade, Continental Army (Orderly Book, Winter Hill, Cambridge, July 18, 1775 – 27 March, 1776), Revolutionary War Orderly Books, Massachusetts Historical Society.

by Heather Rockwood, Communications Manager

I was recently thinking about Hamilton, the Broadway-hit musical written by Lin-Manuel Miranda and first performed in 2015, and wondered what MHS collection and archive pieces we have that connect to Alexander Hamilton (1757–1804), one of our Founding Fathers. To my delight, I found two letters from him to his sister-in-law, Angelica Schuyler Church (1756–1814). A paragraph in one of the letters that Hamilton wrote compares to words in the musical, specifically in Church’s song, “Take a Break:”

In a letter I received from you two weeks ago

I noticed a comma in the middle of a phrase

It changed the meaning, did you intend this?

One stroke and you’ve consumed my waking days

It says

“My dearest, Angelica”

With a comma after dearest

You’ve written

“My dearest, Angelica”

Fans of the musical will know that in this song Church is teasing her brother-in-law about his grammar, and that the score alludes to a rumored flirtatious relationship between the two. These lines from the musical have been dubbed “comma sexting” on the internet. In the letter from 6 December 1787 in the MHS collection, Hamilton wrote to Church:

You ladies despise the pedantry of punctuation. There was a most critical comma in your last letter. It is my interest that it should have been designed; but I presume it was accidental. Unriddle this if you can. The proof that you do it rightly may be given by the omission or repetition of the same mistake in your next.

This paragraph reads as lighthearted sibling banter, and in a letter from Church to Hamilton on 19 February 1796, she called him her “naughty brother.” Some jocular banter between siblings to show off their knowledge, class, style, understanding, and affection is plausible, considering both Church and Hamilton were known for their witty writing. In the 1780s and 1790s, punctuation, spelling, and grammar were not governed by the rules we follow today, and although spelling was becoming standardized at the time of these letters, a comma in the wrong place was common.  

Miranda admitted to taking some artistic license when writing Hamilton. For example, Church was already married by the time her sister, Eliza Schuyler, met Hamilton and later married him. Thus, the musical’s story of Church and Hamilton falling in love at first sight but knowing they couldn’t marry, and Church letting her younger sister marry Hamilton—as the lyrics in “Satisfied” reveal—is not historically accurate.

Read more about Alexander Hamilton in the MHS collection and archives on this Alexander Hamilton Features page.