Exhibition Yankees in the West 6 October 2017 to 6 April 2018 Open Monday through Saturday from 10 AM to 4 PM

For generations Americans have been fascinated with the American west. Depictions of the western landscape flooded New England in the mid19th century, spurring a stream of western tourism. Yankees in the West draws from the Society's collections of letters, diaries, photographs, drawings, and artifacts to explore the ways New Englanders experienced the trans-Mississippi west in the late19th and early 20th centuries.

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Early American History Seminar Terror Twice Told: Popular Conventions, Political Violence, and the Coming of the Constitutional Crisis, 1780-1787 3 April 2018.Tuesday, 5:15PM - 7:30PM Brendan McConville, Boston University Comment: Richard D. Brown, University of Connecticut

As the revolutionary war ended, members of committees, conventions and other extraordinary revolutionary institutions continued to operate as independent political actors. Between 1781 and at least 1786, committeemen and conventioneers launched forceful, violent efforts to reengineer American society. Committee-directed mobs expelled “tories” from many communities, and committeemen and conventioneers used both local laws and contract theory to legitimate these expulsions. This paper argues that the wave of political violence after the American victory at Yorktown in 1781 ultimately reflected conflicts within the American political community over who could be an American, what institutions constituted “the people” in a republic, and the character and limits of the “the people’s” power to form self-governing institutions. These disputes played an important role in creating the 1787 constitutional crisis.

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

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Brown Bag Native Americans in the Antislavery Movement 4 April 2018.Wednesday, 12:00PM - 1:00PM Natalie Joy, Northern Illinois University

This presentation explores Native American participation in the American antislavery movement from the 1830s to the 1860s. In addition to attending meetings, Indians signed petitions, donated money, organized fundraising fairs, held positions in antislavery societies, and assisted fugitive slaves. Most significantly, they influenced abolitionist thought on a number of issues.

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Public Program, This Land is Your Land This Land is Your Land Series: Private Land 4 April 2018.Wednesday, 6:00PM - 7:30PM There will be a pre-talk reception at 5:30 James Levitt, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Meg Winslow, Mount Auburn Cemetery; Cindy Brockway, The Trustees; moderated by William Clendaniel There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).

Watch the recording of this event, embedded below:

Panelists: Panelists: James Levitt, Lincoln Institute of Land Policy; Meg Winslow, Mount Auburn Cemetery; Cindy Brockway, The Trustees; and moderated by William Clendaniel

Some of the early efforts to preserve open space for the physical and spiritual benefits offered by access to nature came from private organizations. Mount Auburn Cemetery was the first large-scale designed landscape open to the public in North America and as such began the rural cemetery movement that later led to public parks. In 1853 the Laurel Hill Association was founded in Stockbridge, inspiring a national Village Improvement Society movement. Later generations have benefited from the first private, statewide conservation and preservation organization, The Trustees of Reservations. Historic New England has saved traditional farms and Mass Audubon and other private organizations preserve and manage open space across the state. How common is this preservation by private organizations? How sustainable is this concept for future generations?

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.

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Special Event Distilling Boston: From the Colonial Period to the Present 5 April 2018.Thursday, 6:00PM - 8:00PM This event is open only to MHS Fund Giving Circle Members, Fellows, and Members Stephanie Schorow

MHS Fund Giving Circle members, Fellows, and MHS Members are invited to a lively evening that explores theculture and history of alcohol consumption in Boston. Using illustrations, photos, and multimedia clips, Stephanie Schorow will speak about Boston’s drinking history beginning in the colonial period, continuing through Prohibition and into the current craft cocktail scene. Following the talk, enjoy a reception, sample cocktails, and continue the conversation.

Schorow is the author of a series of books on Boston history, including Drinking Boston: A History of the City and Its Spirits; Inside the Combat Zone: The Stripped Down Story of Boston’s Most Notorious Neighborhood; The Cocoanut Grove Fire; and The Crime of the Century: How the Brink’s Robbers Stole Millions and the Hearts of Boston. She has worked as an editor and reporter for the Boston Herald, the Associated Press, and numerous other publications; she currently teaches writing at Regis College.

This event is open only to MHS Fund Giving Circle Members, Fellows, and Members.

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Environmental History Seminar The Ice Trade: Frederic Tudor’s “Slippery Speculation” 10 April 2018.Tuesday, 5:15PM - 7:30PM Andrew Robichaud, Boston University Comment: David Spanagel, Worcester Polytechnic Institute

This paper reexamines the emergence and development of the ice trade in Boston and North America, described in 1806 by the Boston Gazette as a “slippery speculation.” What can the ice trade tell us about environmental, economic, political, and spatial change in nineteenth-century Boston and North America?

To RSVP: email seminars@masshist.org or call (617) 646-0579.

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Brown Bag #sayhername: Recovering the Itinerant Ministry of Zilpha Elaw, 1820-1873 11 April 2018.Wednesday, 12:00PM - 1:00PM Kimberly Blockett, Pennsylvania State University at Brandywine

During the Second Great Awakening, almost all denominations discouraged female preachers. Of course, some women did it anyway. Elaw ignored her husband and clergy, faced significant danger, and preached from Maine to Virginia. Then famous, now Elaw and her published Memoirs are mostly unknown. Blockett will discuss the silences of race and gender in the archive.

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History of Women and Gender Seminar Women, Gender, and Sexuality in the High School U.S. History Curriculum: A Conversation 17 April 2018.Tuesday, 5:30PM - 7:45PM Location: Fay House, Radcliffe Institute Wendy Bergeron, Winnacunnet High School; Marlin Kann, Cambridge Rindge and Latin School; Miriam Morgenstern, History UnErased; Susan Zeiger, Primary Source Moderator: Victoria Cain, Northeastern University

All 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.

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Public Program, Conversation Grappling with Legacy 17 April 2018.Tuesday, 6:00PM - 7:00PM There will be a reception before the program from 5:30 to 6:00 Sylvia Brown in conversation with Edward Widmer There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).

What 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.

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Public Program, Author Talk Lexington & Concord: The Battle Heard Round the World 19 April 2018.Thursday, 6:00PM - 7:30PM There will be a pre-talk reception at 5:30. George C. Daughan There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).

The 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.

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Public Program Begin at the Beginning - Overstepping Their Bounds: How the Puritans Wrested Massachusetts from Gorges 21 April 2018.Saturday, 1:00PM - 4:00PM

In 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.  

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Modern American Society and Culture Seminar Creepy Crawling in Los Angeles: The Manson Family and Cultural Mixing as Apocalypse 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.

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Public Program, Conversation, This Land is Your Land This Land is Your Land Series: Public Land 25 April 2018.Wednesday, 6:00PM - 7:30PM There will be a pre-talk reception at 5:30. Ethan Carr, UMass Amherst; Alan Banks, National Parks Service; Sean Fisher and Karl Haglund, Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation; moderated by Keith Morgan There is a $10 per person fee (no charge for MHS Fellows and Members or EBT cardholders).

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.

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