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Letter from the President

Dear Members:

The Society’s house at Mount Vernon Street hasbeen a very busy place this year. In addition to ourconvivial Annual Meeting and three stimulating

Stated Meetings, we welcomed Suffolk University’sHonors History Graduates for their awards ceremonyand Boston University’s American and New EnglandStudies Program for their spring reception for M.A. andPh.D. students. Our Graduate Student Forum adopted anew format suggested by the day’s senior scholar,Professor Karen Kupperman of New York University,which promoted lively discussion. Vice-President RobertAllison and Corresponding Secretary Martha McNa-mara convened a Boston Historic Sites Forum to discussintegrating interpretation of various historical museumsto give school classes and the visiting public a strongerunderstanding of the city’s history. The Society co-sponsored People and Places, a summer teacher institutefor public school teachers. Offsite, we cosponsored theWinterthur Furniture Conference, New Perspectives onBoston Furniture, -, that will result in a ColonialSociety publication. As for publications, has seenvolume III of The Papers of Francis Bernard: Governor ofColonial Massachusetts, -. We eagerly anticipatetwo more publications before the end of the year, the firstvolume of the papers of Governor Thomas Hutchinson,edited by our Editor of Publications John Tyler, andvolume VI of the Josiah Quincy, Jr. papers, a compilationof his newspaper essays and other political writings, inpreparation by Neil York.

This has also been a year of transition and sadness, aswe have bid farewell to several Colonial Societystalwarts. Edmund Sears Morgan of Yale University,elected to the Society when a graduate student atHarvard in , was our longest serving member.

Ebenezer Gay, long Curator of Scientific Instruments atHarvard, and William Bradford Osgood, a trustee ofmany Boston historical institutions, were both elected in. Marcus McCorison, President Emeritus of theAmerican Antiquarian Society, was elected in . Mostdeeply felt was the death in August of Pauline Maier,William R. Kenan, Jr. Professor of American History atMIT, who had served on the Society’s Council since and was Chair of our Committee on Publications.Pauline was central to the Society’s work and success. Wewill miss her greatly.

Sincerely,D R. F

President

A Revolutionary Find

T eight copies of a printed subscriptionsheet from Boston’s first organized response to theTownshend Acts, dated October , , were discoveredin the stacks of Houghton Library at Harvard University.What makes them so important is that they bear over manuscript signatures of local merchants and busi-ness people who agreed to participate in boycottingBritish imported goods – a gold mine for scholars keento identify the individuals who played such a central rolein the American Revolution’s early development.

Leading up to the Revolution, the British repeatedlyattempted to impose duties on Americans to defray thecosts of colonial administration. A year after the repeal ofthe Stamp Act, Parliament enacted the first of the Town-shend Acts in the spring of . These sought to imposeduties on a wide array of durable goods being importedinto the colonies. Leading colonists up and down the

The Colonial Society of Massachusetts

September Volume XVIII, Number


Whereas this province labours under a heavy debt, incurred in the course of the late War and the inhabitants by this meansmust be for some time subject to very burdensome taxes ([Boston: Edes and Gill?, ]) Houghton pAB.B.w.Digital reproduction of all eight sheets is available through Harvard’s online catalog.


seaboard protested loudly throughout the summer of. Bostonians then gathered at a Town Meeting onOctober , to mount a boycott (“nonimportationagreement”) of a long and very specific list of goods in-cluding:

“Loaf Sugar, Cordage, Anchors, Coaches, Chaises andCarriages of all Sorts, Horse Furniture, Men andWomens Hatts, Mens and Womens Apparel readymade, Houshold Furniture, Gloves, Mens and Wom-ens Shoes, Sole-Leather, Sheathing and Deck Nails,Gold and Silver and Thread Lace of all Sorts, Goldand Silver Buttons, Wrought Plate of all Sorts, Diamond, Stone and Paste Ware, Snuff, Mustard, Clocksand Watches, Silversmiths, and Jewellers Ware, BroadCloths that cost above 10s. per Yard, Muffs Furrs andTippets, and all Sorts of Millenary Ware, Starch,Womens and Childrens Stays, Fire Engines, ChinaWare, Silk and Cotton Velvets, Gauze, Pewterers hol-low Ware, Linseed Oyl, Glue, Lawns, Cambricks,Silks of all Kinds for Garments, Malt Liquors andCheese.”

A committee was thereby formed to prepare aprinted form to announce these intentions and to procure“subscriptions to the same.” This meeting, the subscrip-tion form, and the distribution of those forms are welldocumented in contemporary newspapers and handbills.Who signed the forms was not – until recently, when theabove sheets were uncovered by Colonial Society mem-ber Karen Nipps during a project to catalog older libraryacquisitions.

The sheer number of signatures is attention-getting,as are the names of many signatories. Paul Revere,William Dawes, James Otis, Joseph Sherburne, RoyallTyler—these are names quite familiar to historians of theperiod, but there are many less familiar, not to mentionunknown. A number of men who would eventuallychoose to be Loyalists signed. Some signed only for ayear’s duration. Other signatures are scratched out.Thrilling to note is that it is signed by sixty-five women.The diversity itself is striking, offering a rare glimpse intothe pre-Revolutionary demographics of the Boston mer-cantile class. Scholarly interest is already mounting andthe sheets will undoubtedly prove essential documentsfor future study of consumerism and the origins of theRevolution.

A Brief Report on Publications

by John W. Tyler

T and sudden death of Pauline Maier has casta long shadow over what would otherwise have been abright record in publications this year. To say thatPauline’s literary success and academic distinction gavereflected luster to the Colonial Society’s publications ismerely to mention the least of her contributions. She wasthe guardian for the Society’s high standards for accuratetranscriptions. She was also a leading voice within thePublications Committee advocating that our volumesshould be useful in advancing academic research, and shestoutly resisted proposals that came our way that seemedtoo narrowly focused. Wherever her research travels tookher, Pauline was ever on the lookout for a cache of over-looked manuscripts worthy of CSM publication. As Ed-itor of Publications, I felt her constant support and willmiss her hearty laugh at Colonial Society gatherings,which was a sure sign that wit and good humor were inthe air.

The first volume of Colin Nicolson’s The Bernard Pa-pers set such a high standard that I would have beenpleased if subsequent volumes merely equaled its excel-lence, but each new volume shows greater refinement ineditorial technique and book-making skill. (Not manypeople would take such care in preparing an index!) TheBernard Papers really are sufficient in themselves as arecord (admittedly a biased one) of Boston politics in thes, and readers of The Bernard Papers, thanks to Colin’sgenerous annotations, really don’t need any secondarysources to follow the entire story. The strong narrativethread makes them engrossing reading even for the non-specialist, who might enjoy opening a volume at randomfor a glimpse of Boston two and a half centuries ago.

I myself have been at work on the first volume of TheCorrespondence of Thomas Hutchinson for much longerthan I care to admit. I had hoped to bring it out whileMalcolm Freiberg, to whom the volume is dedicated, wasstill alive. My only excuse for failing in that endeavor isthat my twin responsibilities as boarding school teacherand the CSM’s Editor of Publications never seemedallow the time I wanted for my own scholarly work. But,thank goodness, many other busy academics somehowfind a way to get on with things despite myriad demandson their time.

The first volume of The Correspondence of ThomasHutchinson is highly selective. Although many Hutchin-

son letters (mostly routine business correspondence) existprior to the volume’s starting point in , I chose tofocus on Hutchinson’s political career, especially as itshed light on the coming imperial conflict. Such lettersare few until his appointment as chief justice in :they focus on a voyage he made to England in - asMassachusetts agent, dispatched to argue for the returnof a number of towns that had been separated from theBay Colony when New Hampshire was created; the furorover the Land Bank and establishment of a specie-backed currency in Massachusetts; Hutchinson’s role atthe Albany Conference in ; and his support of mili-tary efforts during the French and Indian War.

Once Francis Bernard makes his controversial ap-pointment of Hutchinson as chief justice, the feud withJames Otis begins, and as the plot thickens so does thefrequency of Hutchinson’s correspondence. Thus thechallenge of the Boston merchants to stricter enforce-ment of the Navigation Acts, the writs of assistance case,and the Massachusetts response to the Stamp Act arefully documented. One particularly unusual document isHutchinson’s list of the furniture and clothing takenfrom his house during the Stamp Act Riot of August. Hutchinson’s attempt to seek compensation forthese losses launches a flurry of letter-writing so the clos-ing year of the volume is particularly well documented.The Correspondence of Thomas Hutchinson, Volume I,should appear sometime in the late fall or early winter.

Close on the heels of Thomas Hutchinson, Volume I,will be Volume VI of The Quincy Papers edited by NeilYork, containing Quincy’s surviving personal correspon-dence, as well as the newspaper essays and pamphlets onwhich his reputation principally rested. This project wasdear to Pauline Maier’s heart since it was she who arguedthe Quincy Project was incomplete without such docu-ments. Pauline even intervened from time to time whenlibrarians and archivists seemed particularly slow to an-swer Neil’s queries.

I am always reluctant to predict publication dates, butthe editors (Fellow Members Brock Jobe and GerryWard) of the anthology of papers delivered at the Win-terthur Furniture Forum last March are particularly in-dustrious and have been at work reviewing essays thissummer and will send out suggestions for revisions to au-thors soon. They hope their volume might appear in thefall of .

There will be more volumes of The Bernard Papersand Hutchinson Correspondence appearing in the not-too-distant future, and Douglas Winiarski continues his workon Josiah Cotton’s most unusual Memoirs and allied doc-uments. The CSM Council and Publications Committee


jointly authorized this spring a groundbreaking approachto the editing of the Rowley Church Records. CSMMembers may remember these records caused quite a stirseveral years ago when they were rediscovered in a safedeposit box of a bank that was closing its doors.

Ken Minkema and Jeff Cooper, the editors of theRowley Project, write, “While this volume contains ma-terials typical of church records—minutes of churchmeetings, church covenants, baptismal, marriage anddeath lists—the Rowley book is entirely unique in thebreadth, depth, and level of detail devoted to church andcommunity life. Exceeding pages of tightly writtentext, the volume includes, in addition to the vital statis-tics, hundreds of pages of correspondence betweenchurches, results of ecclesiastical councils, extraordinarilydetailed proceedings of disciplinary cases, sermons, andmore. The dates of the volume are especially noteworthy.Though the records extend to , the vast majority ofthe narrative material dates from the s and s—the second generation of settlement—a period for whichwe suffer a dearth of primary source material of this nature.”

Supported jointly by the Colonial Society of Massa-chusetts, the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale, and theCongregational Library in Boston, the Rowley projectwill be the CSM’s first venture into community-sourcing, which Minkema and Cooper define as “aprocess by which, through the medium of a webpage,scans of manuscript pages are made accessible by thepublic via email or file transfer sites. Invitations are ex-tended through press releases, email blasts, blogs, and so-cial media seeking volunteers to participate in transcrib-ing these scans. These volunteers—graduate students,fellow scholars, even retirees—first take an online test toascertain their level of ability, then are separately assignedpages to transcribe, which they then submit to the pro-ject editors for final review.” The Publications Commit-tee thought long and hard about whether such a processcould live up to the CSM’s standards of accuracy in tran-scription, but in the end the Committee’s confidence inMinkema and Cooper, both of whom have previousColonial Society volumes to their credit, was such thatwe took the leap, knowing that at the end of the day eachtranscription would receive a side-by-siding of the origi-nals together with the final typescript by the two editors.

Edmund S. Morgan(-)

by Timothy H. Breen

E S. M had a marvelous gift for weavingvarious levels of human experience into coherent and sig-nificant stories about the major issues that continue toshape our culture. His analysis of the abuse of imperialpower during the run-up to revolution and the develop-ment of racism in a society that loudly proclaimed rightsand freedom addressed complex problems. But whatmade Morgan’s studies great history was his ability to linkthese complex, often abstract themes to the lives of ordi-nary men and women trying desperately to make sense ofthreatening events. Stamp Act Crisis (written with HelenMorgan) was a brilliantly layered narrative, moving fromthe world of confused and bumbling leaders to people dri-ven, often reluctantly, to resistance. And, even after almosthalf a century, anyone wanting to understand the intenselyhuman dimensions of Puritanism would be best advisedto start with Puritan Dilemma. As a teacher, he never de-manded that his students follow a certain line of interpre-tation or adopt a particular methodology. He encouragedindependence, imagination and experimentation. Hisonly firm requirement, other than being honest to thesources, was that historians must write well. For, as he re-minded those who worked with him, if the historianwrites only for other historians, then he or she fails tocommunicate effectively with a larger audience in need ofhistorical understanding.

Graduate Student Forum

Our Graduate Student Forum convened on May , with presentations framed under the headings of “Trust,Knowledge, and Authority in Colonial America,” withModerator Karen Ordahl Kupperman, Professor of His-tory and Silver Professor at New York University.

At the suggestion of Karen Kupperman, and selectioncommittee members Bob Gross and Susan Lively, thepresenters did not read papers, but instead brought doc-uments to discuss and use to illuminate the seventeenth-and eighteenth-century worlds. The presenters were:

Jonathan Barth (George Washington University), on thesignificance of money in colonial America;

Donald F. Johnson (Northwestern University), on theBritish occupation of Revolutionary America;

Nicholas Gliserman (University of Southern California),on landscapes of war in New England, -;

Randi Lewis (University of Virginia), on trade, politics,and the maritime frontier in the Early Republic;

Julia Mansfield (Stanford), on the scourge of yellowfever;

Steven Pitt (University of Pittsburgh), on Boston’s th-century trade and merchant communities;

Ian Saxine (Northwestern), on the Maine frontier after.


Pauline Maier(-)

by Mary Beth Norton

P M, who died on August from lung can-cer at the age of , was a devoted member of the Colo-nial Society and chair of the publications committee. I,Mary Beth Norton, write this remembrance as someonewho met her when we were graduate students at Harvardin the s. There were few women studying historythen; we were Bernard Bailyn’s first two female studentsand two of very few in all fields. Unsurprisingly, webonded; and that bonding increased after we had fellow-ships at the Charles Warren Center the same year, -. She was working then on what became her influentialAHR article, “Coming to Terms with Samuel Adams,” apiece that forever altered historians’ view of that impor-tant Bostonian. She continued to work in the revolution-ary era, and continued to break new ground on whatseemed to be well-known subjects—the Declaration ofIndependence (American Scripture), and the Constitution(Ratification). I owe my membership in the Colonial So-ciety to her: when she realized that I was a member ofthe MHS and AAS but not the CSM, she immediatelymoved to rectify the situation. The CSM and I will bothmiss her.

Beginning with the traditional dinner at Mount Ver-non, the presenters and members of the Society had alively and engaging series of discussions, using courtrecords, newspapers, maps and illustrations, showing therange of sources available to understand the past. Thepresenters were able to leave with new scholarly friendsand colleagues, and arms filled with Colonial Societypublications for further research.

Save the date for next year’s Graduate Forum, Friday,June 6, 2014. Professor Robert Gross of the University ofConnecticut, who has participated in the GraduateForum on the selection committee and as an engagedcommentator, will be the Moderator.

New Members, -Daniel Putnam Brown, Jr., of West Granby, Connecticut.Daniel Putnam Brown, Jr., is a graduate of Williams Col-lege and Yale University Law School. He is a partner inthe law firm of Shipman & Goodwin, located in Hart-ford. He has served as a Trustee of the Connecticut His-torical Society and currently serves on the MuseumCommittee, and is a former elector of the WadsworthAtheneum. He has a strong interest in New England fur-niture of the seventeenth century and has lectured widelyon related topics, as well as co-authored an article forAmerican Furniture on William & Mary “leather” chairs.

Linford Fisher, of Cranston, R.I. Linford Fisher is an as-sistant professor of History at Brown University, wherehe has taught since ; he previously taught at IndianaUniversity. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard in. His new book is The Indian Great Awakening: Re-ligion and the Shaping of Native Cultures in Early Amer-ica, and he has published essays in the New EnglandQuarterly, Ethnohistory, and the Harvard Theological Re-view. He was a participant in the Graduate Stu-dent Forum at the Society, and in -, was awarded along-term research fellowship at the Massachusetts His-torical Society from the National Endowment for theHumanities.

Brian J. LeMay, of Boston. Brian LeMay is the Presidentand Executive Director of the Bostonian Society, a posthe has held since . Previously he was the AssistantDirector of International Relations at the Smithsonian,supporting the Museum’s international programs. Hestudied History of Art and received an MA from TheJohns Hopkins University and a M.Phil. from the Cour-tauld Institute of Art, University of London. He pursued

his Ph.D. studies at the Courtauld concentrating on theportraiture of James Whistler.

Joshua Lane, of Deerfield. Joshua Lane is the Curator ofFurniture and Curator of Academic Programs at HistoricDeerfield. Previously, he served as curator of the Stam-ford (Connecticut) Historical Society. He has taught inthe American studies programs and history departmentsat Miami University of Ohio and Yale University, wherehe received his Master of Philosophy degree in Americanstudies. He has written on early American material cul-ture focusing on th-century American furniture, andcultural history. He conceived and curated the recentHistoric Deerfield exhibit “Into the Woods: FurnitureHistory at Historic Deerfield.”

Nathaniel Sheidley, of Boston. After completing his doc-torate in history at Princeton University, Nathaniel Shei-dley taught for ten years at Wellesley College. His initialscholarly work has been on Native Americans and reli-gion—his book Preachers, Prophets, and Unruly Men, onreligious upheaval on the southern frontier (-) isunder contract with the University of NebraskaPress. Since he has been the Historian and Directorof Public History at the Bostonian Society, where he isresponsible for creating public history programs, focusingon the role of the Old State House in Colonial and Rev-olutionary Boston.

Michael Yogg, of Wellesley. Michael Yogg recently re-tired from Putnam Investments, where he was employedsince . Previously he was at the State Street Research& Management Company. He attended Yale Universityand was a student of Bernard Bailyn at Harvard Univer-sity where he received his Ph.D. His thesis, The Best Placefor Health and Wealth: A Demographic and EconomicAnalysis of the Quakers of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, waspublished in . He is also the author of Passion for Re-ality: Paul Cabot and the Boston Mutual Fund. He is a for-mer board member of numerous institutions, includingthe Massachusetts Historical Society.

News of MembersJames B. Bell has published Empire, Religion and Revolu-tion in Early Virginia, - (Palgrave, London, NewYork, ). It is a chronicle of England’s contrasting im-perial and ecclesiastical policies for its first two colonies,Ireland and Virginia. The settlement of Virginia con-trasted sharply with England’s experience in Ireland.


Ellen Hunt Botting co-edited with Sarah L. HouserHannah Mather Crocker’s Reminiscences and Traditions ofBoston (Boston: New England Historic Genealogical So-ciety, ), which received the triennial Edition Awardfrom the Society for the Study of American WomenWriters in . She also wrote two articles on Crocker:“Theorizing Women’s Political Agency from the Mar-gins of Hannah Mather Crocker’s Reminiscences and Tra-ditions of Boston,” Early American Literature : (forth-coming, Winter ) and “Solving an IntertextualManuscript Mystery for Women’s History: The Case ofHannah Mather Crocker’s Reminiscences and Traditions ofBoston,” Legacy: A Journal of American Women Writers :(forthcoming, December ).

Francis Bremer is currently working on a book tenta-tively entitled “‘. . . To taste the preciousness of eachother’s experiences’: Lay Religion and the Developmentof Puritanism,” which will explore the role of the laity inshaping the movement in England and early New Eng-land through lay prophesying, conferencing, and othermeans of sharing experiences.

Richard D. Brown has co-written, together with DoronS. Ben-Atar, Taming Lust: Crimes Against Nature in theEarly Republic (University of Pennsylvania Press, forth-coming in early ). The work focuses on the separateand independent prosecutions for bestiality of two octo-genarians, one in Massachusetts, one in Connecticut.What makes these cases especially remarkable is thatthey took place in the late s—not the Puritan era—and the convicts were sentenced to hang at a time whenhumane Enlightenment penal reforms were sweeping theUnited States. Moreover the crime for which they wereconvicted was associated with youths and young men, notthe very old. The authors examine the cases as microhis-tories within the larger context of taboos against inter-species sexual contact in Western history.

Benjamin Carp reports that Defiance of the Patriots willbe awarded the Society of the Cincinnati Cox Book Prizeat a ceremony later this fall.

Tony Connors has a book forthcoming: Ingenious Ma-chinists: Two Inventive Lives from the American IndustrialRevolution (SUNY Press).

Jeannine Falino has an upcoming exhibition at the Mu-seum of the City of New York called “Gilded New York,”which focuses on the upper reaches of wealthy New Yorksociety. The show will feature jewelry, costume, silver,paintings, and decorative arts. It opens on November and will be up for one year. She is co-curating the exhi-bition with Donald Albrecht and Phyllis Magidson, and


the catalogue, published by the Monacelli Press, will in-clude essays on jewelry, fashion, architecture, photogra-phy, and the featured balls of the era.

Philip F. Gura’s edition, Jonathan Edwards: Writings fromthe Great Awakening, appears this fall in the Library ofAmerica. He is also completing the first book-lengthstudy of the New England Native American intellectual,William Apess, for the University of North CarolinaPress.

Chris Hussey’s paper “Clifford – the Warren Farm” willbe published in The Mayflower Quarterly’s Septemberissue. The full paper with appendices, graphics, and mis-cellaneous reference materials is on file (digital and hardcopy) at Pilgrim Hall in Plymouth. Hussey also assistedthe Pilgrim Society in acquiring a Massachusetts Histor-ical Commission grant for further waterproofing repairsto the Pilgrim Hall Museum.

William Koelsch published Geography and the ClassicalWorld: Unearthing Historical Geography’s Forgotten Past(London: I. B. Tauris Co., Ltd), No. in the Tauris His-torical Geography series. It is a linked series of essays de-scribing the rise and decline of a once-flourishing genreof scholarship and teaching, classical geography, in bothBritain and the U.S., from the establishment of the Soci-ety of Dilettanti in London in (which sponsored aseries of notable expeditions to Greece, Sicily, and theLevant in the late eighteenth and early nineteenth cen-turies) to the founding of the new American universitiesin the post-Civil War period. It ends with the publicationof Clark professor Ellen Churchill Semple’s The Geogra-phy of the Mediterranean: Its Relation to Ancient Historyand her death in . It has been given a four-star rating(the highest) in Choice magazine, often used for selectingbooks for American academic libraries.

Eric Nellis’s latest book is Shaping the New World: AfricanSlavery in the Americas, - (University of TorontoPress, ).

Mary Beth Norton will be starting phased retirement(teaching half time for up to five years, at her option) atCornell in January.

Reiner Smolinski, General Editor of Cotton Mather’sBiblia Americana, America’s first Bible commentary, ispleased to announce the publication of the next two vol-umes of his ongoing Mather Project: (vol. : Joshua -Chronicles), edited by Kenneth P. Minkema, which willbe released in October, , and (vol. : Ezra - Psalms),edited by H. Clark Maddux, which will be released inDecember, . He also invites CSM members to join

him for: Mather Redux: New Perspectives on CottonMather, a fun-filled symposium in honor of the anniver-sary of Cotton Mather’s th Birthday (-). TheSymposium will be held at the Congregational Library, Beacon St., Boston on Friday, October , . For theprogram, please see http://www.congregationallibrary.org/MatherRedux

John W. Tyler presented “’Such Ruins Were Never Seenin America:’ The Looting of Thomas Hutchinson’sHouse during the Stamp Act Riots” in March at the Furniture Forum in Winterthur, Delaware, the begin-ning event of the Four Centuries of Massachusetts Fur-niture project. Tyler also joined the Historic ResourcesCommittee of the Trustees of Reservations advising onthe furnishing, maintenance and interpretation of theirhistoric buildings.

Kate Viens participated in two conferences over thesummer. She presented “Pride and Asparagus: sMarket Gardening on the Christopher Gore Estate” atthe Dublin Seminar for New England Folklife at His-toric Deerfield on June . On September , she pre-sented “Richard Cobden and the Influence of Transat-lantic Travel on the Victorian Self ” at the New EnglandAmerican Studies Association Conference held at theMashantucket Pequot Museum and Research Center.

Neil York’s volume six of the CSM’s Portrait of a Patriot:The Major Political and Legal Papers of Josiah Quincy Jr.should appear in early . It includes Quincy’s news-paper articles and personal correspondence. York also hasan article, “Defining and Defending Colonial AmericanRights: William Bollan, Agent,” coming out soon inAmerican Political Thought, and is working on a scholarlyedition of The Crisis for the Liberty Fund. The Crisis ap-peared as a weekly in London, starting in January and running into October , issues in all. It wasvery critical of British policy toward the colonies, withcaustic language aimed at the King that would be un-matched on either side of the Atlantic until Paine’s Com-mon Sense. York was invited to do the volume on thestrength of his article about The Crisis that appeared inthe British journal History, in .

Kyle Zelner was promoted to chair of the history de-partment at the University of Southern Mississippi.

New Thoughts on Old Things: FourCenturies of Furnishing the Northeast

The Museum of Fine Arts, Boston (MFA), the ColonialSociety of Massachusetts, and the Massachusetts Histor-ical Society will co-sponsor a symposium devoted to newscholarly research on the design, production, and circula-tion of furnishings in New England.

Museum of Fine Arts, Boston Alfond Auditorium Huntington Avenue, Boston, MA

October , , : AM - : PM

Keynote Speaker Ethan Lasser, Tales from the Object Lab: Narratives forthe st Century Museum

Speakers Tania Batley, E. W. Vaill Patent Chair Manufacturer(Worcester, MA)Nicole Belolan, Aunt Patty’s Furniture: Adult Cradlesand the History of Physical Mobility Impairment inEarly AmericaLouisa Brouwer, “Vanishable Antiques”: The Story ofIsrael Sack, Inc., and the Building of an American In-dustryBen Colman, Between Memory and Antiquity:The Cir-culation of Seventeenth-Century Furniture in th-Cen-tury PlymouthPhilippe Halbert, Convenance and Commodité: Fur-nishing the Château Saint-Louis and the Intendant’sPalace of QuébecMarissa S. Hershon, The Egyptian Revival in the ’s:The Reception Room at Cedar Hill (Warwick, RI)Jennifer N. Johnson, Patterns of Gentility: PictorialNeedlework Upholstery of Eighteenth-Century New-port

Registration begins at :AM. Program starts at:AM.

To register: Please reserve your spot online at:http://www.mfa.org/programs/lecture/new-thoughts-old-things-four-centuries-furnishing-northeast or callLauren Spengler in the Art of the Americas at [email protected] or --. Please provide your name andthe number of tickets you would like to have reserved.



Annual Fund, -

The Colonial Society’s membership has responded with great generosity to the - Annual Appeal. Warm thanksto everyone who gave this year, notably our leadership donors in the Samuel Eliot Morison and Frederick Jackson TurnerCircles, and the donors to the Walter Muir Whitehill Prize Fund, the William M. Fowler, Jr., Outreach Fund, and theFour Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture collaborative. We are especially grateful for a substantial grant for endowment,the income of which is to be used for our publications program.

The Annual Fund complements our endowment and rental income, members’ dues, and sales of books to maintain theSociety’s financial position and the high quality of our publications and programs.

Samuel Eliot Morison Circle

Christopher and Micheline Jedrey

Frederick Jackson Turner Circle

David Ames, Jr.Frederick D. BallouThomas H. BuffintonDaniel R. CoquilletteJ. Ritchie GarrisonEbenezer GayAmalie M. KassHenry Lee

Robert MiddlekauffJoseph Peter Spang

Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr

Anonymous (3)Robert J. AllisonVirginia and Fred AndersonThomas AppletonRodney ArmstrongProf. James AxtellGeorgia B. BarnhillJames B. BellAnne E. BentleyChris BenekeDavid C. BosseHelen BreenF. Gorham Brigham, Jr.Richard D. BrownMiriam W. ButtsJohn G. L. CabotLevin H. CampbellCharles F. Carroll

Cary CarsonDavid K. CasePhilip CashJohn CatanzaritiJonathan M. ChuCharles E. ClarkSheldon S. CohenAnthony J. ConnorsLorna CondonAbbott L. CummingsRobert F. Dalzell, Jr.Claire W. DempseyW. Dean EastmanRobert EglestonDennis FioriDonald R. FriaryRichard P. GildrieSusan Goganian

David L. GreeneJack GrinoldRobert A. GrossPeter R. HaackRobert L. HallElton W. HallJames HenrettaKenneth M. Hills, Jr.Eric A. HinderakerHenry B. HoffMargaret A. HoganChristopher HusseyDavid B. IngramF. Washington JarvisBrock JobeRuth Oliver JolliffePatricia E. KaneRick A. Kennedy

Albert T. KlybergWilliam A. KoelschCrawford LincolnSusan L. LivelyPauline MaierWilliam MartinSusan E. MaycockRick and Bunny MelvoinCatherine MenandKenneth P. MinkemaChristopher MonkhouseLeslie A. MorrisRoger C. MoultonJohn MurrinRobert D. MusseyEric NellisMary Beth NortonRichard and Jane Nylander

Sustaining Circle

The Americana FoundationAnonymousMr. and Mrs. James P. BarrowLaura Beach and Joshua KalksteinMr. and Mrs. Kenyon C. Bolton, IIIAnne and Peter BrookeMrs. Elizabeth CampanellaMr. Steven M. Champlin and Ms. Mary Beth CahillMrs. I. W. ColburnWendy A. CooperDennis Fiori and Margaret BurkeDr. and Mrs. Josef E. FischerDiane Garfield and Peter L. Gross, M.D.Barbara and Robert GlauberMrs. Martha HamiltonAnn and Donald HareBill and Cile HicksMr. and Mrs. James F. Hunnewell, Jr.


Brock W. JobeMrs. Josiah K. LillyJonathan B. LoringThe Lynch FoundationSara and Forbes ManerMr. and Mrs. G. Marshall MoriartyMr. and Mrs. L. Michael MoskovisRobert and Elizabeth OwensNancy and George PutnamDr. Margaret B. and Mr. John C. RuttenbergRuth P. RyderMs. Sudie Schenck and Mr. Steve GoodwinMr. and Mrs. Roger T. ServisonJoseph Peter SpangGary R. Sullivan Antiques, Inc.Jennifer and Matthew ThurlowMr. William W. UptonMr. and Mrs. Neil W. Wallace

Sharon and Ron O’ConnorWilliam B. OsgoodJames M. O’TooleThomas M. PaineCarla Gardina PestanaMark PetersonNathaniel D. PhilbrickJenny Hale PulsipherJohn W. RepsLinda Smith RhoadsJesper Rosenmeier

We apologize for any omissions or errors in the above lists. Please contact us to note corrections. Thank you.

Neal SalisburyMark L. SargentEric B. SchultzCaroline F. SloatRobert H. Smith, Jr.Lionel SpiroJudge and Mrs. George R.Sprague

Theodore E. Stebbins, Jr.Charles M. SullivanKevin Sweeney

Bryant F. Tolles, Jr.Thomas HowardTownsendLeonard TraversLouis L. TuckerNorman P. TuckerWilliam B. TylerJohn W. TylerAlden T. VaughanNicholas WestbrookEdward L. Widmer

Alicia Crane WilliamsThomas R. Wilcox, Jr.Gordon S. WoodConrad E. WrightL. Kinvin WrothNeil L. YorkHiller B. ZobelRoberta Zonghi

Walter Muir Whitehill Prize FundWilliam Fowler

William M. Fowler, Jr., Outreach FundHarvey I. Steinberg

Grant for endowment, income to be used for the Society’s publicationsEstablished in memory of Izaak Walton Killam of Nova Scotia by his

Massachusetts sisters through their testamentary trusts.

Gifts to Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture designated for the Colonial Society publication New Perspectives on Boston Furniture, -

Julia D. CoxThe SeminariansWilliam W. Upton

Gifts to Four Centuries of Massachusetts furniture, unrestricted


Dates to Remember

September

The exhibition “ ‘The Best Workman in the Shop:’ Cabinetmaker William Munroe of Concord”opens at the Concord Museum runs through March , . This and the other three exhibitions aswell as the symposium listed below are all Four Centuries of Massachusetts Furniture events. Pleasevisit www.fourcenturies.org for even more special events.

September

The exhibition “Furniture Masterworks: Tradition and Innovation in Western Massachusetts” at His-toric Deerfield and runs through January , .

October

“New Thoughts on Old Things: Furnishing the Northeast,” a symposium cosponsored by the Mu-seum of Fine Arts, Boston; the Massachusetts Historical Society; and the Colonial Society of Mass-achusetts takes place at the MFA.

October

The exhibition “The Cabinetmaker and the Carver: Boston Furniture from Private Collections”opens to the public and runs through January , .

October

The exhibition “Delightfully Designed: The Furniture and Life of Nathan Lombard” opens to thepublic at Old Sturbridge Village and runs through May , .

November

CSM Annual Meeting at PM followed by dinner at the Somerset Club

December

CSM Regular Stated Meeting at PM – Fellow Member Nathaniel Philbrick, “Bunker Hill: A City,a Siege, a Revolution”

February

CSM Regular Stated Meeting at PM – Paul Staiti, Alumnae Professor of Fine Arts, MountHolyoke College, “John Trumbull’s ‘The Death of Warren at Bunker’s Hill’”

April

CSM Regular Stated Meeting at PM – Fellow Member Lisa Brooks, Associate Professor of Eng-lish and American Studies, Amherst College, “Turning the Looking Glass on King Philip’s War: NewResearch, Ancient Places”

T C S MMount Vernon StreetBoston, MA

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