Beacon Street Blog

Our reading room will be closed on Monday, June 3rd for our board's annual meeting. Staff will be on hand to answer questions by phone or email, and all of our online resources will be available as usual.

Recently, while at the 2013 Digital Commonwealth Conference, I learned about two great websites that use geospatial planning tools to create maps that share history and tell stories in visually compelling ways. Here's a little more information on each one. Each one of these tools harnesses the use of primary source archival materials and technology in new and exciting ways. Check out the links — they are pretty amazing!

• [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"309","attributes":{"alt":"Neatline logo","class":"media-image","style":"width: 120px; height: 44px; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"Neatline logo","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]Neatline is, "a geotemporal exhibit-builder that allows you to create beautiful, complex maps and narrative sequences from collections of archives and artifacts, and to connect your maps and narratives with timelines that are more-than-usually sensitive to ambiguity and nuance." Neatline is a project of the Scholar's Lab at the University of Virginia Library.

  You can see examples of Neatline's interactive maps in action on their website.

• [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"310","attributes":{"alt":"HistoryPin logo","class":"media-image","style":"width: 120px; height: 26px; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"HistoryPin logo","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]History Pin bills itself as a global community built around history. Individual people, groups, or organizations can take their photos and "pin" them to maps using behind the scene geo-referencing tools. This nonprofit's goal is to "liberate" photos from archives, families and attics from all around the world. You can search by topic, timeline, or location and even log in to add your own photos.

  Visit the History Pin site for more information.

-Cristina

The Congregational Library will be closed on Monday, May 27th in observance of Memorial Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions for the staff, please send an email, leave a voicemail, or use our website's contact form, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office next week.

Don't forget to let us know if you'll be joining us for tomorrow's free lunchtime lecture.

Park Ranger Dorothy Rivera will give us an exclusive preview of a new National Park Service tour The Great Equalizer?: Black Boston and the Struggle for Education.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"313","attributes":{"alt":"Freedman's Bureau classroom, Richmond, VA, ca. 1866","class":"media-image","style":"width: 201px; height: 124px; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"Freedman's Bureau classroom, Richmond, VA, ca. 1866","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]Join us to discuss the growth of the educational system in Massachusetts and the role that it played in the struggle for civil rights and abolition from the colonial period through the 20th century.

This event is the first in a new partnership with the Boston African American National Historic Site which is headquartered here at 14 Beacon Street.

Wednesday, May 22nd
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Program begins promptly at noon.

Free.
Register through SurveyMonkey.

image "The Misses Cooke's school room" courtesy of the Library of Congress, via Wikimedia Commons

Working at the Congregational Library has given me a soft spot for large illuminated manuscripts, particularly Bibles. So when I came across a recent article on the British Library's Medieval manuscripts blog, I just had to share it. This early-8th century tome went on quite a journey in its day, being taken from northeastern England, through France, and finally ending up at an Italian monastery.

King Offa and the Ceolfrith Bible

Our story begins with Ceolfrith, saint and abbot of the monastery of Wearmouth-Jarrow in Northumbria from 690 to 716. Ceolfrith was Bede's early mentor, and during his rule the size and wealth of the monastery increased greatly and the number of books in the library doubled. Most famously, Ceolfrith commissioned three large Bibles from his own scriptoria: one for Jarrow, one for Wearmouth and the third for the Pope.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"315","attributes":{"alt":"Ceolfrith Bible illumination","class":"media-image","style":"width: 200px; height: 271px; float: right; margin: 5px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"Ceolfrith Bible illumination","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]Realising that he was close to death, Ceolfrith resigned from the abbacy in 716 and set out for Rome, where he planned to present one of the Bibles to Pope Gregory II (715-731) and to remain to await his death. But he died en route, at Langres in Burgundy, and the Bible he was carrying instead made its way to the monastery of Monte Amiata in Florence. It is the only one of Ceolfrith's three Bibles to survive intact, and is now in the Biblioteca Medicea Laurenziana at Florence, known as the Codex Amiatinus and the oldest surviving full copy of the Bible in Latin. The image [to the right] of Christ in Majesty with the four Evangelists is one of two full-page miniatures from this huge volume, which is over 48cm tall, weighs 35kg and has more than one thousand pages.

If you'd like to learn more about the fate of this book and see some of its text, you can read the full article on the Medieval manuscripts blog. Or if Bibles don't strike your fancy, you can explore other beautiful books in the British Library's Digital Catalogue of Illuminated Manuscripts, where all of the images are free to use under public domain copyright rules.

--Robin

I recently processed a new missionary collection from Zimbabwe. Before the 1980s, Zimbawe was known as Rhodesia, or even earlier as Southern Rhodesia. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) had a station in Southern Rhodesia starting in 1893 at Mt. Silinda and a sub-station at Chikore. One of the mid-20th century missionaries who served there was Charles Lord, who donated a 9-folder collection, primarily of reports from the field dating to the mid 1950s. There are also a few histories, some correspondence and photographs. The collection originally came with a number of pamphlets about the mission or the region, which will be added to our missionary pamphlet collection.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"319","attributes":{"alt":"Southern Rhodesia Mission collection, \"Chikore School, 1922\"","class":"media-image","style":"width: 500px; height: 282px;","title":"Southern Rhodesia Mission collection, \"Chikore School, 1922\"","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]
photograph from the Southern Rhodesia Mission collection,
captioned "Chikore School, 1922"

A rare but not unusual feature in the collection is a history written in what I have been told is a blend of chiShona and chiNdau. I do not have any background in African linguistics, but I'm privileged to have a very good source who does, as do her colleagues. Thank you to Wendy Urban-Mead for confirming the languages so our catalog record will be as precise as possible.

This collection is available to all researchers and the finding guide is up on our website. Please contact us if you plan to visit.

-Jessica

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"321","attributes":{"alt":"CL window bookplate","class":"media-image","style":"width: 150px; height: 230px; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"CL window bookplate","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]If you've ever seen the image to the right, than you likely know it to be the Congregational Library's bookplate, which can be found adhered to the inside cover of many of the books in the library's collection. Upon first glance, it is reasonable to interpret it as a lovingly rendered image of our Reading Room, with its view of the Park Street Church. A closer inspection, however, reveals some details that seem off, when compared to the actual Reading Room. While the church seen in the window is undoubtedly the Park Street Church, the window through which it appears looks too small and incorrectly shaped to be one of the windows in the Reading Room. Also, the boat near the window and bust upon the bookshelf do not resemble any items from the library's collection. As the Reading Room has remained largely unchanged since the Congregational House at 14 Beacon Street opened in 1898, it doesn't seem likely that the bookplate shows an older version of the Reading Room. So what is the bookplate actually meant to show and why was so much artistic license taken?

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"322","attributes":{"alt":"bookplate image detail","class":"media-image","style":"width: 400px; height: 508px;","title":"bookplate image detail","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]
bookplate central image
click to enlarge

Fortunately an article in the March 26, 1925 issue of The Congregationalist explains the origins of the bookplate's design and gives further details of the artistic intentions of its creator. The bookplate was created in 1925 by a Boston architect named Harold A. Rich. If you look closely at the rug in the bookplate, you can see "H.A. Rich 25" written along its border. His architectural training may explain why he chose the Classical framing that surrounds the Reading Room picture. According to the article, Rich illustrated an "idealized picture of a corner of the main reading room." Rich's purpose for creating an "idealized" picture seems to have been to allow him to incorporate details that invoke Pilgrim and Puritan history. As the library has been involved in preserving this history since its inception, creating a picture, which combines the Reading Room with icons of the Pilgrim and Puritan past provides a visual summary of one of the library's primary missions. There are four items shown in the bookplate, which are meant to recall the past. This first is the ship by the window, which is a model of the Mayflower. Above the ship, there is a framed picture of a church steeple. This is the steeple of St. Botolph's Church in Boston, England, otherwise known as the Boston Stump and the church where John Cotton preached, before immigrating to New England. The bust above the bookshelf is meant to show a quintessential 18th-century parson, complete with wig, gown, and bands. Finally, the small statue found on the table in the foreground is a small replica of Augustus Saint-Gaudens's statue of Deacon Samuel Chapin, one of the early settlers of Springfield, Massachusetts.

A picture of an idealized Reading Room, rife with symbols of the Puritan past was probably chosen for the library's bookplate as a subtle means of marketing the library's purpose and mission. In 1925 when the bookplate was first put into use, the library sought to expand its patron base, by encouraging new patrons living outside of the Boston area to take advantage of the library’s resources, by borrowing books through the mail, rather than visiting the library in person. For these new borrowers, who may never have seen the actual Reading Room and who may not have been fully aware of the library's history and purpose, the bookplate provided an apt artistic representation of the library and its mission, despite not showing a precise visual representation of the Reading Room. Now, eighty-eight years later, the library continues to add this bookplate to its new acquisitions and the message that it sends about the library still holds true.

-Steve

Review of Red Ink: Native Americans Picking Up the Pen in the Colonial Period by Drew Lopenzina
(SUNY Press. 2012)

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"324","attributes":{"alt":"\"Red Ink\" cover image","class":"media-image","style":"width: 120px; height: 181px; float: left; margin: 0px 10px 5px 0px;","title":"\"Red Ink\" cover image","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]One of the things I enjoy in my job as Librarian is spending time reading about newly published books that will fit into our collections. Perusing academic publications, I was intrigued by the title Red Ink. One of my responses was to consider the political correctness of "red" and Native Americans. Looking into the book, I found the "red" did describe the literature of Native Americans AND the red ink used to correct and change the meaning and output of the Natives by the white culture. Red was also the color of bloodshed in the contacts between Native and other cultures. I will admit I had not considered a written record of Native American although I was familiar with the colonial missionary work that taught reading and writing. My thinking was that the tradition was oral and that any Native American literature was about the Natives not by them.

Lopenzia reviews America colonial literature and reports Native Americans were very active writers in the Colonial period and acquired the skill rapidly. This book includes the story of Samson Occom, who learned the western style of writing through the missionary schools and became a Presbyterian minister. He was the first Native American to publish his writings in English. Occom was a missionary and a teacher and raised a notable amount of money that would fund Dartmouth College. He used his knowledge to protect the Native Americans from predatory land rights deals.

Red Ink covers the period from first European contact with Native Americans to the founding of Brothertown in 1785. Chapters describe Wussuckwheke, or the Painted Letter, Praying Indians, Printing Devils, King Philips Signature, maintenance of Native tradition in hidden transcripts, and the road to Brothertown. Comprehensive detail notes and an extensive bibliography are included. An interesting note to researchers — in 2006 Joanna Brooks collected all of Occom's writings together.

Drew Lopenzina is professor of Early American and Native American literature at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. His work has appeared in the journals American Literature, American Quarterly, American Indian Quarterly and others. He is currently working on a biography of the nineteenth-century Pequot activist and minister William Apess.

-Claudette

Last week, I was pleased to attend a reception at Simmons in honor of Louise Lincoln. Miss Lincoln, an undergraduate at the eve of World War II (1936-1940), donated her scrapbook to her alma mater. It was integrated into the program's Notable Women project, which scans and meticulously catalogs alumni scrapbooks. Longtime readers with a very good memory may remember that I mentioned another Notable Woman several years ago, Daisy Helyar. All the Notable Women projects are generated by Candy Schwartz's digital library class. She selects scrapbooks from the college archive and her class transforms it over the span of a semester into a fully viewable and cataloged digital surrogate. In this case our own Sari Mauro was part of the team that made the magic happen. It was impressive to hear how a small group of students broke out the work, collaborated, and produced a highly detailed and technically perfect product.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"326","attributes":{"alt":"Louise Lincoln project logo","class":"media-image","style":"width: 200px; height: 61px; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"Louise Lincoln project logo","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]Miss Lincoln, a notably quiet and devout woman, grew up during the Great Depression and joined the work force just as the second World War started. This influenced her to add to her secretarial skills with nursing; she continued her education at Yale. The scrapbook focuses on her years at Simmons, however. She valued her time as an undergraduate, she stayed in close contact with the school and that is reflected in the scrapbook pages. Each page is described at item level. I recommend taking time to browse the pages as well as trying out the search features.

Congratulations to Sari and her classmates on a job masterfully done.

-Jessica

While researching the histories of the churches in our 1843 Boston Almanac church engravings digital exhibit, I used a lot of historical maps to figure out where some of the buildings used to be. The names and configurations of Boston's streets have changed a lot over the centuries, for a number of reasons.The Back Bay marshland was filled in to create a new neighborhood; fires and revitalization projects caused entire sections of the city to be rebuilt in new ways; and existing streets have been renamed to honor prominent individuals.

A recent blog post by the Mass. State Library has some further insights:

For instance there used to be two streets in what is now Government Center called King Street and Queen Street. King Street is now State Street and Queen Street is now Court Street. In the book: What they never told you about Boston, or, What they did that were lies by Walt Kelley. He tells us that King and Queen Streets were changed to distance themselves from the Royalty in England. In 1722 these two streets were near Corn Hill which is near where Tremont Street and Cambridge Street meet. King Street was named after King Charles I who was in power when the Puritans settled in Boston in 1630. Charles Street, the Charles River and Charlestown, Massachusetts are all named for King Charles I as well.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"328","attributes":{"alt":"John Bonner map of Boston from 1722","class":"media-image","style":"width: 320px; height: 222px;","title":"John Bonner map of Boston from 1722","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]
John Bonner map of Boston from 1722.
Copy of rare map of Boston.
Published by George B. Foster, Boston, 1872

If you'd like to do some further investigation of your own, the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library has digitized approximately 200,000 maps and 5,000 atlases from around the world, including almost 600 depicting Boston itself.

Researchers, start your engines.

--Robin

In this final post in celebration of Preservation Week, I am here to talk to you (write to you?) about some steps you can take a home to preserve your own personal digital files.

Digital preservation isn't like paper or photograph preservation — and that probably doesn't come as much of a surprise. How many of our blog readers have 3.5-inch floppy disks floating around with files on them? And how many of you actually have a computer with a 3.5-inch floppy drive? How many of you have storage media hanging around with WordPerfect files on them? [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"329","attributes":{"alt":"floppy disks","class":"media-image","style":"width: 200px; height: 126px; float: right; margin: 5px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"floppy disks","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]How many of you have tried to open an old file, only to be met with myriad gibberish?

Digital preservation is tricky because the things we are trying to preserve can't be seen without the aid of a computer. Whereas we can always pick up a book or a piece of paper or a photograph and see it, use it, and evaluate it, no tools required, digital files require us to use tools — big, complicated, tools — to even know that the file exists. This can made digital preservation daunting, but no less necessary.

With this in mind, here are some simple tips for preserving your digital files at home:

1. Always give your files a descriptive, yet short, file name.

• Don't use spaces in your file name.
• Don't use special characters, either (underscores are alright to replace spaces)
• And, yes, this means even renaming all those photos you took on your vacation.

2. Always place your files in a logical place on your hard drive

• Use sub-folders, if need be, to logically organize your items

3. Back-up your files — don't store them all on one device, or even all in one physical place

• You can do this using an external hard drive, or by utilizing a cloud-storage service like Dropbox, Amazon Cloud, Google Drive, SkyDrive, Carbonite, etc. Consider, also, off-site back up. This can be a cloud storage service or a hard drive that is stored somewhere other than your house. Off-site digital back up helps mitigate the risk of a local disaster or incident (say, a flood) wiping out your important documents.

4. Consider making some of your older, inactive documents into PDFs

• PDFs are a better solution for long-term storage, particularly because they aren’t as subject to obsolescence as other file types are

5. When upgrading your software or hardware, check to see if the new software can open your old file types (you can check this with an internet search). If not, save your old file types as a different type that does migrate to the new software. This way, you won't lose access to your old files.

• Some pretty universal file types (at the moment) include:
  • rich text (RTF)
  • plain text (TXT)
  • PDF — for text and images
  • CSV (Comma Separated Value) — for spreadsheets and databases
  • jpeg — for images
  • png — for images

-Sari

Congratulations to our friends at the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC) for turning 40! This amazing organization is a gem. We've mentioned them from time to time, most recently in Monday's post kicking off the Amerian Library Association's Preservation Week. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"331","attributes":{"alt":"NEDCC logo","class":"media-image","style":"width: 150px; height: 46px; float: left; margin: 8px 10px 5px 0px;","title":"NEDCC logo","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]They've recently redesigned their website, so even old friends of the Center might want to visit and see what's new. For example, a link to their preservation leaflets and disaster assistance resources are highly visible on their homepage. They are also offering new sections about conservation treatment for several types of media.

If you're in the market to learn more about preservation or conservation, working proactively on a disaster plan or are in the middle of a disaster, or if you need something conserved, we hope you'll contact our friends in Andover.

-Jessica

Welcome to Preservation Week!

I spend a fair bit of time helping churches deal with how to care for their historical records. Much of what I tell that audience can apply to what you might be keeping in your own home. There are several things you can do that cost you little to nothing and will do a lot to keep your stash of letters and pictures from unnecessary risk.

Here are the top 3 things to get you going in the right direction:

1. Be Proactive.

You can avoid a problem before you start if you review where you are keeping your valuable papers and if there is a high probability of that space being a problem, relocate before Grandma's old love letters are a mouse nest or under a foot of water. We try to find out of the way places to keep our stuff. Basement, attic, garage are the trifecta. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"333","attributes":{"alt":"ruined comics","class":"media-image","style":"width: 200px; height: 133px; float: right; margin: 5px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"ruined comics","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]They live there for a reason, usually — because those are not great living areas, because you don't have anywhere else to put them. We make due with the space we have.

Whenever possible, minimize exposure to overly moist air or potential water sources: sump pumps, pipes, leaky rooves, flooding basements, drafty garages. Minimize risk and check in now and then to make sure they're still OK, not after the disaster has struck.

2. Box It.

Create a barrier between your precious documents and the elements. Sunlight is the enemy for healthy skin for humans and healthy paper for archives: both get burned. Keeping things in a box will keep the sun off the papers. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"334","attributes":{"alt":"document boxes in our archive","class":"media-image","style":"width: 200px; height: 150px; float: left; margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px;","title":"document boxes in our archive","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]You have some choices when considering what kind of box to use. Ideally, archive-quality cardboard boxes are the best. Cardboard also provides extra protection from major changes in humidity, which is another of paper's enemies. However, if you feel plastic is the way to go, choose an inert plastic one and be very sure to check in to be sure that moisture doesn't get trapped in them, which can create a mold situation. Whatever box you choose, be sure it's clean and structurally sound.

3. Get Smart!

There are a lot of options when it comes to preserving paper records and books. It's been a topic of study and has been refined over generations. So much available online to help you learn more and make some smart decisions. Here's just a few to get you started:

• ALA — Preserving Your Memories
• ALA — Preservation Resource Links
• Family Archives — How to Preserve Your Photos
• NEDCC — Preservation Leaflets

 -Jessica

photograph of waterlogged comic books courtesy of Flickr user Allen Holt

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"335","attributes":{"alt":"Francis Bremer leads a walking tour of New Haven, CT","class":"media-image","style":"float: right; margin: 0px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"Francis Bremer leads a walking tour of New Haven, CT","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]We've become pretty big fans of historian Francis J. Bremer over the past few years. As part of the celebrations for the 375th anniversary of the founding of New Haven, Connecticut, Bremer led a historical walking tour this past Saturday to share his knowledge about the city's religious founder, John Davenport, its civil leader, Theophilus Eaton, and the colorful history of its early days.

There is an entertaining description of his talk in the New Haven Independent, including prosecutions of heresy and witchcraft, and controversy over infant baptisms.

"One could imagine him [Davenport] being a 17th-century televangelist if had this technology," Bremer quipped.

If you'd like to know more about John Davenport, take a look at Bremer's latest book, Building a New Jerusalem: John Davenport, a Puritan in Three Worlds.

photograph courtesy of the New Haven Independent

Here at the Congregational Library we have more than just books and archival materials — we also have objects. We don't have many, and they aren't something we actively seek to collect, but those we do have hold some sort of significance to the greater story of Congregationalism or are part of a larger historical collection.

Objects are unique in that they don't always come with information. They don't have a title page (like a book) or a lot of intrinsic text that contextualizes them within a larger story (like many archival things do). Unfortunately, without that larger context, we often miss out on a large portion of what makes that object so interesting.

I recently found myself working with a Sabbath School handkerchief. My tasks were to determine a method of storing the handkerchief (up until this point it had been folded), and add it to our online catalog to make it find-able. I did just that, and the cloth is now secured to flat piece of archival cardboard with polyester strapping, thus ensuring it remains flat, and hopefully working out some of the creases. It's also been added to the catalog under the title "Sabbath School Hymn Handkerchief". But as I was creating a record for it, I realized that we really don't know much about the item.

The handkerchief bears the title "Sabbath School Hymn" along with the hymn's staff music (in two parts) and six verses. There are, below it, two more pieces of verse: "We Never Part From Thee" and "The Golden Rule". It is decorated by motifs of grape leaves, flowers, open Bibles, and Sunday school children. The handkerchief was printed here in Boston by the Boston Chemical Printing Company, but no other attribution is given. The name "Clara E. Downing" is hand-written in the lower left hand corner followed by the word "Present". In a different hand is written "About 1835".

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"336","attributes":{"alt":"Sabbath school handkerchief","class":"media-image","style":"width: 350px; height: 367px;","title":"Sabbath school handkerchief","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]
Sabbath school handkerchief
click to enlarge

I've included an image here in the hopes that one of our readers might recognize the handkerchief and be able to tell us a bit more about it. Have you seen something like this before? Do you have one? Do you know who might have been giving them out? Tell us about it! We'd love to know more about this very cool item.

--Sari

One of the benefits of living in the internet/digital world is the opportunity for collaboration. One such program that I learned about during the spring New England Archivist meeting's keynote by Tom Sheinfeld was the Papers of the War Department 1784-1800. The earliest records created by our government were primarily through the War Department, so when their offices burned in 1800, the nuts and bolts of what made up our infant nation was lost. But maybe not lost forever!

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"338","attributes":{"alt":"War Department Papers logo","class":"media-image","style":"width: 200px; height: 96px; float: right; margin: 5px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"War Department Papers logo","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]These Papers record far more than the era's military history. Between 1784 and 1800, the War Department was responsible for Indian affairs, veteran affairs, naval affairs (until 1798), as well as militia and army matters. During the 1790s, the Secretary of War spent seven of every ten dollars of the federal budget (debt service excepted). The War Office did business with commercial firms and merchants all across the nation; it was the nation's largest single consumer of fabric, clothing, shoes, food, medicine, building materials, and weapons of all kinds. "Follow the money," it is said, if you want to learn what really happened, and in the early days of the Republic that money trail usually led to the War Office. For example, the War Department operated the nation's only federal social welfare program, providing veterans' benefits (including payments to widows and orphans) to more than 4,000 persons. It also provided internal security, governance, and diplomacy on the vast frontier, and it was the instrument that shaped relations with Native Americans. In many respects, the papers lost in the War Office fire of 1800 constituted the "national archives" of their time.

Through this online project, dedicated souls have been piecing together the puzzle through dozens of repositories that collected correspondence, records, and articles relating to and by the War Department. They provide several search options, allow users to view images of the original documents, and are working on generating crowdsourced transcriptions. This repository is a valuable historical resource, and getting better by the day.

-Jessica

We recently received a new book about the Mount Silinda Mission in Zimbabwe, published by Global Ministries:

Almost all of the books one finds concerning the history of mission work in Africa have been written from the perspective of missionaries or western observers. The voices of indigenous Africans, who were in almost all cases the most effective agents of Christian mission, are seldom heard. With the release of Precious Mt. Silinda by Mrs. Kate E. Sukuta and her son, Dr. Sydney Sukuta, this void is beginning to be filled.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"340","attributes":{"alt":"\"Precious Mt. Silinda\" cover image","class":"media-image","style":"width: 120px; height: 180px; float: left; margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px;","title":"\"Precious Mt. Silinda\" cover image","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]Precious Mt. Silinda examines the impact of Christian missionary work in Africa since the dawn of the twentieth century from an African perspective, focusing specifically on the history of long time Global Ministries partner, the United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe. As coauthor Mrs. Kate Sukuta notes, "I feel as though God put me in a unique position to witness over a century of Christian work through my parents' eyes, starting when Mt. Silinda Mission and the United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (UCCZ) were simultaneously founded in 1893, followed by my and my late husband's Christian work to date. As we enter the twenty-first century I feel obligated to share this gift God gave me with the rest of the world, for perhaps this is part of my mission and purpose in life. Even though this "Century Missionary Report Card in Africa" represents my specific interpretations, opinions, and views, I am almost certain that most African people who share a similar background with me will generally agree with my overall conclusions."

Mrs. Kate Sukuta is a second generation member of the UCC Zimbabwe and much of the historical information comes from her personal experience. Her son, Dr. Sydney Sukuta, is a former member of the UCC Zimbabwe and now works as a professor in California.

More from the authors' website:

• First-hand accounts of the impact of Western Christian missionary work in Africa since the late nineteenth century through African eyes.
• How Tshaka Zulu's supremacy wars in KwaZulu/Zululand paved the pathway for the founding of Mt. Silinda Mission and the United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (UCCZ).
• What Western Christianity needs to understand to better serve Africans, and specifically African Christians.
• What Western clinical healing processes could adopt in order to be accepted as complete by Africans.
• How Christian-oriented communities like Mt. Silinda Mission:
  • Exalted the status of African women in society during the colonial era.
  • Undermined apartheid by grooming scholars and intellectuals who would become the political catalysts in the African decolonization process.
  • Produced disciplined and cultured scholars who have gone on to break new grounds in education, business, agriculture, government etc.

You can buy a copy of your own through CreateSpace, or become a member and borrow ours.

If you're looking for a way to get some fresh air while learning about local history this weekend, take a look at this walking tour of Cambridge architecture hosted by the North Bennet Street School:

A historic walk with Steven O'Shaughnessy

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"342","attributes":{"alt":"Steven O'Shaughnessy","class":"media-image","style":"width: 182px; height: 121px; float: right; margin: 0px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"Steven O'Shaughnessy","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]Sunday, April 7
10:00 AM - 2:00 PM

Visit Brattle Street, a historic site in Cambridge, with our Preservation Carpentry instructor Steven O'Shaughnessy. A few of the notable stops along the walk are the 1880 Stoughton House, a shingle style built by H.H. Richardson; The 1759 Vassal-Craigie-Longfellow House, considered among the finest Georgian Mansions in the nation; and the 1689 Hooper-Lee-Nichols House, home of the Cambridge Historical Society. Please note, this is three hours of walking. Bring comfortable shoes, water, and your camera.

Register on the NBSS website.
Registration fee: $30

The weather forecast for Sunday looks lovely. Why not get out there and soak up some new knowledge?

We are very proud to announce that the Congregational Library will be joining the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium, a collaboration of cultural agencies managed by the Massachusetts Historical Society.

The NERFC awards eight-week research grants for scholars to study at its member institutions. Because of its granting schedule, we won't be hosting researchers sponsored by the Consortium this coming year. That means you have plenty of time to put together your application for the 2014-15 cycle before the February deadline. Proposal requirements can be found on the MHS website.

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The Congregational Library will be closed on Friday, March 29th in observance of Good Friday.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions for the staff, please send an email, leave a voicemail, or use our website's contact form, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office next week.

We hope you have a lovely Easter weekend.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"346","attributes":{"alt":"Easter lamb bread","class":"media-image","style":"width: 300px; height: 272px;","title":"Easter lamb bread","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]

image of Easter lamb bread courtesy of Silar via Wikimedia Commons, released under a Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 Unported license.

Our reading room will be closed to the public tomorrow from 9:00 am to 1:00 pm for a staff retreat. We have a lot of exciting projects in the works, so we're setting aside some time to plan, plot, scheme, and dream in order to make sure we bring you the best resources and services we can.

If you need to get in touch with us during that time, you can send an email, leave a voicemail, or use our website's contact form, and we'll get back to you when we break for the afternoon.

Last week, we told you about the historic importance of early Puritan documents called relations. So it should come as no surprise that I was excited when I happened across some in the course of a new project.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"350","attributes":{"alt":"First Parish Church in Haverhill, ca. 1895","class":"media-image","style":"width: 180px; height: 175px; float: left; margin: 5px 10px 5px 0px;","title":"First Parish Church in Haverhill, ca. 1895","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]I recently processed a newly acquired collection of relations from Haverhill's First Parish Church, which much later became known as Haverhill First Congregational Church. These relations and other accompanying church records were accumulated by Reverend John Brown, who served the parish from 1719-1742. While I received these materials in alphabetical order, I believe they were once kept in a kind of chronological order due to the numbering system the minister used on the back of the documents.

The relations chronicle the religious experiences and conversion stories of the people in this colonial community. These documents are valuable for a number of reasons, particularly because of the evidence of congregants relating their stories first hand on why they wanted to become members of First Parish. Relations do not generally survive. The Haverhill relations are often written on small scraps of paper, cut precisely to the size of the relation. This illustrates the value of paper in the early 18th century as well as the chances of the relations being lost to time due to their size and individual nature.

These relations and associated documents will be scanned and added to the New England's Hidden Histories materials.

Working with these records over a couple of weeks, I noticed some interesting trends:

• Perhaps unsurprisingly, there are significantly more women than men offering their relation.

• There are a number of relations from teenagers.

• There's a spike in relations immediately following the Earthquake of 1727. Interestingly, according to Sidney Perley's Historic Storms of New England, the epicenter was felt along the Merrimac Valley, near Haverhill.

• By using the sort function in Excel, I can report the most common names in this era and community were Elizabeth, Mary, and Sarah for women and John, Samuel, and Thomas for men.

• Not all items in this collection are formal Relations. Other items include dismissions, testimonies, confessions, and declarations. One touching declaration was written by Ebenzer Eastman and given to Rev. Brown to be read aloud in church on the occasion of the birth of his child. It states, "Ebenezer Eastman with his wife desire Gods name may be praised in this Congregation for his Goodness to hir in preserving his from the dangers of childe birth and making hir the living mother of a living childe."

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Ebenezer Eastman's declaration of thanks
click to enlarge

-Cristina

On Thursday we said goodbye to our most recent Administrative Assistant, Alexander Howard. Although he was only with us for nine months, he has been invaluable to our everyday operations and our long-term planning. He has organized events, worked on our fundraising and membership campaigns, and helped coordinate our new look, not to mention being a pleasant person to have around.

We wish Alex all the best as he moves on to his new position with the Providence After School Alliance, and hope they will appreciate him as much as we have.

Some of our more eagle-eyed readers may have already noticed that we're searching for a new Administrative and Development Assistant. If you know of someone who meets our needs, we are accepting applications through this Friday, March 22nd.

Back in September we announced the opening of a new exhibit in our Reading Room featuring colonial church records. In that announcement, we mentioned that one of the record types on display are "relations". Relations, or perhaps more commonly referred to today as "conversion narratives", served as a written or oral public testimony of religious conversion or experience. These were usually made in front of a congregation as part of the process of becoming a member of that church. In each case, the congregation would then vote on whether or not the individual should be admitted to the covenanted membership of the church.

We tend to think of these relations as being a specifically New England (or maybe even Massachusetts) convention, but they were in fact common practice in Puritan and Congregational churches on both sides of the Atlantic. [[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"356","attributes":{"alt":"\"Puritan Conversion Narrative\" cover image","class":"media-image","style":"width: 120px; height: 180px; float: right; margin: 5px 0px 5px 10px;","title":"\"Puritan Conversion Narrative\" cover image","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]There have been several studies of Puritan conversion narratives (including one which draws a nice comparison between those in New England and England), so I won't go into too much detail here.

Suffice it to say that these narratives are rather rare to find in a church's archival collection, for several reasons. One, there simply aren't that many churches that were founded in a time period when relations were the "done thing" whose archival collections still exist. Two, many relations were made orally, and the only records of their existence that can be found are notations in church minutes. Three, written relations were usually made on rather small pieces of paper, which can be difficult to organize and keep together. In many cases, time, closings, reorganizations, decay, and natural disasters have wiped out these very personal expressions of faith.

[[{"type":"media","view_mode":"media_original","fid":"357","attributes":{"alt":"relation of Elijah Alden at Middleborough, 1794","class":"media-image","style":"width: 350px; height: 296px;","title":"relation of Elijah Alden at Middleborough, 1794","typeof":"foaf:Image"}}]]
relation of Elijah Alden at Middleborough, 1794
click to enlarge

It's understandable, then, that we get pretty excited when we come across a previously-unknown trove of them. We get even more excited when we can share them with you! This will soon be possible as we get more and more collections online as part of New England's Hidden Histories. The relations found in some of these collections are from the 17th and 18th centuries, and they offer a great deal of insight into colonial public expressions of faith (stay tuned for more information!). We also recently uncovered some Civil War-era relations in a church collection from Pawtucket, RI. While we have no plans to offer these for online-access at this time, once the collection is available (watch this blog for that announcement), they will be available for researcher use.

--Sari