Beacon Street Blog

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March 26, 2018

When I was ten, my personal hero was Patrick Henry. He was the Revolutionary War figure who demanded "liberty or death" — in retrospect, not a surprising choice for a bookish, secretly rebellious pre-adolescent. But by the time I reached college, I had switched to Elizabeth Cady Stanton, the outspoken leader of the woman suffrage movement. I had discovered "women's history".

I shouldn't have had to choose one over the other, but that's the way history had been done for a long time. The stories revolved around wars and politics, and so in spite of an occasional Molly Pitcher or a Queen Elizabeth, the average textbook was pretty male-dominated. When changes came, they were incremental. In the new textbooks famous women appeared in text boxes, set off to one side, and probably not on the final exam.

Women's historians called this the "add women and stir" approach, a way of writing history not unlike adding chocolate chips to cookie dough. The cookies would certainly be edible without the chocolate chips and the chips don't turn the cookie into a ham roast. But the chocolate chips — and the women — are extra. They don't really alter the final product.

How much we miss! Lately one group of women has fascinated me, at least partly because I've found so much material about them in the Congregational Library. These women lived in the mid-twentieth century, after the suffrage amendment but well before the National Organization for Women and The Feminine Mystique. They lived out their faith in organizations like United Church Women, but also as deeply loyal Congregationalists, Baptists, Presbyterians, and Methodists. These were women who enjoyed taking leadership, lobbying presidents and generals and atomic scientists — but who hated being called feminists. 

In fact, they always preferred to go by their husbands' names. They were "Mrs. Harper Sibley", "Mrs. Samuel Cavert", "Mrs. Theodore Wedel", and "Mrs. Douglas Horton". Their husbands were prominent, accomplished men, but thee wives were incredibly competent on their own. Cynthia Wedel had a Ph.D. in psychology and was the first female president of the National Council of Churches. Mildred McAfee Horton was the president of Wellesley College and in World War II commander of the WAVES (Women Accepted for Voluntary Emergency Service, the women's division of the Naval Reserve).

To me, these stories are every bit as much "hidden history" as are the church records we collect and digitize on our website. It's not hard, for example, to find Douglas Horton, the main architect of the merger that created the United Church of Christ, in our collection — but where is the intrepid Mildred Horton?  

These are some of the stories we'll consider next week at the library, as we observe Women's History Month. You are all cordially invited to attend or watch live-streamed a talk I'll be giving on "Liberal Women in Conservative Times" at 4:00pm on Tuesday, April 3rd. Please RSVP on Eventbrite.

-Peggy Bendroth

Content:
March 14, 2018

Since a snow emergency is still in effect for the city of Boston, our reading room will remain closed on Wednesday, March 14th.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question that requires staff attention, please send us an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll respond when we return to the office.

Content:
March 12, 2018

Due to the impending severe winter weather and the state of emergency declared by the city of Boston, our reading room will be closed on Tuesday, March 13th.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Wednesday, March 14th.

We hope all of our local friends are safe and warm.

 


photograph "Bokeh Snow tree branches in Massachusetts blizzard" by D Sharon Pruitt, via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
March 8, 2018

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed today, Thursday, March 8th due to inclement weather conditions.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send us an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office.

Please check this blog or our Facebook page for updates regarding Friday's hours.

Stay warm and stay safe!

 


snowflake ornament image courtesy of Petr Kratochvil via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
March 1, 2018

I haven’t made it a practice to comment on current events in our blog—we’re a library after all and have enough work to do seeing to the past without also taking on the present and the future.

But the recent death of Billy Graham has seemed an exception—and so you are welcome to keep reading, or if the subject is not your cup of tea, to move along and keep browsing our website.

Two years ago I was asked to write an “afterward” to a book of essays on Graham. (Billy Graham: American Pilgrim, was published by Oxford University Press in 2017 and edited by Andrew Finstuen Anne Blue Wills, and Grant Wacker.) My job was to try and answer the “what next” question: will there be another evangelist in Billy’s mold, and if so, who?

I worried a lot about that article. No historian wants to get caught prognosticating, after all, but even worse, I had read plenty of surveys that showed large numbers of people simply did not know who Billy Graham was. For many younger Americans he was a distant memory (or in some cases, a rock impresario).

Nevertheless, I dutifully ticked through all of the “next Billy Graham” candidates—family members, evangelical bigwigs like Rick Warren and Max Lucado, prosperity preachers like T.D. Jakes and Joel Osteen. One thing seemed reasonably certain at the time, that if another Graham-like figure was to come on the scene, he (or she) would come from the “next Christendom,” where the majority of Christians now live, in Asia, Africa, or Latin America.

At the time, I had no idea of the biggest problem facing my prognosticatings. In 2016 many people were already declaring the demise of evangelicalism—in fact, many evangelicals themselves were admitting that they had lost the culture wars and would need to adjust to being, as one of them put it, the “away team rather than the home team.” But that was all before the election of 2016 and the dramatic role evangelicals would play in the election of Donald Trump.

Not surprisingly, I’ve been thinking a lot about how I would write the article if I were given the assignment now. Two years ago I was skeptical of any radical changes in the offing—paradigms, I wrote, shift far less often than we think they do. Since then, we’ve become less sanguine. Many of my fellow historians of American religion have issued sharply critical denunciations of evangelicalism, some declaring its final demise, others wondering whether the category even made sense in the first place. Without a doubt the evangelicalism that Graham represented, the white, middle-class nexus of Wheaton College, Christianity Today, and the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, is no longer with us. “Evangelicalism” today looks more and more like an unknowable hodgepodge of religious and political agendas, alarmingly responsive to social media and stubbornly resistant to criticism.

At the very least, if I were writing the article now, I’d add a caveat: this is not a time for crowning successors. Billy Graham came on the stage in the midst of an evangelical revival that arose in the shadow of the Cold War, an era in which hope overrode fear. Conservative evangelicals, many of whom had become convinced that the end of the world was near, chose a brighter future, an America that might after all become truly Christian. Most of us today would see that optimism as narrow and naïve, and might also rightly wonder about Graham’s message. Despite the flurry of post-mortems in the press and on social media, we are only beginning to understand his complex impact on American society.

I might also risk some more open editorializing. These are dauntingly different times from the era that crowned Billy Graham an evangelical leader. Now we can measure, as never before perhaps, the hopes and expectations that all of us, evangelicals and non-evangelicals alike, have quietly relinquished, how fear has become such a normal state of mind. I think that the “next Billy Graham,” if such a person does come along, will know this. His or her message may well be every bit as simple and “biblical” as Graham’s, but in a different way. It will, like the Bible itself, make the most sense to people living in hard times, facing an uncertain future.

-Peggy Bendroth

Content:
February 16, 2018

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed on Monday, February 19th in observance of Presidents' Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions you would like to ask the staff, please send an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday.

 


presidential portrait of James Madison by John Vanderlyn courtesy of the White House Historical Association, found via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
February 13, 2018

The latest additions to our New England's Hidden Histories program come from our project partners, the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum. One is a brand new collection to the program, and two are consolidations of materials that are physically separated between our two institutions.


Essex, Mass. First Congregational Church

This church was founded as the Second "Chabacco" Church in Ipswich in 1683, and it has been through many changes over the centuries. This collection contains volumes of church records and town meeting records of Chebacco Parish. It also includes some papers written Rev. John Cleaveland during his time as pastor, a few loose administrative records, and relations of faith from female members.


Newbury, Mass. First Church

We had already published the minutes of a 17th-century ecclesiastical council from the CLA's holdings, but several new additions from the PEM's collection give a much fuller picture of the church's history. They include volumes of church records and ministers' records, as well as documents relating to later ecclesiastical councils.


Salem, Mass. Tabernacle Church

The majority of these materials come from our collection at the CLA. The contribution now added from the PEM's holdings is an earlier version of the church's covenant from 1786. It is a particularly useful supplement because the previously published version is a copy made almost a decade later. Other materials in this collection include both bound and loose church records, construction plans for the Tabernacle itself, and a lengthy dispute between the church's first pastor and its proprietors.


Take a look at some or all of these documents. You never know what interesting information you might find.

 

Special Thanks

These digital resources have been made possible in part by the Council on Library and Information Resources, through a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this resource do not necessarily represent those of the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Content:
January 12, 2018

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed this coming Monday, January 15th in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday, January 16th.

Content:
January 11, 2018

Did you know that the Congregational Library & Archives is a member of the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium?

The NERFC is a collaboration of cultural agencies managed by the Massachusetts Historical Society. It awards eight-week research grants for scholars to study at its member institutions. If you have a project idea that meets the granting criteria, you still have time to put together your application for the 2018-19 cycle before the February deadline. Proposal requirements can be found on the MHS website.

Content:
January 4, 2018

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed tomorrow, Friday, January 5th due to inclement weather.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send us an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office.

Stay warm and stay safe!

 


photograph "Bokeh Snow tree branches in Massachusetts blizzard" by D Sharon Pruitt, via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
January 3, 2018

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed tomorrow, Thursday, January 4th due to forecasted weather conditions.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send us an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office.

Please check this blog or our Facebook page for updates regarding Friday's hours.

Stay warm and stay safe!

 


snowflake ornament image courtesy of Petr Kratochvil via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
December 29, 2017

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed this coming Monday, January 1st.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday, January 2nd.

However you plan to greet the new year, we hope that it will be a good one.

Content:
December 22, 2017

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed this coming Monday and Tuesday, December 25-26, in observance of Christmas.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Wednesday, December 27th.

We wish all of you a safe and happy holiday.

 


star ornamement image by Nina Matthews via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
December 20, 2017

The latest additions to our New England's Hidden Histories program come from groups in the North Shore region of Massachusetts that had strong opinions on the issues of the time. One forged a local fellowship of churches that has lasted to the modern day. The other achieved its purpose and disbanded. Take a look and see what you can find.

The original manuscripts in these collections are owned by our project partners, the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

 

Essex North Association, Mass.

The Essex Middle Association, which would later become the Essex North Association, was formed in Rowley, West Parish (now Georgetown) in 1761. Noteworthy members included Rev. John Cleaveland, who ministered Chebacco Church in Ipswich for 52 years. The Association weighed in on various social issues throughout its long history, including slavery and the temperance movement.

 

Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society

The Salem Female Anti-Slavery Society (SFASS) was formed in 1834. The preamble to the SFASS's constitution stated its three principles: that slavery should be immediately abolished; that people of color, enslaved or free, have a right to a home in the country without fear of intimidation, and that the society should be ready to acknowledge people of color as friends and equals. The majority of SFASS membership was comprised of wives and daughters of the members of the Anti-Slavery Society of Salem and Vicinity (ASSSV), who were drawn largely from Salem's middle and professional classes. Early activities of the society included distributing clothes to freed blacks in the area, supporting the National Anti-Slavery Bazaar at Faneuil Hall, organizing a sewing school for black girls, and aiding fugitive slaves in Canada.

 

Special Thanks

These digital resources have been made possible in part by the Council on Library and Information Resources, through a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this resource do not necessarily represent those of the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Content:
November 20, 2017

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed this coming Wednesday through Friday, November 22-24, in observance of Thanksgiving.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Monday, November 27th.

We wish all of you a safe and happy holiday.

Content:
November 9, 2017

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed on Friday, November 10th, in observance of Veterans' Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return on Monday.

Content:
November 3, 2017

Our reading room will be closed to the public on Monday, November 6th for a meeting of our board.

All of our online resources will be available as usual, and staff members will be in the office to answer questions over the phone or by email.

Content:
October 29, 2017

Just in time for Halloween, we have a collection of records from the infamous Salem Witchcraft Trials of the late 17th century.

The Salem Witchcraft Trials were a series of hearings before county court trials to prosecute people accused of witchcraft in the counties of Essex, Suffolk, and Middlesex in colonial Massachusetts, between February 1692 and May 1693. Despite being generally known as the Salem Witchcraft Trials, the preliminary hearings in 1692 were conducted in various towns across the province: Salem Village (now Danvers), Ipswich, Andover, and Salem Town. The best-known trials were conducted by the Court of Oyer and Terminer in 1692 in Salem Town.

If you're familiar with Arthur Miller's play The Crucible, you might be surprised at how much more banal and bizarre some of the cases truly were.

The original manuscripts in this collection are owned by our project partners, the Phillips Library at the Peabody Essex Museum.

Check out the collection page for more information.

 

Special Thanks

This digital resource has been made possible in part by the Council on Library and Information Resources, through a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this resource do not necessarily represent those of the Council on Library and Information Resources.

Content:
October 6, 2017

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed this coming Monday, October 9th, in observance of Columbus Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return on Tuesday.

We hope you have a safe and happy holiday weekend.

Content:
October 4, 2017

Last fall we published the digitized versions of the bound records from the Congregational Church in Sturbridge, Mass. as part of our New England's Hidden Histories program. Now we've added several groups of loose records, including correspondence to the Female Society, disciplinary case documents, and relations for admission to membership.

These materials offer a deeper look into the lives of the town's residents. Most are written by individual laypeople rather than church officials, and they delve into more personal matters. Relations show the members' thoughts on their faith. Disciplinary cases remind us that neighborly squabbles and errors in conduct are nothing new. The letters to the Female Society demonstrate that the bonds of community and friendship can be some of the strongest and most enduring.

Take a look at the expanded Sturbridge collection and see what you can find.

 

Special Thanks

These digital resources have been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this resource do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Content:
September 21, 2017

On the final day of summer, we are pleased to bring you this guest post from our most recent archival intern.


This past summer I traveled through time at the Congregational Library & Archives. They gave me the opportunity of professional growth through hands-on learning that allowed my mind's eye to witness the human and financial cost of war, and discover personal stories of victims and survivors.  This was possible through processing the records from the American Committee for Relief in the Near East.


booklets on Armenia in the ACRNE collection

Another stop in the timeline of history brought me to the second half of the 1900s, where the activities of the Bay State Congregational Women's Fellowship allowed my mind to wonder through the changes in our country and culture.

I must confess, processing these two collections set my mind into writer's gear, where both learning history and creating narratives formed the perfect combination of inspiration and motivation to continue working in archives. I saw the world of possibilities each archival collection offers for interdisciplinary studies and research.

Now that the fall semester is starting we are sharing with classmates our internship experiences and I find myself recalling the fulfillment I felt during this internship. I thank the CLA and its archivists for this amazing experience.

—Maria Leighton
summer 2017 archival intern

Content:
September 13, 2017

We are excited to announce the the availability of two new collections in our New England's Hidden Histories program. Both are from towns close to us here in eastern Massachusetts.

 

Hopkinton, Mass. First Congregational Church

The Church of Christ in Hopkinton first gathered on September 2, 1724. The church began with 14 members and by the end of the first ministry, the church had 376 members. The First Parish of Hopkinton was organized in 1827, and The Church of Christ of Hopkinton was incorporated in 1895 and reincorporated in 1928.

The church's first meeting house was raised in December of 1725. In 1731 the church voted to observe the Cambridge Platform of Church Discipline, which meant adopting a congregational form of governance. In 1829 the meeting house was sold, and a new church building was built. However, this building was destroyed by a fire in 1882. A new edifice was built in the same location and dedicated in 1883. This building was also destroyed by a hurricane in 1938. The fourth building was constructed in the same location in 1939. On October 2, 1994 the congregation voted to leave the United Church of Christ denomination due to theological differences. In 1997, the current church building was constructed in order to accommodate expanding membership. In September 2011 the name of the church was officially changed to Faith Community Church. They are still active today. More information can be found on their website.

Included in these records are confessions of faith; church meeting minutes; reports; and lists of marriages, baptisms, deaths, and dismissions.

 

Pembroke, Mass. First Church

The earliest history of the First Church in Pembroke can be traced to the early 18th century. The First Church in Pembroke was organized October 22, 1712 and its first minister, Daniel Lewis, was ordained December 3, 1712. Under Lewis the parish flourished and in 1727 a larger, meeting house was built. The third meeting house was erected by the end of 1837. It continues today as a vibrant congregation.

These records document the early history and life of the church, including membership lists, administrative and financial records, and church correspondence.

 

Special Thanks

This digital resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this resource do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Content:
September 1, 2017

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed on Monday, September 4th in observance of Labor Day.

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

Content:
August 18, 2017

Our reading room will be briefly closed to the public on Tuesday, August 22nd from noon to 1:00 pm, for a staff event.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question for the staff during that time, please leave a voicemail or send an email, and we will get back to you later in the day. If you are planning to visit us in person on that day, please take this into account.

Content:
August 2, 2017

Yesterday, August 1, 2017, was the final day. 14 Beacon Street, the historic home of the American Congregational churches, took on a new owner, Faros Properties. It will remain an office building and the Congregational Library & Archives will continue on in its accustomed space — but now as one tenant among many, no longer the landlord.

The decision to sell 14 Beacon Street was weighty, complicated and historic. The story goes back to 1853, when the American Congregational Association, owner of the building and the library, was first formed. This was a time when denominational identity — and particularly the records of the past — were major issues for Congregationalists. Unlike Presbyterians and Methodists and Episcopalians, they had no central core. Congregationalists were a loose coalition of regionally organized churches, not really a denominational at all.

The ACA was typical of nineteenth-century voluntary societies. It was a small group of ambitious souls who took on two daunting but important tasks: create an archive of historical memory, and build a denominational headquarters. No one else was seeing to either one. Congregational missionary and educational and social service agencies were scattered around Boston and around the country. The records of Congregational history were languishing in church basements (as many still are) or being absorbed into other libraries.

More than half a century later the ACA succeeded. In 1898 the proprietors dedicated a grand new denominational headquarters — Congregational House — sitting at the top of Beacon Hill in Boston. They had raised the money themselves over the course of decades, through hundreds of individual donations, but they did not think small. The library occupied the second floor, an elegant high-ceiling reading room overlooking the famous Granary Burial Ground. The upper floors housed the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, the earliest and largest of the Protestant missionary agencies, as well as women’s missionary organizations, educational and social service efforts, and Pilgrim Press with all its enormous machines.

The early years of the twentieth century must have been a heady time in that building. (Local guidebooks described it as a "beehive of benevolent activity".) But it could not last. By the 1970s, most of the denominational agencies had moved out, first to New York City, and then to Cleveland. 14 Beacon Street began to fill with local nonprofit organizations, providing non-luxurious office space a stone's throw from the Massachusetts statehouse.

The library remained, but in shadow. The internet age threatened to end it altogether: why endure the horrors of traffic and parking in downtown Boston when information was available at the press of a computer key?

As many readers of this blog know very well, today the Library and Archives are thriving, fulfilling the historical mission taken up in 1853, thanks in part to that internet world, but also to a hardworking staff and visionary board. From small beginnings — in 2004 one could still hear the ping of typewriters echoing in the usually empty reading room — the library has become a leader in digital preservation. Our massive effort to save and digitize colonial-era church records, the oldest documents in American history, is now supported by major grants from the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Mellon Foundation. The CLA is a vital part of the world of historic preservation and scholarly study, and dedicated to making all of its resources available to the public. It alone preserves the memories of the Congregational churches, from their earliest beginnings to the present.

The ACA owned the building as long as it could. This was our endowment, after all. We treasured the work of our building staff — Carol Doherty, Suchesta Flynn, John Beattie, and David Chroniak — and endeavored to serve tenants as best we could for as long as we could. Ultimately the ACA faced the limitations all nonprofits do, particularly the realization that maintaining downtown Boston real estate was beyond its mission. Small wonder that the ACA board had started debating the sale issue in the 1930s, and with renewed intensity in the 2000s, as 14 Beacon passed its first century mark.

The sale is a moment for celebration, but also sadness. The Congregational Library & Archives has ensured its future: proceeds from the sale will provide adequate, though not lavish, financial resources, and will allow us to concentrate our intellectual resources on building a future instead of managing an edifice. The building will be in better hands, and it will receive the care it deserves. The board chose a new owner who understands the history of the building and its importance in Boston and Beacon Hill. But the future will be different. Many of us, I know, are grieving this change.

I have wondered a lot lately what the founders of the ACA would think about all this, and here's what I've decided: as Congregationalists they would have understood the need to stay institutionally nimble, to keep the apparatus as simple as possible. There were good reasons why Congregational churches were always bare of ornament and the worship service plain and simple. That is the Congregational Way. I believe the founders would rejoice that we are honoring their core mission, to preserve irreplaceable historic documents, and to make sure memories stay clear and relevant.

-Peggy Bendroth

Content:
August 2, 2017

We are pleased to announce the the availability of two new collections in our New England's Hidden Histories program.

 

Brockton, Mass. First Parish Congregational Church

This church was founded as the Fourth Church in the North Precinct of Bridgewater, became the First Parish in the new town of North Bridgewater, and then First Church in Brockton when the town changed its name in 1874. It later went on to merge with other local churches to form Christ Church in Brockton. The records contained in the two volumes that have been digitized are from the early years of First Church, and include information about membership, the governance of the church, and the administration of the parish in which it was located.

For more information about the larger Christ Church Brockton collection, see the archival finding aid, or go straight to the collection page and start reading.

 

Stoneham, Mass. First Congregational Church

This collection contains the early records of First Congregational Church Stoneham, founded in 1729. Included are church records of meeting minutes, vital statistics, and membership rolls; parish and financial records, including salary and capital expenses; and documents created by ministers who served the church, including commonplace and account books from James Osgood, and sermons from an unnamed minister, most likely John Stevens who served in both Stoneham and Haverhill.

For further information about the full collection, please consult the finding aid, or go directly to the collection page.

 

Special Thanks

This digital resource has been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this resource do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

Content:
June 30, 2017

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed on Monday and Tuesday, July 3rd & 4th in observance of Independence Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions for the staff, please send an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Wednesday the 5th.

fireworks over the U.S. fleet in Sasebo, Japan
fireworks over the U.S. fleet in Sasebo, Japan

 

We hope everyone has a safe and happy holiday weekend.

 


photograph of sailors, family members and Japanese citizens gathered to watch fireworks on U.S. Fleet Activities Sasebo, Japan (2005) by U.S. Navy Photographer's Mate 1st Class Paul J. Phelps

This file is a work of a sailor or employee of the U.S. Navy, taken or made as part of that person's official duties. As a work of the U.S. federal government, the image is in the public domain.

Content:
June 9, 2017

The books in the Town Histories section tell us more than the stories of towns big and small; they show the history of the book in the nineteenth-century. Prior to 1800, every aspect of book production — papermaking, casting and setting type, printing, and binding — was done by hand. The book world began to experience the effects of the Industrial Revolution with the introduction of steam-powered printing presses around 1800. Papermaking was mechanized at the same time, and wood pulp paper was first used in the mid-nineteenth-century. By the mid-1800s, enormous rolls of paper were fed through steam-powered presses, creating large quantities of books at unprecedented speeds.

Hand-bookbinding slowed down book production, and this problem was solved when starch-filled bookcloth was introduced in the 1820s. The bookcloth was glued to boards. These covers, or "cases", were made separately from the pages, or text block, which were then glued into the cases. Publishers stamped multi-colored and gold- or silver-colored decorations onto these bindings using metal dies.

The Isles of Shoals. An Historical Sketch by John Scribner Jenness, published by Hurd and Houghton, New York, 1873

The Theology section also includes one book with an extraordinary publisher's binding.

Future Punishment; or Does Death End Probation? Materialism, Immortality of the Soul; Conditional Immortality or Annihilationism, Universalism or Restorationsim; Optimism or Eternal Hope; Probationism and Purgatory. By the Rev’d William Cochrane, D.D., published by Bradley, Garretson & Co., Brantford, Ontario, 1886

"Deluxe" bindings mimicked fine leather volumes bound by hand, using inexpensive leathers and false bands across the spine. It can be difficult to determine whether a book has false bands without taking the book apart and destroying the binding. The book pictured below may be one of these nineteenth-century deluxe bindings.

Two Hundred Years Ago; or, A Brief History of Cambridgeport and East Cambridge, with Notices of Some of the Early Settlers written by S.S.S. Published by Otis Clapp, Boston, 1859

Many books also contained multi-colored illustrations created by chromolithography, a color-printing technique developed by the French in the 1820s where colors are applied on top of each other to create a multi-colored image.

This lithograph is pasted to the front cover of: World’s Columbian Exposition 1893 Chicago: Catalogue of the Russian Section published by the Imperial Russian Commission, Ministry of Finances, St. Petersburg, 1893

Stereotyping and electrotyping were two popular printing techniques in the nineteenth-century. A stereotype plate is created by pressing papier-mâché onto set type. The dried papier-mâché forms a mold into which type metal is poured, and the result is a metal plate that contains all of the text for one page of a book. Once a printer had created stereotype plates (or stereos) for all of the pages of a book, he could free the type set by hand and use it to set the pages of other books. In the future, when he wanted to reprint a book, he could use the stereos — whereas in the past, he would have had to reset all of the pages by hand. Electrotype plates are created using water, metal salts, and electricity. The electricity is applied to a solution in which metal has been placed, causing the metal to spread over the surface of a mold, taking its shape. Like stereos, electrotype plates each contain an entire page of text. Needless to say, the use of stereos and electrotype plates sped up the process of printing.

 
The City of Cincinnati. A Summary of the Attractions, Advantages, Institutions and Internal Improvements, with a Statement of Its Public Charites by George E. Stevens, published by Geo. S. Blanchard & Co., Cincinnati, 1869   Walks and Rides in the Country Round About Boston Covering Thirty-Six Cities and Towns, Parks and Public Reservations, Within a Radius of Twelve Miles from the State House by Edwin M. Bacon, Published for the Appalachian Mountain Club by Houghton, Mifflin and Company, Boston, 1897
 

Walks and Rides in the Country Round About Boston has a unique binding feature: pockets in the front and back covers. These pockets contain four lithographed maps.

For decades, the mechanization of typesetting eluded printers and publishers. The linotype machine, which cast one line of type in a single slug, was invented in the 1880s, and it further sped up the printing process. Today, most typesetting is done by computer; only fine press publishers continue the tradition of setting type and printing by hand.

In the nineteenth-century, publishers added advertisements to their books. These ads range in size from single leaves to pamphlet-sized advertising supplements, and they were glued ("tipped") or bound into books. One book in the Special Topics in Theology section contains both tipped-in and bound-in advertisements.

Heaven Our Home. We Have No Saviour But Jesus, and No Home But Heaven by the Author of "Meet for Heaven," "Life in Heaven," "Christ's Transfiguration" published by William P. Nimmo, Edinburgh, 1871

The nineteenth-century was an era of faster and cheaper book production, and its legacy can be seen today in any bookstore or library: shelves of books printed on wood pulp paper with cased-in bindings.

 

-Clarissa Yingling

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June 8, 2017

The General Association of Connecticut (now the Connecticut Conference, UCC) was assembled from a number of county-level ministerial associations and church consociations. In partnership with the present conference leadership, we have digitized dozens of volumes of their earliest records. They contain meeting minutes, committee reports, membership lists, rules and recommendations for ordinations of ministers, as well as discussions of various matters of doctrine.

Check out the collection page for more information.

 

Special Thanks

This digital resource has been made possible in part by the Council on Library and Information Resources, through a Digitizing Hidden Collections grant.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this resource do not necessarily represent those of the Council on Library and Information Resources.

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June 2, 2017

Our reading room will be closed to the public on Monday, June 5th for our board's annual meeting.

Staff will be in the office to answer questions by phone or by email, and all of our online resources will still be available as usual.

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June 1, 2017

In honor of June and the upcoming Pride Parade here in Boston, we have added some material to our Open and Affirming Coalition (ONA) collection.

Our friend Marnie Warner donated the material she had collected while she was active establishing the original Open and Affirming policy that was proposed and accepted by the United Church of Christ in 1985. Prior to the ONA collection's public availability here, Marnie volunteered many long hours to help sort out and arrange and clarify the boxes and files. Her insider's perspective was and is always appreciated.

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May 26, 2017

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed on Monday, May 29th 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 or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday.

 


image of historical American flags courtesy of PBS.org

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May 9, 2017

Don't miss this exploration of early American religious song, illustrated with live performances. Reserve your seat today.


From William Billings to Lowell Mason

Join choral ensemble Norumbega Harmony for a noontime concert exploring the musical and cultural transformation of Congregational sacred music from the Revolutionary Era's stark psalm tunes and lively fuging tunes, pioneered by William Billings of Boston (1746-1800), to the European Romantic melodies and harmonies of the city's great music educator and church composer Lowell Mason (1792-1872).


Wednesday, May 10th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through Eventbrite.

 


Learn more about Norumbega Harmony on their website.

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May 8, 2017

As an archivist, I will occasionally make site visits for potential new collections. While chances are good that I will be the one to eventually organize the records, there's no guarantee that the work will divide that way, with intern projects and more than one archivist on staff. However, when I went to Connecticut to visit the Rev. Dr. Davida Foy Crabtree about two years ago, I hoped that I would be the one who would organize her records. The reason why I felt so strongly about this collection is that it represents a side of our collection that I'm always eager to expand upon: that of recent history and a continuation of lesser heard voices. Rev. Crabtree has spent her life and career championing feminism and striving to even the playing field. She attended college during the height of the cultural movement of the late 1960s and early 1970s. A self-described trouble-maker who questioned authority and the status-quo, Crabtree became a member of the United Church of Christ's Executive Council by the age of 27.

As a campus minister, she saw a need for a women's center and helped co-found and lead the Prudence Crandall Center for Women in New Britain, Connecticut in the mid-1970s. She served at Colchester's Federated Church before tackling Conference Minister for the UCC's Southern California and then returned to serve in her home state of Connecticut as Conference Minister until she retired in 2010. Researchers interested in studying the cultural shifts of the 1960s and 70s, who wish to explore women's roles as leaders within the United Church of Christ, will want to come visit and spend some time with this collection. Crabtree is a prolific writer who maintained and donated the personal writings that delve into reactions to the current events of the day that are so often never spoken of or expunged from earlier generations' work.

The guide to this collection is now available on our website. We strongly encourage researchers to review this and to make an appointment before visiting.

-Jessica

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April 25, 2017

This is Preservation Week, hosted by the American Library Association.

In honor of that, there is going to be a reprise of #AskAnArchivist day on Twitter tomorrow, Wednesday, April 26th. This is a great opportunity to get smart on how to care for and maintain your historically valuable items, no matter what their format: paper or digital! Our archivists, Jessica Steytler and Taylor McNeilly, will be following the hashtag and answering the questions. If any of our patrons or members have questions relating to preservation, send them our way!

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April 18, 2017

Our reading room will be closed to the public on Thursday, April 20th from 11:00 am to 2:00 pm for a meeting of the Advisory Circle, our friends of the library group.

Staff will be on hand to answer questions by phone or email, and all of our online resources will be available as usual.

 

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April 13, 2017

By a coincidence of the calendar, the Congregational Library & Archives will be closed this coming Friday, April 14th for Good Friday and the following Monday, April 17th for Patriots' Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions you would like to ask the staff, please send an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday.

To those of you celebrating Easter this weekend, we wish you a safe and happy time. And best of luck to everyone participating in the 121st Boston Marathon on Monday.

 


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

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April 12, 2017

Did you know that we co-sponsor a research fellowship with our neighbors at the Boston Athenaeum?

American Congregational Association - Boston Athenaeum Fellowship

This fellowship supports research in American religious history involving the collections of the Boston Athenaeum and the Congregational Library & Archives. The award includes a stipend of $1,500 for a residency of twenty days (four weeks) and includes a year's membership to both institutions. Applicants must be U.S. citizens or foreign nationals holding the appropriate U.S. government documents.

If you've been considering applying, the deadline is this Saturday. More details about this and other funding opportunities can be found on our Research Scholarships page.

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April 10, 2017

There's still plenty of time to sign up for this month's free lunchtime lecture. It's bound to be a rockin' good time.


Christian Rock and Evangelical Culture in the 1960s and 1970s

Alongside the headlines, radio sermons, about the Beatle scare in the mid-1960s there was another story emerging. The so-called generation gap and the trouble with wayward youth riled conservative Christians from coast to coast. In response to worries about the widening generation gap, many evangelicals — as well as Catholics and some mainline Protestants — made peace with the form of rock music. The embrace of rock was not too out of the ordinary. Conservative Christianity proved remarkably elastic, as believers had long used nearly any means necessary to steady the faltering or save the unconverted.

Billy Sunday, the most well-known fundamentalist preacher of the century, set the tone when he declared, "I'd stand on my head in a mud puddle if I thought it would help me win souls to Christ." By the late 1960s folk masses and traditional songs geared to a young audience became commonplace. Billy Graham shared the stage with Christian rock acts in the early 1970s and penned a book about the Jesus generation, even using the slang of "hippiedom" in the process. He, like many other faithful, decided that the genre could be baptized for godly purposes. Baby boomers and their parents — many of them Pentecostals — played a critical role in crafting a lively, more changeable, and culturally engaged faith. For evangelicalism to thrive, so went the logic, it had to adjust to the times and accommodate the youth culture. The new openness to the counterculture inspired millions.

Randall Stephens is an Associate Professor and Reader in History and American Studies at Northumbria University, Newcastle Upon Tyne, UK. He is the author The Fire Spreads: Holiness and Pentecostalism in the American South (Harvard University Press, 2008); The Anointed: Evangelical Truth in a Secular Age, co-authored with physicist Karl Giberson (Belknap Press of Harvard University Press, 2011); and editor of Recent Themes in American Religious History (University of South Carolina Press, 2009).

His current book project, The Devil's Music: Rock and Christianity Since the 1950s (under contract with Harvard University Press), will examine the relationship of rock music to American Christianity as well as the emergence of Christian Rock. Stephens has written for the Atlantic, Salon, Raw Story, the Wilson Quarterly, Books & Culture, Quartz, Christian Century, the Independent, the Chronicle of Higher Ed, and the New York Times. In 2012 he was a Fulbright Roving Scholar in American Studies in Norway.


Wednesday, April 12th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through Eventbrite.

 


photograph of a Harmony H82 Rebel guitar by Jason Scragz via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
March 28, 2017

Seats are filling up. Don't forget to reserve yours for this week's free lunchtime discussion.


William Goodell (the abolitionist) was a distant relative of William Goodell (the missionary to the Ottoman Empire) and Lucy Goodale. Like his relatives, William Goodell (the abolitionist) was deeply involved with the Congregational Church, which played a central role in the abolition of slavery in the United States.

In 1833 Goodell founded the New York Anti-Slavery Society and the American Anti-Slavery Society. Over the next three decades, he devoted his life to the cause of destroying the sin of slavery (and incidentally, the sin of racism). His descendants continued this trend. Grandson, William Goodell Frost was the third president of the remarkable Berea College (motto: God has made of one blood all peoples of the earth). It was the first school in the south to be coeducational and racially integrated. Frost was at the forefront of struggles against the Jim Crow system in the South. It was Frost who confronted the Kentucky state legislature when it passed a bill in 1904 to segregate Berea College. Frost and the Berea College administration fought this bill all the way to the Supreme Court.


Over the past decade, the study of missionaries from the United States has grown in leaps and bounds. Much of this work presumes that missionaries were always outsiders to the societies they evangelized however their children often grew up speaking local languages without a trace of an accent, and seeing the world through local lenses. This process of acculturation signals that the work of conversion was often a two-way street, and that the experience of living abroad for several generations profoundly shaped communities of missionaries.

In the Middle East, the American missionaries become involved in activities later associated with the Peace Corps, from building schools to carrying out famine relief. In Hawai'i, the American missionaries were involved in the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the annexation of the islands to the United States. Finally, in the south of the United States, in the aftermath of the Civil War, missionaries built most of the historically black colleges and struggled against the racism of Jim Crow.

Miller's current research (including sources from the Congregational Library & Archives) brings these strands of missionary history together in the broader framework of world history. Research for his second book follows the story of a single missionary family, the Goodell or Goodale, across three generations from New England to the Ottoman Empire, Appalachian Mountains and Hawai'i.


Thursday, March 30th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through Eventbrite.

 


image of M. L'Instant, abolitionist from Haiti, an excerpt from "The Anti-Slavery Society Convention, 1840" by Benjamin Robert Haydon, owned by the National Portrait Gallery, via Wikimedia Commons

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March 15, 2017

Don't let the snow keep you away. The sidewalks are being cleared, and there are still seats left for tomorrow's free lunchtime lecture.


Lord Mayor Robert Briscoe's Boston Tour

In the spring of 1957, the Jewish Lord Mayor of Dublin, Robert Briscoe, paid a visit to Boston, while on tour of the United States. A religious, Jewish, Irish mayor was an unexpected presence who represented much of what Cold War Americans hoped was possible in their own country: courageous patriotism from members of all parties of the Judeo-Christian tradition. Although little-remembered today, the visit of an Orthodox Jewish Irish mayor created much fanfare and presented a model of citizenship that resonated with Cold War Bostonians.

Rachel Gordan grew up outside of Boston and received her PhD in American religious history from Harvard and her bachelors from Yale College. She teaches American Jewish religion and culture at BU and Brandeis University and is working on a book about postwar American Judaism.


Thursday, March 16th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through Eventbrite.

 


image of Robert Briscoe, Lord Mayor of Dublin, excerpted from a 1962 photograph of a meeting with President Kennedy, courtesy of The Jewish Chronicle

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March 13, 2017

Due to the impending severe snowstorm, our reading room will be closed on Tuesday, March 14th.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Wednesday, March 15th.

We will update this post with any further information, if necessary. You can also keep up-to-date through our Facebook and Twitter feeds.

We hope all of our local patrons are safe and warm.

 


photograph "Bokeh Snow tree branches in Massachusetts blizzard" by D Sharon Pruitt, via Wikimedia Commons

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February 17, 2017

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed on Monday, February 20th in observance of Presidents' Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions you would like to ask the staff, please send an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday.

 


photograph of Mount Rushmore by Sfmontyo via Wikimedia Commons

 

Content:
February 14, 2017

Don't forget to let us know if you'll be joining us for this month's free lunchtime lecture. Seats are filling up fast.


In 1818, William Goodell (the missionary) introduced his relative, Lucy Goodale to his college friend Asa Thurston. Lucy Goodale and Asa Thurston were two of the earliest American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions' missionaries in Hawai'i. Over the course of the 19th century, the missionaries in Hawai'i invested heavily in sugar plantations and helped take over the islands including the coup that overthrew Queen Lili'uokalani. They eventually led the movement for U.S. annexation of the island nation.

Over the past decade, the study of missionaries from the United States has grown in leaps and bounds. Much of this work presumes that missionaries were always outsiders to the societies they evangelized however their children often grew up speaking local languages without a trace of an accent, and seeing the world through local lenses. This process of acculturation signals that the work of conversion was often a two-way street, and that the experience of living abroad for several generations profoundly shaped communities of missionaries.

In the Middle East, the American missionaries become involved in activities later associated with the Peace Corps, from building schools to carrying out famine relief. In Hawai'i, the American missionaries were involved in the overthrow of Queen Liliuokalani and the annexation of the islands to the United States. Finally, in the south of the United States, in the aftermath of the Civil War, missionaries built most of the historically black colleges and struggled against the racism of Jim Crow.

Owen MillerMiller's current research (including sources from the Congregational Library & Archives) brings these strands of missionary history together in the broader framework of world history. Research for his second book follows the story of a single missionary family, the Goodell or Goodale, across three generations from New England to the Ottoman Empire, Appalachian Mountains and Hawai'i.


Thursday, February 16th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through Eventbrite.

 


image of Kailua Church, an excerpt from "The King's Country Seat, and Church at Kailua", frontispiece of Scenes in the Hawaiian Islands and California (1865) by Mary Evarts Anderson, via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
February 12, 2017

Due to the continuing severe winter weather and the city of Boston's recommendation, our reading room will be closed on Monday, February 13th.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday, February 14th.

We hope all of our local friends are safe and warm.

 


snowflake ornament image courtesy of Petr Kratochvil via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
February 8, 2017

Due to the impending severe snowstorm, our reading room will be closed on Thursday, February 9th.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question you'd like to ask the staff, send an us email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Friday, February 10th.

We hope all of our local patrons are safe and warm.

 


snowflake ornament image courtesy of Petr Kratochvil via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
February 1, 2017

We are pleased to announce the the availability of three new collections in our New England's Hidden Histories program. Although they come from some of the oldest churches in Massachusetts, their earliest records have been lost. Our hope is that this program and others like it will help prevent further such losses, as well as making the information contained in these manuscripts available and accessible to all who might want them.

 

Ipswich, Mass. First Parish

This collection contains the earliest surviving records from First Parish in Ipswich, Mass. The church was originally formed and built its first meetinghouse in 1634 after the town was incorporated. The three volumes available here include records pertaining to the church and its surrounding parish on subjects such as administrative and financial matters, membership information, and singing as part of worship.

Read more in the finding guide or go directly to the collection page.

 

Ipswich, Mass. South Parish

These are the records from the South Parish in Ipswich, Mass. The congregation separated from First Church in 1747 and remained its own entity for 175 years until 1922 when the two rejoined. The two volumes contain records concerning both the church and its surrounding parish, including matters of administration, finance, and membership, as well as a brief history of the church.

Take a look at the finding guide or go right to the digital collection page.

 

Newton, Mass. First Church (digitized)

First Church in Newton, Mass. was originally established as the First Church of Cambridge Village in 1664. The village seceded to become the city of Newton in 1688. The CLA received all of Newton First Church's historical records when the church closed in 1972, but now some of the earliest books in that collection are part of our New England's Hidden Histories program. These two volumes contain the earliest surviving records relating to church administration, membership, and finances.

See where these materials fit into the larger collection on the archival finding guide or go straight to the collection page and start reading.

 

Special Thanks

These digital resources have been made possible in part by the National Endowment for the Humanities: Exploring the human endeavor.

Any views, findings, conclusions, or recommendations expressed in this resource do not necessarily represent those of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

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January 13, 2017

The Congregational Library & Archives will be closed on Monday, January 16th in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have questions you would like to ask the staff, please send an email or leave a voicemail, and we'll get back to you when we return to the office on Tuesday.

 

Content:
January 4, 2017

The South Congregational Church was established in 1868; it was a formalization of what M. C. Andrews and J. B. Fairfield started in 1852 when they established a Sunday School. Over the years, the church went through many changes before closing in February 2015. This collection contains meeting minutes and reports; financials; membership ledgers including births, deaths, and marriages; social and auxiliary groups; newsletters; and orders of worship.

As we are transitioning to a new publication system for our finding aids, detailed information about this collection is temporarily only available in PDF format. Basic information can be found the collection's catalog record.

 


photograph of South Congregational Church in Lawrence, Mass. courtesy of Benoît Prieur via Wikimedia Commons

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