Beacon Street Blog

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April 3, 2014

We are very excited to announce the availability of a new New England’s Hidden Histories collection! Marblehead, Mass. First Church records, 1684-1866 is now available for researcher access online.

First Church of Marblehead was formally established in 1684. The town of Marblehead was originally settled as a plantation of Salem in 1629 and incorporated as a town twenty years later. During its time as a plantation, Marblehead was served by various pastors, including Samuel Cheever, who began his tenure in Marblehead in 1668 and was later called as First Church’s first pastor.

[]The collection consists of 2133 pages of records contained in 9 volumes and contains the earliest records of the church as a formal entity. The collection contains the expected membership records, including admissions, dismissions, and baptisms, as well as lists of deaths in the church. Church meeting minutes, similarly, make up a large portion of the volumes’ pages. But in addition to these (rather expected) collection records, the Marblehead First collection also contains a significant amount of records on church discipline, civil government, taxes and salary, meeting house expenses, and church governance.

We would like to thank the wonderful folks at First Church, Marblehead, for their participation in the Hidden Histories program. You can learn more about the church by visiting their website

I invite you to head over to our New England’s Hidden Histories page and take a look at the collection. If you are interested in using this collection, we invite you to take a look at its finding aid. And have any questions, please do not hesitate to contact the library!

 

--Sari

Content:
April 1, 2014

[]We've mentioned the Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library a few times over the years. Now the New York Public Library is getting in on the action by releasing 20,000 historical maps from its own collections through its Digital Collections portal.

From the OpenGlam announcement:

The New York Public Library has just released a great set of over 20,000 historical maps, in high-resolution, under a Creative Commons CC0 Public Domain license. This means that anyone can download them for free and reuse them in any way they want. The collection contains maps from the 16th to 19th century, mainly from the United States and New York of course, but also from other countries.

The maps can be viewed through the New York Public Library's Digital Collections page. Through this website, NYPL also offers the Map Warper, an open source tool which digitally aligns historical maps with current maps.

Just as the BPL primarily features maps from the Boston area, the NYPL collection mostly focuses on New York City and the surrounding areas. These maps cover hundreds of years, and range in detail from a single square block to the entire world.

[]

Take a look through the the New York Public Library's digitized maps and see what you can find.

 


map of the NY World's Fair (1940) and Joan Blaeu's world map (1644) courtesy of the NYPL digital collections

Content:
March 28, 2014

Something very cool is happening, and it involves scholars from many backgrounds around the globe. One of the world's oldest and most annotated Bibles, split across four libraries, has been thoroughly conserved, described, photographed, and transcribed. From the Codex Sinaiticus Project website:

Codex Sinaiticus, a manuscript of the Christian Bible written in the middle of the fourth century, contains the earliest complete copy of the Christian New Testament. The hand-written text is in Greek. The New Testament appears in the original vernacular language (koine) and the Old Testament in the version, known as the Septuagint, that was adopted by early Greek-speaking Christians. In the Codex, the text of both the Septuagint and the New Testament has been heavily annotated by a series of early correctors.

The significance of Codex Sinaiticus for the reconstruction of the Christian Bible's original text, the history of the Bible and the history of Western book-making is immense.

The project website provides detailed accounts of how the physical book was made, why it was split apart and virtually reunited, the evolution of its text, the modern processes undertaken by the project participants, and so much more. The entire manuscript and its transcription is available to anyone. Some pages even have the option of viewing multiple lighting exposures and reading translations into the languages of the participating institutions.

[]
Psalms 1:4-5 in the Codex Sinaiticus Project interface
with transcription and English translation

From the Medieval manuscripts blog of the British Library:

Codex Sinaiticus Added to Digitised Manuscripts

Codex Sinaiticus is one of the great treasures of the British Library. Written in the mid-4th century in the Eastern Mediterranean (possibly at Caesarea), it is one of the two oldest surviving copies of the Greek Bible, along with Codex Vaticanus, in Rome. Written in four narrow columns to the page (aside from in the Poetic books, in two columns), its visual appearance is particularly striking.

The significance of Codex Sinaiticus for the text of the New Testament is incalculable, not least because of the many thousands of corrections made to the manuscript between the 4th and 12th centuries.

[]
correction to Mark 2:22 in the Codex Sinaiticus

Whether you're interested in Biblical scholarship, bookmaking, photography, conservation, or the technology behind the project, there is something in the Codex Sinaiticus Project that should catch your attention. I think it's fascinating.

-Robin

 


excerpt of Codex Sinaiticus Mark 2:22 courtesy of the British Library's Medieval manuscripts blog

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March 27, 2014

It's not every day that an archivist gets to discuss punk rock and still be talking about archives, but that is exactly what I was able to do last week. Ian MacKaye, a member of several bands over the years (Fugazi, Minor Threat, and The Evans) gave the Friday keynote at the New England Archivists spring meeting.

I had not realized before I sat down for the keynote that MacKaye has been deeply involved in creating a comprehensive archive for his Fugazi sound collection. He had collected tapes of his shows, both his own and ones he asked fans to give to him. What do you do with all those tapes? A copy-on-demand model was a burden, and there was far too much material to choose from to make a live album. But when MacKaye met an NYU student several years ago, they teamed up to create a comprehensive online repository for all the recordings; their combined talents have yielded a stunning site.

All of the shows have been listed. (Given the magnitude of transferring the tapes to digital, not all of the recordings are available.) One can search by the name of a song, date, location (city, state, country, and venue).

Most journals are kept for the very personal needs of the writer. MacKaye's tour journals ended up being the backbone of the new site's metadata. Each show has extensive, built-in notes about attendance, cost of the show, as well as any specific details: was it a benefit, protest, unusual audience participation, or venue issues.

This project is an excellent lesson for crowdsourcing. It started in the beginning, when fans gave MacKaye copies of their show recordings, then later they would send in photos, which supplemented the band's original collection. Additionally, site members can write in comments about shows/recordings.

[]

As an archivist, it's important to me that not just the popular, mainstream parts of history are retold. There are more kids in the metaphorical lunchroom than student council and sports team players. The margins of society is often where we find some of the most interesting stories throughout history. Within the last few decades, punk rock has been the epitome of underground and counter-culture and, by extension, under-documented. Which is why Ian MacKaye's work is so exciting and revolutionary. His natural inclination to record as much of his experience in his bands as possible is the raw material for a stunning website.

The obvious target audience is the fans, but it's never as simple and clean-cut as that. Scholars can derive a great deal of information about a subset of late 20th and early 21st century American society: political activism, economics, social change... and that's just the beginning.

Thanks to Ian MacKaye for showing me that punk rock and archives have commonality.

-Jessica

Content:
March 25, 2014

For the last month, I've been processing a collection of documents related to the Illinois Home Missionary Society. Prior to starting this internship, I'd thought of missionary work mainly in relation to foreign missionaries, but the Illinois Home Missionary Society and its parent organization, the American Home Missionary Society, focused instead on supporting local churches and communities by commissioning ministers for congregations that couldn't afford to pay for their own. As I went through the records of the Society, I was particularly struck by several scrapbooks in the collection. The contents of the scrapbook were mostly ephemera – donation slips, flyers for events, conference programs, and newsletters – but they offered many insights into the activities of both the Society and Congregational churches.

[]

For example, take a look at the photo above, an advertisement for a song service conducted by the Reverend F.A. Miller. The flyer gives Rev. Miller the epithet "the Singing Evangelist" and in the flyer pictured below, he's referred to as "the Christian Soloist". What’s remarkable about both of these flyers is the extent to which the song aspect of the service is emphasized, sometimes even at the expense of the actual preaching.

[]
"Solo singing [...] also preaching"

These flyers, as well as many of the others I encountered for events and lectures, illustrate how deeply the Congregational churches were integrated into local communities. It was not just a source of spiritual guidance and support, but also an organization that people turned to for education and even entertainment. This should have come as no surprise to me, as I know the huge role that social and educational programming play in modern-day churches, but it was fascinating nonetheless to see the extent to which those roles are not recent developments, but rather a continuation of long established traditions of community involvement.

-David Castillo

Content:
March 24, 2014

Our reading room will be closed on Tuesday, March 25th for our staff's long-term planning meeting. We have a lot of exciting things in the works for the coming year and beyond, so we want to get all of our metaphorical ducks in a row to make sure we can provide you with the best resources possible in a timely, responible way.

All of our online resources will still be available as usual. If you have questions for staff members, you are welcome to send an email or leave a voicemail, and we will get back to you as soon as we are able.

Content:
March 21, 2014

The Congregational Library and Archives depends on its donors to support programs and projects you tap into every day and every week throughout the year.

March 31st marks the end of our fiscal year and we need your help to guarantee that we can continue what you have come to expect from our resources and staff.

Last fiscal year we broke records with:

  • Mather Redux: New Perspectives on Cotton Mather bringing scholars, students, and laypeople together in a lively and successful symposium and a memorable walking tour of his old stomping grounds, Boston's North End.
  • A brand new website providing an array of new – and growing – digital resources for scholars and churches across the country and around the world.
  • New England's Hidden Histories, our collection of digitized Congregational church records, continuing to grow, now with the energy and expertise of a full-time staff person, our first digital archivist.

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More of you than ever are visiting our website, following us on Facebook and Twitter and more of you than ever are accessing our resources in the library and online.

Now we need your help.

Click on the button below to donate $10, $25, $50 through PayPal before April 1st and be counted.

 

Content:
March 20, 2014

[]For contemporary Americans, St. Francis of Assisi is the most familiar of saints other than, perhaps, the Virgin Mary. He is as beloved among Protestants as among Catholics, and his image appears outside churchly settings in such places as garden centers and movies. How did a medieval Catholic saint become so familiar in Protestantism and popular culture? And what does it mean that he did? We will look at Protestants' rediscovery of Francis in the nineteenth century and at some of the many ways he has been interpreted, visualized, and and imagined.

[]Patricia Appelbaum is a leading scholar of Christian pacifism and the author of Kingdom to Commune: Protestant Pacifist Culture Between World War I and the Vietnam Era. She will talk about her current work on Saint Francis and his evolution from Catholic saint to animal lover and hippie icon, the star of "Brother Sun and Sister Moon".

 

Thursday, April 24th
3:00 - 4:00 pm

Free.
Register through SurveyMonkey.

 


painting "St. Francis" (1898) by Albert Chevallier Tayler in the public domian, found via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
March 18, 2014

You never know what you'll find through social media. While perusing my Twitter feed last week, I came upon a link from historian Todd Andrlik to "The No. 1 hit song during the American Revolution". That certainly piqued my interest. On the Journal of the American Revolution site, Andrlik explains:

By 1768, Pennsylvania political activist John Dickinson became a true triple threat. He was already one of the most successful lawyers and businessmen in all of Pennsylvania and Delaware, and was the author of the "Letter from a Farmer" essays, one of the most widely admired and reprinted political pamphlets of the decade. And that summer he added another accomplishment: Popular songwriter.

Dickinson penned new lyrics to the melody of the famous British Royal Navy tune, "Heart of Oak," and shared his verses with local Philadelphia newspaper printers. William and Thomas Bradford, printers of the Pennsylvania Journal, and William Goddard, printer of the Pennsylvania Chronicle, were among the first to publish the ballad along with Dickinson's written request: "Please to insert the following Song in your next [Journal/Chronicle], and you will oblige yours, &c. D."

Thanks to an intercolonial newspaper exchange system, Dickinson's "Liberty Song" spread like wildfire, appearing in newspapers throughout the colonies.

...

The patriotic tune became an American anthem throughout the Revolution and was used that summer to help unite colonists against a series of new laws, known as the Townshend Acts, that imposed strict revenue-raising taxes on goods imported from England, including paint, glass, lead, paper, and tea. It must have also made Dickinson a total ladies' man as he married Mary Norris, a property-rich 36-year-old, two Julys later.

He even provides a modern recording of the song and its lyrics.

[]

I never would have imagined that one of the most popular Revolutionary tunes would be a parody, or that its lyricist would go on to marry the colonial equivalent of a groupie. Do you have any unusual history stories to share?

-Robin

Content:
March 17, 2014

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


[]Scott Couper is the director of development for Inanda Seminary in South Africa, a historian, and the author of a highly regarded biography of Albert Luthuli, the African freedom fighter and Nobel Peace Prize winner — and Congregationalist. Scott also has an article on "Inanda Seminary Under Apartheid" in the winter issue of the Congregational Bulletin, one of several about South Africa and the surprising story of African Christians in Congregational churches.

 

Wednesday, March 19th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through SurveyMonkey.

Content:
March 14, 2014

[]The United Church of Pelham (Mass.) was incorporated on June 8, 1959, superseding the Federated Church of Pelham. Papers and documents dated before June 8, 1959, refer to the Federated Church of Pelham, while those after that date refer to the United Church of Pelham.

The Federated Church of Pelham was formed in 1936, and joined together the following existing congregations: the Methodist-Episcopal Church of West Pelham (est. 1831), the First Congregational Church of Pelham (est. 1837), also known as First Congregational Parish of Pelham, the Union Church Society of North Belchertown (Dwight Chapel, est. 1886).

The United Church of Pelham did join the United Church of Christ in 1959 and closed in 2013.

This collection includes annual reports, minutes, financial papers, pastor papers, Sunday School, woman's guild, and bulletins. The time-frame for the records starts in 1920 when the church was known as Pelham First Church and also includes records from when it was Pelham Federated. The bulk of the records are between 1950-1980.

Visitors are welcome to come in to use this collection. The guide to the collection is available.

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March 13, 2014

I recently came upon a blog that could be very useful for our genealogy researchers. Caroline Pointer runs 4YourFamilyStory.com, and posts daily lists of databases and other research tools that can help other family historians trace their roots.

One timely link that caught my eye this week is the news that this Saturday, March 15th is:

...the day of Genealogy in Sweden. There are a lot of events going on all over Sweden, at libraries, archives and genealogy societies. ArkivDigital.se celebrates all weekend by letting people look into thier on-line churchbooks for free during the weekend. You need to register an account and download an applikation (availible for Windows, Mac OS, Linux and iPad).

Have a great weekend digging into churchbooks and other historical documents: http://www.arkivdigital.net/

[]

As many of our patrons know, church records are often the most reliable (sometimes the only) town records available from the 17th and 18th centuries. They can contain documentation of baptisms, marriages, deaths, and other accounts of events in their congregants' lives. If you have Scandinavian ancestry, ArchivDigital might be worth a look while you have the chance.

Otherwise, take a look though 4YourFamilyStory.com. Caroline has great tips for tracing your heritage across the country and around the world.

Content:
March 11, 2014

I recently finished processing the Kincaid family papers, a collection consisting of mostly correspondence to William Kincaid (1841-1897) in addition memorial papers for his late wife Martha (1843-1913). This collection was interesting to work with because it was not created by the subjects, but rather was amassed by their great-granddaughter Katherine Kincaid Newman. William Kincaid was a lifelong supporter of the Congregational Church, graduating from Oberlin College and holding many ministerial posts from upstate New York to Kansas.

As evidenced by the correspondence within the collection, he was an adept speaker and was continually sought after by other Congregations. In 1885, he was called to the position of secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions, and later the American Home Missionary Society. Upon his passing, his wife picked up his charitable works and founded the Women's Home Missionary Union of New York, where she held the post of president until her death in 1913.

-Elyse Edwards

 


Webmaster's note: Elyse completed processing this collection in December. We've delayed releasing new finding guides as we were making some behind-the-scenes adjustments to the new site. There are several more collection guides to come over the next few weeks, so keep an eye out for more exciting new content.

Content:
March 10, 2014

If you've spent any time reading news sites or commercially-funded blogs, you've probably seen photographs credited to Getty Images. The company...

has made a business out of licensing stock photography to web sites. But, in recent years, the company has struggled, facing stiffer competition from other companies … and from online piracy. Quoted in the British Journal of Photography, Craig Peters, a Senior VP at Getty Images, observes that Getty is "really starting to see the extent of online infringement. In essence, everybody today is a publisher thanks to social media and self-publishing platforms. And it's incredibly easy to find content online and simply right-click to utilise it." All of this becomes a problem, for Getty, when cash-strapped "self publishers, who typically don't know anything about copyright and licensing," start right clicking and using the company's images without attribution or payment.

In an effort to educate the general public about copyright (and get some advertizing of their own in the process), Getty Images has made 35 million photographs in their collection free to use as embedded images. The embed code provided by Getty includes their logo, the artist's information, and a link to the page containing more of the photo's details on Getty's site.

Contestants compete in the Washington National Cathedral's
Pancake Race on Shrove Tuesday March 4, 2014 in Washington, DC.

It's simple to use, ensures that the artists get the credit they deserve, and allows that more people access to Getty's vast library of images. You can read more in this article from Open Culture, or jump straight in and start perusing Getty's archive of embeddable files.

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March 7, 2014

[]The theme for this year's Preservation Week is "Pass it on." We've decided to embrace it in two ways.

The first will be a series of blog posts to help you stay on track in your personal or professional archiving. They will run April 28th through May 2nd, and provide advice for keeping your memories and important records safe for the future.

 

[]The second will be a hands-on workshop with our archival staff about preserving your photographs. Whether they're film prints or digital files, we have tips to help you ensure that your pictures are in good shape to be handed down. We will have examples of "do"s and "don't"s on hand, and encourage participants to bring samples from their own collections for more specific advice.

Tuesday, April 29th
10:00 - 11:00 am

Register through SurveyMonkey.

 


"Bauh (Photography and memory)" by Wikipedia Portugal user Rmm2 and released into the public domain by the author

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March 6, 2014

[]Our neighbors at the Mass. State Library have added to their collection of postcards depiciting the State House. While they are, understandably, focusing on the government seat itself, I couldn't help but note subtle changes to its surroundings. Between the earlier drawing and the later photograph featured on their blog, awnings were removed from the "pulpit corner" of Park Street Church, electric street lights were added up the hill along Park Street, and an historical plaque was added to the Boston Common plaza at the corner of Park and Tremont Streets.

Looking through the gallery, you can see Beacon Hill in day and night, in every season, see the State House exterior transition from white stone to red brick, and even see changes in fashions and vehicles through the years. There are evolving internal and external features, monuments, fountains, and streetscapes from the past century on display. Take a look and see if anything catches your eye.

-Robin

 


mid-20th century postcard of the MA State House, courtesy of the MA State Library

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March 4, 2014

Last month, I presented at the annual United Church of Christ New Hampshire Conference event, Prepared to Serve.

[]This training event offered a wide variety of workshop topics: philosophical / spiritual enrichment, tech topics, how-to, and current events being the most common. I've been offering a class on caring for church records for several years now, but I had not had a chance to talk to a group in over a year, and this was a perfect place to connect to new people.

[]I talk about creating a records management policy, and why it's so helpful; the steps involved in collecting and organizing historical records; digital concerns; and preservation. There are always a diverse audience regarding priority, role within the church, level of involvement in the project at hand, and level support (financial or otherwise) they can draw from. I learned early on that this diversity demands flexibility as the presenter, which is all for the best. I enjoy answering the specific questions that come up during the course of the workshop. It's unusual if I do not learn something new by the end.

We offer this workshop to our community. If you are interested in learning about how to take care of your church's records, please consider contacting us. We strongly recommend that you make this a part of a larger event that your church, association, conference, or historical group may be planning, but there are options for individual church visits. We welcome hearing from you.

-Jessica

Content:
February 28, 2014

"We would not be misunderstood, as if we meant to insinuate, that a due Pursuit of Religion is inconsistent with all manner of Diversion: No, we suppose that there are Diversions undoubtedly innocent, yea profitable and of use, to fit us for Service by enlivening & fortifying our frail Nature, Invigorating the Animal Spirits, and brightening the Mind, when tried with a close Application to Business."

-- Thomas Foxcroft, A Serious Address to those
who unnecessarily frequent the Tavern
, 1726

With the Olympics dominating everyone's television and internet feeds for the past week or more, I got to wondering: what sports did the Puritans play? In my quest to find the answer, I turned to our copies of Puritans and Puritanism in Europe and America: A Comprehensive Encyclopedia, edited by Francis J. Bremer and Tom Webster. Here's what I learned:

While it's certainly true that the pop-culture, stereotypical, view of the staid and dour Puritan makes it hard to imagine them at play, they actually weren't opposed to the idea of sports and diversions as a whole. In fact, they by turns embrace certain sports and shunned others, based on various criteria and influences.

[]In England, the Puritans were much in favor of hunting and fishing, but were quick to condemn games requiring various types of balls. This dichotomy was mostly due to the productive and fruitful nature of the first, and the "sinful" nature of the second. Tennis and handball were too closely associated with the Catholic clergy for European Puritan tastes, while football turned villages against each other and carried with it a high probability of significant injury. Bowling, likewise, was liable to tempt its players into gambling and was not to be borne. Sports centered on physical violence and blood-drawing, such as fighting (including animal fighting), were also frowned upon.

But the English Puritan's relationship with sports was further complicated by politics and the monarchy. The Book of Sports was first issued by James I and then later by Charles I. Upon reissue, the book was, by mandate, read from every Church of England pulpit. Not only did the book offend Puritan sensibilities by encouraging play on Sunday, it became closely tied with the Church of England and the monarchy, inciting even more Puritan displeasure.

Separated from this controversy in England, sport in Puritan New England enjoyed less restriction. Although the Puritan colonists still eschewed "blood sports" and most games requiring the use of a ball, the colony had developed an acceptance of nine-pin bowling by the mid-1600s. Militia-training and warrior games also rose to prominence, spurred on by the colonial requirement that called all able-bodied men into militias. Popular warrior sports included horse races, marksmanship, and, perhaps surprisingly, wrestling, which rarely resulted in significant injury or drawn blood. Hunting, though necessary in the colonies, was by far less-favored by the Puritans of New England than fowling (mostly due to inadequate firepower required to successfully bring down a larger animal), which perhaps lead to the significant interest in fishing.

This Puritanical view of sports continued in the New England until the Revolutionary War, reinforced by the changes in the practice of sports in England. With the ascension of Charles II to the throne, ball sports in England took new prominence. Increased prominence lead to increased organization with advertising, admission charges, paid players, and betting. The increase in "sinful" behavior, the increased violence, and the vulgarization of sport in England only served to confirm for the New England Puritans the need to avoid such things. It wasn't until the Revolutionary War that ball sports were introduced to colonists from New England by soldiers from the middle and southern colonies.

--Sari

 


excerpt from "Skittle Players Outside an Inn" (ca 1660) by Jan Steen, courtesy of the National Gallery (London) via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
February 27, 2014

We are pleased to announce the availability of a new collection in New England’s Hidden Histories!

Thanks, in part, to the Phillips Library of the Peabody Essex Museum, the early records of Byfield Parish Church have been digitized and made available online.

Byfield Parish Church was founded circa 1702 by citizens from the western portions of Rowley and Newbury. The meeting house was built in 1702, and a parsonage in 1704. That same year, the parish (known as Rowlberry or Newbury Falls up until this point) was renamed Byfield in honor of Judge Nathanial Byfield.

The collection contains records from 1709 to 1845. The records address a number of topics, including disciplinary cases, moral charges leveled against a pastor for holding slaves, Ecclesiastical councils, and meeting minutes.  Also of particular note is the first record book, which contains baptismal and death records for the church. Often, the records of death also include notations as to the cause of death. The four record books can be found through our New England’s Hidden Histories portal page. The collection's finding guide is also online.

--Sari

Content:
February 25, 2014

Since the advent of mass printing, letterhead was created to make a statement. As an announcement, advertisement, or both it's meant to convey a feeling via image; to demonstrate the importance, integrity, and essence of whomever is writing the letter.

While processing the Chicago Theological Collection of Chicago Congregational Club papers from 1908-1930, I was struck by the richness and impact of the letterhead it contains. The Chicago Congregational Club was founded in 1883 by Chicago Congregationalists with a focus on Christian fellowship and spiritual influence in the life of Chicago and the Midwest. This collection primarily contains correspondence, but also includes some minutes, programs, by-laws, and membership. The correspondence is between members of the club. These members represent some of the elite citizens and businesses men in Chicago during this time period.

Beyond that, the letterhead is a lot of fun and often quite beautiful. Here are some of my favorites:

1. Allgo Manufacturing and Distributing Company – Specializing in pest and insect removal

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2. The Campbell Company Printers and Engravers – Note the modern illustrations and use of color.

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3. The Cable Company – Specializing in pianos and organs

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4. Garner-Taylor Press – Specializing in printers, binders, and paper rulers.  Note their motto, "If We Don’t Do Your Printing We Both Lose"

[]

As a collection, this display of letterhead is also a great reminder that archival resources may be of research interest beyond their obvious use. In this case, the Chicago Congregational Club collection may be of interest to researchers looking for more information regarding occupations, design, popular taste, or technology (e.g. pest powder!) from another era. Regardless, the letterhead is an informative and fun window to another era.

This collection is now available for research.

-Cristina

Content:
February 24, 2014

Sometimes, when working with our image collection, I come across on image that needs a little extra TLC. This was the case with the images of Reverend George Mifflin Harker and his wife Anna Harker nee Wood. The images are most likely Ambrotypes or tintypes, given the images' probable date, and they're enclosed in a handsome hinged case.

[]

Rev. George Mifflin Harker, the son of Jesse and Elizabeth (Thomas) Harker, was born on January 10, 1799, in Moreland, Pennsylvania. He married Anna wood of Bucks County, Pennsylvania, in 1822. Born a Quaker, he became a Methodist-Episcopal preacher in 1824, an ordained deacon in Ithaca, New York in 1828, and an elder in Rochester, New York, in 1830.

In 1835 Rev. Harker, his wife Anna, and their five children arrived in Miami County, Ohio, where Harker became a circuit preacher, making a 10-12 stop circuit every couple of weeks. During their 26-year stint in the Midwest, the Harker family moved frequently, oftentimes settling in cities and towns known to be famous stations on the Underground Railroad.

A strong abolitionist, Harker took issue with the Methodist-Episcopal church on the issue of slavery, and in 1843 he left the church along with other like-minded individuals and formed the Wesleyan connection. Harker later served as the delegate to the first general conference of the Wesleyan Methodist Church in the United States held in 1844 in Cleveland, Ohio.

The Harkers left the Midwest for California in 1861 and joined their eldest son John Wesley, a merchant in San Francisco. Harker attempted to establish several Wesleyan churches in California, first in Monterey, and next in San Jose. Unable to firmly establish the churches, he left the Wesleyans and took up successive ministries in Congregational churches in Pescadero, Clayton, and East Oakland, the last of which he served without charge from 1871 until his death in 1882.

Over the course of his long life, Harker published several books and pamphlets, including "Calvinism and Arminism", "Church and Polity", and "The Right of Women to Preach and Hold Office in the Church".

 --Sari

Content:
February 21, 2014

[]Scott Couper is the director of development for Inanda Seminary in South Africa, a historian, and the author of a highly regarded biography of Albert Luthuli, the African freedom fighter and Nobel Peace Prize winner — and Congregationalist. Scott also has an article on "Inanda Seminary Under Apartheid" in the winter issue of the Congregational Bulletin, one of several about South Africa and the surprising story of African Christians in Congregational churches.

 

Wednesday, March 19th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through SurveyMonkey.

Content:
February 18, 2014

UPDATE: This event has been cancelled due to the presenter's illness. We will attempt to reschedule for later in the year.


An Eighteenth-Century Intellectual, Universalist, and Champion of Women's Rights

[]Judith Sargent Murray was an essayist, poet, and playwright. She was among America's earliest champions of female equality, education, economic independence, and political engagement.

Bonnie Hurd Smith, the entrepreneurial founder of History Smiths and the Judith Sargent Murray Society, has spent ten years collecting, editing, and publishing the letters of this remarkable woman and her surprising life. Come and learn more about Bonnie's fascinating historical detective work and the stories she discovered.

 

Thursday, February 20th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through SurveyMonkey.

 


portrait of Judith Sargent Murray courtesy of the Judith Sargent Murray Society website

Content:
February 14, 2014

The Congregational Library will be closed on Monday, February 17th in observance of Presidents' 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:
February 13, 2014

If your town is one of the many that might be snowed in this weekend and you need a good book to curl up with, consider the following.


[]The Letters I Left Behind:
Judith Sargent Murray Papers, Letter Book 10

In the first volume of Bonnie Hurd Smith's multi-year project to transcribe, index, and edit Judith Sargent Murray's letter books, Bonnie presents a "new" eyewitness account of eighteenth century history told through the pen of an educated, merchant class essayist. Letters in this volume were written by Judith Sargent Murray from 1796 to 1799, and they include those written to John Adams and George Washington. May be borrowed from the Congregational Library

 

[]Letters of Loss & Love:
Judith Sargent Murray Papers, Letter Book 3

The second volume of Bonnie Hurd Smith's multi-year project to publish Judith Sargent Murray's letter books contains letters written during the years 1785 to 1789, when Judith's first husband went bankrupt and died leaving her widowed and poor, when she married the Universalist preacher John Murray and met John and Abigail Adams during their honeymoon journey, and when she traveled to Portsmouth, New Hampshire, York, Maine, and parts of Rhode Island and Connecticut.

 

[]Mingling Souls Upon Paper:
An Eighteenth-Century Love Story

Bonnie Hurd Smith uses Judith Sargent Murray's letters to tell the poignant love story between the eighteenth century essayist Judith Sargent Murray and John Murray, the founder of organized American Universalism. The two were friends for fourteen years before they could marry, separated by Judith's first husband, the disapproval of her family, threats to John's safety, and the Atlantic Ocean. May be borrowed from the Congregational Library

 

[]From Gloucester to Philadelphia in 1790:
Observations, thoughts, and anecdotes from the letters of Judith Sargent Murray

In 1790, the eighteenth century essayist Judith Sargent Murray made a six-month journey to Philadelphia with her husband, John Murray, to attend the first national convention of Universalists. The letters in this volume chronicle meetings with historical figures like George Washington, sitting through early sessions of Congress in New York, towns, cities, events, and travel conditions.

 

If you don't have time for a whole book, there are also a number of articles by Bonnie Hurd Smith on the Judith Sargent Murray Society website.

Content:
February 11, 2014

Like browsing through historical collections, learning new things? Or perhaps you enjoy looking at images or audio/visual materials from another era? Do you like these things even more when you can do them from the comfort of your own couch? And when said browsing can help contribute to an institution's understanding of their holdings, enabling them to provide better access to other people using their collections?

If you answered "yes" to any of this, you are in luck! Metadata Games is now in beta and available for your perusal. The platform offers a variety of games (with more coming soon) that present you with cool images, audio, and moving images from cultural institutions and encourage you to provide information about the images, within the constraints of various rules. You can play single- or multi-player games, through the online platform, or via iOS or Android app, and more games are in development.

[]

I encourage you to check it out and try your hand at it! Not only will you have fun (if this is your kind of thing), but you'll be helping cultural institutions gather data about the items in their collections. That data will in turn help these institutions better describe their holdings, and make it easier for patrons to find what they're looking for.

--Sari

Content:
February 10, 2014

Letter books were used to keep copies of letters which were sent and received by a person, or in other instances, they are collections of copies of historic letters which were available, copies of published letters, and letters written by famous people. Letter books were the carbon copies, mimeographed copies, photocopies, or digital copies of their time.  Authors frequently kept letter books as aids to their memoirs. "Governour Bradford's Letter Book" was source material for his work, Of Plymouth Plantation. The library holds copies of both. Some of the most famous letter books are held by the Library of Congress, including George Washington's letter books detailing his leadership in the Revolutionary War and his Presidency.

[]Bonnie Hurd Smith has been transcribing and publishing the letter books of Judith Sargent Murray which were found in 1984 and were published on microfilm by the Mississippi Department of Archives and History. At the age of 23, Judith Sargent Murray began making copies of her correspondence to create a historical record for future generations. Twenty volumes, containing approximately 2,500 letters, these letter books make up one of the few surviving collections of writings by women from this period in American history.

Join us to hear Ms. Smith describe her work in making these letter books publicly available at our Brown Bag Lunch, Thursday, February 20 from noon-1:00 PM.

-Claudette

 


portrait of Judith Sargent Murray courtesy of the Judith Sargent Murray Society website

Content:
February 7, 2014

While processing the records of Samuel Ives Curtiss, our intern Elise came across a notebook. It was fairly unremarkable, except for the inscription:

[]

Amico suo caro, claro, docto

Dri. Samuel Ives Curtiss, jri.:

die natali               d.d.d

nonis februarii a.d. ICCCLXXVIII     Casparus Renatus Gregorius

Lipsiae

Since I studied Latin for several years in school, the archivists asked me to take a crack at translating the text. The first line is roughly, "To a dear friend, brilliant, learned". The rest indicates that the notebook was a birthday gift from Curtiss's friend and colleague, Caspar René Gregory. Although they were both born and raised in the United States, the two met at the University of Leipzig. The date in the inscription -- the ninth of February, A.D. 1878 -- is shortly before Curtiss left Germany for an appointment as the chair of Biblical Literature at Chicago Theological Seminary.

Both men went on to teach, publish, and lecture extensively. Curtiss specialized in the Old Testament, particularly Semitic languages and history, and emphasized their importance to Biblical study. Gregory remained at Leipzig and became well known for his work with expository materials in the New Testament, specifically in the Acts of the Apostles.

We tend to think of esteemed scholars as isolated thinkers in ivory towers, or arguing over minutiae. It's nice to find reminders like this one that they are very human, even friends.

--Robin

Content:
February 6, 2014

[]We announced the availability of the Rev. Robert Wood collection in our blog almost two years ago. Since then, his collection has been used several times by several different different scholars.

One of our most recent researchers, Elise Chenier of Simon Frasier University, spent most of a week in New England, reviewing the collection here, and going to interview the Rev. Wood at his home. Prof. Chenier is the director of the Archives of Lesbian Oral Testimony (A LOT), and is currently researching gay marriage in the 1950s and 1960s. Rev. Wood represents a living testimonial to that era and that experience; part of his collection includes a number of audio cassettes that cover the topic. Prof. Chenier has provided an opportunity for these cassettes to be digitized and transcribed. While they do not directly relate to her field, she recognizes that they represent a valuable resource for her fellow historians and she shares our concerns for the longevity of magnetic tape. The audio files and their transcripts will be in formats that can be more readily accessed; the originals, some of which are almost 40 years old, will be put aside for safe-keeping.

We are very excited about this partnership. We will provide an update when tapes and files are back on site.

-Jessica

Content:
February 4, 2014

School has started back up for the spring semester, and we thought we'd take this opportunity to do a small refresher on doing research at the Congregational Library & Archives.

Know what you're researching? Check out our online catalog and our extensive list of finding aids. Between both of these resources, you'll be able to learn about our archival collections and library materials.

[]Still not sure what you're looking for? Not sure how to get started? Worried you may have missed something? Speak with an archivist or librarian before your visit! We're available via phone or email, and are always willing to speak with you. We may be able to suggest additional resources, collections, or avenues of inquiry.

Check out our online resources. These include supporting sources (like denominational yearbooks, digitized sermons) and digitized archival collections themselves (of particular note: New England's Hidden Histories, which contain digitized colonial period church records).

Schedule plenty of time for your visit. Even if you have a very direct and limited line of inquiry, you never know how long it is going to take to survey all the available sources. Sometimes you have to wade through 18th or 19th century handwriting, sometimes the relevant source is larger than expected, and sometimes the librarian or archivist helping you comes up with additional resources you hadn't considered.

[]If you are on a tight schedule, email ahead to notify us of your interest and time restrictions. Arrive at the library knowing what you would like to see, and we'll be happy to get what you need!

Come prepared to take notes! You can take notes using paper and pencil, or on a laptop, tablet, or mobile device. We also allow digital photography, as long as you don't use flash and are only taking the pictures for your own research. If you wish to publish images of our collections, you'll need to ask permission.

Once here, please leave all food items outside or in your bag, and please do not bring in drinks when working with our materials. Water is allowed, as long as it's in a covered, sealed, container.

Not doing research, but in the area? Feel free to stop in and take a breather. We have a range of current Congregationally-themed periodicals for your perusal, newly acquired books on display, an exhibit about colonial period church records, and public Wi-Fi. Who knows what you may find to inspire you!

--Sari

Content:
February 3, 2014

I don't consider my day complete without a visit to The Onion, that wonderful satirical website of news and current events, always funny and often brilliant. Anyone without a sense of personal irony is fair game, from politicians and cat-lovers to video gamers and football players. But if I had to pick a favorite it would be one hitting closest to home: "Historians Politely Remind Nation to Check What's Happened In Past Before Making Any Big Decisions". []The article outlines an exciting new strategy called "Look Back Before You Act."

"It's actually pretty simple," one historian explains. "Did the thing we're thinking of doing make people upset? Did it start a war? If it did, then we might want to think about not doing it."

Good satire makes us laugh, but it also points out truth. People rarely if ever consult historians about big decisions, no matter how loudly (or politely) we might insist. And the reason for that is not just public indifference or willful ignorance: the past is easy to ignore because it's just very, very complicated.

Last week I had a phone call from a pastor looking for some help with his congregation's plans for renovating their sanctuary. The conversation would have been very short if he had wanted to know anything about church architecture — I leave that one to the trained experts — but we got to talking because, as it turned out, the real issue was being faithful to the building's past. This was something more than the proper shape of window frames, or whether the sanctuary could be painted light pink; it was about how the past was authoritative in his congregation, how the vision of the founders should guide the actions of their descendants.

What a can of worms! If we were really intent on getting down to basics, all Congregational churches today would be windowless meetinghouses with thatched roofs. The beautiful white structures we now associate with Puritan rigor and pristine Congregational practice were actually creations of the late-eighteenth and early-nineteenth centuries, when tastes had changed and churches had a bit more discretionary income. But even those began to disappear in the mid-nineteenth century, as our nearer ancestors began dressing those dull and plain old buildings in Victorian Gothic, instituting all those features that many people now associate with a standard church building: arched stained glass windows, a central aisle, a nave and a choir loft, and even a few crosses hanging on the walls or decorating the communion table.

And thus we find ourselves at the bottom of that wriggling can of worms. The average Congregational church today earnestly replicates the Anglican cathedrals that the tradition's Puritan founders fought so fiercely, enduring exile and in some cases death for the right not to have a central aisle, an altar rail, and a choir. If John Winthrop or Richard Mather walked in to one of them they would, well, plotz.

I'm not advocating a return to the seventeenth century — in fact we might even wish the founders had been able to lighten up a little on a few things, for the sake of their descendants. But you see the problem: "the past" is a long time and it is not just one thing. It is changing constantly. Do we pick one time that was somehow more authentic than another? Some religious traditions find a style of architecture they like and stick to it, but even their buildings take on different meanings as centuries pass.

In a broad sense, being faithful to the past means understanding and carrying on a founding vision. These are often fairly easy to identify, not as a simple set of rules but as a challenge so compelling and powerful that it maintains its power across time and distance.  We are talking about that particular genius, that complex but obvious idea, that keeps people talking and arguing and thinking generation after generation. For the original Puritans the idea was simplicity and immediacy, a faith free of distractions from the single purpose of godly living — whether the "smells and bells" of Anglican worship or the pull of selfishness, anger, and pride. And so, one could argue, churches claiming Congregational roots should follow that principle in their design.  That doesn't necessarily mean getting rid of crosses and choir lofts but it does mean creating some visual expression of the spiritual clarity the Puritans hoped to achieve.

I heard in a sermon recently that some of our most forward-looking church leaders believe that old denominational differences are headed to extinction, that one day in the not-too-distant future Congregationalists and Episcopalians, for example, will happily meld together into a larger movement of progressive Protestant churches, a new iteration presumably better suited to meet the issues of the age. On one level the idea is not all that surprising or new — enthusiasts have been saying the same thing about American Protestantism since denominations were born (at least as formal structures) two hundred years ago. As far as I know it hasn't happened yet.

But in other ways, I find the dream of removing denominational distinctives in the name of a greater unified good profoundly depressing. Yes, we can be impatient with all of the external apparatus that gets in the way of doing good; it is probably OK to paint a sanctuary light pink.

But not at the expense of founding visions. Like it or not, anyone claiming a religious identity in the present carries a historical burden, a set of obligations to their spiritual ancestors. Often we express this in patriarchal terms, as a debt to our "forefathers" and "foremothers" — who would not find this unwieldy and irritating? In fact, we are equals and fellow believers, part of the same very long and unfinished story.

At their best religious "dialogue" and ecumenical efforts allow each faith community to honor its commitments. For in fact, every pastor, priest, rabbi or church leader carries an obligation to invisible people. The flock is not just the living sitting before them in the pews (and filling the offering plate) but the entire "communion of saints" who once occupied those same places. Just because someone is dead does not mean we have permission to patronize or dismiss them like so much extra baggage.

If there's any hope for a new progressive movement out there in the future, one with staying power and imagination, I think it's going to be one with a lively sense of history, a relationship with the ancestors that is so complicated and fraught that we will never feel the need to stop debating, challenging them — and allowing them to challenge us.

-Peggy

 


image courtesy of The Onion, issue 47-39

Content:
January 31, 2014

Frequent readers of our blog may remember this post over the summer about our new book cradle, made possible through the generous donation of Rick Taylor, Marjorie Royle, and Douglas Taylor. We are pleased to announce an upgrade to our wonderful cradle in the form of a custom-built table. The cradle now rests on a matching table. The table is on casters, making it easy to move about and position, and has a pull-out writing surface for easy note-taking. It certainly makes doing research with over-sized periodicals much easier!

[]

--Sari

Content:
January 30, 2014

An Eighteenth-Century Intellectual, Universalist, and Champion of Women's Rights

[]Judith Sargent Murray was an essayist, poet, and playwright. She was among America's earliest champions of female equality, education, economic independence, and political engagement.

Bonnie Hurd Smith, the entrepreneurial founder of History Smiths and the Judith Sargent Murray Society, has spent ten years collecting, editing, and publishing the letters of this remarkable woman and her surprising life. Come and learn more about Bonnie's fascinating historical detective work and the stories she discovered.

 

Thursday, February 20th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through SurveyMonkey.

 


portrait of Judith Sargent Murray courtesy of the Judith Sargent Murray Society website

Content:
January 28, 2014

There's still plenty of time to register for tomorrow's free lunchtime lecture.


Join photographer Paul Wainwright for a look at his captivating shots of New England's classic church buildings.

[]New England's Puritan meetinghouses embody an important chapter in American history, yet their role in forming our country is not widely known. Participatory government (the "town meeting") was born and refined in them. The original "Tea Party" was organized in one – the Old South Meetinghouse here in Boston.

Following the example set by Paul Strand in his classic 1950 book Time in New England, the exact location of each of Wainwright's photographs is relatively unimportant. Just as Strand painted a composite portrait of New England, Wainwright's photographs paint a composite portrait of the New England meetinghouse. These structures are typical of those that once existed at the center of every colonial New England town. While most have been torn down or renovated beyond recognition, the few structures contained in this body of work remain, touched only by time.

Paul's book, A Space for Faith, The Colonial Meetinghouses of New England, is available for members to borrow from the Congregational Library.

Wednesday, January 29nd
12:00 - 2:00 pm

(Please note that this is a special extended session.)

Free.
Register through SurveyMonkey.

Content:
January 27, 2014

There's been a lot of good buzz about Peggy Bendroth's latest book, The Spiritual Practice of Remembering. If you'd like to hear her speak about it in person and pick up a signed copy, you can do so this Thursday evening. She will be appearing at First Church in Cambridge from 5:30-7:30pm.

[]We often dismiss history as dull or irrelevant, but our modern disengagement from the past puts us fundamentally out of step with the long witness of the Christian tradition. Yet, says Margaret Bendroth, the past tense is essential to our language of faith, and without it our conversation is limited and thin.

This accessible, beautifully written book presents a new argument for honoring the past. The Christian tradition gives us the powerful image of a vast communion of saints, all of God's people, both living and dead, in vital conversation with each other. This kind of connection with our ancestors in the faith, Bendroth maintains, will not happen by wishing or by accident. She argues that remembering must become a regular spiritual practice, part of the rhythm of our daily lives as we recognize our world to be, in many ways, a gift from others who have gone before.

"Margaret Bendroth shows once again that she is an artist who happens to work with words rather than paint or clay; she is also a Christian and a historian. Bendroth makes a powerful case that the past is never totally past but remains a rich resource for the practice of our faith. The point is less the mastery of this or that 'dry' detail than to see that our spiritual parents often faced questions similar to ours yet gave answers different from ours -- answers more practical, more creative, and more faithful. It pays to pay attention. The book is at once learned, thought-filled, and wonderfully engaging."

— Grant Wacker, Duke Divinity School

If you can't make it to the event, we have a couple copies of the book here at the Congregational Library available for our members to borrow. And if you aren't a member yet, signing up is easy.

Content:
January 23, 2014

The scene opens on a beautifully appointed room in Boston's Back Bay, with the librarians and archivists of New England's most prestigious institutions seated around a large mahogany table.

And me.

This was an annual meeting and my first. We spent the first bit of time going around the table introducing ourselves and our libraries, and by pure chance I, the newcomer, went first. Without much sense of what was appropriate in that gathering I launched into a quick and general description of our collection. The more I talked the more I began to worry that to most of the people in the room the Congregational Library looked small and way too religious to be taken seriously. My suspicion deepened as the introductions progressed. One by one, librarians and archivists from Ivy League schools and prestigious historical societies trotted out truly impressive statistics — it turns out that the custom is to talk about the collection in terms of linear feet and numbers of volumes — as well as rare and valuable items (including in one case, a collection of wood varnishes) and astonishingly complete and amazing archival materials. This is the way of the world among research libraries these days, not all that different from fishermen and ministers of large churches — importance is all about measurements and comparisons.

[]The conversation made me think back to my own experience as a researcher, working on my first book about fundamentalism. I knew right off that there was no point visiting any Ivy League libraries or for that matter any important collection in the Boston area. Not only were my fundamentalists outside the cultural purview of institutions like these, no right-minded fundamentalist would have ever wanted anything on their thoroughly secular shelves anyway. My sources, like my subjects, were angular and unusual, mostly invisible to mainstream American culture — purposefully so.

And so I ended up going to places like Winona Lake, Indiana, home of a famous Bible conference and the summer home of the evangelist Billy Sunday. My visit began with a tour of Billy's old stomping grounds conducted by the librarian driving his pickup truck. I stayed in a bed and breakfast owned by kind, church-going people who had decorated it like a Victorian bordello, and I ate at Pizza Hut every night because that was the only restaurant in town.

The material I went to see had been rescued from trash barrels. These were the personal papers of Billy Sunday, one-time Chicago White Sox second baseman and internationally known evangelist, one the most colorful and influential figures of the early twentieth century. Now few people know much about him, and would have known less if someone hadn't happened to come by right before the garbage trucks arrived.

Obscure and fugitive sources were not the only challenge, however. Doing research on culturally marginal people in any out-of-the-way place requires a special kind of resourcefulness, finding points of connection with people who might be suspicious outsiders, and perhaps for good reason. The people I visited were, yes, very conservative and not particularly tolerant of the non-orthodox, but they were also used to being laughed at, caricatured or discounted because of their religious beliefs. Perhaps not surprisingly, being disliked and disowned by the broader culture was for some a true badge of honor. Getting at my primary sources meant becoming familiar with their rhythms and their habits, being gracious and more often than not keeping my mouth shut — not always easy for an academic. It meant surviving some genuinely awkward situations, including one visit to the library of an old fundamentalist school where for my entire stay I endured the hostile gaze of a woman (I suspect) harboring a lifelong crush on the man I was researching.

I am not against top research libraries and the new digital age — if anything I am an aider and an abettor — but I have been around enough to know that there is a lot that someone viewing primary sources from a computer screen (or in a hushed and beautifully-appointed reading room) will never see. The point is not just the texts themselves or the prestige of the building that houses them — it is the unique human environment that has created them and in many cases guarded them from outsiders. Good research, and by that I mean research that teaches us something about what it means to be human, is not just about being smart or well-connected. It means giving up the illusion of control, going in to listen and to learn.

-Peggy

 


"Books to be returned..." photographed by Flickr user Hash Milhan and released under a Creative Commons license.

Content:
January 21, 2014

Due to the predicted snowstorm, tomorrow's free lunchtime lecture has been postponed until next week on Wednesday, January 29th.


Join photographer Paul Wainwright for a look at his captivating shots of New England's classic church buildings.

[]New England's Puritan meetinghouses embody an important chapter in American history, yet their role in forming our country is not widely known. Participatory government (the "town meeting") was born and refined in them. The original "Tea Party" was organized in one – the Old South Meetinghouse here in Boston.

Following the example set by Paul Strand in his classic 1950 book Time in New England, the exact location of each of Wainwright's photographs is relatively unimportant. Just as Strand painted a composite portrait of New England, Wainwright's photographs paint a composite portrait of the New England meetinghouse. These structures are typical of those that once existed at the center of every colonial New England town. While most have been torn down or renovated beyond recognition, the few structures contained in this body of work remain, touched only by time.

Paul's book, A Space for Faith, The Colonial Meetinghouses of New England, is available for members to borrow from the Congregational Library.

Wednesday, January 29nd
12:00 - 2:00 pm

(Please note that this is a special extended session.)

Free.
Register through SurveyMonkey.

Content:
January 17, 2014

The Congregational Library will be closed on Monday, January 20th in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. 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:
January 14, 2014

[]We at the Congregational Library are intimately aware these days of how much behind the scenes work goes into a digital project, be it a new website (and isn't it pretty?) or exhibit space, or special projects like New England's Hidden Histories. So, when I read that the library at Trinity College has just released pages from The Book of Kells for public viewing online, my mind spun at what it must have taken to get that site up and running. As a book lover, a history major, and an artist who's dabbled in calligraphy and other peripherally similar activities, The Book of Kells has always been a super-star. At this point, there is only basic information listed about the book, with the expectation that it will be filled in later. The additional information provided about the process notes that the scans were pulled from copies made in 1990, which made my archivist's heart relieved, that the original was not put through the exposure of new photography.

Thanks and congratulations to Trinity for this milestone project.

-Jessica

 


Gospel of Mark, Saltire cross with winged Man and Lion, from The Book of Kells owned by Trinity College Dublin, digital no. MS58_187v

Content:
January 2, 2014

[]The library will be closing at 3:30pm today due to inclement weather.

UPDATE: We will remain closed on Friday, January 3rd.

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, January 6th.

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

 


snowflake ornament image courtesy of Petr Kratochvil via Wikimedia Commons

Content:
December 30, 2013

We will be closing at 3:00pm on Tuesday, December 31st, and will remain closed on January 1st. All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question for the staff, send an email or leave a voicemail, and we will get back to you when we return to the office on Thursday, January 2nd.

Happy 2014!

 

Content:
December 23, 2013

We will be closing at 12:30pm on Tuesday, December 24th, and will remain closed for the rest of the week. All of our online resources will be available as usual. If you have a question for the staff, send an email or leave a voicemail, and we will get back to you when we return to the office on Monday, December 30th.

To all of our patrons who celebrate, we hope you have a safe and happy holiday.

Content:
December 19, 2013

[]Earlier this month, the British Library released more than one million images on Flickr Commons. They have been scanned from the pages of 65,000 books published in the 17th-19th centuries, and are freely available for use by anyone. What's more, they're crowdsourcing the pictures' descriptions and tagging to make them even more useful.

We are looking for new, inventive ways to navigate, find and display these 'unseen illustrations'. The images were plucked from the pages as part of the 'Mechanical Curator', a creation of the British Library Labs project. Each image is individually addressible, online, and Flickr provides an API to access it and the image's associated description.

We may know which book, volume and page an image was drawn from, but we know nothing about a given image. Consider the image below. The title of the work may suggest the thematic subject matter of any illustrations in the book, but it doesn't suggest how colourful and arresting these images are.

[]

Pictures within books are rarely given much description, and their meanings can be lost when they're taken out of context. You can help others find these beautiful photographs, etchings, and illustrations by fleshing out their descriptions or adding tags on Flickr. Even if you're not interested in that part, they are fun to look through. The subjects contained in the collection show everything from maps to portraits, architecture to decorative borders to vintage advertisements, and more.

You can learn more on the British Library's blog, or go directly to their Flickr page and start searching. There are some beautiful and fascinating things just waiting to be found.

--Robin

Content:
December 17, 2013

Join photographer Paul Wainwright for a look at his captivating shots of New England's classic church buildings.

[]New England's Puritan meetinghouses embody an important chapter in American history, yet their role in forming our country is not widely known. Participatory government (the "town meeting") was born and refined in them. The original "Tea Party" was organized in one – the Old South Meetinghouse here in Boston.

Following the example set by Paul Strand in his classic 1950 book Time in New England, the exact location of each of Wainwright's photographs is relatively unimportant. Just as Strand painted a composite portrait of New England, Wainwright's photographs paint a composite portrait of the New England meetinghouse. These structures are typical of those that once existed at the center of every colonial New England town. While most have been torn down or renovated beyond recognition, the few structures contained in this body of work remain, touched only by time.

Paul's book, A Space for Faith, The Colonial Meetinghouses of New England, is available for members to borrow from the Congregational Library.

Wednesday, January 22nd
12:00 - 2:00 pm

(Please note that this is a special extended session.)

Free.
Register through SurveyMonkey.

Content:
December 16, 2013

As you can see, we've launched a new version of our website. It's now more mobile friendly, dynamic, and (if we do say so ourselves) prettier. We've reorganized a few things, so you may need to update any bookmarks you have here.

We've also integrated this blog. The archive over at the old Typepad page will exist for a couple more months until our subscription runs out, but all new posts will only be here on the site. We will still post notifications of new entries on both Twitter and Facebook, so if you follow us in either of those places, nothing will change.

Take a look around. You might just find something you didn't know you needed.

Content:
December 13, 2013

For the last month and a half, we have been hosting a new Simmons grad student, Elyse Edwards. She has been working on processing a collection for us for her Intro To Archives internship.


[]Coming from the west coast, I have grown up learning predominately about Mission history, my congregational history knowledge being relegated to a few sections studied in US History many years ago. One thing that I've really enjoyed about this whole process, aside from being able to put archival theories into practice in a real life situation, is the opportunity to learn about people, places, and times that otherwise might never have crossed my path. Through this experience, I have been able to fully immerse myself in the history of the Union Congregational Church at Winthrop, the "Friendly Church by the Sea". In sifting through over 100 years of records, I found that this church, its members, and clergy truly embodied the ideals of a "friendly church by the sea". While membership fluctuated over the years, the church continued to be an active part of the community. The Women's Association was particularly noteworthy, regularly providing assistance not just to church members but to the church itself. They organized and sponsored a majority of the church events over the years, in addition to engaging members and encouraging participation in there's and other auxiliary groups.

In the end, low membership and the high cost of maintaining the church as an organization and a building led to its demise. However, UCC Winthrop will always serve as a noteworthy example of a community who, feeling that their spiritual needs were not being met, founded a congregation that addressed and satisfied their needs for over a century.

-Elyse Edwards

Content:
December 12, 2013

Every once in a while, we will have a Visitor From The Stacks interlude during our board meetings as a way to provide an entertaining way of highlighting prominent people from our history. Most recently, Charlie Hambrick-Stowe dressed up as Cotton Mather at our September meeting.

[]This time, I volunteered to take on the persona of one of our former staff members, Joseph Clark. We last mentioned Rev. Clark two years ago during our Christmas break posts. Dr. Clark served as pastor in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, his only church. He found the role of pastor in such an active and large community to be too taxing on his heath, so he left the ministry and served as secretary for the Massachusetts Missionary Society for almost twenty years.

[]During Clark's time in the Missionary Society, he must have seen many instances of venerable colonial churches discover they could not locate their founding documents and the records that supported their first hundred years. As a dedicated scholar, historian, and minister, his focus and passion was preserving Congregational history and the records he used to tell the denomination’s tales. During the final decade of his life (1851-1861) Joseph Clark and his brethren worked to establish the Congregational Library Association here in downtown Boston. Clark acted as corresponding secretary for those ten years, then took on more roles: financial officer, editor for the Congregational Quarterly, and finally as our second librarian. The stress, particularly that of financial officer, took its toll on Dr. Clark, and after only two years as librarian, he died after becoming progressively sicker in the last few years of his life, and finally died in August 1861.

Dr. Clark and his friends' hard work may well be the reason why the library didn't fail with so many other ventures did at the eve of the Civil War. For that alone, he will always be a person of note, but even so, there are so many interesting things about him and his journey that I could have discussed more. He:

  • had a direct ancestor (Thomas Clark) on the Mayflower.
  • came of age during the Congregationalist/Unitarian Controversy, and had a family divided over this very issue.
  • joined the ministry and served when revivalism was strong and his community was actively participating in that revival.
  • participated in creating a charitable and social organization that speaks of the age.
  • served in the organization that was the basis of the current Massachusetts Conference, providing support and feedback to churches.
  • established a publication (Then the Congregational Quarterly, which evolved into various denominational yearbooks that are still being published today).
  • lived through an economic era that mirrors our modern day issues of recession, slow recovery, and political turmoil.

-Jessica

Content:
December 10, 2013

There's still plenty of time to register for tomorrow's free lunchtime lecture.


[]The First Hundred Years

Faith, Polity and Wider Fellowship are the three tenets from which rose the important affirmation of faith adopted by the Congregational Churches in 1913 when the National Council met in Kansas City, Missouri "to affirm traditional congregationalist principles in a form that would meet the needs of the new century."

Visitors to the Congregational House at 14 Beacon Street are greeted by a copy of the Statement cast in bronze on our foyer's wall. Many of us pass the declaration every day, but what does it mean and what part does it play in the history of American religion?

Join Executive Director Dr. Peggy Bendroth as she explores the historic significance of the Statement and its contribution to a full century of religious and social life and thought.

Wednesday, December 11th
12:00 - 1:00 pm

Free.
Register through SurveyMonkey.

Content:
December 9, 2013

We recently received from Robert Peters, Jr. two hymnals which came from the collection of his late brother, Frank. The first book is The Christian Hymn Book, being a Collection of Psalms, Hymns, and Spiritual Songs. It was compiled by the Executive Committee of the Ohio Christian Book Association. This volume is the Seventh Edition, printed at the Office of the Gospel Herald by John Ellis, 1859. The copyright statement listed is "Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1844, by Isaac N. Walter, in the Clerk's office for the District of Ohio". Elder Walker (1805-1856) was one of the leading ministers of the Christian Denomination in the West, was the long-time secretary of the Ohio Central Christian Conference, and assisted in establishing and publishing The Gospel Herald, a religious periodical in Ohio. The preface details the reasons for publishing this hymnal: "As far as our acquaintance extends, a large majority of Christians in the West have decided, that the hymn-books in use among us are deficient, either in arrangement of variety; and in some instances, in the sentiment contained in hymns." You can read more about the life of Isaac N. Walter in his memoir.

[]

The second is A Collection of Psalms and Hymns, for Social and Private Worship. This volume is the Second Edition, stereotyped by E. White, New York, and printed by Abraham Paul, No. 72 Nassau Street, 1824. The connection to the Christian denomination is the gold embossed words on the front cover, "North Christian Society" and "Pulpit" embossed on the back cover. Mr. Peters believes this book may have been used by his paternal grandfather, who served as minister at the North Christian Church in New Bedford, MA from 1909-1917.

The Christians were a small but vigorous group, a product of the religious revivals of the late 1700s and early 1800s. They united with the Congregationalists in 1931. More information about the Christians can be found on our Congregational Christian Traditions page.

Thank you to Rob Peters for adding to our collection.

-Claudette

Content:
December 6, 2013

Our reading room will be closed on Monday, December 9th for our board's quarterly meeting. Staff will be on hand to answer questions by phone or email, and all of our online resources will be available as usual.

Content:

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