Rescued from Oblivion

Historical Cultures in the Early United States

Alea Henle

• Publisher: University of Massachusetts Press
• Year: 2020
• Print ISBN: 9781625344991, 9781625344984
• eBook ISBN: 9781613767450
• Topic: History
• Subtopic: Museum Studies
• Index: History

In 1791, a group of elite Bostonian men established the first historical society in the nation. Within sixty years, the number of local history organizations had increased exponentially, with states and territories from Maine to Louisiana and Georgia to Minnesota boasting collections of their own.

With in-depth research and an expansive scope, Rescued from Oblivion offers a vital account of the formation of historical culture and consciousness in the early United States, re-centering in the record groups long marginalized from the national memory. As Alea Henle demonstrates, these societies laid the groundwork for professional practices that are still embraced today: collection policies, distinctions between preservation of textual and nontextual artifacts, publication programs, historical rituals and commemorations, reconciliation of scholarly and popular approaches, and more. At the same time, officers of these early societies faced challenges to their historical authority from communities interested in preserving a broader range of materials and documenting more inclusive histories, including fellow members, popular historians, white women, and peoples of color.

Chapter One

“The Lumber Yard of History”

The Organization, Progress, Successes, and Failures of Historical Societies

THE OHIO-BASED LOGAN HISTORICAL SOCIETY described its purpose as “to collect, stack up, to keep and season the materials out of which, in future, a most useful and accurate history may be constructed.” Its short-lived, mid-nineteenth-century publication, American Pioneer, became a “lumber yard of history.” Historical society officers and members saw themselves as middlemen, gathering and protecting materials for the sake of future generations in the face of general inaction. The federal government did little to collect and preserve historical materials apart from funding the purchase of early presidential papers for the State Department. Congress did not allocate funds for the Library of Congress to purchase manuscripts, or establish the National Archives until the twentieth century. State and local governments provided assistance but initiated few preservative actions. Libraries and academic institutions likewise did little. In contrast, early historical societies amassed collections of early books, pamphlets, newspapers, manuscripts, artifacts, indigenous antiquities, and natural specimens.1

General inaction to preserve historical materials mattered. State and national governments’ inattention to their records contrasted with known use of historical documents for research purposes. Historical society founders also recognized the value of historical documents for citation in court cases, justification for legislative bills, and to ensure the inclusion of particular peoples and places in local, regional, and national narratives. For example, Boston historian Hannah Mather Crocker suggested that prudent matrons such as herself might save a nation “by preserving the records and certain documents that shall be sufficient evidence to prove the boundaries of the nation.” At the time, the northeastern border between Canada and Maine was in dispute.2

To date, most research on historical societies in the United States appears as individual institutional histories. Complementing these, recent scholarship focuses on historic preservation in specific cities (e.g., Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, or Deerfield, Massachusetts) or analyzes individual historic sites (Independence Hall, Plymouth Rock) over an extended timeframe. With few exceptions, scholars have failed to compare historical societies. In 1934 historian Julian P. Boyd defended historical societies by recounting a narrative of their rise and progress to answer criticism based on their apparent decline following the establishment of the American Historical Association in 1884. Later, historian David Van Tassel highlighted the importance of the historical societies’ dual roles as preservers and creators even as they became centers of localism. Historian and librarian Walter Muir Whitehill’s Independent Historical Societies (1962) and the North Caroliniana Society’s Historical Consciousness in the Early Republic (1995) address societies by state and region, mirroring the local bias of institutional and location-oriented scholarship. Only Leslie W. Dunlap, a mid-twentieth-century librarian, examined multiple societies. Historiographical developments since Dunlap’s work call for this examination.3

By the mid-nineteenth century, professional men of station, predominantly Protestants of Anglo-American descent, organized more than fifty historical societies in the United States to preserve historical materials. They relied on volunteer labor to gather and protect materials, and often failed or had periods of sporadic activity punctuating stretches of dormancy. The members sought to document the history of the nation but understood it through the lens of the local. Few historical societies received large-scale donations. Officers relied on membership fees or assistance from local and state governments, which increased affiliations with local and state identities.

“Food for Worms”: Preserving Historical Materials before Historical Societies

Founders of the first historical societies created organizations focused on collecting and preservation in no small part because earlier efforts to gather and preserve historical materials on a large scale met with failure or limited success. Today, historians have numerous repositories available for consultation, from government archives to quasi-public societies to academic libraries. Massachusetts Historical Society founders had far fewer options, despite access to informal networks of correspondents throughout the states. Indeed, they recognized insufficient action or support for gathering and protecting historical materials on the part of governments, learned organizations, private individuals, and the general public.

Colonial historians used government records as a primary consultation point in researching the history of the colonies and their peoples. New York colonial official Cadwallader Colden based his early eighteenth-century history of the Iroquois on access to official documents. Later in the century, Rev. Jeremy Belknap acknowledged in the first volume to his History of New Hampshire a debt to New Hampshire and Massachusetts officials for providing him with access to public records.4

Such straightforward acknowledgments masked a complex situation in which government records were incomplete, dispersed within colonies, located in Europe, or insufficient alone as a source for writing history. Records were vulnerable to fire and other disasters, with notable losses. Thomas Hutchinson worked on a history of Massachusetts while in the colonial government. He held multiple government offices, serving at various times as lieutenant governor, chief justice, a probate judge, and councilor, and therefore had access to the colony’s “ancient” public records. Unfortunately, many were lost, forcing him to seek materials for his history elsewhere. A year after the first volume was published, a mob protesting the Stamp Act looted his house and destroyed historical materials in his possession. Afterward, some radicals implied the destruction was an attempt to keep Hutchinson from continuing his history. Hutchinson’s friend, Rev. Andrew Eliot, rescued some of Hutchinson’s papers, allowing him to complete the second volume.5

Record-keeping practices allowed officials to keep government records in private establishments and refer to both private and public matters in correspondence, blurring the lines between public and private. Colonial governments preserved records for administrative use, not historical. Often officers and elected officials did not turn over documentation to their successors. Connecticut exemplifies how government records at the time were not under consistent governmental control. In the mid- to late eighteenth century, the Connecticut General Assembly repeatedly directed state officials, including Governor Jonathan Trumbull, to collect colonial documents. Trumbull gathered many, but kept them in his home even after retiring from office. Historian Christopher Bickford suggested Trumbull made two collections: a personal collection, which his family offered to the Massachusetts Historical Society in 1794, and one of documents gathered in compliance with the General Assembly’s request, which the Trumbull family returned to the State of Connecticut much later.6

Trumbull intended the collection for a library accessible by the public, for the use of future historians. His heirs did not consider Yale a suitable recipient for his collection of Connecticut colonial records. His son David offered the collection to the new Massachusetts Historical Society in 1794, believing his father would have preferred the quasi-public Society over a “Collegiate or other Library, where they probably would soon become ‘Food for Worms.’” While Europe enjoyed more than 2,500 libraries with extensive holdings in the mid-eighteenth century, colonial citizens had far fewer options. In 1756 Oxford University’s Bodleian Library received its largest single donation, which contained more than five thousand volumes, to date. Neither the College of William and Mary nor Yale College boasted as many works at the time of the Revolution.7

Drawing on English precedents, editor Ebenezer Hazard of Philadelphia sought assistance from the Continental Congress for an ambitious project to collect and publish American colonial records. Congress voted to allocate funds to Hazard’s enterprise and provided an endorsement which facilitated access to colonial state papers. Whether he received any monies is unclear. Despite assistance from friends, he completed copying materials for only Massachusetts and New Hampshire. Publication of the first two volumes of his collection in the early 1790s left him in debt.8

Most historians relied primarily on private and family collections. While Thomas Hutchinson found his own family papers proved helpful in writing his history of Massachusetts Bay, he acknowledged a debt to his brother-in-law Samuel Mather for free access to Mather’s library. Hutchinson believed earlier Boston historian and minister Thomas Prince also collected “the greatest and most valuable part” of his history from the Mather library. Similarly, William Stith, a retired president of the College of William and Mary in Williamsburg, Virginia, owed much of the contents of his mid-eighteenth-century history of the colony to the manuscripts and books in the library of planter William Byrd II.9

Unfortunately, private and family collections posed problems of care and preservation over generations. Individuals with historical materials often willed these to their heirs. This allowed for sale or disbursement. Boston minister Cotton Mather’s library passed to his son, rather than being sold to pay his debts, possibly through lifetime gifts from Mather to his son or legal finagling after Mather’s death to ensure lineal passage. The library and associated materials largely remained in the family for nearly a century afterward. Virginia collector William Byrd II left his library to his son, William Byrd III, who sold it. Rev. Thomas Prince bequeathed his historical and religious libraries to the Old South Church, but the contents were neglected even before British depredations during the occupation of Boston. At least one historical collector directed his materials to a younger, kindred spirit: former town clerk and Governor Stephen Hopkins left his historical manuscripts to fellow historian Theodore Foster rather than a family member.10

Rev. Jeremy Belknap drafted a letter in 1774 proposing Harvard College Library become a repository for historical materials. At the time, the thirty-year-old Boston-born and Harvard-educated minister served the First Church in Dover, New Hampshire. He began researching the history of New Hampshire and became convinced of the importance of the active collection and preservation of documents. Aware of growing unrest in the colonies over matters of governance, Belknap pondered how future historians might view the times in which he lived. He imagined the Harvard library as a place to collect “such authentic Documents as may enable some future historian to delineate the present times in as full and perfect a manner as possible.”11

Nothing came of Belknap’s suggestion, but later English-born Boston minister and historian William Gordon proposed a similar plan. Gordon was then working on a history of the American Revolution (published 1788) and conscious of the difficulties of locating and accessing historical records. His idea involved appointing a committee to gather historical materials. Harvard leaders chose Gordon to carry out the project, but he did nothing and returned to England leaving the matter unaddressed.12

Trustees of Harvard College took the proposal under consideration again and approached Belknap, who had recently moved to Boston. He agreed to lead Harvard in collecting historical matter, reflecting that he “often experienced that, where there is much labour and little profit, I am not out of employ.” He urged owners of important collections to donate them to Harvard and attempted to arrange for Harvard to purchase a valuable collection of newspapers and pamphlets from pioneering historical editor Ebenezer Hazard of Philadelphia. Within twelve months, Belknap became convinced college officials lacked the will to collect and preserve historical materials. Belknap never donated from his own collection to the project, probably suspecting the plan would fail.13

Belknap and other historically minded individuals in Massachusetts recognized the limitations of governments, learned institutions, and private collectors in collecting and preserving historical materials by 1790. Scholars place the establishment of the Massachusetts Historical Society in the context of the specialization of learned culture and the extension or adaptation of European practices. The founding of the Society also commented on the failures of other institutions and organizations. The founders determined the best way to ensure preservation of historical materials was through a society focused solely on this objective.14

“The Honourable Example”: Establishing Historical Societies

At the outset, early societies embraced grand ambitions. Over time, their expectations declined and they restricted their spheres of potential action. Americans founded more societies as the nineteenth century progressed. New Yorkers created the New-York Historical Society thirteen years after establishment of the Massachusetts Historical Society. Massachusetts citizens organized the American Antiquarian Society after another decade. By the twenty-fifth anniversary of the Declaration of Independence, men established societies in Pennsylvania and all New England states except Vermont. Behind these points lay a tale of successes—and failures.

“A Safe Repository”: From One to Few, 1790–1820

New York City businessman and philanthropist John Pintard called on Belknap in 1789 to suggest forming a Society of Antiquaries. The following year, Belknap drew up such a plan. For inspiration, he probably looked to European historical and antiquarian societies, which were largely affiliated with royalty and organized along national lines. He also had domestic examples: the American Philosophical Society in Philadelphia and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in Boston. Instead of emphasizing the United Sta...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction
• Chapter One
• Chapter Two
• Chapter Three
• Chapter Four
• Chapter Five
• Chapter Six
• Conclusion
• Appendix One
• Appendix Two
• Notes
• Index