Congregational Library

New Historical Podcast - Now Available

It's been too long since we've had the chance to add to our Instant History section of the web page. We now have the much-requested recording of our own board member and eminent historian, Rick Taylor, reading his paper "Congregationalism's Biggest Mistake." This lecture on October 21 was part of our ongoing Brown Bag Lunch series. Be sure to listen or read the original paper on our web site.

-Jessica

Events at the Boston Public Library

Normally we wouldn't publish an event until Thursday, but this event is tonight. It's bound to be a lot of fun and the topic of Congregationalists is guaranteed to be part of the program.

You may have seen her being interviewed on The Daily Show, you may have read her book, Wordy Shipmates (which you may borrow from this library). Well, now you can see her live at the Boston Public Library. She's part of their author lecture series. The event starts at 6pm at the main branch in Copley Square. The BPL's program is robust and ongoing. You can follow them on Facebook, or review their main web page for more information.

-Jessica

"White on White: Churches of Rural New England"

Photograghs by Steven Rosenthal; essay by Verlyn Linkenborg; afterword by Robert Campbell; published by the The Monacelli Press; 136 pages, 12X14 inches, 80 tritone photographs.

This beautiful book has been added to the Library collection. Mr. Rosenthal began photographing New England Churches in the mid-1960 to preserve a sense of place in the New England landscape. Some ofthe churches pictured in the book are: First Congregational Church, Kensington, NH, First Congregational Church, Newfane, VT, First Congregational Church, South Paris, ME, First Congregational Church, Nantucket, MA, and South Ferry Church, Narragansett, RI.

Book Signing and Exhibit: October 30, 2009 at Cape Ann Museum, 27 Pleasant Street, Gloucester, MA at 6:00 PM. Call 978-283-0455.

For more information about this book, click here.

Claudette

Scrapbooks of S. B. Capen

Samuel B. Capen (1842-1914) was a very active leader of social and religious societies in his life time. At the time of his death in China, he was the President of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) and the President of Wellesley College. His activities included: Vice President of the American Congregational Association (ACA), Director of the Boston City Missionary Society, a Trustee of the United Society of Christian Endeavor, Chairman of the Executive Committee of the Laymen's Missionary Movement of the United States and Canada, a member of the Board of Managers of the North American Civic League for Immigrants,a member of the Society of Mayflower Descendants, and President of the Massachusetts Peace Society. From 1882-1899, Mr. Capen was President of the Congregational Sunday School and Publishing Society and from 1894-1899, he was President of the Boston Municipal League.

In our stacks we have a number of scrapbooks from Mr. Capen, those of most interest include scrapbooks containing articles regarding the Rockefeller contribution controversy and one collection on the Laymen's Missionary Movement. Other books are albums containing pictures of missionaries, their families and other clergy. 

History Friday: “Glory! Glory! Glory!”

That, as I learned this past month, is the exclamation that Ellen White used to shout when she was about to have a vision. Ellen Gould Harmon White was the founder of the Seventh-Day Adventist Church, a dynamic woman with a prophetic gift; she’s also the subject of a four-day conference I’ll be attending in Portland, Maine, this weekend.

 

The Ellen White Project, as it’s called, has assembled some twenty authors and twice as many commentators to discuss an essay collection now in process.  That’s a lot of historians in one place, and I have to confess I am a little giddy at the prospect.

 

White’s background does actually connect to the Congregational Library, particularly our large cache of materials from the Christian Connection. She was part of a group that formed in the wake of the “great disappointment,” when the world did not come to an end in 1844, as seer William Miller had predicted it would. White’s visions helped one part of the remnant to regroup, reinterpreting what looked like failure as a simple misreading of divine events. White was originally a “shouting Methodist” from Portland, but many of the other ex-Millerites came and went from the Shakers and from the Christians, who were also quite comfortable with charismatic female leadership and open to novel religious ideas.

 

The rest of her story is just as colorful as one would expect. She was a great advocate of health reform (having been permanently disfigured by a rock thrown at her face when she was a young girl) and after she moved to Battle Creek, Michigan, she took up with Harvey Kellogg, another reformer interested in water cures and, yes, healthy breakfast cereals. If you’re interested in knowing more, we have a biography or two of White in our collection—and then, of course, there will be a great collection of essays coming out sometime in the near future (but no predications of when . . . ).

 

Peggy

Our archive and rare book room

In honor of  Archives History Month, we thought we'd share some history of our archive space.

From the 112th Annual Report of the Directors and Library, May 24, 1965:

Adjacent to the Library on the third floor of the building is a large room where rare books and manuscripts will be kept safely in filtered, humidity and temperature controlled air. On the second floor there is a small area for study of rare books adjoining the Pratt Room which has been altered and incorporated in this facility for preservation of the historic items entrusted in our care.

From the 113th Annual Report of the Directors and Library, Ma 23, 1966:

A year ago plans were under way and details completed for the dedication of the new Archives and Rare Book Room.

It was in July before the book stacks were installed. The air-conditioning equipment required several months for adjustment. It was therefore not until the end of December that the rare books were transferred from the old cage and three safes to the new stack room. Some work in cataloging and arrangement of books still remains to be done. There are records on deposit and manuscripts to be indexed and arranged in this room also. New chairs, a table for the microfilm reader, and a book tuck with a locked shelf have been furnished for the study room. In recent months it has been used frequently as a place for quiet concentration and research.

--Claudette

 

Dear Diary

This past Wednesday night I had the honor of attending a dinner given by the Massachusetts Historical Society, in honor of historian Laurel Thatcher Ulrich.  She received their Kennedy Medal, a high honor given to the likes of Edmund Morgan, Oscar Handlin, and Arthur Schlesinger, Jr. (She’s also the historian who coined the phrase that “Well-behaved women rarely make history.”)

I sat in a room upstairs in the Harvard Club, feeling out of my element but bemused by all the oil portraits of eminent Harvard graduates lining the walls—nearly all of them Congregationalists.

Ulrich’s talk was about a diary she was reading about Wilford Woodruff, an early leader in the Mormon Church. He kept a regular chronicle of his daily life, including three trips to Boston in the 1830s.  (He ended up not much liking it here.) 

It reminded me of a project I did last year with Sam Smallidge, one of our Simmons interns.  We combed through the entire archives and Sam created a document that listed and described every diary and journal in our collection.  There were a lot, and most of them looked fascinating—many were records kept by traveling ministers about the places they visited and people they baptized.  It was easy to imagine that these would be grist for a lot of wonderful projects.

Sam and I found a lot of other treasures too—18^th century manumission papers (handwritten) to free a slave in Massachusetts, a lottery ticket from the Revolutionary War era, and of course many records of ancient church fights and controversies.  They’re all still up there in the archives, waiting for the next Laurel Thatcher Ulrich to open the secrets they’ve been keeping for all these many years.

-Peggy

Events

 

For any colleagues out there who are in the Boston/New England area, the New England Archivists (NEA) are having a meeting at UMass Boston in a few weeks. The theme will be on appraisal. It's rare for me, but this time I will be attending the Friday workshop on stabilizing digital accessions. If you're going to any of the weekend's activities, let me know. Students should note, there is a new reduced rate for joining NEA. It's never too early to start networking.

 

On the closer horizon, I will be visiting Simmons to talk about what it's like to work in a small archive to one of Jeannette Bastian's classes. The following evening, I'll be talking to church historians about organizing their congregation's records. It's not too late to sign up for that: email our administrative assistant, Susan Thomas <link to staff page>. Also, there's no rule that says you have to be a Congregationalist to attend and learn some tips. Most of what I talk about applies to any Protestant denomination.

 

-Jessica

History Friday: Use Your Head

I remember very clearly the first time I read Mark Noll’s The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind in 1994.  It was a powerful and astonishing book, decrying the deep-seated anti-intellectualism among conservative Christians. It kind of floored me, for lots of reasons, some having to do with my own scholarly interests and some having to do with Noll’s virtuoso command of evangelical history.

 

  Last week I was part of a conference considering this same question, fifteen years later—and I can report that the most recent news is definitely mixed.  Without question, evangelicals have made progress in graduating Ph.Ds and M.B.A.’s and M.D.s.  My own field, American religious history, has been transformed by historians like Noll, George Marsden, and Nathan Hatch.  But the larger evangelical public doesn’t read their books—the most popular historical expert among conservative Christians is David Barton, former co-chair of the Texas Republican Party and a best-selling author of books about the faith of the founding fathers (deists mostly) and overblown paeans about the spiritual destiny of the United States.

 

Evangelicals may buy a lot more books than other Protestants, but my guess is that they don’t have any kind of a corner on the anti-intellectual problem. The people who put this Library together understood that their Christian faith required a lot of careful thinking, reading, and learning. It wasn’t just about personal growth or emotional enrichment—it was about the life of the mind as well.

 

It’s discouraging sometimes, to see how little demand there is for thinking in the religious world, how little interest in books and ideas that take time to absorb. People often seem too busy loading their guns for the next encounter with a liberal or a conservative or an atheist.

 

Last week a woman came into the Library and she said she wanted to learn more about the Puritans—apparently John Cotton was one of her ancestors. It’s hard to suggest just one book about the Puritans, and most of the ones I know are pretty dense material. So I suggested a book I read in college, Edmund Morgan’s The Puritan Dilemma: The Story of John Winthrop, written way back in 1958. 

 

I kind of didn’t expect that she’d really read it--most people want something quick and dirty (so to speak).  But next I saw, the woman was sitting in the Library reading.  She stayed there for a long time, and then she came back the next day.  And the next! 

 

The best part of the day was walking through the Reading Room and seeing her still sitting there, reading away. It was a great reminder of why we are still here.

 

--Peggy

Archives Collections

Check out what we have in our archives by visiting our web site and clicking on Resources or clicking on Online Catalog and search using the word Manuscripts.

In honor of American Archives Month, I'll share with you the words of Lisa Lewis, Associate Archivist for the Catholic Diocese of Baton Rouge: "Archivists bring the past to the present. They're records collectors and protectors, keepers of memory. They organize unique, historical materials, making them available for current and future research."

Keeping these words in mind regarding questions you may have about your church records, please contact Jessica Steyler, our archivist, check out our records management information on our web site, or enroll in our next Records Management workshop on October 21.

--Claudette