Congregational Library

Notable Historical Figures- Benjamin Wisner

Benjamin Blydenburg Wisner (1794-1835)." Wisner was a minister at Old South Church from 1821-1832. After his pastorate at Old South Church he became the secretary of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions

Useful resource for the unemployed archivists

The New England Archivists are continuing to come up with more ways to help out the unemployed professionals amongst us. They have created a job posting page on their site- check it out.

The Thanksgiving Myth

This past week I picked up James Baker’s Thanksgiving: The Biography of an American Holiday.  Baker was Director of Research at Plimoth Plantation for many years, and I suppose that easily makes him the living authority on everything having to do with Pilgrims and Thanksgiving.

 

At the center of this book is a mystery: how the Plymouth Pilgrims ever got credit for starting our modern-day Thanksgiving tradition. There is no historical reason for imaging any connection between what we do today and that original meal, nearly four centuries, ago, when Pilgrims and Native Americans sat around a table presumably loaded with turkey, stuffing, and pumpkin pie. The Pilgrim feast, Baker says, was likely just that—a three-day celebration of the colony’s temporary success. It was not a true thanksgiving, which in the Puritan tradition was a quiet day of church-going that sometimes included a festive meal, but not necessarily—it certainly would not have included three days of unregulated feasting!

 

In fact, Baker says, the only contemporary account of the Pilgrim meal, the so-called Mourt’s Relation published in 1622, was republished without the story of the three-day feast, and the story itself lost until a new edition came out in the 1840s. By that time, the Puritan thanksgiving was heavy with patriotic and Christian significance, and it was fairly small work to fold those Pilgrims right into the mix.

 

No need to put away the big shoe buckles and pointed hats next week—but the real story of Thanksgiving is actually a lot more interesting than our rituals of overeating, football, and afternoon naps. If you’re going to lie down Thursday afternoon, I recommend taking James Baker’s book with you!

-Peggy

Intern Activities- Artifact Collections at the Congregational Library

Our advanced archive class intern shares his experience with his project -

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The Congregational Library is home to more than books, manuscript collections, and archival collections.  A hidden collection exists alongside the books and paper.  We have known about the existence of these artifact collections for some time, but a project is now underway to reveal the three-dimensional materials.  The project, led by an intern from Simmons College GSLIS, is only in the beginning stages, but a researcher can view the records for these objects by searching “Object Collection” under 'Series' in the Congregational Library Catalog.

 

Revealing these materials is more complicated than simply taking a camera and photographing the object.  How does the cataloger describe the object?  How does the cataloger describe varied objects, ranging from Hebrew scrolls to Buddhist texts, and from ceremonial gavels to communion sets?  The Congregational Library has developed a set of procedures and guidelines, modified from the bibliographic standard AACR2, which allows the cataloger to apply similar standards across a wide array of material.

 

Two examples of items cataloged under this project are from the S. Brainard Pratt collection.  Pratt was a prolific collector of Bibles and religious artifacts.  We have a scroll in Hebrew of the Book of Ecclesiastes.  This scroll is primarily made of wood and parchment.  The scroll was procured for Pratt through the U.S. Consulate in Jerusalem.

 

 

Pratt also obtained a set of human bones “formerly worn as ornaments.”  These are from the Sandwich Islands, dating to around 1840.

These two artifacts illustrate the variety of collections at the Congregational Library.  Please continue to check for updates in this blog on what is happening at the Congregational Library.

-Abraham Miller

Natick Church Records- Available through Yale

After a lot of planning and collaboration with our project partners at the Jonathan Edwards Center, we are proud to announce that the early records from the First Congregational Church in Natick, MA are transcribed and available for use online.  A scanned copy of the original manuscript will be up soon, for those interested in the handwritten records, but the transcript is searchable and will be much more legible for most researchers.

More information can be found here.

-Robin

Mr. Martin and "Conversation Corner"

We were browsing through some scrapbooks in the stacks recently and spent some time reviewing 13 volumes plus an index of clippings from The Congregationalist of the column "Conversation Corner," a column for children.  The author of this column, Mr. Martin, was in reality Rev. Charles C. Carpenter (1836-1918) of Andover. Rev. Carpenter was the son of Dr. Elijah Wood Carpenter of Bernardston. This collection of columns was published in The Congregationalist from 1886 to 1906. Additionally, there are two scrapbooks of letters to Mr. Martin from both children and adults. Rev. Carpenter as Mr. Martin also filled two albums of pictures he received from children. The scrapbooks and albums were gifts from Rev. Carpenter.

This struck me as appropriate for the season from "Conversation Corner" November 17, 1892:

It is all right about those apples. I am fully convinced that that particular variety is still raised in abundance! The paper containing the reference to them was scarcely printed when a gentleman, apparently nearly as old as the pictured veteran "at the head of the column," rang my bell and, when I opened the door, poured out an armful of apples, saying, "There are your gillyflowers!" He added that they came from the "Cape district," but I did not think to ask him whether it was Cape Cod or Cape Ann. Coming into Boston a gentleman on the cars gave me a message from a lady in Springfield that she had a supply from Connecticut which I could have by calling. At the Congregational Library I found a basket of the real old egg-shaped beauties I had longed to see—these were from Lakeville, Mass. In the editor's office I found a request to call at the Home Missionary rooms, where I found another sample lot left by a Maiden gentleman—they were from Byfield. I had hardly reached home when one large apple came in a box all by itself through the mail; ...

--Claudette

Anatolia College

This past Friday night the Reading Room was chockablock full of people. The Library was hosting a reception for Hans Gieseke, the new president of Anatolia College in Greece, and everyone was in a celebratory mood.

Why at the Congregational Library? Anatolia College was originally founded in 1886, in Turkey, by missionaries of the American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions. They stood by the school when students and faculty came under persecution by the Turks, and when the school was forced to leave Anatolia and reorganize in Thessaloniki in 1923.  Through a series of chance encounters, I got to know representatives of the school, and discovered that their U.S. headquarters were just around the corner from us, on Bowdoin Street.

It struck me as I watched the happy people at the reception last Friday, that all of the early founders and presidents of the school would have been familiar with Congregational House and the Congregational Library. For many years this was the American Board’s headquarters, and 14 Beacon Street the return address on every package sent overseas.

It is not hard to imagine that all of them would have been absolutely tickled to know that, in November 2009, representatives of Anatolia would be returning to Congregational House to celebrate a new step into their future.  It was one of those funny historical moments that keeps this place intriguing—and reminds me of a poem Doug Showalter alerted me to in Fred Goodsell’s book, They Lived Their Faith:

From every stormy wind that blows,

From every swelling tide of woes,

There is a calm and sure retreat,

‘Tis found at Fourteen Beacon Street.

-Peggy

Treasures of the Pilgrims: Carved Pew Back and Ceiling Beam from Scrooby

In 1897, Rev. Morton Dexter made a gift of the Pew Back from Scrooby Church to the American Congregational Association. Rev. Dexter was the son of Rev. Henry M. Dexter and editor of The Congregationalist. The carvings of the grape vine on the pew are believed to be a reference to Christ from John 15:5, "I am the vine; you are the branches. If a man remains in me and I in him, he will bear much fruit; apart from me you can do nothing." A another pew back picture can be found in John Brown's book, The Pilgrim Fathers of New England and their Puritan Successors (1895).

The Ceiling Beam from Scrooby Manor was a gift of the Rev. Henry M. Dexter, editor of The Congregationalist and the Congregational Quarterly, in 1898. In Rev. Dexter's opinion, the beam was over the heads of the Pilgrim fathers as the worshiped.

The Scrooby Separatist Church was organized in the Scrooby manor house by William Brewster in around 1607. Brewster fled to Amsterdam in 1608, moved to Leiden in 1609, and left from England in 1620 on the Mayfloweras the elder of the group we now know as the Pilgrims. In New England, they founded Plymouth Colony.

Most of the manor house and its outbuildings were demolished around 1636-7 following the orders of Charles I. Around 1750 part of one wing of the manor house was renovated and can be seen today.
 

--Claudette
 
 

More Notable Historical People - Francis Burns

 

Francis Burns (1809-1863) was an American Methodist minster who served as a missionary in Liberia. He was the first Missionary Bishop, and the first African American Bishop of the Methodist Episcopal Church.

 

Link to a more extensive biography

Intern update

Emily Glinert, one of our interns this semester wrote today's piece on her project-

As an intern at the Congregational Library this semester, I have been working with the collection of Rev. Maxwell (Max) and Elizabeth (Betty) Welch.  Max and Betty were both born in 1913 in Maine.  After they were married, they lived in Maine and Massachusetts before deciding to become missionaries in Portuguese Angola, West Africa.  By the time Max and Betty departed for Portugal in 1947 to learn the Portuguese language, they had two young sons, who traveled with them.

The Welch family lived in Portugal for about one year and then they went to the missions in Angola.  During their time in Angola, Max and Betty had two more children, bringing their family to six people.

After a furlough year from 1952-1953, the whole family returned to Angola until 1957.  The collection contains correspondence, photographs, slides, books, recordings and scrapbooks from this time in their lives, as well as the years after their time in Angola as they continued to be involved in the efforts of the missionaries who came after them.

 

I have been amazed while organizing the Welch collection.  It must have been very difficult to travel to Angola with small children and to be away from their families and friends in the United States.  In order to keep in touch, they used sound recordings and written correspondence, both of which give a good picture of their experiences.  Max and Betty were also extremely good at documenting their journeys through photographs.  Some of my favorite pieces in the collection are the photographs of the family’s daily activities, such as the children playing at school or Betty leading a meeting in their home.  The collection has been very interesting from an archival point of view as well because there are both digital and analog items that are being preserved.  In my preservation class, we have been studying the use of digitization as a means of preservation and I have gained a greater understanding by working with digitized materials within this collection.  This also means that when I am finished, the collection will be available to be accessed through the website.

 

I am so thankful to the Congregational Library and the Welch family for giving me this enriching opportunity.  It has been a wonderful experience.