Beacon Street Diary

Meetinghouse in Harpswell, Maine

Harpswell is a town located within the Casco Bay region of Maine. The meetinghouse, depicted below, was the meetinghouse used first by the Second Parish of North Yarmouth, Maine, organized in 1753. The church later reorganized as the Elijah Kellogg Church of South Harpswell during the mid-nineteenth century.

What strikes me about this print is the color. The unseen sun, at the horizon, is depicted with reds and oranges in the background, with the sky above still blue. Aesthetically, these colors fit well with the varied greens of the grass and the graves in the foreground. The color, combined with the detail, creates a rich image, where the visual image can stand beside the written word as a descriptive medium.

For more images of churches in Maine, search for "Church buildings - Maine - Pictorial works" in the library catalog.

--Abraham

Alexander McKenzie. Portrait.

First Church, Congregational, in Cambridge, Mass., is celebrating its 375th Anniversary this year. Alexander McKenzie (1830-1914) was minister at First Church from 1867 until his death in 1914. While at First Church, McKenzie published books, including a history of the church. McKenzie was born in New Bedford, Mass., and attended Phillips Academy in Andover. He was a graduate of Harvard College and Andover Theological Seminary. After ordination in Augusta, Maine, he was pastor at Augusta's South Church from 1861 until his transfer to Cambridge.

For more information on Alexander McKenzie, please read his necrology in the 1914 Congregational Yearbook, or search the online catalog for "McKenzie, Alexander, 1830-1914". Finally, for more information on First Church, Congregational, in Cambridge, search "First Church (Cambridge, Mass.)" in the catalog or view the finding guide for the church records.

--Abraham

Repository of western Canadian missionary records

Much like the Protestant denominations in the United States, members of the United Church of Canada and the Methodist churches set up missions across Canada during the late 19th and early 20th centuries to aid and educate the Aboriginal peoples they encountered during the country's colonization. Many of the records from those missions have ended up in the UCC archives at their headquarters in Toronto. Just as the Congregational Library is striving to make our missionary materials available online to researchers everywhere, the United Church of Canada has set up repositories for their digitized records.

Up and Down the Coast contains hundreds of photographs, documents, and even videos dating from approximately 1850 to 1975 that chronicle the schools, medical and marine missions, and other "Indian work" in British Columbia. While these materials may not offer the most flattering look at the missionaries themselves from a modern perspective, they are important records of Canada's national history and the recent history of the First Nations.

Ella June Meade Portrait

The following is a portrait of Ella June Meade. The lithographic print was created by Armstrong & Co. in Boston, Massachusetts. Other than the sitter's name and printmaker, there is not much information on this image.

If you have any leads on who Ms. Ella June Meade was, please send us an e-mail or leave a comment below. For more information on searching the Congregational Library image collections, please refer to the Image Collection FAQ.

--Abraham

Hiram Bingham Portrait

The following is an engraved portrait of Hiram Bingham (1789-1869), Congregational Minister and missionary. Bingham was a missionary, through the American Board, to Honolulu, in Hawaii, then known to the missionaries as the Sandwich Islands. The print was engraved in Honolulu in 1838, and impressed, from a lithograph, in Paris. Bingham served with the American Board for twenty years in Hawaii, between 1820 and 1840.

It was during this period that the Kawaiahao Church was established in Honolulu. For more information on Missions to Hawaii, search the online catalog for the subject "Missions - Hawaii".

--Abraham

Miriam Woodbury portrait

The following undated photograph is a portrait of Miriam Woodbury. Woodbury was a leader within the Home Missionary Society and acted as Secretary of the organization.

For more information on Home Missionary Societies, search the online catalog for "American Home Missionary Society" or "Congregational Home Missionary Society".

--Abraham

Internship Retrospective

One of my activities this summer has been to review and document the interns that I've supervised over the past 11 years. As it turns out, there have been a total of 41 volunteers and Simmons interns. This does not include the people who have reported to Claudette. It's amazing and overwhelming how much we have accomplished with these students' help. What's so particularly great is that there's a huge range of activities that have been done.

• Old reliable: church and personal papers processed
• Image collection scanning and cataloging
• Displays created
• Metadata created for our ongoing Massachusetts church records digitization project
• Indexing for our in-house publication, The Bulletin
• Multiple interns (as many as 3) working together on one project at the same time: Park Street and Old South Churches
• Off-site work (again PSC and OSC)
• Extensive use of wikis and requests for interns to participate here on our blog
• Creation of new collections: specifically our Object Collection
• Re-evaluation and revision of collections, particularly the Small Collections

As time goes on and I spend more time here, I'm less likely to request help on a straight-up 2 boxes to be sorted. I never thought that I was capable of keeping track of two interns on one project back in 2005, but now I'm not only request two interns for a project, but it's a highly complex, high-responsibility arrangement that has spanned almost 2 years at Old South Church. I have come to expect a great deal from the people who choose me out of the sea of internship choices and I am gratified by how much I get back in return.

Thank you again to the dozens of students I have had in my care and a preemptive thank you to those who will come to us in the future.

For those alumni that are keeping track here and want to participate in a where are they now segment, drop me a line. (Be sure to cc Claudette — see previous entry about imminent maternity leave on my horizon.) We'd love to hear any memories you may have of working here, of the project you did, and what you're doing now.

-Jessica