Beacon Street Diary

Scheduling reminder -- closed for MLK Jr. Day

The library will be closed on Monday in observance of Martin Luther King Jr. Day.

All of our online resources will be available as usual, but the reading room and the staff will not. If you have inquiries for the staff, please send an email or leave a voicemail and we'll get back to you when we return.

Puritan Poetry

We don't often think of the Puritans and poetry together in the same sentence, but we probably should. Massachusetts Bay Colony was home to several poets, and their poems were widely read. In an attempt to correct this (unfortunate) way of thinking, I have put together a short listing of Puritan poets worth paying attention to:

 

Anne Bradstreet (1612?-1672)

Bradstreet is perhaps one of the best known Puritan poets, and her verse can be easily be divided into two sections: early, imitative poetry and more personal lyrics published later in life. A free digitization of her poems can be found on Internet Archive where it is available for viewing or download in several formats.

 

Benjamin Thompson (1642-1714)

Although he was frequently called on to write elegies, Thompson is best known for his narrative jeremiad on King Philip's War, New England's Crisis, is available online from the University of Virginia.

 

Michael Wigglesworth (1631-1705)

Wigglesworth is best known for his semi-epic portrayal of the Last Judgment in The Day of Doom which became the second best-selling book published in the Massachusetts Bay Colony. Of equal note, however, is Wigglesworth's didactic jeremiad “God's Controversy with New England” which changes meter based on the speaker.

 

Cotton Mather (1663-1728)

Mather's poetry is often overlooked in favor of his other activities in the colony, but he, too, penned quite a bit of verse, including meditations, elegies, hymns, and verses for children. Mather's “The Body of Divinity Versifyed” is available online.

 

Edward Taylor (1642-1729)

Taylor's poetry was kept private, left to his heirs in a 400-page manuscript book with the instruction that it should never be published. It was re-discovered in 1937 and published two years later. Taylor's verse consists mostly of private meditations and lines written in preparation for the serving of communion. Some of his verse is available from poemhunter.com.

 

You can find more resources on these poets (and on Puritan poetry in general) by searching our catalog!

-Sari

People of the Stacks #6 -- Joseph Felt

Joseph Felt

Rev. Joseph Barlow Felt served as the Congregational Library's first librarian, and was also one of its founders. He graduated from Dartmouth in 1813 and held pastorates in Sharon and Hamilton, Massachusetts, until 1832 when he left the ministry and devoted his time to writing and research instead. He was State Archivist from 1836 to 1842, and then Librarian at the Massachusetts Historical Society from 1842 to 1853. The year he left the MHS he was formally appointed Librarian of the Congregational Library. Before being appointed to the post, Dr. Felt served as one of the founding members of the American Congregational Association and served as its Secretary. He retained the official post as Librarian until 1858 without salary.

Little is recorded about Dr. Felt's service to the library, however, it is known that, when he began his duties as Secretary, the library consisted of 100 books which had been a gift of the American Congregational Union. Upon Dr. Felt's retirement, the library's holdings had grown to 4,800 bound volumes, 15,000 pamphlets, and 800 manuscripts. While at the library, Dr. Felt wrote and published The ecclesiastical history of New England. He retired to Salem, Massachusetts, where he lived until his death in 1869. The library holds quite a few of Dr. Felt's works — many of which are also available online at Internet Archive.

-Sari

Mnemons

I came across this word in a book I was reading about the history of memory, by the French historian Jacques LeGoff. The particular topic was how people kept track of things before there were books and computers and such. Le Goff describes the role of "memory specialists", people specifically appointed to remember on behalf of everyone else. In ancient Greece, the mnemon's principle responsibilities were in law courts they were an early form of precedent I suppose — and in religious matters they helped keep track of the liturgical the calendar of feasts and sacrifices and so forth.

But Le Goff also writes that in mythology and legend, the mnemon often accompanied a hero, always on hand to remind him of the "divine mission that will cause his death if he forgets it". An interesting model for our faithful corps of local church historians!

Do we need mnemons today? Le Goff says that after the development of writing, these walking and talking memory banks are transformed into — who else? — archivists. May their tribe increase.

-Peggy

New lunchtime events for Winter and Spring

We're happy to announce that we're planning a slew of events for the coming year, from entertaining discussions to educational workshops and more.

First up is the return of our Brown Bag Lunch lecture series. One Wednesday each month, we'll be hosting an informative guest to make your lunchtime a little different. The presenters are local scholars in American religion, religious history, sociology, and physics. Each topic will be a fascinating look into an aspect of religious life, from the Puritans to the present.

Take a peek at the blurbs on our homepage, or head over to our Program & Workshop Schedule for all the details.

What better way is there to spend your lunch hour than learning?

Puritans and World War II

In 1942, one of the grimmest years in American history, the cover of Life magazine's November issue was a beautiful clapboard church. The caption announced that the issue was dedicated to “The Puritan Spirit".

I have had this magazine around on my desk for a while — it was given to me by my friend Arvel M. Steece — but it hadn't really surfaced until just this week when I was doing some New Year straightening up (some say archeological digging). The advertisements are absolutely captivating, a constant reminder of how much times have changed. There are men (and women) in uniform hawking Milky Way bars, RCA Victor, washing machines, cedar chests, watches, and even Prince Albert in a can. The letters to the editor include a picture of a cat with its tongue stuck out entitled “In Der Fuehrer's Face".

But what really strikes a twenty-first century person are the casual vices for sale. The issue includes ads for pipes, Model Smoking Tobacco (preferred by models everywhere), Lucky Strike and Fleetwood cigarettes, Ballantine Beer, Old Schenley, Virginia Dare, California wines, Old Crow, Jack Daniels, Philadelphia Blended Whiskey, Paul Jones whiskey, Fine Arts whiskey, Calvert whiskey, Old Mr. Boston (a two-page spread in color), Dubonnet, Ron Meritou Puerto Rican rum, Dewar's White Label — and more. These were tough times!

The Pilgrims and Puritans — Life made no real distinction between the two — occupy a 14-page spread, with full color pictures of famous historic events. Though the spread includes the usual bit of witch-burning and intolerance, it also uplifts the New England town and the little red schoolhouse — American icons both — as central to the Puritan inheritance.

The article itself was written for people in war time, uplifting the “Puritan Spirit” as the “faith that makes for victory", and the underpinnings of American democracy. Even FDR “might have been speaking for the Puritan Fathers", the article declared, “when he closed his first radio address of the war, on December 9, 1941, with the words that our cause and our hope were for “liberty under God".”

Looking back from 2012 I did have to chuckle that one issue of Life magazine could at the same time uplift the Puritans while surrounding them with lurid advertisements about cigarettes and alcohol. The irony is not exactly what it seems though. In actual fact, the Puritans and Pilgrims were ordinary seventeenth-century men and women who knew that drinking water wasn't always safe and that a good pint of ale was a fine thing, just as long as it wasn’t taken to excess. So the advertisements would have puzzled them but not entirely shocked them.

If Life magazine did a similar feature issue today, we would find a lot “no-no's” in the magazine, but in the advertisements, not in an article about Puritans. All of the print given to hard liquor and cigarettes would be unthinkable today, knowing what we know about the risk of cancer and the effects of alcoholism. Regardless what we may think about these kinds of bans — whether they’re an affront to free speech or a matter of public safety — they have become widely accepted in American culture today. In the end I think the best route, if we can take it, is to be puritanical in the best sense — enjoying life's pleasures for what they are, but never being ensnared by them.

-Peggy

Pew Forum report on Global Christianity 2011

The Pew Forum on Religion & Public Life recently released their latest report on the size and distribution of the world's Christian population. It's quite thorough, covering a variety of traditions in 232 countries across five regions, with spotlight countries in each region. Their findings might surprise you.

In addition to the report itself, they have created interactive maps, data tables, and a quiz to test your knowledge. Who knew statistics could be so much fun?

--Robin

Vacation Blog Post: People of the Stacks #5 -- Frederick T. Persons

Frederick T. Persons

Rev. Frederick T. Persons served as the library's fifth librarian. He was born in 1869 in Sandisfield, Massachusetts, graduated from Yale College in 1894 and from Union Theological Seminary in 1902. He was ordained a year later and went on to serve churches in Connecticut and Maine. For the eight years prior to his employment at the Congregational Library, he served as Librarian and instructor at Bangor Theological Seminary in the school's New Testament department. He came to work at the Congregational Library in February of 1924 and held the position until 1947.

During his 23-year tenure here, he was responsible for an expansion in the library's circulation, allowing materials to circulate nation-wide, and the establishment the Quarterly Bulletin    . In a retrospective on former Congregational Library Librarians, John Quint, the chair of the Library Committee, wrote: "All in all Mr. Persons's contributions to the development of the Library are of inestimable value in the goodly line of the Librarians who have so faithfully and efficiently rendered their devoted service." Rev. Persons was known to be an authority on church architecture and early New England religious and secular history, according to Mr. Quint, and often rendered his "most valuable assistance to people desiring to look up old records, books, and manuscripts of the beginnings of the Puritan epoch in America."

The library currently holds one work by former librarian Rev. Persons: an address he delivered in Bethany Connecticut at the dedication of the Clark Memorial Library.