Beacon Street Diary

The Life and Character of Miss Susanna Anthony

Since February, Evelyn Walker, Rare Book Cataloger, has been reviewing and updating our rare book catalog records. Evelyn brought some interesting items to our attention. The library has two copies of the Hartford, 1799 edition of The Life and Character of Miss Susanna Anthony, who died in Newport ... in the sixty-fifth year of her age. Susanna was born in Newport, RI and was the youngest daughter of a goldsmith. Although raised as a Quaker she converted to Congregationalism during the Great Awakening in 1741. Susanna's diary chronicles a complicated spiritual existence. She penned over a thousand pages of diary entries which were excerpted by Rev. Samuel Hopkins for this book. The most notable highlight excerpted by Hopkins was the account of her 1741 conversion.

Each of the library's copies has noteworthy provenance: Copy 1 was owned by the Cheshire Theological Institute of Keene, NH. This institution was formed in 1830 around the 700 volumes owned by Rev. Z. S. Barstow. It was a corporation in which many of Keene's prominent men held shares, designed to furnish the clergymen of the county with literature that might aid them in their work. It existed for about twenty years. Copy 2 was also owned by a small library, the United Social Library of Cornish, NH. During the 1830s and into the mid-nineteenth century, "a circulating library for adults called the 'Cornish Social Library,' was maintained in town, much to the pleasure and edification of the people. The records of this library have not been found, and whatever of such there was, is doubtless lost." (History of the town of Cornish, New Hampshire, with genealogical record, 1763-1910 by William H. Child, p. 240-41)

If you know of any additional information about either of these two libraries, we would love to hear about it.

A copy of the Portland, 1810 second edition of The Life and Character of Miss Susanna Anthony is available through Google Books.

-Claudette

New archival collection -- D. M. Fisk

Continuing on the success of using the "MPLP" standard to process backlog archival collections, the D.M. Fisk papers are now available for research.  They were originally donated to the Congregational Library from the Chicago Theological Seminary.

Daniel Moses Fisk was born in in New Hampton, NH on April 10, 1846. He was educated at Brown University and Harvard Medical School before becoming an ordained minister in Jackson, Michigan in 1886. During his career, Fisk's pastorates were primarily in the Midwest and Plains. He settled in Kansas, in 1899 where he worked as a minister and then as professor and dean at Washburn College before his death in Topeka in 1932.

This collection includes Fisk's sermons (published and unpublished), addresses, and notes. Of particular note are a series of sermons written about President Lincoln's assassination.

Note: This collection has been minimally processed for access and is available for researcher access.

Take a look at the finding aid for more details.

Gifts from Dr. John Leslie Lobingier

At the 155th Annual meeting of the Massachusetts Congregational Christian Conference in May 1954, held in Bethany Congregational Church, Quincy, MA, Dr. John L. Lobingier was designated Emeritus Secretary of Christian Education. Dr. Lobingier had been Conference Minister of Education from 1942-1954. The resolution for this honor reads in part: "He has directed the work of our youth in this Commonwealth with great insight and vision."

I started looking into Dr. Lobingier when I was reviewing a shelf of plays in the library's stacks. The shelf list cards indicated that these short one act plays were gifts of Dr. Lobingier. The necrology in the United Church of Christ Year Book for 1974 listed the following: He was born in Chicago, IL on January 1, 1884. He studied at Union and Lexington Theological Seminary and was ordained a Disciple of Christ in Lexington, KY in June 1907. From 1906 to 1907 he was assistant pastor at Magnolia Avenue Christian Church then pastor of Christian Church of Ocean Park, CA from 1908-11. His next pastoral assignment was Christian Church of Santa Monica CA from 1911-14. In 1921, he became pastor of United Church of Christ, Oberlin, OH and was there until 1926. He then began his other religious work in this building at 14 Beacon Street with the Society of World Fellowships and the Congregational Education Society until 1926 before moving to the Massachusetts Congregational Conference. Dr. Lobingier died in Winchester, MA on August 4, 1974 at the age of 90.

Having learned about Dr. Lobingier's involvement with religious education, I began to understand the reasoning behind this gift of plays. The plays are Baker's Plays, currently owned by Samuel French Inc. The origin of Baker's Plays dates back to the 19th century. According to Katy DiSavino, "Baker's predecessor, the Herbert Sweet Company, published and sold plays in Boston from 1845-1872. When the great Boston Fire of 1872 destroyed many of the company's printing plates and other material, it moved into the newly rebuilt district and continued operation under the name of George M. Baker & Company." George's brother, Walter took over the company in 1892 and in 1921 the company became Baker's Plays. Baker's was known for its list of family friendly and religious plays. It offered an large selection of plays suitable for high school and middle school students.

Typical of these plays is one titled "The Friendly Kingdom" by Dorothy Clark Wilson. The play is described as the story of a boy king who follows the commandment "Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself." Another play, "The Years Ahead" by Elliot Field, is the story of a young couple who declines a "tempting business offer in Boston" and decides despite family pressure to go as missionaries to Persia.

-Claudette

New archival collection -- Southern Rhodesia Mission

I recently processed a new missionary collection from Zimbabwe. Before the 1980s, Zimbawe was known as Rhodesia, or even earlier as Southern Rhodesia. The American Board of Commissioners for Foreign Missions (ABCFM) had a station in Southern Rhodesia starting in 1893 at Mt. Silinda and a sub-station at Chikore. One of the mid-20th century missionaries who served there was Charles Lord, who donated a 9-folder collection, primarily of reports from the field dating to the mid 1950s. There are also a few histories, some correspondence and photographs. The collection originally came with a number of pamphlets about the mission or the region, which will be added to our missionary pamphlet collection.

photograph from the Southern Rhodesia Mission collection,
captioned "Chikore School, 1922"

A rare but not unusual feature in the collection is a history written in what I have been told is a blend of chiShona and chiNdau. I do not have any background in African linguistics, but I'm privileged to have a very good source who does, as do her colleagues. Thank you to Wendy Urban-Mead for confirming the languages so our catalog record will be as precise as possible.

This collection is available to all researchers and the finding guide is up on our website. Please contact us if you plan to visit.

-Jessica

Book review -- Red Ink

Review of Red Ink: Native Americans Picking Up the Pen in the Colonial Period by Drew Lopenzina
(SUNY Press. 2012)

One of the things I enjoy in my job as Librarian is spending time reading about newly published books that will fit into our collections. Perusing academic publications, I was intrigued by the title Red Ink. One of my responses was to consider the political correctness of "red" and Native Americans. Looking into the book, I found the "red" did describe the literature of Native Americans AND the red ink used to correct and change the meaning and output of the Natives by the white culture. Red was also the color of bloodshed in the contacts between Native and other cultures. I will admit I had not considered a written record of Native American although I was familiar with the colonial missionary work that taught reading and writing. My thinking was that the tradition was oral and that any Native American literature was about the Natives not by them.

Lopenzia reviews America colonial literature and reports Native Americans were very active writers in the Colonial period and acquired the skill rapidly. This book includes the story of Samson Occom, who learned the western style of writing through the missionary schools and became a Presbyterian minister. He was the first Native American to publish his writings in English. Occom was a missionary and a teacher and raised a notable amount of money that would fund Dartmouth College. He used his knowledge to protect the Native Americans from predatory land rights deals.

Red Ink covers the period from first European contact with Native Americans to the founding of Brothertown in 1785. Chapters describe Wussuckwheke, or the Painted Letter, Praying Indians, Printing Devils, King Philips Signature, maintenance of Native tradition in hidden transcripts, and the road to Brothertown. Comprehensive detail notes and an extensive bibliography are included. An interesting note to researchers — in 2006 Joanna Brooks collected all of Occom's writings together.

Drew Lopenzina is professor of Early American and Native American literature at Old Dominion University in Norfolk, VA. His work has appeared in the journals American Literature, American Quarterly, American Indian Quarterly and others. He is currently working on a biography of the nineteenth-century Pequot activist and minister William Apess.

-Claudette

First Congregational Church of Waverley

Our latest addition to our collection is from the First Congregational Church of Waverley. Normally churches derive their name from the town in which they reside. However, Waverley is a neighborhood/village within the town of Belmont, Massachusetts. The church was established in 1865, although the start date for the earliest records goes back to 1861. That is when our star of the collection, the Society ledger book, begins. Another interesting feature is a page-a-day calendar from 1866. The unknown author didn't write every day, but did fill in entries steadily throughout the year. We hope a future researcher will crack the code and find out who authored it. The church closed last year. We are grateful to their last minister for saving the material he sent to us. The collection is now available for researchers to study.

-Jessica

 

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photograph of First Congregational Church of Waverley in Belmont courtesy of the Belmont Citizen Herald via WickedLocal.com

Intern wrap-up -- Mary Guinan

I have been interning here at the Congregational Library for the past two months as part of my internship requirement for my LIS 438 class at Simmons College. In those two months, I have had the wonderful opportunity to gain experience processing a small archival collection from start to finish.

The collection consisted of the personal papers of Edward Franklin Williams, a Congregational minister, lecturer, and writer from the mid-to-late-nineteenth century. I started out just taking an inventory of sorts to try to understand who this person was and what materials were in the collection. I think I probably spent more time than necessary doing research about Williams and his life. I really enjoyed working with his actual documents and trying to put together the pieces of his life. I felt like a sort of historical detective!

The arrangement and series I decided on reflect, I think, the most appropriate and logical organization of the materials. I really learned a lot about the various aspects of archival processing. There were a few bumps along the way. The fact that some of the series are split up between boxes wars with my desire to have everything fit exactly right and be 'just so'. Then there was the issue of how to number the folders when the series are split up. These 'bumps' were the instances where I learned the most. I was able to get real-world examples of things that were discussed in my classes.

I was also lucky enough to get experience or at least an exposure to aspects of archival processing that I didn’t really expect to. I heard a lot of talk about EAD and got to work a little bit with DACS. These are both concepts that, I'm told, I will be very familiar with after taking more classes. It was nice to get a little bit of an introduction and get to see how these concepts are applied in the real world. I was also able to get a little bit of preservation experience. Though it was only the basics, I'm glad that I was able to get some exposure to that aspect of archival processing.

-Mary Guinan

Boston: where the streets have new names

While researching the histories of the churches in our 1843 Boston Almanac church engravings digital exhibit, I used a lot of historical maps to figure out where some of the buildings used to be. The names and configurations of Boston's streets have changed a lot over the centuries, for a number of reasons.The Back Bay marshland was filled in to create a new neighborhood; fires and revitalization projects caused entire sections of the city to be rebuilt in new ways; and existing streets have been renamed to honor prominent individuals.

A recent blog post by the Mass. State Library has some further insights:

For instance there used to be two streets in what is now Government Center called King Street and Queen Street. King Street is now State Street and Queen Street is now Court Street. In the book: What they never told you about Boston, or, What they did that were lies by Walt Kelley. He tells us that King and Queen Streets were changed to distance themselves from the Royalty in England. In 1722 these two streets were near Corn Hill which is near where Tremont Street and Cambridge Street meet. King Street was named after King Charles I who was in power when the Puritans settled in Boston in 1630. Charles Street, the Charles River and Charlestown, Massachusetts are all named for King Charles I as well.

John Bonner map of Boston from 1722.
Copy of rare map of Boston.
Published by George B. Foster, Boston, 1872

If you'd like to do some further investigation of your own, the Norman B. Leventhal Map Center at the Boston Public Library has digitized approximately 200,000 maps and 5,000 atlases from around the world, including almost 600 depicting Boston itself.

Researchers, start your engines.

--Robin

Our mysterious handkerchief

Here at the Congregational Library we have more than just books and archival materials — we also have objects. We don't have many, and they aren't something we actively seek to collect, but those we do have hold some sort of significance to the greater story of Congregationalism or are part of a larger historical collection.

Objects are unique in that they don't always come with information. They don't have a title page (like a book) or a lot of intrinsic text that contextualizes them within a larger story (like many archival things do). Unfortunately, without that larger context, we often miss out on a large portion of what makes that object so interesting.

I recently found myself working with a Sabbath School handkerchief. My tasks were to determine a method of storing the handkerchief (up until this point it had been folded), and add it to our online catalog to make it find-able. I did just that, and the cloth is now secured to flat piece of archival cardboard with polyester strapping, thus ensuring it remains flat, and hopefully working out some of the creases. It's also been added to the catalog under the title "Sabbath School Hymn Handkerchief". But as I was creating a record for it, I realized that we really don't know much about the item.

The handkerchief bears the title "Sabbath School Hymn" along with the hymn's staff music (in two parts) and six verses. There are, below it, two more pieces of verse: "We Never Part From Thee" and "The Golden Rule". It is decorated by motifs of grape leaves, flowers, open Bibles, and Sunday school children. The handkerchief was printed here in Boston by the Boston Chemical Printing Company, but no other attribution is given. The name "Clara E. Downing" is hand-written in the lower left hand corner followed by the word "Present". In a different hand is written "About 1835".

Sabbath school handkerchief
click to enlarge

I've included an image here in the hopes that one of our readers might recognize the handkerchief and be able to tell us a bit more about it. Have you seen something like this before? Do you have one? Do you know who might have been giving them out? Tell us about it! We'd love to know more about this very cool item.

--Sari

Precious Mt. Silinda

We recently received a new book about the Mount Silinda Mission in Zimbabwe, published by Global Ministries:

Almost all of the books one finds concerning the history of mission work in Africa have been written from the perspective of missionaries or western observers. The voices of indigenous Africans, who were in almost all cases the most effective agents of Christian mission, are seldom heard. With the release of Precious Mt. Silinda by Mrs. Kate E. Sukuta and her son, Dr. Sydney Sukuta, this void is beginning to be filled.

Precious Mt. Silinda examines the impact of Christian missionary work in Africa since the dawn of the twentieth century from an African perspective, focusing specifically on the history of long time Global Ministries partner, the United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe. As coauthor Mrs. Kate Sukuta notes, "I feel as though God put me in a unique position to witness over a century of Christian work through my parents' eyes, starting when Mt. Silinda Mission and the United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (UCCZ) were simultaneously founded in 1893, followed by my and my late husband's Christian work to date. As we enter the twenty-first century I feel obligated to share this gift God gave me with the rest of the world, for perhaps this is part of my mission and purpose in life. Even though this "Century Missionary Report Card in Africa" represents my specific interpretations, opinions, and views, I am almost certain that most African people who share a similar background with me will generally agree with my overall conclusions."

Mrs. Kate Sukuta is a second generation member of the UCC Zimbabwe and much of the historical information comes from her personal experience. Her son, Dr. Sydney Sukuta, is a former member of the UCC Zimbabwe and now works as a professor in California.

 

More from the authors' website:

• First-hand accounts of the impact of Western Christian missionary work in Africa since the late nineteenth century through African eyes.
• How Tshaka Zulu's supremacy wars in KwaZulu/Zululand paved the pathway for the founding of Mt. Silinda Mission and the United Church of Christ in Zimbabwe (UCCZ).
• What Western Christianity needs to understand to better serve Africans, and specifically African Christians.
• What Western clinical healing processes could adopt in order to be accepted as complete by Africans.
• How Christian-oriented communities like Mt. Silinda Mission:
  • Exalted the status of African women in society during the colonial era.
  • Undermined apartheid by grooming scholars and intellectuals who would become the political catalysts in the African decolonization process.
  • Produced disciplined and cultured scholars who have gone on to break new grounds in education, business, agriculture, government etc.

You can buy a copy of your own through CreateSpace, or become a member and borrow ours.