Latest news with #MassachusettsHistoricalSociety
Boston Globe
19-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Echoes of rebellion and tyranny from the 18th century in 250th anniversary celebrations today
Advertisement Lexington resident Lena Singh was one of the few protesters, sitting astride the yellow metal fencing, holding a sign that read 'Patriots don't tolerate tyranny.' Singh, in her mid 50s, said she wanted to remind people why the country was founded. Get Starting Point A guide through the most important stories of the morning, delivered Monday through Friday. Enter Email Sign Up 'The first order of business is for people, the citizenry, to get the message that power is with the people,' she said. 'The president, our elected representatives, they all answer to the people. Citizens need to realize their own power.' Governor Maura Healey made the connection even more directly in a speech at the reenactment in nearby Concord. 'We live in a moment when our freedoms are once again under attack from the highest office in the land,' Healey said, without mentioning President Trump by name. 'We see things that would be familiar to our revolutionary predecessors: the silencing of critics, the disappearing of people from our streets, demands for unquestioning fealty.' Advertisement The current president, as well as the living former presidents, were invited to Lexington on Saturday, but none attended. That the governor and residents of deep blue Massachusetts made a connection between Colonial-era controversies and the current situation under a Republican president may not be surprising. But, as 250th anniversary celebrations to mark events later in the Revolutionary War shift the focus to Southern states and rural areas, pro-Trump crowds may emphasize other aspects of liberties regained. Crowd boos British troops as they march into Lexington for 250th anniversary Share Lexington officials estimated that 20,000 to 25,000 people came to watch the reenactment of the battle that sparked the American Revolution. ( Produced by Jenna Perlman/Globe staff ) But historians of the revolution also heard echoes of the conflict in recent times. Retired Northeastern history professor William Fowler saw a parallel to Colonial times amid the constant stream of threats from the central government in Washington D.C., and the defiance from those officials out in the hinterlands. 'There is some similarity,' said Fowler, who also was the director of the Massachusetts Historical Society. 'It's certainly not as serious as 1775. We, with our Constitution, do have the mechanism to adjust and to accommodate disputes amongst our citizens and government.' Indeed, just hours after the reenactment, thousands of protesters were exercising those rights in a series of organized demonstrations around Massachusetts and across the country against the Trump administration that featured signs such as 'USA, no kings.' Hiller Zobel, a former associate justice of the Superior Court of Massachusetts and author of several books on the American Revolution, said he had been thinking about Trump's tariffs and the British taxes imposed on the colonies that contributed to the original protests against the crown. Advertisement 'There isn't any question that a tariff is a tax,' the 93-year-old retired jurist said. In both eras, the duties may raise funds needed to pay off debts. But Zobel said he did not see tariffs improving trade practices, and, as important then as now, unifying the populace, either. 'Tariffs are not the way to do it,' he said. The reenactment in Lexington Saturday included a pre-battle escape with confidential papers of John Hancock, who was present the night before conflict and would go on to preside over the Continental Congress and sign the Declaration of Independence enumerating King George's offenses against the colony. Trump has The declaration charges the king with obstructing immigration and naturalizations, cutting off trade and imposing tariffs, depriving the right of trial by jury, and 'transporting us beyond Seas to be tried for pretended offences,' Pestana noted. 'The declaration's list of accusations resonates,' she said. That resonance may have carried over to some of the judges assessing Trump's actions, particularly in the language some used to assess the current state of constitutional liberties. For example, there were echoes of the sonorous tones of the framers in the decision Thursday from a federal appeals court panel reaffirming the Trump administration must Advertisement Where the Declaration of Independence proclaimed the truth that all men are created equal was 'self evident,' Judge J. Harvie Wilkinson in the appeals court decision appealed to 'the intuitive sense of liberty that Americans far removed from courthouses still hold dear.' But, while the elevated language in the Declaration concluded with a pledge of unity to the ideals behind the founding document, Wilkinson warned of the risk of continued division. 'The Executive may succeed for a time in weakening the courts, but over time history will script the tragic gap between what was and all that might have been, and law in time will sign its epitaph.' He then concluded his seven-page decision: 'We yet cling to the hope that it is not naïve to believe our good brethren in the Executive Branch perceive the rule of law as vital to the American ethos. This case presents their unique chance to vindicate that value and to summon the best that is within us while there is still time. At the old North Bridge in Concord on Saturday morning, Conan Walter, a 65-year-old retiree, was holding a sign that read 'Stop fascism now' and 'We the people.' His shirt had another message: 'No one votes for Elon Musk.' One woman approached and him and said, 'Fascism stopped on Jan. 20.' 'You think so?' replied Walter. 'I do.' 'Well, we have a difference of opinion, and that's what I'm fighting to keep,' said Walter. Minutes later, a different woman approached Walter and his sign on that bridge, fist-bumped him and said 'Hell yeah, brother.' Walter shrugged. 'Every interaction is going to be different,' he said. Fowler, the historian, was a park ranger at Minute Man National Historical Park in the 1960s and values the reenactments as an opportunity to meditate on conflict and disagreement. Advertisement 'It is a moment of meditation for many people to really think, really think for a minute, that people actually died here,' he said. 'And before this was over, many thousands of people would die. That's something to meditate about. That is something to think about.' Sean Cotter and Danny McDonald of the Globe staff contributed to this story. Aaron Pressman can be reached at
Boston Globe
13-04-2025
- Politics
- Boston Globe
Coverture is a dirty word for women and their rights
Advertisement Abigail Adams alluded to coverture in her famous Americans should know about coverture not just to understand the obstacles 18th-century women faced or the limits of 'revolution' in 1776, but also because coverture has never been fully abolished in this country. Passing an Equal Rights Amendment would reverse this revolutionary-era inequality. Wouldn't that be a fitting act to celebrate the 250th anniversary of the American Revolution? Advertisement Catherine Allgor Cambridge The writer is president emerita of the Massachusetts Historical Society and a visiting scholar of history at Tufts University.
Boston Globe
09-04-2025
- Entertainment
- Boston Globe
1775 and all that
The Concord Museum has a home-field advantage with 'Whose Revolution.' The museum is a mile from the Old North Bridge, where 'Whose Revolution' aims to give an overview of how life was lived during the revolutionary era. (Focusing on the battles is an ongoing exhibition, 'April 19, 1775,' and it's quite well done.) 'Whose Revolution' draws on material culture, fine art, political and social history. There are 55 items on display, ranging from three early John Singleton Copley portraits and a copy of Advertisement Twivel (woodworking tool), 18th century. Gavin Ashworth A selection of teapots does double duty: the consumption of tea being such a part of daily life in the 13 colonies and the attempt to tax it being such a cause of political conflict. Look to the right of the display of teapots and other ceramics and you see two pieces of paper bearing designs of alluring delicacy. Attractive enough to be art prints, they're British tax stamps: as in Advertisement That possessive pronoun at the beginning of the show's title tells you that its chief concern is with people and their relationship to the revolution. Those people were not all male or all white or even all patriots. (The 18th-century mansions along Brattle Street, in Cambridge, are known as Tory Row for a reason.) The show includes a first edition of Phillis Wheatley's poetry, four silhouettes commissioned to accompany brief accounts of four Black people living here during this period, and a video of Elizabeth Solomon, a Ponkapoag elder, discussing the relationship of Indigenous peoples to this land that the colonists had taken away. The irony of colonizers of others' land rebelling against tyranny imposed upon them is hard to miss. Pocket pistol belonging to Paul Revere. Massachusetts Historical Society/From the collections of the Mass Perhaps when Ralph Waldo Emerson (a Concord resident) used 'shot heard round the world' for the fighting at the Old North Bridge rather than the confrontation on what we now know as Lexington Battle Green he justified it as continuing a tradition of Revolutionary geographical inaccuracy: specifically, the Battle of Bunker Hill, in Charlestown, actually took place on Breed's Hill, also in Charlestown. An expertly done multimedia presentation on the battle is the centerpiece of '1775: Rebels, Rights & Revolution,' which runs at the Massachusetts Historical Society through Dec. 18. The MHS's Carol Knauff curated. Advertisement Permit to pass through British lines, May 1775. Massachusetts Historical Society/From the collection of the Massa The historical society's holdings being as rich as they are, many of the more than 50 items on display are memorable: from a pocket pistol belonging to Revere (did he take it with him on his midnight ride?) to a cannonball recovered from the fighting at Lexington to not one, not two, but three powder horns. Most of the items, though, are less physically substantial — letters, journals, even a permit to pass through British lines in May 1775 — and they are no less memorable. They're also a reminder of how text predominated over image in that culture, of how much words and ideas mattered in making the revolution. Jean Baptiste Bourguignon d'Anville and Robert Sayer, "A new map of North America," 1763. Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library 'Terrains of Independence,' at the Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library consists of a dozen maps — 13, if you count the one of Boston and Charlestown etched on a powder horn. The exhibition is up until next March, which marks the 250th anniversary of Evacuation Day. All of the maps repay study, and some are quite beautiful. Curated by Suffolk University's Kathryn Lasdow and the Leventhal Center's Garrett Dash Nelson, 'Terrains' is organized in terms of five 'scales': empire, region, nation, city, and landmark. The wall texts are both informative and insightful. They point out, for example, how much the shape of Boston (practically an island, before all the filling in of the 19th century) lent itself to clashes with the military; and, as further fuel for revolutionary fire, that 1 in 3 inhabitants of the city in 1768 were British soldiers. Paul Revere, copper engraving plate of the occupation of Boston, 1768. Commonwealth Museum 'Upon Such Ground: Massachusetts and the Birth of a Revolution,' at the Commonwealth Museum, has a well-chosen closing date: June 17, Bunker Hill Day, another 250th anniversary. Among the more notable artifacts are a drum used at that battle (its size is such that one hopes it was not a little drummer boy who carried it), a sword belonging to the British major who gave the order to fire at the Old North Bridge, and a muster book of volunteers from Waltham who fought on April 19. The reminder its roster gives of how extensive and, for lack of a better word, democratic the revolutionary cause was is deeply moving. Advertisement The Commonwealth Museum doesn't charge admission. Neither does the BPL, of course, nor the historical society. 'Free' takes on an added meaning in this case, though, one with a relevance to the 250th and what it entails that's greater than all the many items in these four fine exhibitions put together: that would be 'free' as in freedom. Because the museum is run by the Massachusetts secretary of state's office, visitors can also register to vote at the exhibition. Museums love interactive displays, as they should: Museumgoers love them, too. But it's hard to top a voter-registration form for interactivity. Powder horns and swords and maps are excellent things. They illustrate the past. Ballots are even better. They help determine the future. WHOSE REVOLUTION At Concord Museum, 53 Cambridge Turnpike, Concord, through Sept. 1. 1775: REBELS, RIGHTS & REVOLUTION At Massachusetts Historical Society, 1154 Boylston St., through Dec. 19. TERRAINS OF INDEPENDENCE At Leventhal Map & Education Center at the Boston Public Library, Copley Square, through March 2026. 617-859-2387, UPON SUCH GROUND: Massachusetts and the Birth of a Revolution Advertisement At Commonwealth Museum, 220 Morrissey Boulevard, through June 17. 617-727-9268, Mark Feeney can be reached at
Yahoo
14-02-2025
- Yahoo
New exhibition explores stories of emigration
An exhibition has opened that focuses on the historical stories of people who left a county to emigrate abroad. Departures will be showcased at the Suffolk Archives building in Ipswich, Suffolk, and follows a previous exhibit about immigration stories called Arrivals. The project tells the stories of emigrants from Suffolk, such as colonists arriving on the US east coast, people leaving for the Australian and Californian Gold Rushes and GI brides departing for the US after World War Two. Emily Shepperson, the exhibition and interpretation officer at the Suffolk Archives, said: "A lot of emigration leads back to the [British] Empire, and we've obviously been talking about that a lot recently. "We've had periods in the past where we've been very proud of the Empire, where as now we talk about it much more critically, looking at what did Empire mean for people?" The exhibition - which runs from 14 February to 1 June - includes original letters, on loan from the Massachusetts Historical Society, by the early American colonist John Winthrop, who emigrated from Suffolk to New England in the 17th Century. Also on display are documents signed by Bartholomew Gosnold, who was from Otley Hall, near Ipswich, and emigrated to Virginia where he established a colony in 1607. "[Gosnold] went out over to the east coast of America which, in his words, he 'discovered', but of course, there were already people living there," said Ms Shepperson. "But he named places like Cape Cod after the amount of fish that he saw there and Martha's Vineyard, which he named after his daughter Martha who'd recently passed away." The exhibition also includes an original passenger list for the Titanic - which is on loan from the National Archives - and stories of more recent people who have emigrated from Suffolk to start new lives elsewhere. Follow Suffolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X. Arrivals exhibition shares migration stories Windrush quilts bring community together Messages of unity shared at multicultural festival Suffolk Archives
