Massachusetts Historical Society
From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
The Massachusetts Historical Society is a major historical archive specializing in early American, Massachusetts, and New England history. It is located at 1154 Boylston Street, Boston, Massachusetts and is the oldest historical society in the United States.
The Society was founded on January 24, 1791, by Reverend Jeremy Belknap to collect, preserve, and document items of American history. He and the nine other founding members donated family papers, books, and artifacts to the Society to form its initial collection. Its first manuscript was published in 1792, becoming the first historical society publication in the United States. Indeed, the Society claims to have been the only historical collection in the United States until establishment of the New-York Historical Society (1804) and the American Antiquarian Society (1812), after which time the Society's collecting activities began to focus primarily on Boston and New England.
Today the Society continues to collect, preserve, and communicate historical information about Massachusetts and the United States. It is now organized in five departments: Library, Publication & Research Programs, the Adams Family Papers, The New England Quarterly, and Administration. Major collections include:
- Adams Family Papers (1639-1889) - material relating to President John Adams (1735-1826) and Abigail Adams (1744-1818), as well as other family members including Charles Francis Adams (1807-1886), John Quincy Adams (1767-1848), Louisa Catherine Adams (1775-1852), Charles Francis Adams (1835-1915), and Henry Adams (1838-1918). The collection includes correspondence, diaries, literary manuscripts, speeches, legal and business papers, etc.
- Manuscripts and printed texts - approximately 12,000 biographies and more than 10,000 local histories, as well as newspapers and broadsides including John Dunlap's July 4-5, 1776, Philadelphia printing of the Declaration of Independence. Notable manuscripts include Paul Revere's account of his ride, handwritten copies of the Declaration of Independence by both Thomas Jefferson and John Adams, and the Coolidge Collection of Thomas Jefferson Manuscripts containing thousands of pages of Jefferson's correspondence, manuscripts of writings, and Monticello records including account books, journals, and more than 400 architectural drawings.
- Artwork - paintings by John Singleton Copley (1738-1815), Sarah Goodridge (1788-1853), Chester Harding (1792-1866), Alonzo Hartwell (1805-1873), Samuel Stillman Osgood (1808-1885), John Smibert (1688-1751), and Richard Morell Staigg (1817-1881), as well as sculptures by Thomas Ball, Richard Saltonstall Greenough, Henry Dexter, and Hiram Powers.
The Society continues to produce scholarly books, but now augments these publications with documentary television programs and films for a broader audience.
