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Introduction

 

  Less than a month after the establishment of the Massachusetts Historical Society in January 1791, Jeremy Belknap, its corresponding secretary, described the founders' aspirations in a letter to a friend. We intend to be an active, not a passive , literary body,  he wrote, not to lie waiting, like a bed of oysters, for the tide (of communication) to flow in upon us, but to seek and find , to preserve and communicate literary intelligence, especially in the historical way.

  The Society was true to its founders' intentions.  Under Belknap's active leadership the MHS, the first historical society in the western hemisphere and the first institution of any description devoted primarily to collecting Americana and publishing in American history, grew vigorously.  Belknap began to build the holdings of the Society's library almost immediately, and within a year the MHS also issued its first publication.

  The example of Belknap and his associates continues to animate the MHS today.  The society's founders were innovators and activists; the modern study of American history owes an important debt to them for the library and publications programs they introduced and nurtured.  The Society's present generation continues its work today in the spirit of its founders, building the programs it has inherited and creating new ones.

 As the Society enters its third century, its services encompass four principal activities: its library, publications, the Center for the Study of New England History, and public programs.

 The Society's library collections cannot be matched either in scope or depth by those of any similar institution.  The area of primary interest is the manuscript collection of approximately ten million pieces (more than 3,000 separate collections) of personal papers and institutional records.  Here, the serious reader may find such valuable resources as the diary of seventeenth-century witchcraft trials judge Samuel Sewall, the papers of Paul Revere and the Adams family, and even the private writings of Thomas Jefferson (including his farm and garden books as well as most of his architectural drawings).  Holdings cover such diverse subjects as the history of religion, law, education, and medicine; diplomacy and international commerce; the American Revolution and the Civil War; and Native American and women's history.  although holdings are particularly strong for the history of New England for the period from colonization through the late nineteenth century, the society also has significant materials for the study of the West Indies, Latin America, the china trade, and twentieth-century American political history.

 The Society's collection of rare books is especially useful for the early history of printing in Massachusetts, but it covers the entire span of publishing in what is now the United States.  Other collections include more than 20,000 broadsides; over 5,500 maps; considerably more than 200,000 monographs, including over 30,000 pamphlets; large collections of almanacs and directories; and more than 500,000 feet of microfilm.  Fine- and decorative-arts holdings include significant collections of portraits and miniatures, silhouettes, bust, and engravings.  Among the artists represented are John Singleton Copley, Gilbert Stuart, and John Trumbull.  The Society also has many thousands of photographs, including more than 300 early daguerreotypes.  Other historical objects at the Society range from furniture and clocks to clothing and other personal belongings.

 The MHS has been an active publisher since 1792.  Over the course of two centuries it has published hundreds of items, most of them in series, including the Collections (edited documents), the Proceedings (a scholarly annual), Sibley's Harvard Graduates (biographical sketches of seventeenth- and eighteenth-century Harvard alumni), and Studies in American History and Culture (essay collections and scholarly monographs).  The Society is an active producer of microform works, having issued more than sixty titles since the 1950s.  It is also the principal sponsor of the Adams Papers documentary editing project.  Each year the society issues a list of its Titles in Print , which is available free upon request.

  The Center for the Study of New England History, which the MHS recently established, draws upon the Society's rich collections and location in Boston to sponsor research projects, publications derived from its research activities, scholarly conferences, and an ongoing seminar for university faculty and graduate students interested in American history from the colonial period through the Civil War.  The Center offers a number of short-term research fellowships, open to independent scholars, advanced graduate students, and holders of the Ph.D. or its equivalent.  Each grant provides a stipend of $1,500 for four weeks of research at the MHS.  Many of the fellowships are available for work on any subject for which the Society's collections are appropriate.  Others support research in specific subject areas or collections, including colonial New England; graphic arts in the Society's collections; Paul Revere and his world; and projects pertaining to the military, political, and diplomatic history of colonial Massachusetts.  Each year the Center prepares a small Guide to Accommodations for researchers coming to Boston from a distance.  It is available for a modest fee to cover reproduction costs.

  The MHS sponsors a full calendar of programs for its members and for the participants in its principal support group, the Fellows of the Library.  And each year it sponsors public lectures at the Boston Public Library and elsewhere.  The Society also lends its materials for exhibition at museums, libraries, and other nonprofit cultural and educational institutions.

 For more information on the Society's past and its collections, see:

 Louis L. Tucker, The Massachusetts Historical Society: A Bicentennial History (Boston: The Society, 1996).

 Louis L. Tucker, Clio's Consort: Jeremy Belknap and the Founding of The Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston: The Society, 1990).

 Witness to America's Past: Two Centuries of Collecting by the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston: The Society and the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston, 1991).

 Andrew Oliver, Ann Millspaugh Huff, and Edward W. Hanson, Portraits in the Massachusetts Historical Society (Boston: The Society, 1988).

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