Study the revolution through the words and artifacts of the women who lived it. Women like Abigail Adams, Hannah Winthrop, and Mercy Otis Warren were vital consumers (and boycotters) of imported goods, and functioned as heads of household while their male family members served in the military or traveled on political missions. They recorded important events of the day, and, in the case of Warren, interpreted those events for a public audience. Throughout the workshop we will explore the daily lives of revolutionary women, including those who served as soldiers and secret agents, or followed the army as cooks and laundresses. The program fee includes visits to the Old North Church, the Paul Revere House, and the Museum of Fine Arts.
This seminar will explore, through the use of primary source documents, three themes: how the Union and the Confederacy justified secession and war; the idea of emancipation as a revolutionary form of war; and Lincoln’s proposals for reconstructing the United States as the Civil war came to an end in 1865. This program is co-sponsored by the Ashbrook Seminar at Ashland University.
Registration fee: FREE
Contact the MHS Education Department for more information: education@masshist.org or 617-646-0557
Investigate American whaling in the age of sail, and its effects on the politics, economy, and culture of Massachusetts. Whaling provided men and women of the Commonwealth with new opportunities for financial and cultural exchange. Using documents from the MHS and Leventhal Map Center, we will explore the lives of sailors, whaling wives, and entrepreneurs, and trace the expanding geographical horizons afforded by the whaling industry. On August 5 we will take a field trip to New Bedford, Massachusetts, the largest whaling port in the world by the 1830s. We will visit the New Bedford Whaling Museum to explore art and artifacts from whaling voyages that spanned the globe, and take a walking tour of the city whose whale oil “lit the world.”
Registration fee: $75
Hours: 9:00-5:00 each day
To register: education@masshist.org or 617-646-0557
Explore Massachusetts’s connections to the sea through the documents, artifacts, landscapes, and historic structures in Salem, Beverly, Gloucester, and Marblehead. Join us as we learn more about the original inhabitants of this region and their earliest encounters with European settlers. Tour the working waterfront of Gloucester, and learn how global trade has affected these communities over the past three centuries. View the region’s past from an artistic perspective and discuss the works of Winslow Homer, Fitz Henry Lane, and other artists who found inspiration from the sea.
