April 5, 2025 • 26 mins
Since the days following the Revolutionary War, the Massachusetts Historical Society has been dutifully documenting events and stories that have made up the American experience, especially here in New England. That includes a one-of-a-kind look into how the war for independence played out back in the 1700's. Chief Historian Peter Drummey joins Nichole with new information about their exhibit "1775 - Rebels, Rights, and Revolution", and a deeper look into what it takes to preserve history.
This segment is the fourth interview in our new series, "Revolutionary Roots", where we take a closer look at the stories, people, events, and local ties that connect New England to the nation's upcoming 250th anniversary in 2026.
This segment is the fourth interview in our new series, "Revolutionary Roots", where we take a closer look at the stories, people, events, and local ties that connect New England to the nation's upcoming 250th anniversary in 2026.
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:07):
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England Weekend.
Each and every week right here, we come together and
talk about all the topics important to you and the
place where you live. Thanks again for joining us this week.
I'm Nicole Davis. When it comes to history, we are
certainly no stranger to that around these parts, and the
reason we know so much about the events that shaped
our nation is through our stories. Thankfully, we have many
(00:31):
historians around here who preserve those stories from generations past
for generations to come. For the latest segment of our series,
Revolutionary Roots, I wanted to talk with somebody who is
passionate about history, but also passionate about helping others discover
it for themselves. Peter Drummy is the chief historian over
at the Massachusetts Historical Society. They're in Boston's Back Bay
(00:52):
and they have a brand new exhibit. It's called seventeen
seventy five Rebels, Rights and Revolution. Peter is here on
the show now to talk about it. Happy you're here
with us, Peter, Thank you for the time for people
who might not be too familiar with your work at
the Historical Society. I guess we'll give us a history,
so to speak.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
The Massachusetts Historical Society is tied to the history of
the Revolution. It was founded in seventeen ninety one ten men,
and they were men ministers the Attorney General of Massachusetts,
people who had positions of responsibility but also were really
interested in history. Some were revolutionary war veterans. But they
(01:35):
came together to pool their own personal libraries of materials
about history to form an organization they called simply the
Historical Society. There were no others. We were incorporated in
seventeen ninety four, so our name has been long standing.
But they set out to collect essentially the national history
(02:00):
from here in Massachusetts, in drawing on Massachusetts sources. But
they wanted a complete history of this country, in this
very new country. Then they also were concerned that the
history of the Revolution would fade away as the revolutionary
generation did, so they wanted to make sure the story
(02:23):
was told and preserved. They thought everyone would be interested
in what they were doing, so they printed. Their first
publications were the backpage for a weekly newspaper, so that
be essentially a page devoted to history, things to do
with the Revolution, but also going back to the time
(02:43):
of European settlement. They were very interested in the Native
Americans living here. But essentially from the time of European contact,
they weren't archaeologists, and they weren't you know, that was
still coming into being that there was a prehistoric that
is a past for written records, but they were concentrating
on essentially sixteen twenty onward here and a little bit
(03:07):
earlier in Virginia and elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
What is your role in a twenty first century Massachusetts?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
My role is essentially as I'm a librarian. My title
is to make it clear that we're a historical society
and focusing on history, but I'm in a librarianship is
sort of a helping profession. I'm here to help people
find out more about what their interests are, and that's
(03:39):
not simply drawing upon our immense collection collected over now
more than two hundred years, but also to guide people
where there are other sources that will be useful for them.
Beyond that, I help with interpretation. That is, especially something
(04:01):
like an exhibition that is helping with the assembly of it,
but also helping and interpret it to especially groups that
come for that will be both. Now many times it's
student groups that come in to find out what we
(04:22):
have to offer for this, but it's also their teachers.
That is, we're the base of a program called National
History Day here in Massachusetts. It's a national program, but
where students write a paper or present a documentary or
dramatically interpret events in American history. And I'm also involved
(04:47):
in that, but that interpretation of what we hold. And
also I've been here a very long time, so there
are very few things that come up that I haven't
bumped into before. And that means you don't have to
be smart. You just have a good memory of what
people what with people have looked at before and what's
been helpful for the exploration of a project. People's own
(05:10):
personal research is unique to them, but there are very
few questions that haven't come up in the past.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Like you're your own in Karta encyclopedia or possibly the
Dewey decimal system up there.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, that's exactly right in the sense of trying to
figure out what things outside the regular organized way you
describe and request materials, what else might be worth finding
out might be helpful in finding out about that that
(05:46):
and some of that sort of intuition. But it's a
lot of experience goes into it.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Sure. And then following up on that question, I guess
digging a little further, and we've talked about your role
as the librarian, what role do you think the historical
society has a whole has these days, when again, we
have such easy access to information, how does the society
stay relevant in the twenty first century.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Well, some the historical societies face this challenge. It isn't
the first time this has happened. It doesn't mean that
we know the answer. Because people we collect primarily manuscripts,
handwritten documents of individuals and families over the whole course
of American history. We don't end at the Revolution or
(06:31):
the Civil War. We collect right up to the present.
Except for people in public life, there tends to be
a zone of privacy, so that if you give us
your parents or even your grandparents' papers, you may want
all the people who are described in those papers being
no longer here interested before they're made available to a
(06:55):
wider public. Often people in public life have kind of
thicker skins, and when they put their pen down, someone
else's will can pick it up. That it's not as
easy as that. But in collect and then our collection
is based on these collections of written documents, millions of
(07:18):
pages of documents and thousands of individual collections, and then
a whole range of things for the time of the revolution,
contemporary newspapers and maps and broadsides, that is, printing on
one side of a sheet of paper to be either
posted or read aloud or handed out if it's small.
But then coming onto the present, we have photographs from
(07:42):
the very introduction of photography to America. We have uh
digital recordings and now increasingly record recordings of materials that
no longer have had a existence on paper are traditional collecting.
(08:03):
This isn't a really interesting time to be doing it,
but our relevance is often not so much looked to
the past as a map to the present. But there
are very few things that have not have happened that
happened today that don't have an analogy. I started out
by saying when people when the telegraph came along, people
(08:25):
thought that's going to change everything, and it certainly did.
The aubility of information from a distance essentially instantaneously changed
a lot. The introduction of the telephone later on in
the nineteenth century, again people said, who's going to write
to anyone else if they can pick up a you know,
(08:47):
but those things. Radio is really important too, from its introduction,
and we're pretty close to Europe here, so international radio
communication gets a head start here, but spreads very quickly
over the world. But all those in those technical changes,
the ones today are more dramatic. I would argue that
(09:10):
the changes going on today, this is deep stuff. That
the changes going on today are like the introduction of
printing in the fifteenth century, that that's as dramatic and
big a change. And I often wonder that people then
realized they were in the middle of a dramatic revolution,
(09:33):
and how source if you were dependent on handwritten sources
you were up until that time, what a narrow audience
that would be. And then suddenly the scale of it
changes dramatically, and the range of things that you print
as opposed to copy by hand changes dramatically too. It
becomes it's essentially democratizing. It has a lot of complications
(09:56):
go along with it, but that's what we're in the
middle of. Embrace it, not sort of try to push
back against it. And we're trying to do that, just
as I said. The Historical Society's first publications were the
backpage for weekly newspaper, I think in some respects, and
having a website and systematically digitizing materials that are available
(10:20):
essentially toyhere everyone everywhere who has an Internet connection. It's
kind of faithful to what they were trying to do
in the eighteenth century in transcribing documents. At the beginning
of the Historical Society, there was no way to preserve documents,
so their idea of preservation was to multiply the copies. Also,
(10:45):
people who were founders of the Historical Society had and experiences,
sometimes paradoxically positive, of invented news. In Boston. In the
years leading up to the Rebel, when there was agitation
against the royal authority, there was something called It has
(11:06):
various titles, but essentially it's called the Chronicle of Events.
It was a false newspaper. What they would do is
things that they couldn't publish here. People would actually create
these stories, mostly about the abuses of the local population
by the soldiers sent here to Garrison Boston and enforce order.
(11:29):
So that I have an article essentially that claimed that
the population was being abused. They would descend it to
someone else and it would be published in a newspaper elsewhere, Okay,
in major town or city elsewhere. Then it would come
(11:51):
back in that newspaper to Boston, and then someone here
would say published in the chronicle of events were from
and modernized. They were kind of in a good cause.
They were in what became the revolutionary or patriot movement
as was called. Then. Nevertheless, they were taking even kernels
(12:13):
of true stories and so exaggerating them to make them unrecognizable.
But that sounds awfully contemporary in some respects to me.
And as I say, it's possible for people to be
convinced they're doing this in a righteous cause, that they're
what they're doing is sort of inventing information and widely distributed,
(12:37):
and that lasts in Boston. I'm not saying I wouldn't
want to put too much on top of that, but
it's an example of where we can look at something
in the past and saying everything that's happening now is
not happening for the first time, and people address this
and how they did. That's not a guide to us,
but sometimes when we're not looking things really close to
(12:59):
us may see them more objectively. That's true, this was
good purpose, but in fact it was undermining our and
if we read that today as being essentially primary source
record from seventeen seventy say, of what was happening here
in Boston, we could be led seriously astray right, get
(13:23):
the wrong idea along with did example of what those
sort of things look like. You know.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
No, it's a really good example about how a history
always repeats itself and b how even in the days
of the early days of the printing press, we're experiencing
this now with so called digital democracies. You brought up
the innovation of the World Wide Web. All of us
being able to connect with each other is a blessing
and a curse in my opinion. And I could go
on for hours about that, and unfortunately we don't have hours.
(13:51):
We'll have to make some time sometime.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
But you just think one other point about that is, yeah,
of course that one thing we may not think about
is and this is because New England Massachusetts Bay founded
for commercial and colonial purposes, but with religious content to
(14:14):
its founding. There's a very high rate of literacy here.
At the time of the revolution, both boys and girls system.
Each town is supposed to have a school. Both boys
and girls are to be taught to read and write,
especially important reading. There is some basic arithmetic being taught,
(14:41):
mostly aimed at boys, but nevertheless, there's more education here
than in almost anywhere else in the world, probably the
only place you'd see this as in Scandinavia, where there's
the same sort of Protestant religious impulse. There's a large
audience for things that are published and printed, a large
base to build upon, so that things like in Boston,
(15:05):
a very small town nevertheless has newspapers from the introduction
of newspapers to America, and by the time of the
Revolution has several newspapers. They come and go, but some
last for a very long period of time. And these
newspapers almost always have a political bias. They're almost always
(15:25):
in support of royal authority or attacking royal authority, and
the people who are newspaper publishers think that's what their
obligation to do, is to advocate. So that's just again,
it sort of sounds it's a long time ago, but
has implications for us today.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
We humans just love doing the same thing over and
over again atontally. So okay, so let's see, you know,
we were talking about a few of those stories from
the era of the Revolution. So let's segue here into
your new exhibit. It's called seventeen seventy five Rebels Rights Revolution.
And we've been talking about the personal stories and all
(16:04):
those little manuscripts and everything left behind, those little parts
of daily life. I think that that is what attracts
me so much to this because I think that when
you're reading about the revolution in a history book sometimes
it's easy to disconnect yourself from the fact that these
were people going through actual stuff. They're not just in
black and white portraits. I love how this exhibit brings
(16:26):
that to the forefront.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And a perfect example is the first document in our
exhibition is a letter that Powervier writes in seventeen ninety
eight to the Historical Society. There you go, pages long.
It's a long detail account of the events leading up
to the outbreak of fighting, but essentially Powervir's central role
(16:50):
in communicating the information by signal and then in person
to the countryside that an expedition to captures and conquered
and to capture Patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams
is about to take place. And you say, well, well,
(17:11):
I people often say well, he wrote this to the
Historical Society in seventeen ninety eight. It's not our first
document that we collected, but it's essentially the kind of
things that they were trying to do. But what happened
is he writes out this detailed account, and then we
have in his personal papers, which are mostly business papers
(17:35):
for the Revere family enterprise make bellows and canons and
gold and silversmithing and roll copper everything else. But within
it our actual personal papers. And back in seventeen seventy five,
when one of as the revolution began, one of the
main things the revolutionary government coming into being here in
(17:57):
Massachusetts wanted to do was to have depositions that showed.
On April nineteenth, the people in the countryside were essentially attacked.
Who fired first became a really important issue. It turned
out that Rvier briefly captured him his way to conquered,
had gotten back to Lexington just as firing broke out there,
(18:22):
and trying to be a good opponent, you know, give
honest answers, he said, there was firing, but I couldn't
see what happened because there was a building between me
and Lexington Green, So he didn't have the the British
soldiers came and shot down the Americans. Kind of story
(18:44):
to tell, as simple as that he was trying to
be careful what he said. So this was a deposition.
We don't know why it wasn't published. My feeling was
is that it wasn't it. It didn't have a support
of enough purpose in.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
For the narratives, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Exactly right, Yeah, and so, but we do know what
he said in seventeen seventy five, and then when he
said in seventeen ninety eight, and except for things, they
were the ministerial troops, the troops sent by not the
evil king yet that came the next year, but the
evil sinister forces behind Parliament sent to America. They were
(19:24):
the forces of Parliament here to oppress the people. In
seventeen ninety eight. They were the British and we were
the Americans.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Right, It was a little more simple than that.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
But it's sort of wonderful to see how the central
narrative remains the same. That's an example, but a very
famous one. But then this exhibition is I think one
thing that people don't think of is there were refugees
from the day after Lexington and conquered. That is, people
(19:56):
who are sympathetic to royal authority having to assent, leave
or flee the countryside and come to Boston, where there
were British troops to protect them in a form of
government still in existence. On the other side, many, even
most of the population of Boston wanted to get out
(20:19):
of town. There were still a town then, and so
still were pep who could pass back and forth in
a system set up, but there was sort of an
exchange of populations. But at the end of the day
on April nineteenth, there essentially was royal authority only in
Boston itself, and the countryside was aroused. A siege army
(20:46):
was coming into being, like on the spot. I think
the contingency of this is striking long term, going to
move towards self government and perhaps independence here. But the
events that unfolded on April nineteenth and everything that followed,
(21:06):
no one could predict that was going to happen, and
I think it was truly shocking to most people, whether
they were sympathetic, whether or not, this had was largely unexpected.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Could you imagine this playing out today here in the
city of Boston. I mean, when you think about that
you would literally have people in Boston, you know, was
siding with one side, moving out to Watertown in Arlington
and trying to drive down Route too with everything they've got,
you know, China head to Metro West, some people coming in.
It's just it's it's unfathomable to me as a twenty
(21:43):
first century citizen, but it happens all the time all
over the world.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And then just a few weeks later in June of
seventeen seventy five, Yeah, there's one of the largest battles
of the revolution as fought. Essentially it's then a separate town, Charlestown,
but essentially with inside of everyone and during that battle,
with terrible casualties, amazingly high casualties for the number of
(22:09):
people involved. It's sort of been described as a series
of blunders redeemed by heroism. I mean, people were as
brave as people can be and just made on both
sides mistake after mistake. But during that battle the town
of Charlestown was burnt down. There you have the people
(22:34):
living in Charlestown are essentially refugees at war, refugees exactly
as we understand and see them in documentaries or television
news or hear about them and radio news that that
happened right here. And I'll just tell you one more
just thing in our exhibit. That's sort of powerful because
(22:56):
often as wonderful as these manuscripts are, artifacts speak to
people in a way that is something held or worn
by someone from the eighteenth century in a way that
physical artifact. And one of the things are this is
brilliant letter by Abigail Adams who could see the Battle
(23:18):
of Bunker Hill from a hilltop near their home in
Braintreen on Quinsy. But next to it are two little
silver spoons. Kind of catch your attention. Well, a young
woman with a wonderful New England name relief ellery is
living in Charlestown. People are told that there's going to
(23:38):
be an attack on the new Overnight fortifications, that she
should leave her with their family. And during the course
of just getting up and fleeing, there are things on
the breakfast table. This is about the time of day
this happens, and she picks up two uns and puts
(24:01):
them in her pocket, which is almost like an apron
with a pocket in it that women wore at home
and at the end of the day their house has
been burned, all of our possessions gone except these two spoons.
That's all that remains. And that is something that we
(24:23):
don't think of in the American Revolution. That's sort of
what seems like a modern level of destruction and loss
is affecting those people exactly as people are affected today.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
How can people find you? Where can they learn more
about the exhibit? Do you need tickets or so on
and so forth.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Let me briefly explain. The exhibit is open free to
the public six days a week, Monday through Saturday, and
on into the evening on Tuesdays. Okay, I think it's
good to look at our website because there'll be special events,
gallery tours, and lectures. They're all so are occasionally things
(25:01):
that change our hours of operation. But we'll be here
with this exhibition because we have so many wonderful things.
The story and the exhibition will will be the same
throughout the end of the year, end of seventeen twenty five.
That shows you where I live, but it all also
(25:23):
be but we can exchange things, so we can tell
the same story through different documents. So we can show
documents much longer than you would normally do, and a
museum exhibition, so I'm here practically all that time and
sometimes longer. My name's Peter Drummy. I'm a historian and
(25:44):
library and here at the Historical Society. I love everything
we have. But this is a brilliant story, and it
really is a story, and it's told through the voices
of people. And I'm happy to help anybody in any
way that I can to find out more about that.
I love that.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Peter, thank you for your time today. Thank you for
your passion and your desire to keep our nation's history alive.
It means so much. And please go check out the
exhibit of the Massachusetts Historical Society on Boylston Street in Boston. Peter,
thank you for your time, my pleasure. Have a safe
and healthy weekend. Please join me again next week for
(26:23):
another edition of the show. I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ
News Radio on iHeartRadio.
From WBZ News Radio in Boston. This is New England Weekend.
Each and every week right here, we come together and
talk about all the topics important to you and the
place where you live. Thanks again for joining us this week.
I'm Nicole Davis. When it comes to history, we are
certainly no stranger to that around these parts, and the
reason we know so much about the events that shaped
our nation is through our stories. Thankfully, we have many
(00:31):
historians around here who preserve those stories from generations past
for generations to come. For the latest segment of our series,
Revolutionary Roots, I wanted to talk with somebody who is
passionate about history, but also passionate about helping others discover
it for themselves. Peter Drummy is the chief historian over
at the Massachusetts Historical Society. They're in Boston's Back Bay
(00:52):
and they have a brand new exhibit. It's called seventeen
seventy five Rebels, Rights and Revolution. Peter is here on
the show now to talk about it. Happy you're here
with us, Peter, Thank you for the time for people
who might not be too familiar with your work at
the Historical Society. I guess we'll give us a history,
so to speak.
Speaker 2 (01:11):
The Massachusetts Historical Society is tied to the history of
the Revolution. It was founded in seventeen ninety one ten men,
and they were men ministers the Attorney General of Massachusetts,
people who had positions of responsibility but also were really
interested in history. Some were revolutionary war veterans. But they
(01:35):
came together to pool their own personal libraries of materials
about history to form an organization they called simply the
Historical Society. There were no others. We were incorporated in
seventeen ninety four, so our name has been long standing.
But they set out to collect essentially the national history
(02:00):
from here in Massachusetts, in drawing on Massachusetts sources. But
they wanted a complete history of this country, in this
very new country. Then they also were concerned that the
history of the Revolution would fade away as the revolutionary
generation did, so they wanted to make sure the story
(02:23):
was told and preserved. They thought everyone would be interested
in what they were doing, so they printed. Their first
publications were the backpage for a weekly newspaper, so that
be essentially a page devoted to history, things to do
with the Revolution, but also going back to the time
(02:43):
of European settlement. They were very interested in the Native
Americans living here. But essentially from the time of European contact,
they weren't archaeologists, and they weren't you know, that was
still coming into being that there was a prehistoric that
is a past for written records, but they were concentrating
on essentially sixteen twenty onward here and a little bit
(03:07):
earlier in Virginia and elsewhere.
Speaker 1 (03:10):
What is your role in a twenty first century Massachusetts?
Speaker 2 (03:15):
My role is essentially as I'm a librarian. My title
is to make it clear that we're a historical society
and focusing on history, but I'm in a librarianship is
sort of a helping profession. I'm here to help people
find out more about what their interests are, and that's
(03:39):
not simply drawing upon our immense collection collected over now
more than two hundred years, but also to guide people
where there are other sources that will be useful for them.
Beyond that, I help with interpretation. That is, especially something
(04:01):
like an exhibition that is helping with the assembly of it,
but also helping and interpret it to especially groups that
come for that will be both. Now many times it's
student groups that come in to find out what we
(04:22):
have to offer for this, but it's also their teachers.
That is, we're the base of a program called National
History Day here in Massachusetts. It's a national program, but
where students write a paper or present a documentary or
dramatically interpret events in American history. And I'm also involved
(04:47):
in that, but that interpretation of what we hold. And
also I've been here a very long time, so there
are very few things that come up that I haven't
bumped into before. And that means you don't have to
be smart. You just have a good memory of what
people what with people have looked at before and what's
been helpful for the exploration of a project. People's own
(05:10):
personal research is unique to them, but there are very
few questions that haven't come up in the past.
Speaker 1 (05:19):
Like you're your own in Karta encyclopedia or possibly the
Dewey decimal system up there.
Speaker 2 (05:24):
Yeah, that's exactly right in the sense of trying to
figure out what things outside the regular organized way you
describe and request materials, what else might be worth finding
out might be helpful in finding out about that that
(05:46):
and some of that sort of intuition. But it's a
lot of experience goes into it.
Speaker 1 (05:50):
Sure. And then following up on that question, I guess
digging a little further, and we've talked about your role
as the librarian, what role do you think the historical
society has a whole has these days, when again, we
have such easy access to information, how does the society
stay relevant in the twenty first century.
Speaker 2 (06:09):
Well, some the historical societies face this challenge. It isn't
the first time this has happened. It doesn't mean that
we know the answer. Because people we collect primarily manuscripts,
handwritten documents of individuals and families over the whole course
of American history. We don't end at the Revolution or
(06:31):
the Civil War. We collect right up to the present.
Except for people in public life, there tends to be
a zone of privacy, so that if you give us
your parents or even your grandparents' papers, you may want
all the people who are described in those papers being
no longer here interested before they're made available to a
(06:55):
wider public. Often people in public life have kind of
thicker skins, and when they put their pen down, someone
else's will can pick it up. That it's not as
easy as that. But in collect and then our collection
is based on these collections of written documents, millions of
(07:18):
pages of documents and thousands of individual collections, and then
a whole range of things for the time of the revolution,
contemporary newspapers and maps and broadsides, that is, printing on
one side of a sheet of paper to be either
posted or read aloud or handed out if it's small.
But then coming onto the present, we have photographs from
(07:42):
the very introduction of photography to America. We have uh
digital recordings and now increasingly record recordings of materials that
no longer have had a existence on paper are traditional collecting.
(08:03):
This isn't a really interesting time to be doing it,
but our relevance is often not so much looked to
the past as a map to the present. But there
are very few things that have not have happened that
happened today that don't have an analogy. I started out
by saying when people when the telegraph came along, people
(08:25):
thought that's going to change everything, and it certainly did.
The aubility of information from a distance essentially instantaneously changed
a lot. The introduction of the telephone later on in
the nineteenth century, again people said, who's going to write
to anyone else if they can pick up a you know,
(08:47):
but those things. Radio is really important too, from its introduction,
and we're pretty close to Europe here, so international radio
communication gets a head start here, but spreads very quickly
over the world. But all those in those technical changes,
the ones today are more dramatic. I would argue that
(09:10):
the changes going on today, this is deep stuff. That
the changes going on today are like the introduction of
printing in the fifteenth century, that that's as dramatic and
big a change. And I often wonder that people then
realized they were in the middle of a dramatic revolution,
(09:33):
and how source if you were dependent on handwritten sources
you were up until that time, what a narrow audience
that would be. And then suddenly the scale of it
changes dramatically, and the range of things that you print
as opposed to copy by hand changes dramatically too. It
becomes it's essentially democratizing. It has a lot of complications
(09:56):
go along with it, but that's what we're in the
middle of. Embrace it, not sort of try to push
back against it. And we're trying to do that, just
as I said. The Historical Society's first publications were the
backpage for weekly newspaper, I think in some respects, and
having a website and systematically digitizing materials that are available
(10:20):
essentially toyhere everyone everywhere who has an Internet connection. It's
kind of faithful to what they were trying to do
in the eighteenth century in transcribing documents. At the beginning
of the Historical Society, there was no way to preserve documents,
so their idea of preservation was to multiply the copies. Also,
(10:45):
people who were founders of the Historical Society had and experiences,
sometimes paradoxically positive, of invented news. In Boston. In the
years leading up to the Rebel, when there was agitation
against the royal authority, there was something called It has
(11:06):
various titles, but essentially it's called the Chronicle of Events.
It was a false newspaper. What they would do is
things that they couldn't publish here. People would actually create
these stories, mostly about the abuses of the local population
by the soldiers sent here to Garrison Boston and enforce order.
(11:29):
So that I have an article essentially that claimed that
the population was being abused. They would descend it to
someone else and it would be published in a newspaper elsewhere, Okay,
in major town or city elsewhere. Then it would come
(11:51):
back in that newspaper to Boston, and then someone here
would say published in the chronicle of events were from
and modernized. They were kind of in a good cause.
They were in what became the revolutionary or patriot movement
as was called. Then. Nevertheless, they were taking even kernels
(12:13):
of true stories and so exaggerating them to make them unrecognizable.
But that sounds awfully contemporary in some respects to me.
And as I say, it's possible for people to be
convinced they're doing this in a righteous cause, that they're
what they're doing is sort of inventing information and widely distributed,
(12:37):
and that lasts in Boston. I'm not saying I wouldn't
want to put too much on top of that, but
it's an example of where we can look at something
in the past and saying everything that's happening now is
not happening for the first time, and people address this
and how they did. That's not a guide to us,
but sometimes when we're not looking things really close to
(12:59):
us may see them more objectively. That's true, this was
good purpose, but in fact it was undermining our and
if we read that today as being essentially primary source
record from seventeen seventy say, of what was happening here
in Boston, we could be led seriously astray right, get
(13:23):
the wrong idea along with did example of what those
sort of things look like. You know.
Speaker 1 (13:28):
No, it's a really good example about how a history
always repeats itself and b how even in the days
of the early days of the printing press, we're experiencing
this now with so called digital democracies. You brought up
the innovation of the World Wide Web. All of us
being able to connect with each other is a blessing
and a curse in my opinion. And I could go
on for hours about that, and unfortunately we don't have hours.
(13:51):
We'll have to make some time sometime.
Speaker 2 (13:53):
But you just think one other point about that is, yeah,
of course that one thing we may not think about
is and this is because New England Massachusetts Bay founded
for commercial and colonial purposes, but with religious content to
(14:14):
its founding. There's a very high rate of literacy here.
At the time of the revolution, both boys and girls system.
Each town is supposed to have a school. Both boys
and girls are to be taught to read and write,
especially important reading. There is some basic arithmetic being taught,
(14:41):
mostly aimed at boys, but nevertheless, there's more education here
than in almost anywhere else in the world, probably the
only place you'd see this as in Scandinavia, where there's
the same sort of Protestant religious impulse. There's a large
audience for things that are published and printed, a large
base to build upon, so that things like in Boston,
(15:05):
a very small town nevertheless has newspapers from the introduction
of newspapers to America, and by the time of the
Revolution has several newspapers. They come and go, but some
last for a very long period of time. And these
newspapers almost always have a political bias. They're almost always
(15:25):
in support of royal authority or attacking royal authority, and
the people who are newspaper publishers think that's what their
obligation to do, is to advocate. So that's just again,
it sort of sounds it's a long time ago, but
has implications for us today.
Speaker 1 (15:44):
We humans just love doing the same thing over and
over again atontally. So okay, so let's see, you know,
we were talking about a few of those stories from
the era of the Revolution. So let's segue here into
your new exhibit. It's called seventeen seventy five Rebels Rights Revolution.
And we've been talking about the personal stories and all
(16:04):
those little manuscripts and everything left behind, those little parts
of daily life. I think that that is what attracts
me so much to this because I think that when
you're reading about the revolution in a history book sometimes
it's easy to disconnect yourself from the fact that these
were people going through actual stuff. They're not just in
black and white portraits. I love how this exhibit brings
(16:26):
that to the forefront.
Speaker 2 (16:27):
And a perfect example is the first document in our
exhibition is a letter that Powervier writes in seventeen ninety
eight to the Historical Society. There you go, pages long.
It's a long detail account of the events leading up
to the outbreak of fighting, but essentially Powervir's central role
(16:50):
in communicating the information by signal and then in person
to the countryside that an expedition to captures and conquered
and to capture Patriot leaders John Hancock and Samuel Adams
is about to take place. And you say, well, well,
(17:11):
I people often say well, he wrote this to the
Historical Society in seventeen ninety eight. It's not our first
document that we collected, but it's essentially the kind of
things that they were trying to do. But what happened
is he writes out this detailed account, and then we
have in his personal papers, which are mostly business papers
(17:35):
for the Revere family enterprise make bellows and canons and
gold and silversmithing and roll copper everything else. But within
it our actual personal papers. And back in seventeen seventy five,
when one of as the revolution began, one of the
main things the revolutionary government coming into being here in
(17:57):
Massachusetts wanted to do was to have depositions that showed.
On April nineteenth, the people in the countryside were essentially attacked.
Who fired first became a really important issue. It turned
out that Rvier briefly captured him his way to conquered,
had gotten back to Lexington just as firing broke out there,
(18:22):
and trying to be a good opponent, you know, give
honest answers, he said, there was firing, but I couldn't
see what happened because there was a building between me
and Lexington Green, So he didn't have the the British
soldiers came and shot down the Americans. Kind of story
(18:44):
to tell, as simple as that he was trying to
be careful what he said. So this was a deposition.
We don't know why it wasn't published. My feeling was
is that it wasn't it. It didn't have a support
of enough purpose in.
Speaker 1 (19:00):
For the narratives, so to speak.
Speaker 2 (19:02):
Exactly right, Yeah, and so, but we do know what
he said in seventeen seventy five, and then when he
said in seventeen ninety eight, and except for things, they
were the ministerial troops, the troops sent by not the
evil king yet that came the next year, but the
evil sinister forces behind Parliament sent to America. They were
(19:24):
the forces of Parliament here to oppress the people. In
seventeen ninety eight. They were the British and we were
the Americans.
Speaker 1 (19:32):
Right, It was a little more simple than that.
Speaker 2 (19:34):
But it's sort of wonderful to see how the central
narrative remains the same. That's an example, but a very
famous one. But then this exhibition is I think one
thing that people don't think of is there were refugees
from the day after Lexington and conquered. That is, people
(19:56):
who are sympathetic to royal authority having to assent, leave
or flee the countryside and come to Boston, where there
were British troops to protect them in a form of
government still in existence. On the other side, many, even
most of the population of Boston wanted to get out
(20:19):
of town. There were still a town then, and so
still were pep who could pass back and forth in
a system set up, but there was sort of an
exchange of populations. But at the end of the day
on April nineteenth, there essentially was royal authority only in
Boston itself, and the countryside was aroused. A siege army
(20:46):
was coming into being, like on the spot. I think
the contingency of this is striking long term, going to
move towards self government and perhaps independence here. But the
events that unfolded on April nineteenth and everything that followed,
(21:06):
no one could predict that was going to happen, and
I think it was truly shocking to most people, whether
they were sympathetic, whether or not, this had was largely unexpected.
Speaker 1 (21:19):
Could you imagine this playing out today here in the
city of Boston. I mean, when you think about that
you would literally have people in Boston, you know, was
siding with one side, moving out to Watertown in Arlington
and trying to drive down Route too with everything they've got,
you know, China head to Metro West, some people coming in.
It's just it's it's unfathomable to me as a twenty
(21:43):
first century citizen, but it happens all the time all
over the world.
Speaker 2 (21:47):
And then just a few weeks later in June of
seventeen seventy five, Yeah, there's one of the largest battles
of the revolution as fought. Essentially it's then a separate town, Charlestown,
but essentially with inside of everyone and during that battle,
with terrible casualties, amazingly high casualties for the number of
(22:09):
people involved. It's sort of been described as a series
of blunders redeemed by heroism. I mean, people were as
brave as people can be and just made on both
sides mistake after mistake. But during that battle the town
of Charlestown was burnt down. There you have the people
(22:34):
living in Charlestown are essentially refugees at war, refugees exactly
as we understand and see them in documentaries or television
news or hear about them and radio news that that
happened right here. And I'll just tell you one more
just thing in our exhibit. That's sort of powerful because
(22:56):
often as wonderful as these manuscripts are, artifacts speak to
people in a way that is something held or worn
by someone from the eighteenth century in a way that
physical artifact. And one of the things are this is
brilliant letter by Abigail Adams who could see the Battle
(23:18):
of Bunker Hill from a hilltop near their home in
Braintreen on Quinsy. But next to it are two little
silver spoons. Kind of catch your attention. Well, a young
woman with a wonderful New England name relief ellery is
living in Charlestown. People are told that there's going to
(23:38):
be an attack on the new Overnight fortifications, that she
should leave her with their family. And during the course
of just getting up and fleeing, there are things on
the breakfast table. This is about the time of day
this happens, and she picks up two uns and puts
(24:01):
them in her pocket, which is almost like an apron
with a pocket in it that women wore at home
and at the end of the day their house has
been burned, all of our possessions gone except these two spoons.
That's all that remains. And that is something that we
(24:23):
don't think of in the American Revolution. That's sort of
what seems like a modern level of destruction and loss
is affecting those people exactly as people are affected today.
Speaker 1 (24:35):
How can people find you? Where can they learn more
about the exhibit? Do you need tickets or so on
and so forth.
Speaker 2 (24:41):
Let me briefly explain. The exhibit is open free to
the public six days a week, Monday through Saturday, and
on into the evening on Tuesdays. Okay, I think it's
good to look at our website because there'll be special events,
gallery tours, and lectures. They're all so are occasionally things
(25:01):
that change our hours of operation. But we'll be here
with this exhibition because we have so many wonderful things.
The story and the exhibition will will be the same
throughout the end of the year, end of seventeen twenty five.
That shows you where I live, but it all also
(25:23):
be but we can exchange things, so we can tell
the same story through different documents. So we can show
documents much longer than you would normally do, and a
museum exhibition, so I'm here practically all that time and
sometimes longer. My name's Peter Drummy. I'm a historian and
(25:44):
library and here at the Historical Society. I love everything
we have. But this is a brilliant story, and it
really is a story, and it's told through the voices
of people. And I'm happy to help anybody in any
way that I can to find out more about that.
I love that.
Speaker 1 (26:03):
Peter, thank you for your time today. Thank you for
your passion and your desire to keep our nation's history alive.
It means so much. And please go check out the
exhibit of the Massachusetts Historical Society on Boylston Street in Boston. Peter,
thank you for your time, my pleasure. Have a safe
and healthy weekend. Please join me again next week for
(26:23):
another edition of the show. I'm Nicole Davis from WBZ
News Radio on iHeartRadio.
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