New England Historic Genealogical Society NERFC Fellow Update

Visit  ‘Indifferent to the world’ at the New England Historic Genealogical Society to get an overview of the research done there by NERFC Fellow Peter Walker. Thanks to Scottt Steward for sharing Peter's post about his work at NEHGS.

The Rev. Samuel Fayerweather (1725-1781)
in the NEHGS Fine Art Collection

Visiting Researchers Inspire CHS Displays 

The CHS is pleased to continue its partnership with the New England Regional Fellowship Consortium (NERFC), and to host visiting scholars whose research is supported by grants from NERFC. In December of 2017, two NERFC scholars shared their work during brown-bag lunches with CHS members and staff. 

Shira Lurie, Doctoral Candidate at the University of Virginia, presented her project Politics at the Poles: Liberty Poles and the Popular Struggle for the New Republic. She explained that during the 1790s, an old way of protest in American politics re-emerged. Federalists, who dominated New England, were cast by Republicans as autocratic elitists who ran roughshod over the Republican minority. In protest, the Republicans revived the Revolutionary-era practice of erecting liberty poles in town squares. The poles stood as symbols of opposition to tyranny. Federalists denounced this as an illegitimate form of political expression. In their view, the vote and the legislative process were the only proper way to express dissent. They worried that Republican opposition would undermine federal authority and drag the country back into the chaos of the 1780s. Local Federalists tore down the poles, leading to violence, acerbic press coverage, and legal action.

Kathrinne Duffy (below), doctoral candidate at Brown University, is working on a project entitled Skulls, Selves, and Showmanship: Itinerant Phrenologists in Nineteenth-Century America. Phrenology was a controversial and influential science in the mid-1800s. Proponents believed that the shape of one’s cranium revealed one’s character — a materialist conception of the self that gave rise to novel modes of introspection and observation. To promote their science of the mind, practical phrenologists traveled from town to town, offering lectures and examinations. Ms. Duffy sketched the backgrounds of several prominent phrenologists, and the reaction of audiences, ranging from credulity to skepticism.

Both presentations have inspired future displays at the CHS. Ms. Lurie’s research prompted the CHS Collections staff to plan a display about liberty poles and their depiction in early America; we have examples of them popping up on items as varied as swords and currency. Similarly, the CHS will mount a display of ephemera related to phrenology in the 1800s. Look for these displays at the CHS this year. Both displays will be mounted in our Nawrot History Nook, just outside the Waterman Research Center.

Please visit chs.org/events to learn about upcoming NERFC scholar presentations, or sign up to be notified of future events via email.

A New Baker Library Exhibit Explores the Polaroid Corporation

At the Intersection of Science and Art

Edwin H. Land and the Polaroid Corporation: The Formative Years

Baker Library recently opened a new exhibition, At the Intersection of Science and Art: Edwin H. Land and the Polaroid Corporation: The Formative Years, organized by Baker Library Special Collections. The exhibition is on display until July 28, 2017 in the North Lobby, Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Harvard Business School.

Polaroid's Land Camera

At the Intersection of Science and Art draws from the wealth of material in the Polaroid corporate archives at Baker Library, bringing into focus the formative years and trajectory of the Polaroid Corporation and the career of Edwin H. Land. A scientist and inventor, entrepreneur and CEO, aesthete and humanist, Land fostered invention and creativity within the culture of a small, science-based research and manufacturing company. He argued that the industrial process should be “dedicated to the discernment of deep human needs.” His philosophical insights into those needs coupled with an eye for beauty and artistic expression guided the groundbreaking research ambitions of Polaroid—an iconic, 20th-century startup company whose pioneering achievements in optics and engineering continue to have profound technological, social, and artistic significance.

Visit http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/polaroid to view the on-line exhibition and to find materials for further research.

Please contact Baker Library Special Collections at histcollref@hbs.edu if you would like to request a copy of the exhibition catalog or to learn more.

For more information about Baker Library Special Collections visit www.library.hbs.edu/hc/.

Contact: Laura Linard, Director, Baker Library Special Collections, 617-495-6360, llinard@hbs.edu.

New Exhibition at Baker Library

Baker Library recently opened a new exhibition, Georges F. Doriot: Educating Leaders, Building Companies. The exhibition will run through August 3, 2015 in the North Lobby, Baker Library | Bloomberg Center, Harvard Business School.

The exhibition and related website examines the career of Georges F. Doriot, an educator and a founder of the modern venture capital industry. During his 40-year tenure at Harvard Business School, the charismatic professor taught business and leadership in his celebrated Manufacturing course to nearly 7,000 students. He realized his dream of establishing the first Master of Business Administration program in Europe by helping establish the European Institute of Business Administration (INSEAD). Doriot learned the art of bringing science and industry together in World War II, where he was responsible for the creation of new products for the welfare of US soldiers. For decades, as president of American Research & Development Corporation (ARD), an early venture capital firm founded in 1946, Doriot fostered the development of startup companies that focused on emerging technologies from computers to pacemakers.

George F. Doriot in classroom, 1963.

The exhibition features selections from the Georges F. Doriot Collection—on permanent loan to Baker Library from the French Cultural Center, Boston—that reveal the ideas and ideals of a man who played a pioneering role in the emergence of the postwar entrepreneurial economy.

Visit http://www.library.hbs.edu/hc/doriot  to view the on-line exhibition and to find materials for further research.

Please contact Baker Library Historical Collections at histcollref@hbs.edu if you would like to request a copy of the exhibition catalog.

For more information about Baker Library Historical Collections visit www.library.hbs.edu/hc/.

Puritanism at the Boston Athenaeum

Rachel Trocchio arrived at the Athenæum yesterday and though jet-lagged, she energetically started studying books by William Perkins that are part of the Kings Chapel Collection. Enrolled at the University of California, Berkeley, Rachel will be at the Athenæum through next week to conduct research for her dissertation, "The Puritan Sublime." She studies late sixteenth- and early seventeenth-century theological works through the lens of American Puritanism and plans to return after the holidays. We look forward to hearing about what she learns.

Fellows at the Connecticut Historical Society

This summer, CHS hosted two New England Regional Fellowship scholars with two very different topics. Brendan Gillis, who is completing his Ph.D. at Indiana University, spent two weeks in the Research Center concentrating on our various collections of Justice of the Peace papers and court records from 1760-1800.  He was asking two questions: (1) Did American magistrates begin “molding” English law and tradition to fit their needs in the colonies and when? And (2) How did those practices change because of, and did they have any influence on,  the Revolution? Interestingly, Brendan is finding that although many magistrates served “His Royal Majesty”, they often interpreted the laws to fit the current situation without regard for tradition.

Christine Groeger, from Harvard University, was studying  the rise of credentials between 1870 and 1940. In the 18^th and 19^th centuries, people often apprenticed or learned a trade on the job.  Sometime in the 19^th century, it was important to have a degree or a certificate or license to prove one had the requisite skills for a job. Through her research Christine plans on documenting the development of the need for credentials, looking at time, occupation, and gender as determining factors.

And the 2013 NERFC Fellows Are.....

Kristin Allukian. Working to Become: Women, Work, and Literary Legacy in American Women's Postbellum Literature

Michael Blaakman. Speculation Nation: Land Speculators and Land Mania in Post-Revolutionary America

Richard Boles. Dividing the Faith: The Rise of Racially Segregated Northern Churches, 1730-1850

Anna Bonewitz. Fashioning the British Empire: Fashion, Imagery and Colonial Exchange in Eighteenth-Century New England

Susan de Guardiola. Figures and Changes: The Evolution of the Cotillon in France, England, and America, 1760-1840

Marian Desrosiers. John Banister and the Influence of a Colonial Newport Merchant on the Economy of Pre-Revolutionary America

Russell Fehr. Anxious Electorate: City Politics in Mid-1920s America

Benjamin Irvin. "Invalids" and Independence: Disability, Masculinity, Class, and Citizenship among Veterans of the Revolutionary War

Kathryn Irving. The American Schools for Idiotic Children: Disability and Development in the Nineteenth Century

Noam Maggor. Brahmin Capitalism: Gentlemanly Bankers, Urban Populists, and the Origins of the Modern American Economy

Karen Murray. Roxbury: African-American History, Gender, and the Politics of Urban Poverty

Steven Pitt. City upon the Atlantic Tides: Puritans, Merchants, and the Seafaring Community of Boston, 1689-1763

Ashley Smith. "We Have Never Not Been Here": Place, History, and Belonging in Native New England

Each Fellow receives a $5,000 award to visit at least three of the participating NERFC institutions for no less than two weeks' worth of research on their topic. The thirteen fellowships handed out this year are the most to date.