Christmas 1918

Christmas of 1918 should have been jubilant--the war was over, soldiers were starting to come home and women were on the verge of gaining suffrage. But sadly, dark shadows loomed over festivities and revelry that year, as the aftermath of the war and the widespread Influenza and tuberculosis left hundreds of thousands dead, sick or wounded. The Nation’s central relief organization was the American Red Cross, which desperately needed funding, so they launched a membership drive called the ‘Christmas Roll Call’ from 16 through 23 December, 1918.

“When the United States entered the World War the people appointed the Red Cross as its steward to minister to the wants of human beings in distress whenever aid and succor were needed.

… This is in brief the service work of the Red Cross expressed in unemotional statistics. The real work of aiding suffering humanity, of nursing the ill, and ministering to those in want – the service of relieving the worries of our men overseas- the thousand and one things done in a day’s work- all that can not be told in numerals.

But to continue this work for humanity, to serve as steward for the American people, will require the united support of all Americans. With this end in view, the Red Cross will hold it’s second annual Christmas Roll call during the week of December 16 to 23^rd, when it is hoped that every one will renew the nation-wide pledge of last year to uphold the flag – a vow taken by 22,000,000 million adults and 8,000,000 children.

Some day, and that day seems near at hand, the world will wish to spend as much effort and gold for the prevention of war as it does now for the amelioration of its infinite ills. At this hour, however, the American Red Cross is the sacrament oT the nations, the visible expression of the mother-heart of the race, the beacon and the hope of the world's wounded and storm-tossed everywhere. Membership in the American Red Cross defines and honors the members and scatters healing where healing is sorely needed.” said the Advocate of Peace in December of 1918.

The Broadsides created to promote the 'Christmas Roll Call' or Membership drive of 1918 are some of the most beautiful pieces of 20^th century ephemera. The MHS houses some of the famous broadsides (or posters) created for the Roll Call. The posters’ popularity eclipsed the roll call itself--they are perhaps the most beautiful images ever associated with the Holiday Season. The artists that created these images were some of the best of the time, working pro-bono for the Red Cross effort, such as Harrison Fisher, who created a new stereotype for American woman as bold and beautiful, known as the “Fisher girls.

Christmas a century ago reminds us to be thankful for our blessings, and to continue to support those who work tirelessly to end suffering and alleviate pain, towards the betterment of all humans and life on this shared earth.

The MHS will be closed from 24 December through 1 January, but we welcome you to visit the Library during regular hour through Saturday, December 22^nd to enjoy exploring our collections including our wonderful Ephemera collection of broadsides, posters and greeting cards.

A lovely day for a cup of Tea!

"This is the most magnificent Movement of all. There is a Dignity, a Majesty, a Sublimity, in this last Effort of the Patriots, that I greatly admire. The People should never rise, without doing something to be remembered -- something notable And striking. This Destruction of the Tea is so bold, so daring, so firm, intrepid and inflexible, and it must have so important Consequences, and so lasting, that I cant but consider it as an Epocha in History." (John Adams diary entry for 17 December 1773)

On this day, 245 years ago, tea leaves washed up on the shore of Dorchester Neck. Some of those tea leaves were collected and put into a glass bottle for safe keeping. Why? Because inhabitants of Boston were very proud of what they had brewing in the harbor the night before! Read about the events leading up to the Boston Tea Party at the Coming of the American Revolution: The Boston Tea Party.

Along with the tea leaves collected at Dorchester Neck, the MHS has 4 relics related to the Boston Tea Party inlcuding tea caddies said to have been emptied at the Tea Party and the Edes Family Tea Party punch bowl. The MHS also holds the Boston Tea Party meeting minutes from 29-30 November 1773 and 14-16 December 1773. 

For more information, visit the MHS library with or e-mail us at library@masshist.org.

Barefoot Families and Demon Rum: The Work of an Urban Missionary

In June 1854, the Boston City Missionary Society appointed a Methodist Episcopal clergyman named Luman Boyden to serve as missionary to the poor in East Boston. The 48-year-old Boyden (pictured above, about ten years later) had had a distinguished 20-year career as a minister in Sudbury, Oxford, Dorchester, Chelsea, Fitchburg, Holliston, Spencer, Roxbury, Salem, and Waltham. The Society offered him a salary of $650 a year, and he would earn an additional $200 preaching at Union Chapel in East Boston.

Earlier this year, the MHS acquired four manuscript journals Boyden kept during this time, 1854-1863, primarily documenting his missionary work. He wrote in them every day and described, in compelling detail, the poverty in East Boston, as well as the ravages of alcoholism, domestic violence, other crimes, suicides, and illnesses such as tuberculosis, smallpox, and typhoid fever. Boyden visited the homes of Protestant, Irish Catholic, African-American, and immigrant families, many suffering from terrible privation. His journals are a fascinating social history of the city and a record of 19th-century urban life in general.

Rev. Boyden hit the ground running. His first day on the job was 1 July 1854, and just 17 days in, he was attending the family of a Mr. Rose, who had attempted to kill himself by cutting his own throat with a razor blade. Two days later, Boyden visited a woman “putrid with disease,” a young woman dying of consumption, and the family of a suicide victim. He was shocked and horrified by the things he saw. When three people he’d met were arrested for murder, he wrote disbelievingly, “Did not think Monday that I was talking with those who would so soon be considered murderers.”

The pages of Boyden’s journals are filled with daily tragedies. He visited multiple families a day, and while his compassion for the poor was clearly genuine, he was not a disinterested party. One of his primary goals was conversion, and he distributed Bibles and religious tracts and proselytized about sin and salvation. He used language like “den of pollution” and “hive of iniquity” to describe some homes. About others, he simply wrote, “There Satan appears to reign.” As you can imagine, he encountered resistance from Irish Catholic residents, the dominant immigrant group in the neighborhood.

The journals contain a wealth of information, including names and addresses, and some entries go on for multiple pages. In one, Boyden paints a vivid picture of a tenement building as he moves floor to floor, and you also get a sense of his attitude toward the tenants.

Went into Bee Hive No 2 on Havre Street. It is a large old building in the rear of Bee Hive No 1. In each house 16 Tenements which rent for 1 ¼ dollar each week or $65.00 a year. The amount of rent for each year 1040.00. The Hive No 2 is not worth beside land $400.00. […] The houses are owned by a shoe firm in the city & the Tenants make shoes for the firm so the rent is secure & to obtain work the Tenements are filled. […] As I descended flight after flight I found others of the same class, poor, ignorant, depraved & who must be saved or lost forever.

Boyden reserved his fiercest animosity for alcohol. In the margins alongside his text, he scribbled headings like “Rum & Poverty,” “Rum & Beggary,” “Rumsellers Abomination,” etc. Other headings include “Motherless Boy,” “Barefoot Family,” “Poor & Proud,” “Blind Girl in Waltham,” “Furious Woman,” “Singular Case,” and “Children Under Table.”

Speaking of children, many of those Boyden met on his rounds did not attend or had never attended school. Boyden strongly advocated for the education of all children. On 28 September 1854, he wrote about the Nute family.

House kept quite neat, children dressed neatly but in consequence of being colored they are suffering by a most oppressive arrangement. Their children are allowed to attend the primary school with white children but as soon as they become qualified to enter the grammar school, they are not admitted to the schools in E. Boston, but go to the colored school [the Abiel Smith School] in Belknap St about 2 miles from home. In doing this they are obliged to cross the Ferry & pay two cents toll each way. They have three who attend the school in Belknap St at an expense of ferriage of 12 cents a day. […] They feel afflicted that while the dirtiest, vilest white children are admitted that theirs are excluded. Say they have applied to the General School Com[mitte]e but have accomplished nothing. I am resolved to plead their cause.

Incidentally, less than one year later, the Massachusetts legislature passed the first law in the United States prohibiting segregation in public schools. The campaign was led by Benjamin F. Roberts, whose children had also been excluded from the white schools near their home. Roberts had previously lost his case at the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court in Roberts v. City of Boston (1850).

In his journals, Boyden often recorded follow-up visits, so we know how some of the stories developed, who lived and who died, who went to jail or the almshouse, who converted, who repented, and who didn’t. For example, here’s an amazing passage that caught my eye. On 20 March 1857, Boyden visited an African-American family on Bennington Street, consisting of Mrs. Russell, her adult daughter, and the daughter’s two children.

[The daughter] is very black & I noticed the infant in her arms was far from being black. I asked if her husband was a pious man? She said I may as well tell the truth, I have no husband. I inquired is not the father to that child a white man? She made no reply, excepting a coarse laugh. I told her that it belonged to the father of the child to support it & I could not help her till he had been seen & if he had anything compelled to aid. […] She has another child about 6 years old the same color. I spoke to her plainly of her wickedness. She said with apparent anger, it is Gods will or it would not be so. The old Lady seemed to feel deeply the ruin of her only child.

Miss Russell told Rev. Boyden the name of her baby’s father, who was white and had a wife and other children. Boyden said he would visit the man, although I couldn’t determine if he ever did. Unfortunately, when he returned to the Russell home about a month later . . .

Her daughter in quite a rage because several weeks since I reproved her as she think[s] to[o] severely. She then said it was the Lords will. I told her it was the work of the devil. She replied that she knew that the Lord made her & he did every child. Today she said the child died several weeks ago.

While most entries relate to Boyden’s missionary and ministerial work, some give us glimpses into his personal life. He and his wife Mary had two children—at the start of the first journal, Helen Maria was 24 and Jeremiah Wesley 15. There had been another daughter, Mary Elizabeth, but she died in 1837 at the age of three. Boyden wrote about her several times.

Luman Boyden died in 1876 at the age of 70. His wife Mary lived until 1897. Both parents outlived their son Jeremiah, who served as a U.S. Navy surgeon in the Civil War before dying of yellow fever at 27. Daughter Helen worked as a teacher, married Thomas Warren Thayer, and died in 1922 at 92 years old.

P.S. Interestingly, Boyden frequently referred in his journals to another missionary for the Boston City Missionary Society, Armeda Gibbs. Gibbs was an abolitionist who helped escaped slaves and is probably best known as the first female nurse for the Union army during the Civil War. Sure enough, Boyden noted on 6 August 1862, “Heard Miss Gibbs offered to go as nurse in the army.”

Women at Sea: Ann Johnson and Abbie Clifford

In 1849, the ship Lanerk sailed from Boston to California as part of the Gold Rush. On the ship was a clergyman named Truman Ripley Hawley, and the MHS recently acquired a transcript of his diary of the journey. It contains a lot of terrific detail, but one particular digression caught my eye. On 4 August 1849, off the west coast of South America, the Lanerk met the ship Christopher Mitchell, captained by Thomas Sullivan of New Jersey. Sullivan told Hawley about the following “amusing incident”:

He [Sullivan] sailed from Nantucket with his crew, shipped from different states in the union, only one of whom before the mast had ever been to sea before. On the voyage out all had done their duty, and all had been in the boats as usual. One of the crew was taken sick […] when one of the crew came aft […] and informed the captain that one of the crew in the forecastle who went by the name of George Johnson was a female! It very much surprised him, as well as all on board, and the man was told to go forward and send George into the cabin. He did so, and George made his appearance. The Capt. after interrogating her gave up a birth [sic] in his cabin for her and immediately put back to Peyta [Paita, Peru], gave her $100 and sent her home on board a vessel.

I learned from Eric Jay Dolin’s Leviathan: The History of Whaling in America (pp. 237-40), as well as other sources, that the woman was 19-year-old Ann Johnson of Rochester, N.Y. Her identity was discovered in July 1849 when (ahem) some of her clothes fell away in a feverish delirium. Why had Johnson dressed as a man and joined the crew of the Christopher Mitchell? Well, her story made the newspapers, but contemporary accounts varied widely, and historians haven’t been able to come to a consensus. Here’s Sullivan’s explanation:

She said in her story that she was decoyed away from home, Rochester, N.Y. by a man with whom she lived a few months when he left her, that she then went to her home but was forbid to enter by her father, that she then went and dressed in boy’s clothes, and went to ride horse on the canal, towing boats; that afterwards she went into a shipping office and asked for a birth [sic] on board a ship in the capacity of cabin boy, but finding no encouragement consented to ship as a youngster in a whaler. That she was sent to Nantucket and engaged by the owners of this vessel. Romantic truly!

I can’t say whether this version is definitive, but Hawley was hearing it from the captain himself only one month after it happened. Amazingly, Johnson had been able to maintain her disguise for seven months!

The story of Ann Johnson reminded me of another female sailor I learned about earlier this year when I cataloged the letters of Augustus Percival. Her name was Abbie Clifford, and she sailed with her husband, Captain Edwin Clifford, on a brig that bore her name. The Cliffords were from Maine. Percival served as their first mate in 1869 and mentioned them often in letters to his wife back in East Orleans, Mass.

The Abbie Clifford was engaged in the China trade, and in the fall of 1869, the ship was anchored at Shanghai waiting for a freight of tea. Percival occupied the cabin adjoining the Cliffords, and the three often ate and talked late into the evening on a variety of subjects, including religion. His letters reveal an unmistakable affection for the “free hearted” couple and an admiration, especially, for Mrs. Clifford.

Mrs Clifford is quite a Sailor, has been over 10 years with the Capt and I dont know as she has missed a voyage since he has been Master. She is a fine looking woman, and very pleasant, and quite a talker. [24 September 1869]

She lets me see all the things she buys on shore and I like her much, and we have all got along first rate so far, and hope we shall continue the same, but I know he is a very timid man & very nervous, but then he has much to worry him. [5 October 1869]

Every day brings us nearer a Charter, but he is almost discouraged at times, while She is always looking on the bright side, which is proper. [9 October 1869]

The end of November 1869 found the Abbie Clifford at Swatow (now called Shantou) chartering to take hundreds of “coolies” to Singapore. Percival’s intimacy with the Cliffords had only grown. He described the captain in fraternal terms and continued to praise Mrs. Clifford for her seafaring abilities, as well as her domestic qualities.

Mrs. C. generally looks after his Books, and is very good in figures and is a very good Navigator also and works time for the Capt or did on the passage out. [4 December 1869] 

It seems good to live in such a friendly way, and as it seems good to have some one to confide in, I say many things to Mrs. that I do not to others, and she is very good to me, will sew on a Button, offered to mend my Socks, &c. [6 December 1869]

By December 1870, Percival had moved on to another ship. But events of 1872 proved his admiration for Abbie Clifford very well-founded.

That spring, off the coast of Pernambuco, Brazil, yellow fever ravaged the Abbie Clifford, killing at least five crew members, including the steward, first mate, and Captain Clifford. When Percival heard the news, he wrote to his wife about Mrs. Clifford: “I pity her, but trust she will bear up under her trials with Christian fortitude.”

That she did. After her husband’s death on 5 April 1872, Mrs. Clifford (according to some accounts, suffering from yellow fever herself) gamely took command of the ship and sailed the thousands of miles north to New York, with the help of those men well enough to work. On the way, the crew withstood a five-day gale above Cape Hatteras that destroyed several of the ship’s spars and sails. They arrived at their destination on 12 May 1872.

Abbie Clifford’s exploits were recounted in glowing terms in newspaper articles of the day, like this one from as far away as Australia:

And as early as 1883, she was profiled in books like Daughters of America; or, Women of the Century (pp. 716-7) alongside some of the greatest 18th- and 19th-century American women. The Illustrated History of Kennebec County, Maine (pp. 757-8), published in 1892, mentions Abbie Clifford’s second marriage in 1877 to George Brown and goes on to describe her like this:

Mrs. Brown is a lady of genial bearing, a broad, well disciplined mind, and rare courage. She made several sea voyages with Captain Clifford, who commanded vessels in the merchant service. While on these voyages she studied navigation as a pastime, and when the necessity came of putting her knowledge of chart and compass to the test, her courage was not wanting.

Abbie J. Longfellow, later Clifford, later Brown, was born in 1839, which would make her only 32 or 33 at the time of her triumphal return to New York at the helm of the Abbie Clifford. She died in 1901.