By Susan Martin, Collection Services

The Everett-Boyle papers fill only half of a narrow box here at the MHS, but they include a lot of terrific material from these two interrelated families. One of the family members represented in the collection is Samuel Williams Everett (1820-1862), who served during the Civil War as a surgeon in the Illinois Infantry and later as brigade surgeon. (The Everett family is originally from Boston, which is why their papers happen to be here.)

Unfortunately, we don’t have any of Everett’s war-time correspondence—at least not intact. Some letter fragments obviously date from that time, but the only complete letters by him were written between 1835 and 1851. What the collection does contain, however, are many of his fantastic drawings, beginning when he was a teenager and continuing into the war years. Here are some of my favorites:

“Camp at Lamine river, near Otterville.”

“View up the Ohio at Cairo.”

“Fort Prentiss. Cairo.”

“Military Ball.”

It’s not just Everett’s artwork that makes his letters so entertaining. He was also a gifted storyteller. Even when narrating the mundane happenings of his life, he elaborated and exaggerated for comedic effect. In one letter from early 1851, he wrote about how his coat and some surgical instruments were stolen from his room, and the whole thing reads like a whodunit, complete with a whimsical “royal we”: “On that evil day the sun shone brightly, & we were tempted out to our dinner without a coat, which garment was left sweetly slumbering with the Case of Instruments in its pocket.” The story is illustrated in several panels, ending with an image of two empty nooses captioned: “View of the gallows, upon which the thieves are yet unhung.”

Everett’s description of his brother’s wedding is hilarious:

The parson retreated to avoid being knocked over in the rush of congratulation and kissing. The latter part, it was previously agreed, was to have been omitted at the particular request of the mother, the bride and the bridesmaids; but as in several rehearsals of the performance the rule had been relaxed, so it was at the ceremony and was extended to every young lady present; and repeated upon the discovery that one had been omitted.

(It was either at this wedding or shortly before that he met the bride’s cousin, his future wife, Mary Smith. He described her this way: “In spite of her common name, an uncommonly pretty girl.”)

In another letter, Everett related a humorous—though frightening—incident involving a runaway carriage, when he lost control of his horse’s reins as it raced down the street and sent bystanders scurrying for cover: “Sounds of ‘woe’ were raised from all quarters & sundry individuals appeared willing to sacrifice their lives in trying to stop the runaway, but they only stopped themselves upon re-considering the question.”

Other creative touches make his letters a real pleasure to read. When writing to his family, he addressed different paragraphs to different family members with headings like: “The Misses E.” “Anybody.” “Mrs. E.” “Ditto.” Along the top of one letter, he wrote a note that actually made me laugh out loud: “Nothing worth stopping to read in the street.”

Everett also had a talent for rebuses. Anyone care to take a stab at solving either of these in the comments section below? (Hint: the second snippet is from a published work not original to Everett.)

Everett was shot and killed at the Battle of Shiloh in Tennessee on 6 Apr. 1862, not even one year into his military service. Multiple sources, including The Medical and Surgical History of the War of the Rebellion, identify him as the first Union medical officer killed in action. His “talent for drawing” was noted in his obituary in the 1864 Transactions of the American Medical Association (pp.212-4).

By Susan Martin, Collection Services

Earlier this year, the MHS acquired the scrapbook of Eleanor Shumway, a teenager living in Newton, Massachusetts in the early 20th century. We see a lot of scrapbooks here, but this one is unique because Eleanor annotated each page, making the volume a kind of personal diary, as well.

Eleanor Shumway was born in 1895, the second daughter of salesman Harold H. Shumway and Amy Louise (Moors) Shumway. She had two sisters, Marjorie and Helen. One hundred years ago, when she kept this scrapbook, Eleanor was a student at Newton High School. She attended parties, dances, and concerts; participated in school sports; and gushed about her favorite actors and actresses. Pasted carefully to each page are ticket stubs, programs, invitations, party favors, dance cards, postcards, photographs, newspaper clippings, etc., mostly dating from 1908-1915. The volume also contains some original pencil sketches, including “Works of Art. Representing me.” And next to each item is a handwritten note by Eleanor describing her activities in detail.

Eleanor wrote about popular party games, like Winkums, Drop the Handkerchief, Hearts, and something called Buzz. She and her friends also played cards, bean bag games, and guessing games; ducked for apples; strung pumpkin seeds; told ghost stories; made fudge and molasses candy; ate Jack Horner pie; went skating; and participated in “theatricals.” At one party, the guests performed in blackface, and Eleanor got a prize “for acting the craziest.”

The slang is priceless, and reading through the scrapbook, you can almost hear Eleanor’s voice. She often had “piles of fun,” “great sport,” or “a peach of a time.” Plays she attended were “horrid,” “darling,” or “perfectly slick.” Her “chums” were a “corking bunch.”

But Eleanor’s life was not without its drama. One letter, written by her friend Ruth W. after the two had fallen out, reads:

What was it about Alfred Pratt that Eugenie didn’t know. Please tell me what I said or did to make you & Eugenie not even look at me. I’m awfully sorry and I didn’t mean what ever you heard….Please tell me why you wont look or speak to me.

There was also the occasional mortification:

This note fell out of my History Book over at Charlestown and a gentleman very politely handed it to Marjorie. We nearly died!

This scrapbook is not just a personal account of one precocious American teenager’s daily life, but a window into social history and a record of dramatic technological changes. Eleanor also described riding in a Parkhurst car, as well as eating a meal “made by electricity” at the House of Edison Light in Newton Centre.

To see the Eleanor Shumway scrapbook, or any of our other scrapbooks, please visit the MHS library.

By Tracy Potter

Over the last several weeks in Spotlight on Collections I discussed the life and influence of the Cabot family, the Lodge family, Henry Cabot Lodge (HCL), and Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. (HCL II).  Sadly, this week will be my final installment on the Lodges.  To close up the series I will look to HCL II, to his connection with the Society, and to the many collections of his papers available at the Society. 

Like his grandfather, HCL II became a member of the Society early in his career.  In 1947 the nominating committee and MHS council elected HCL II a resident member of the Society.  As the beginning of his membership corresponded with his first term as U.S. senator, HCL II was not available much of the time to take part in many of the member meetings and events.  Although his work in the Senate and then as an ambassador took him away from the normal duties of a Society member, HCL II contributed to the Society by donating important Lodge family papers.  These papers included the previously mentioned two collections of Henry Cabot Lodge papers, the Lodge-Roosevelt correspondence, the John Ellerton Lodge papers, and the papers of his father George Cabot Lodge.  HCL II also donated many other family papers such as correspondence between Henry Adams and Matilda Elizabeth Frelinghuysen Davis in the Adams-Lodge correspondence, the John Davis scrapbook (HCL II’s maternal grandfather), and the George Cabot Lodge collection.

By 1975, as HCL II’s political and diplomatic career was winding down, HCL II retired as a member of the Society.   Although his membership ended, HCL II continued a relationship with the Society by donating a very large collection of his own papers in 1978.  HCL II’s papers, the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers, is made up of over 66 cartons of material, most of which are stored offsite.  This collection contains letters, speeches, scrapbooks, photographs, audio tapes, newsreels, and memorabilia concerning Lodge’s career as a reporter for the New York Herald Tribune, Massachusetts state representative, United States senator, and representative to the United Nations. Although the Society microfilmed a small portion of this collection (Cartons 30-35 and 37), the majority of the collection is stored offsite and is available for researchers to view with advance notice. 

Upon his death in 1985, HCL II bequeathed a slightly smaller set of his papers, the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers II  which included papers concerning his service in World War II, his diplomatic career in Vietnam and the United Nations, and his 1952 Senate race against John F. Kennedy.  The entirety of this collection, consisting of fourteen cartons, four document boxes, and one oversize box, has been microfilmed.  The original papers are stored off-site, but researchers can make use of the microfilm edition, which is stored onsite for researcher access.

Along with each collection of his personal papers, HCL II also donated a number of photographs.  For preservation purposes, thirteen boxes, two oversize boxes, and thirty-nine volumes of photographs were removed from the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers and renamed the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. photographs.  This collection includes loose photographs, scrapbooks, and photograph albums that depict his political career and family life.  The 591 photographs removed from the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. papers II were renamed the Henry Cabot Lodge, Jr. photographs II .  This collection contains photographs of HCL II, portraits of Lodge family members and political figures, photographs of Emily Sears Lodge’s charity work in Vietnam, and photos of manuscripts.  Both of these collections are available for researcher use in the library.

Although in different ways, both HCL and HCL II contributed to the Society.  They helped shape its history, its collection, and its reputation.  In their support for the Society both men demonstrated their belief in the importance of preserving history, whether it be books, manuscripts, artifacts, or photographs.  I would like to think that their understanding of the importance of history was a key factor in making them so successful in politics and diplomacy, but I will have to leave the verification of that to the historians.