Did you feel an earthquake in Boston on April 5, 2024? Depending on where you were at the time, you might have felt nothing or you might have noticed a mild tremor. While we think of Boston earthquakes as a punchline and damaging quakes as a California problem, that hasn’t always been the case. Imagine an earthquake that comes on with the sound of rolling thunder, one where the ground heaved like waves on an angry sea, throwing people to the ground, opening up fissures in the earth, and triggering a tsunami that affects distant shores. This was the experience of Boston during the great Cape Ann earthquake of 1755, and the effects of a similar seismic shock in modern Boston could be simply catastrophic.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/300/

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During the bicentennial celebrations in 1976, Boston bustled with fireworks, concerts, and historical reenactments, while a unique spectacle quietly unfolded at the Old North Church. The iconic lanterns, forever linked to Paul Revere’s midnight ride, were illuminated not by candlelight, but by the distant light of a star some 200 light-years away. This episode explores the technological challenges involved in capturing starlight and converting it into an electrical signal that traveled thousands of miles, as well as the promotional challenges for Hawaiian officials who wanted to feel like part of the bicentennial celebration. Buckle up, as we journey from the volcanic peak of Mauna Kea to the heart of revolutionary Boston, all under the ethereal glow of a distant star.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/299/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Eclipses happen when the moon passes between the sun and the earth during the daytime, briefly blocking the light of the sun from the face of the earth. Over the past few years, observers in the US have been treated to every flavor of solar eclipse: a partial in 2021 when part of the sun’s disc remains unobscured; a total eclipse in 2017, when viewers in the narrow path of totality experienced daytime darkness, and an annular eclipse just last fall, when a ring of fire hung in the cold, bright sky. In honor of the April 2024 total eclipse, I’m sharing a clip that cohost emerita Nikki and I recorded within the first year of this podcast about some of the earliest experiences of eclipses here in Boston, most notably in 1780 and 1806. I’ll also share a clip about an unrelated phenomenon that darkened the skies over Boston for a second time in 1780, then again in 1881, 1950, and several times in the past 5 years. This was no eclipse however, but rather a much more terrestrial effect.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/298/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

This week I’m pleased to be able to share a recent talk from the Shirley-Eustis House in Roxbury about recent archaeological discoveries at Shirley Place that help shed light on the lives of enslaved residents at the 18th century governor’s residence, as well as evidence of the home’s original location before it was moved into its current position in the 19th century. The presenter is past podcast guest Joe Bagley, the archaeologist for the city of Boston, who has led a series of digs at the Shirley house and at the house’s original location across Shirley street. This work is important because written records have only revealed the identity of one of the Africans who were enslaved at the house by Royal Governor William Shirley. In the talk, Bagley explains how discoveries of animal bones, forgotten paving stones, and a cowrie shell connect the dots to the enslaved lives that history otherwise overlooks. He also shares stone flakes and pottery shards that remind us that the history of Shirley Place long predates William Shirley, encompassing the Massachusett people who first called it home.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/297/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

I’m pleased to share a recent talk called “Cotton Mather and the Women He Loved” that was part of the Congregational Library and Archive’s Valentines Day celebration. Helen Gelinas spoke about Cotton Mather and the women he was closest to: his three wives, his daughters, and his sisters, as well as his lifelong mission to understand the biblical Eve, the prototype for all women in his universe. Helen examined who he was behind closed doors, as a husband and father, and she challenged us to reconsider our assumptions that Cotton Mather would have been a tyrant over his wife and a strong disciplinarian who ruled his children with a rod. She also shared the surprising insight that between wives, Cotton Mather was one of Boston’s most eligible widowers, who was pursued aggressively by suitors.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/296/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Presenter Helen K. Gelinas is the Director of Transcription for New England’s Hidden Histories. She holds a Bachelor of Music degree from The Hartt School in Connecticut, and a BA in English and an MA in American Studies from the University of Tübingen, Germany. In Tübingen, she was selected by The Mather Project to be a research and editorial assistant for Volume 5 of Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana. Following the presentation and publication of her essay, “Regaining Paradise: Cotton Mather’s Biblia Americana and the Daughters of Eve,” she earned a Research Fellowship to the Jonathan Edwards Center at Yale Divinity School. She is currently a Ph.D. candidate in Early American Studies at the University of Heidelberg, completing her dissertation entitled, “‘The Spirit and the Bride’: Female Parity, Prophecy, and the Power of the Pen in the Works of Cotton Mather.”

Date: Friday, April 4, 2024

Does your family history include puritans or ancestors who lived in early New England (1620-1850)? Join us for an in-person workshop on Friday, March 29 from 10:00am – 2:00pm at the Congregational Library & Archives with New England’s Hidden Histories Project Director Dr. Tricia Peone and CLA Archivist Billy McCarthy.

Participants will learn how to use the New England’s Hidden Histories digital archive and other resources at the CLA to research family histories and fill in context for understanding the lives of people in the past.

The workshop will include time to conduct your own family history research at the CLA. Participants are encouraged to send requests for specific items they wish to look at in advance. You do not need to be a historian to attend. Anyone interested in learning how to work with and interpret historical records is welcome. However, space is limited.

The cost to attend includes lunch. Email [email protected] with questions about the workshop.

In this episode, I'm joined by Professor Adrian Chastain Weimer, author of the recent book A Constitutional Culture: New England and the Struggle Against Arbitrary Rule in the Restoration Empire. The book focuses on the period just after King Charles II returned the Stuarts to the English throne, during which he when he sought revenge against Boston Puritans for their perceived role in the execution of his father. Decades before the absolute rule of Edmund Andros, the crown sent four royal commissioners to Boston with secret orders that would upend every facet of public life, from voting to worship to the code of laws. Our conversation explores how the colonists defended their liberty within the constitutional system of colonial Massachusetts under restoration rule.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/295/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Adrian Chastain Weimer is a professor of history at Providence College, where her focus is on 17th century New England. Professor Weimer’s work examines the intersection between faith and public institutions, as well as the relationships between early English settlers and the Native communities surrounding them. Her first book, Martyr’s Mirror, examined how New England Puritans and minority religious groups envisioned themselves as persecuted by wider society, and she is currently editing the collected works of Daniel Gookin. A Constitutional Culture weaves together several of these interests, explaining how royalists tried to reinsert themselves into New England culture and government during the crisis that followed King Charles II’s return to the throne during the English restoration.

Despite the name, Plymouth Hospital was a South End institution. As the first training school for Black nurses in segregated Boston, Plymouth provided a needed service to an underserved community, led by a medical pioneer. Dr. Cornelius Nathanial Garland moved to Boston from the deep south to seek opportunity, but while he found opportunity in the Hub, he also found a deeply segregated medical establishment. To fight against this system and provide opportunities for Black Bostonians in medicine, he founded a hospital and nursing school. However, the most radical civil rights leader in Boston would accuse Garland of reinforcing that very same system of segregated medicine.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/294/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

In the last episode, we talked about Boston’s first water sources, from rainfall and natural springs to a simple wooden aqueduct connecting Jamaica Pond to downtown Boston. This time, we’re picking up where episode 292 left off. As Boston grew in the early 19th century, it quickly outgrew its existing water supply, which was dreadfully polluted anyway. The city was left looking outside its boundaries for a water source that was large and plentiful enough to supply the needs of a growing American city, and debating whether that source should be owned by a governmental entity or a private company. This week, we’ll look at the celebration that came with the solution to that problem, and the drawn out debates and hard work that enabled Boston to supply its citizens with a truly public source of water.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/293/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

A 14 mile route on the aqueducts in Newton and Wellesley from my marathon days:

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This is the first of a three-part history of Boston’s water supply. First up is the early history of water in Boston, from its reliance on natural springs to the construction of the first aqueduct. We’ll compare today’s pure, plentiful drinking water to the challenges that early Bostonians faced in obtaining clean water. First, we’ll look at natural springs, hand-dug wells, and cisterns in early Boston, but as the city grew, these sources became increasingly scarce and polluted. Then we’ll talk about new technologies at the turn of the 19th century, such as drilled artesian wells and the Boston Aqueduct, which brought water from Jamaica Pond into the city. However, these new technologies were controlled by private companies, only providing water to the wealthiest Bostonians, leaving most residents desperate for a new, public source of water in the mid-19th century. Later episodes will explore the near-miracle that introducing a public water supply from the Cochituate reservoir represented and the engineering marvel of our modern Quabbin reservoir.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/292/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/

Jane Lyden Rousseau led the team of archaeologists who studied the crypts at Old North Church during a 2023 restoration. While none of the burials were disturbed, her team was able to carefully study the contents of each crypt, learning more about death rituals and burial customs in colonial New England. In a talk she gave as part of the Old North digital speaker series in December, she shared more about the history of the Old North crypts, as well as what her team learned by looking within. Among the questions that will be answered are when Old North buried congregants beneath the floor of the church, how many people had their final resting places there, and how church sextons made room for a staggering number of burials in a very limited space.

Full show notes: http://HUBhistory.com/291/

Support us: http://patreon.com/HUBhistory/