Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library

Civil War Photography on the Battlefront and Home Front : : May 4 at 2 p.m.

Our 2013 Civil War Lecture Series continues this weekend! The series explores the history of this divisive war and its meaning for our nation today.

Anthony Lee
Civil War Photography on the Battlefront and Home Front
Saturday, May 4 at 2 p.m., free

What did Americans see and feel when they looked at the first photographs of Civil War battlefronts? Join Anthony Lee, Professor of Art History at Mount Holyoke College, in a discussion of Civil War photography, focusing on Alexander Gardner's work. Lee will be available after the talk to sign his book, On Alexander Gardner's Photographic Sketch Book of the Civil War.

This free lecture is made possible by the generous support of the Ruby W. and LaVon P. Linn Foundation.

For more information on the Civil War Lecture Series, please refer to the Museum's programs page. For information on visiting the Museum please click here, or call 781-861-6559.

Photo credit: Courtesy Anthony Lee

Civil War Lecture Explores Black Activists in Boston: March 23 at 2 p.m.

Our 2013 Civil War Lecture Series begins this weekend! Join us for the first lecture in the series. The series explores the history of this divisive war and its meaning for our nation today.

Stephen Kantrowitz
A Citizenship of the Heart: Black Activists and Universal Brotherhood in Civil War-Era Boston
Saturday, March 23 at 2 p.m., free

Stephen Kantrowitz, Professor of History at the University of Wisconsin, Madison, will explore how the fight to abolish slavery was part of a broader campaign by Boston’s African American community to claim full citizenship. The talk will trace the activities of Prince Hall Freemason Lewis Hayden, a fugitive slave and Boston anti-slavery activist. Hayden’s Masonic engagement reflects the development of ideas and practices of black citizenship as tool to remake the republic into a place where all men could belong. Kantrowitz will be available after the talk to sign his book, More than Freedom: Fighting for Black Citizenship in a White Republic, 1829-1889.

The lecture is made possible by the generous support of the Ruby W. and LaVon P. Linn Foundation.

For more information on the Civil War Lecture Series, please refer to the Museum's programs page. For information on visiting the Museum please click here, or call 781 861-6559.

Photo credit: Courtesy Stephen Kantrowitz

 

Found on a Civil War Battlefield

The recent release of the movie Lincoln reminds us that we are still marking the 150th anniversary of the American Civil War. As previous posts have noted, the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library is fortunate to have a number of items associated with that conflict in its collection (to see more, visit our website, select our online collection and search for “Civil War”).

I recently came across this intriguing, Civil War-related photograph in the collection. The round case (about 1 3/4 inches in diameter) contains photographs of Union Generals Ambrose E. Burnside (1824-1881) and George B. McClellan (1826-1885). Burnside was born in Indiana and attended the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. After serving in the Mexican War (1846-1848), he settled in Rhode Island. Burnside returned to military service during the Civil War, but is remembered for a lackluster record, including a disastrous performance at the Battle of Fredericksburg in 1862, when the Union Army suffered 13,000 casualties. After the war, Burnside entered political life, serving as Governor of Rhode Island three times and as a U.S. Senator twice. In 1871, he became the first president of the National Rifle Association. He died in Rhode Island in 1881.

George B. McClellan, born in Philadelphia, also attended West Point in the 1840s and fought in the Mexican War. In 1857, he left the military and took a position as Chief Engineer of the Illinois Central Railroad. When the Civil War began, McClellan returned to military service, becoming popular with his men, but employing a command style that put him at odds with President Abraham Lincoln (1809-1865). In November 1861, McClellan became General-in-Chief of the Union army in November 1861. McClellan often hesitated and delayed his attacks, out of fear that he faced an enemy with more troops than he had. By November 1862, after McClellan’s failure to make significant progress, he was relieved of command. In 1864, he ran against Lincoln for president and lost. After the war, McClellan returned to work in the engineering field and also served as Governor of New Jersey. He died in New Jersey in 1885.

When these photos were donated to the Museum in 1980, the donor provided a family story that the case “was found on the battlefield at Gettysburg in the latter part of August or early September 1863 by my grandfather, George E. Blose.” George Elmer Blose, born in 1836 in Hamilton, Pennsylvania, was 27 years old in 1863. By the time of the 1860 federal census, Blose had moved east to Perry Township, Pennsylvania, where he lived in his father’s house and worked as a laborer. Records of George’s military service during the Civil War are unclear – a couple of George Blose’s are listed from Pennsylvania, but it is inconclusive which record belongs to George E. Blose, if any. By the time of the 1900 U.S. Census, Blose was listed as the head of his household and worked as a farmer in Perry.

At the time that the Civil War began, photography was still a relatively new development. Family members scrambled to have portraits of their loved ones taken before the men marched off to battle. Portraits of generals, like these of Burnside and McClellan, were popular sellers in the North. Whether George Blose found this pair of portraits on the battlefield as his family recalled, or if he purchased them as a souvenir of the nation-rending conflict he lived through is not known.  Nor is the maker of these portraits identified.  While Mathew Brady is perhaps the most well-known photographer associated with Civil War pictures, he actually took few himself. Instead, he financed a group of field photographers, sending them out to take the images, while he acquired and published the negatives. To see more photographs from the Museum’s collection, visit our website and search the online collection.

Generals Ambrose E. Burnside and George B. McClellan, ca. 1862, unidentified maker, United States. Collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, gift of Olney V. Wadding, 80.60.

Sources:

William Marvel, “Ambrose E. Burnside (1824-1881),” retrieved November 28, 2012, from Encyclopedia Virginia: http://www.EncyclopediaVirginia.org/Burnside_Ambrose_E_1824-1881.

“Ambrose E. Burnside,” retrieved November 28, 2012, http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/ambrose-burnside.html.

“George B. McClellan,” retrieved November 28, 2012, http://www.civilwar.org/education/history/biographies/george-mcclellan.html.

“Photography and the Civil War, 1861-1865, Heilbrunn Timeline of Art History,” retrieved November 28, 2012, http://www.metmuseum.org/toah/hd/phcw/hd_phcw.htm.

 

Lecture and Gallery Talk: Women, Quilting, and the Civil War

Be sure to join us at the Museum on Saturday, October 20. We are offering two free programs about women's contributions to 19th century American public life.

At 2 pm, Pamela Weeks, Curator of the New England Quilt Museum, will present "Quilts for Civil War Soldiers: Stories from the Home Front and the Battlefield." Weeks is a quilt historian, appraiser, and artist well-known in the region for her expertise. She will share the stories behind three rare surviving Civil War quilts made by caring hands for soldiers fighting for North and South. At her talk, you can learn about the quilts, their makers, life on the home front during the war, and about how civilians organized to get desperately needed aid and supplies to the battlefield.

After the talk, Weeks will sign copies of her 2012 publication, Civil War Quilts, co-authored with Don Beld, which will be available for purchase. Weeks also curated the 2011 New England Quilt Museum exhibition "One Foot Square, Quilted & Bound." The quilts and objects she assembled for it explored a quilting method developed in New England in the nineteenth century. These "potholder quilts" were made from fabric blocks individually layered, quilted and finish-bound, and only then whip-stitched together — "one foot square, quilted and bound." Known in the pre-war period, the technique became a popular way for groups of seamstresses to work together to make quilts for injured and recuperating Civil War soldiers.

This is the final lecture in our 2012 Civil War series of programs. Look for a new Civil War series for 2013 - more information is coming soon! The series explores the history of this divisive conflict, and its meaning for our nation today. It also relates to Museum’s mission of fostering an appreciation of American history, patriotism and Freemasonry, and reflects both current research and exciting themes relevant to our world. The generous sponsorship of Ruby W. Linn permits us to offer the program in both series at no charge to the public. 

For further insights into how women used their needlework to help shape public life in 19th century America, join Director of Collections, Aimee Newell, for a 1 PM talk in the "Threads of Brotherhood: Masonic Quilts and Textiles" gallery on the same day, Saturday, October 20. See our previous blog post for more information on the talk.

For more information about visiting the Museum, call 781-861-6559 or see our website, www.nationalheritagemuseum.org.

Photo Credits:

Pamela Weeks. Courtesy of Pamela Weeks

Masonic Quilt, ca. 1860, American. Museum purchase, 95.043.11. Photograph by David Bohl.

Lecture: A Massachusetts Soldier Experiences the Civil War, Sept. 29

The Museum resumes its Civil War lecture series on Saturday, September 29, with a talk presented by Megan Kate Nelson of Harvard University. Join us at 2 PM for “Among the Ruins: Charles F. Morse and Civil War Destruction.” The lecture is free and is sponsored by Ruby W. Linn.

Nelson will share the Civil War experience of one Massachusetts soldier, Charles F. Morse, an officer in the 2^nd Massachusetts Regiment Volunteer Infantry. His letters, drawings, and other contemporary images speak eloquently across the years of the world of ruin and destruction that participants in the war found themselves confronting. 

The immense-scale destruction that the Civil War brought to southern farms, cities, and landscapes is no longer part of the world we live in. Unlike other countries, America did not choose to preserve landscapes of ruin as memorials to past wars, opting instead to rebuild or replace what was lost. Because we have forgotten, today we must employ the words and the images recorded by soldiers who saw the Civil War and its consequences if we wish to gain an understanding of the enormity of the ruin they experienced. When we do so, we encounter chaotic and brutal worlds that challenge the coherent narratives of war that popular books and films, reenactments and memorials have given us. For those who lived through the Civil War, as soldiers or as civilians, wartime ruins held vast imaginative significance, powered the emotional reactions they unleashed.

Charles Fessenden Morse was a Massachusetts native and Harvard graduate who led Company B of the 2nd Mass. Rgt. as its captain in the battles of Cedar Mountain, Antietam, Chancellorsville, and Gettysburg. A successful company captain in his early twenties, Morse was promoted to Lieutenant Colonel after Gettysburg. The young man corresponded extensively with family members and friends throughout the four years of his war experience, during which he participated in some of the Union Army's most devestatingly successful forays into Confederate territory. Morse shared his thoughts with the likes of close friend and fellow Harvardian Robert Gould Shaw; look for a fictionalized portrayal of Morse in the film Glory. To learn more about Morse, explore this letter posted by the Massachusetts Historical Society. Morse self-published some of his correspondence in Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865 in 1898. You can access the very copy that Morse donated to the Harvard College Library in 1898 at Google Books.

For her lecture, Nelson draws on dozens of letters written by Morse, held by the Massachusetts Historical Society. She places Morse's observations in the context of her innovative scholarship on the meaning of the destruction caused by the Civil War, the impact of which on the American landscape is almost unimaginable for us today. Megan Kate Nelson is a lecturer in History and Literature at Harvard University. Her second book, Ruin Nation: Destruction and the American Civil War was recently published in May 2012 and has garnered critical acclaim from scholars and Civil War buffs alike. It will be available for purchase after the talk and the author will be on hand to speak with visitors and sign books. You can sample Nelson's work by reading her contribution to the New York Times' Civil War blog Disunion or by exploring the University of Georgia's "Weirding the War" project, to which she was a contributor.

Save the date of the next talk in the series: on October 20, 2012, Pamela Weeks, Curator of the New England Quilt Museum, will speak on "Quilts for Civil War Soldiers: Stories from the Home Front and the Battlefield."

Photo credits:

Charles Fessenden Morse, ca. 1861-1865. Frontispiece of Letters Written During the Civil War, 1861-1865 (1898), available via Google Books.

Megan Kate Nelson. Courtesy of Drew Fritschel Photography

Gallery Talks: "Threads of Brotherhood: Masonic Quilts and Textiles"

What contribution did women’s textiles make to Freemasonry’s vibrant shaping of American families and communities in the 1800s and the 1900s?

To find out, join Director of Collections Aimee E. Newell on Saturday, July 28, 2:00 p.m. in the "Threads of Brotherhood: Masonic Quilts and Textiles" exhibition. This free gallery talk will offer visitors insights into how women demonstrated knowledge of Masonic values with their needles and created lasting reminders of their skills. This new exhibition features more than 25 quilts, coverlets, needlework pictures, and hooked rugs drawn from the Museum's collection. It tells a compelling story of connected lives and shared values.

We will offer two "Threads of Brotherhood" gallery talks in the fall:

Saturday, September 15, 2:00 p.m. and Saturday, October 20, 1:00 p.m.

The October gallery talk is scheduled prior to Pamela Week's 2 p.m. lecture on Civil War quilts for soldiers.  Combined, the two programs provide an ideal opportunity to explore how women used their needlework to help shape public life in 19th century America.

Save the dates! We'll see you at the Museum!

Photo Credits:

Lady Liberty Lights the Way, 1985, Nancy M. Crasco, Massachusetts. Gift of Nancy Crasco, 2010.006.  Photograph by David Bohl.

Masonic Quilt, 1880-1920, unidentified maker, probably Ohio.  Musuem purchase, 2002.008. Photograph by David Bohl.

Don't Miss Our Lecture: Michael Halleran on Civil War Freemasonry

We would like to remind our readers about the next lecture in our Civil War series. Michael Halleran will join us this Saturday, April 28, at the special time of 1 p.m. to speak on "Gentlemen of the White Apron: Freemasonry in the American Civil War." To learn more about the talk and the speaker, read our previous blog post about Halleran.

Here at the Museum, staff has done quite a bit of interesting research on the Civil War. Take a look at some of these previous posts - they are sure to engage your interest. If they do, Michael Halleran's lecture on Saturday may be just the way to flex your historical imagination this weekend.

Have you heard of silver badges worn by Freemasons fighting on the battlefields of the Civil War? We have some in our collection. Were they really used to identify a wounded Mason, so he could receive aid and comfort from Masonic brothers fighting under the opposing flag?

What do the Confederate imprints in our Van Gorden-Williams Library reveal about Masonic activities in the Confederacy during the American Civil War?

How hot was an 1863 discussion of what to do about a newly commissioned Confederate officer who was a longstanding member of a Masonic lodge in Indiana? 

What did we learn about a Union soldier's entry into the world of Freemasonry during the Civil War?

What did inquisitive Museum staff discover about a mysterious Civil War POW powderhorn that entered our collection without a history?

During the Civil War, federally issued currency included gold and silver coins. How did the world of commerce respond when those valuable metals disappeared into hoards and legal tender became scarce?

How did the Harper's Ferry arsenal bell end up on Marlborough, MA's town common?

Help us solve a mystery - If the men in our 19th century photo were not Civil War soldiers, who might they have been?

The Museum is offering the lecture as one in a series dedicated to the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. The series is designed to explore the history of this divisive conflict, and its meaning for our nation today. It is sponsored by Ruby W. Linn.

For more information about visiting the Museum, call 781-861-6559 or see our website, www.nationalheritagemuseum.org.

Photo credit:

Powder horn, ca. 1863, Henry S. P. Rollins (1832-1869), Tyler, Texas, Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, 77.11.2.  Photo by David Bohl.

Michael Halleran on Civil War Freemasonry, 4/28

Michael A. Halleran, a freelance historian, practicing attorney and Freemason, sets the standard for scholarship on Freemasonry in the Civil War. On Saturday, April 28, 2012 at 1 pm, he will present a talk entitled “Gentlemen of the White Apron: Freemasonry in the American Civil War.” The lecture will reveal the history behind the many mythical stories of Masonic Brotherhood across the Civil War battle lines. A signing of his acclaimed book, The Better Angels of Our Nature, will follow. Admission is free.

Halleran's research has helped Museum staff better understand objects in our collection, such as silver Civil War identification badges that display Masonic symbols. Read our previous blog post about how pleased we were to learn more about these objects. 

Halleran received the Mackey Award for Excellence in Masonic Scholarship by the Scottish Rite Research Society for his article on Civil War Freemasonry in that society’s journal, Heredom. He is a member of the Quatuor Coronati Correspondence Circle, and the Scottish Rite Research Society where he studies American military Masonry and the traditions of military lodges worldwide.

The Museum is offering the lecture series on occasion of the 150th anniversary of the Civil War. The series is designed to explore the history of this divisive conflict, and its meaning for our nation today. It is sponsored by Ruby W. Linn.

Upcoming lectures in the series are:

Among the Ruins: Charles F. Morse and Civil War Destruction - Saturday, September 29, 2 pm. Megan Kate Nelson of Harvard University will unfold the Civil War experience of one Massachusetts soldier, Charles F. Morse, an officer in the 2nd Mass. Rgt. His letters, drawings, and other contemporary images will draw us into the world of ruin and destruction that participants in the war found themselves confronting.

Quilts for Civil War Soldiers: Stories from the Home Front and the Battlefield - Saturday, October 20, 2 pm. Pamela Weeks, Curator of the New England Quilt Museum, knows the stories behind the rare surviving Civil War quilts made by caring hands for soldiers fighting for North and South. Learn about the quilts, their makers, life on the home front during the war, and about how civilians organized to get desperately needed aid and supplies to the battlefield.

For more information about visiting the Museum, call 781-861-6559 or see our website, www.nationalheritagemuseum.org.

Photo credit:

Courtesy of Michael Halleran

Where - and When - Is This?

Ever since I first came across this photograph in the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library’s collection, I’ve had a soft spot for it. I especially love the railing with its square and compasses decoration!

This particular view shows a Masonic building with a group of men wearing uniforms in front and on the porch. A handwritten note on the back suggests that the building is located in Petersburg, Virginia, and previously museum staff noted that the soldiers were serving in the Civil War. So, when I added it to the checklist for our “Inspired by Fashion” exhibition (which closed on March 24, 2012), I thought I would do some research to see if I could confirm the building’s location – and ascertain whether it is still standing.

Unfortunately, I wasn’t able to complete my research prior to the opening of the exhibition, but recently, with the help of staff from the Virginia Department of Historic Resources, I discovered that the building is actually located in Pocahontas, Virginia, and it is still standing (see image at right). Unfortunately, the railing with those wonderful square and compasses symbols has been removed, but many of the building’s other features are still in place. The Petersburg attribution seems to stem from the fact that an area along the Appomattox River – and adjacent to Petersburg – was known as Pocahontas and was added to Petersburg in 1785.

Pocahontas, Virginia, where this Masonic lodge stands (and Pocahontas Lodge No. 240 still meets there) is located in Tazewell County, in far western Virginia, on the West Virginia border. Once coal was discovered in the area, development followed: the town was named in 1881 and the railroad reached Pocahontas in 1883. Pocahontas Lodge No. 240 received a dispensation from the Grand Lodge of Virginia in 1883. The building was dedicated on November 24, 1886.  So, not only was our information about where the building stood wrong, but the idea that these are Civil War soldiers is also incorrect; given the date that Pocahontas was settled, this photograph must have been taken long after the Civil War was over.

So, while I have solved the mystery of this building’s location, questions remain: when was this photograph taken? Who are these men? What kind of uniforms are they wearing? If you have any ideas, please let us know in a comment below! And, you can look at more photos from our collection via our website, just click here.

Masonic Building, ca. 1900, Pocahontas, Virginia, Collection of the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, Special Acquisitions Fund, 81.17.

Masonic Building, ca. 2011, Pocahontas, Virginia. Courtesy of the Virginia Department of Historic Resources.

Deadlines Looming for April 28 Symposium - Register Now!

Register now for the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library Symposium, Perspectives on American Freemasonry and Fraternalism, on Saturday, April 28, 2012.   Discounted hotel rates MUST be booked by MARCH 25, 2012, and the registration deadline is APRIL 14, 2012. 

The symposium seeks to present the newest research on American fraternal groups from the past through the present day. By 1900, over 250 American fraternal groups existed, numbering six million members. The study of their activities and influence in the United States, past and present, offers the potential for fresh interpretations of American society and culture.

Seven scholars from the United States, Britain and Belgium will fill the day’s program:

• Jeffrey Tyssens, Vrije Universiteit Brussel, “The Goatee’s Revenge: A Founding Myth and a Founder’s Cult in American Fraternalism”

• Yoni Appelbaum, Brandeis University, “The Great Brotherhood of Toil: The Knights of Labor as a Fraternal Order”

• Adam G. Kendall, Henry W. Coil Library and Museum, “The Shadow of the Pope: Anti-Catholicism, Freemasonry, and the Knights of Columbus in 1910s California”

• Samuel Biagetti, Columbia University, “A Prehistoric Lodge in Rhode Island? – Masonry and the Messianic Moment”

• Alyce Graham, University of Delaware, “Secrecy and Democracy: Masonic Aprons, 1750-1830”

• Bradley Kime, Brigham Young University, “Masonic Motifs in Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory”

• Kristofer Allerfeldt, Exeter University, “The Significance of Fraternalism in Three Criminal Organizations of Late Nineteenth Century America: The Mollie Maguires, the Ku Klux Klan and the Mafia”

All Symposium attendees are invited to a public lecture by Michael Halleran, Independent Scholar, “Gentlemen of the White Apron: Freemasonry in the American Civil War,” at 1 PM, in the Maxwell Auditorium. This presentation is made possible through the generous support of Ruby W. Linn.

The symposium is funded in part by the Supreme Council, 33°, N. M. J., U.S.A. Registration is $65 ($60 for museum members) and includes morning refreshments, lunch and a closing reception. To register, complete the Registration Form and fax to 781-861-9846 or mail to Claudia Roche, Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, 33 Marrett Road, Lexington, MA 02421; registration deadline is APRIL 14, 2012. For more information, contact Claudia Roche at croche@monh.org or 781-457-4142.

ACCOMMODATIONS: A block of hotel rooms has been reserved at Staybridge Suites, 11 Old Concord Road, Burlington, MA, at the discounted rate of $110/studio suite; $120/one-bedroom suite; and $145/two-bedroom suite (taxes not included). To make a reservation, please call 781-221-2233 and mention the Scottish Rite Masonic Museum Symposium. DEADLINE for the discounted rate is MARCH 25, 2012. Limited shuttlebus service will be available between the hotel and the Museum.

Masonic Emblematic Chart, 1840-1850, probably New York, Scottish Rite Masonic Museum & Library, Special Acquisitions Fund, 90.20.  Photograph by David Bohl.