Historical Society Internship

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Week 15: The Worcester Rebellion & The Real Jonathan Wood

This week at the Historical Society was met with an inquiry from Worcester and our own curiosity.  Though not as famous as the battle of Lexington and Concord, the Worcester Rebellion seems to be the first act of aggression against the Crown.  On September 6th, 1774 around 4,700 men from 37 towns in Massachusetts marched to "prevent puppet government's courts from meeting."  Worcester has a list of each militiaman there, however, we are not sure if it is completely accurate.  

Fitchburg is not included on the list of towns that were a part of the Worcester Rebellion, however, certain things in our town meeting records imply that we were building up munitions and gunpowder around June.  This does not mean that we were involved, however.  Word was spreading quickly of rebellion in 1774 and towns were preparing for what was to come.  The early stockpile of arms and training of local men could be seen as a preemptive measure toward the main event instead of trying to lend aid to Worcester.  

A few things to consider are the following facts:

Fitchburg did not have a militia until November 1774 (40 Men)

Not a shot was fired at The Worcester Rebellion

How people were armed.  

Issac Gibson & Phinehas Hartwell are the only two committee members from Fitchburg. 

This means that they might have gone to Worcester to show the support of Fitchburg but there is nothing definite within the town records.  It actually appears as if they skip the month of September entirely regarding the meeting transcripts.  

On Wednesday, I came in and helped my coworker Katrina with a four-page letter.  This letter was from a man in Maine who was pointing out a mistake in "The Birth of Fitchburg" which was published around 1860's.  It was a tedious task considering his handwriting was in cursive and used terms that we were not familiar with.  Thankfully we eventually deciphered the text, discovering that the author of the letter was writing regarding a man known as John Wood might not have been the correct John Wood.  Along with the letter, he attached a family tree of the correct Johnathan Wood with his regards.   

Worcester Rebellion Website

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Week 14: House Tours

this week we prepared for the annual House Tours.  Tickets ranged from $15 to $20.  One of the stops was the Historical Society itself.  During the week, we finished setting up information cards explaining the theme of each tree we set up and set up several more displays.  In addition, we moved some things around to make the area feel more open for people to walk around while the orchestra played music at 11 am and 2 pm.  

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[December 7th] House Tour Event

I will be uploading photos of the Historical Societies exhibit hall later today.  

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Week 13: Thanksgiving Week

Not much occurred this week.  I took some pictures of paintings that are hanging in the front right window.  It's difficult to do with all the toys set up, but I was sure not to step on anything. Other than that I looked into items from the civil war.  This is in reference to my Week 4 post about the War Log and the cannonball that it contained.

There are a lot of items that come up when you search for Civil war artifacts and shrapnel.  None of which was particularly helpful.  When it comes to writing a small information card for the log on display in our main exhibit hall it will most likely be short and to the point regarding where it is from, when it is from and what it is.  

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Week 12: My First Display

This week was enjoyable.  I finished transcribing  the second document and after that, we took down one of the older displays.  After covering the display's base with wrapping paper Shirley and I brought down a box of New Years cards and some Christmas cards.  At this point, I was told I could choose what goes where and what would be on display.  I picked out around 12 New Year and Christmas cards and arranged them how I wanted.  

I placed the more eye-catching cards toward the front of the display.  Then some of the more interesting cards were placed around the edges.  This would encourage people to look at the rest of the cards.  The date of the cards ranges from 1881 to late 1959.  The 2nd floor of the Historical Society is now fully decorated and just in time for the House Tours that will take place on December 7th.  

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Happy Holidays from the Fitchburg Historical Society

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My First Display

Today I was given the opportunity to create my own display out of New Year and Christmas cards.  The date of these cards ranges from 1881 - 1958 give or take a few years.  

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Calendar of Upcoming Events (Dec. - April)

Fitchburg Historical Society House Tour

Saturday, December 7, 2013 from 11 a.m. to 4p.m. Call 978-345-1157 for ticket purchase: $18 in advance, $20 at door.

Visit 12 different historic properties in Fitchburg, all decorated for the holidays. A unique opportunity to discover Fitchburg’s architectural heritage, from the colonial period, through the Federal and Victorian, to early 20th century examples. Enjoy tea and home-made cookies amidst the Victorian splendor of the Fay Club, in this unique holiday tradition and fundraiser to benefit the Fitchburg Historical Society.

  Author signing: Anne O’Connor, author of  Fitchburg: the Old Hometown. Wednesday, January 29, 5:30 – 6:30 p.m.   Free and open to the public.

Fitchburg-based author Anne O’Connor combines research into Fitchburg’s four centuries of history with reminiscences of the city and its people as she has observed them.

  Author signing and Book Party: Fitchburg Historical Society authors discuss the Society’s new publication,  Legendary Locals of Fitchburg . Saturday, March 8, 1:00 – 3:00 p.m.   Free and open to the public.

Celebrate the release of a new book about Fitchburg’s historic figures and contemporary personalities, written for the city’s 250th anniversary by the Fitchburg Historical Society.

  First Thursday History Discussion: “The Rollstone Boulder” by Peter Capodagli.   Thursday, April 3, 6:00 – 7:00 p.m. Free and open to the public.

Learn the unique history of Fitchburg’s travelling boulder, and its attraction for tourists and Fitchburg residents over the years.

  The Fitchburg Historical Society is an independent non-profit, whose mission is to collect, protect, preserve and make accessible Fitchburg’s history. Unless noted, these events are free and take place in the George R. Wallace, Jr. and Alice G. Wallace Exhibit Hall in the Crocker Center for the History of Fitchburg at 781 Main Street in Fitchburg. It is open Monday and Tuesday, 10 a.m. – 4 p.m. and Wednesdays from 10 a.m. to 6 p.m. For more information, visit http://www.fitchburghistoricalsociety.org/ or call 978-345-1157.

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Week 11: Christmas, PSA's & House Tours.

This week the Historical Society was technically closed on Monday, however, a few people including myself still arrived at 9 am to get the exhibit hall ready for Christmas.  We set up roughly eight to nine trees, each with a different theme and two that went into the front windows of the building.  I will take pictures of the windows Wednesday and the trees in the building so you all can see them.  

 After the set-up on Monday, I was asked to construct one to two PSA's for radio announcements that some of the local stations will run regarding the Historical Society.  I sent them to Susan so she can look them over.  If you're local, keep an ear out.   Also, to do some advertising here the Historical Society is starting up their House Tours on December 7th at 11 am.  Tickets can be purchased at the Historical Society during our business hours and the price is 18 for Non-members before the event and $20 on the day of the tours.  

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[Newsletter Sneak Peek] Censorship Round Table

            On Wednesday, October 16th, the Historical Society hosted a roundtable discussion about censorship in Fitchburg.  The guest speakers for this event were the Assistant Superintendent of Fitchburg Public Schools Paula Giaquinto, Editor of the Fitchburg Sentinel Charles St. Amand and President Robert Antonucci of FSU.  Shirley Wagner from the Historical Society moderated the roundtable, presenting the primary questions before the audience was allowed to ask their own questions.  

            The first question presented to Paula Giaquinto was: “School systems frequently receive requests to remove books from their library shelves or the required reading lists. As superintendent of schools, have you or the school board encountered such requests and how are these addressed?” Her response was that there has not been a recorded complaint with the Fitchburg Public School system since 1986. The next question was for Antonucci: “Universities may get similar requests.  Have you encountered these and how have you handled them?” Antonucci replied, saying that there has been “Nothing during my 11 years for the most part” and there have been little to no complaints from parents. 

            The next set of questions revolved around newspaper censorship and started with Charles Amand, inquiring How do you decide which ones (stories) to include and which ones to exclude?   Do you ever think about this as censorship?  His answer to this was “No, they are ethical decisions more so than anything else.” Amand also spoke of a personal case where someone was emailing him information for a story, but he could not fact check all of it with his resources, meaning he could not run the story. This questioned allowed a segue to Antonucci’s question regarding his take of the dispute that happened in 1969 when President James Hammond of FSC pulled a school newspaper because of an article being published that he viewed as inappropriate. His response was that he would have backed the school newspaper at the time if he had not already graduated at the time of the issue.  When asked about student code of conduct in regards to censorship implemented by the school President Antonucci said that everyone at the school are adults and so the school did not need much if any censorship.  Giaquinto, however, said there are student codes of conduct for the public schools regarding what they can wear while on school grounds.  An example brought up was a student who had come to school wearing an offensive shirt.  He was told to change or turn it inside out to solve the problem.  This led to the next question: “Do the Sentinel, FSU, and Fitchburg Public schools use software to monitor internet activity of students and staff?

            Amanda’s answer was that during his years there he has not noticed anything outside of occasionally being denied access to certain websites that had been marked as unreliable sources of information.   Antonucci was next, stating that the college has no hardware or software that monitors internet usage outside of their firewall that blocks SSN, credit card, and other spam emails.  The only place that appears to have any heavy monitoring software is the public school system.  Giaquinto said there are regulation and control over the internet usage in the schools and they have a worker whose job it is to monitor the internet activity.  Their software revolves around blocking websites based on keywords but does not block social media, expecting the students to be responsible with their time on the computer.  The final question asked the trio how they handle parental censorship.  The answers were short but to the point.  Antonucci began, saying it depends on the development of your child and “I think it is for the good.”  Amanda continued that “It’s parenting” while Giaquinto said that everything is much more permissive and accessible today so informal censorship is a way to control what your kids see.  At this point the group began taking questions from the audience, Paula Giaquinto was asked if she believed school uniforms in public schools is a form of censorship.  Giaquinto remarked that it is not a form of censorship because the steps leading up to that decision require the input of the community so they can express the needs and outcome of their eventual consensus.  

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Week 10: Burbank Hospital 

This week I focused on a few boxes filled with pictures and publications.  The newest edition (Boxes #4 & #5) came with a list of everything within the box and Shirley wanted to begin doing the same thing for our other boxes.  She had me start with Boxes 1-3 for Burbank Hospital.  This required me looking at each document within the box, listing what it was and the year (if available) of when it was published or taken.  Some were pictures, brochures of the hospital, magazines for patients and other documents were budget plans, new wings of the hospital and so on.  

This project took me one day to complete, but it was tedious.  I listed each document in chronological order and attempted to do so with the documents within the boxes as well.  The documents that did not have dates on them I left with a "_____" next to their description so that if the date is discovered at a later time we can fill it in instead of reprinting the list or scribbling it off to the side.

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Burned Books, Banned Books

On Wednesday, September 25th, Professor Daniel Sarefield gave a PowerPoint lecture on the history of book burning.  This event was part of the Fahrenheit 251 Collaborative Project with Cultural Alliance partners, the Fitchburg Art Museum, Fitchburg State University, Fitchburg Public Library, Rollstone Gallery, FATV, and WPKZ.  Mayor Lisa Wong gave the welcome.   Professor Sarefield split his 75-minute speech into three parts, the Contemporary, Personal, and Historical.

Starting with the contemporary view of book burnings, Dan spoke about Pastor Terry Jones, who in 2010 ignited controversy by marking September 11th as “Burn a Quran” day.  He initially backed down due to the pressure of media attention but on March 2011, he put a copy of the book on trial and burned it.  Other modern references of book burning that were brought up were the burning of Gaddafi ‘s 1957 manifesto.  According to Sarefield, book burning and banning became heavily driven by political motives.  The ability to maintain what the people read and see in the news and in books can keep people in line and make for much less hassle. 

Once he covered the contemporary view of book burning, Dan moved on to his personal experience with censorship by the government.  Over the summer, Daniel, his wife Tracy and their daughter Stella traveled to Istanbul.  During their time there, the riots revolving around Giza Park erupted and were quickly silenced by the government.  Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube were blocked while protestors flooded the streets.  Television was also controlled as the news said nothing about the conflict as if pretending it was not happening right outside.  It was not until the Sarefields were out of the country that they were able to see how bad things really were for the protestors in Istanbul.  The government was using their power to control the flow of information in order to gain a political foothold.

Having covered his first two points, Dan then moved on to the historical background of book burnings.  When the first book burning took place is a question that can be answered several times with different answers.  The first rumored book burning took place in 500 BCE when Diogenes Laertius, a Greek philosopher, wrote a piece about the possibility of the Gods not existing.  His writings were quickly gathered up and burned after they expelled him from Athens.  However, outside of a reference to this event, there is no solid proof that it actually occurred.  It was not until 181 BCE in Rome that a record appears of a book burning occurring regarding a text that supposedly “pertained to the dissolution of religion.”   This is our first look at recorded politically motivated censorship. 

The country North Korea burns books with a sense of patriotic duty.  Burning books that promote immorality within the people or in most cases books that would cause a deviation from certain ideas.  Sarefield ended the presentation by answering questions and having two Fitchburg State students to take people’s opinions regarding what book would save if a book burning took place today.  

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Week 9: NETCO, Sentinels and Old Maps

This week was routine, yet fairly busy.  I'm afraid it will not be an exceptionally long post as I worked between different short-term assignments that I will cover in this post.  This week I went over to the Grover Street building (our original building) twice.  The first was to take a picture of a map similar to the one above.  The difference being that on the glass casing that the map in the Grove Street building there are additional markings to indicate where the modern day streets are in relation to the map under the glass that was made in 1764.  Eventually, we want to put this on our website that allows visitors to see the map prior to the modern day layout of the city and the current map side by side.  An additional option that was brought up was overlaying the two but I'm not sure how to properly do that.  

The second time I went to Grove street was with my co-worker Katrina needed to retrieve a couple of bound copies of the Fitchburg Sentinel.  Being on the top shelf in a safe in the basement I asked Katrina to grab them and hand them to me because of my slight fear of heights.  We carried them back to our building on Main street in preparation for the people who would need them come Monday.  

Finishing off the week I made a few more copies for our NETCO files, some color, and some just parts and newspaper articles.  This week I shall (most likely) post the final revision of my Censorship Round Table piece.  

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Week 8: An Article and Halloween

Short post this week, sorry folks.  I'm currently making edits to my piece on the Censorship Round Table and will do a read through of it and final edits before I  post it on here and submit it to my superiors.  Other than trying to work on that (I became stuck several times as I was writing it, including right now).  I need to fit it to a page so it is not too long while retaining most of the discussion so our members can read about it.  

Later on, in the week, we had to change the display in one of our front windows from a summer theme to Halloween as the community had a trick or treat event for the kids of the City of Fitchburg.  Allowing all of them to get candy while being safe.  Certain buildings along the main street participated in this event.  Expect a mid-week update. 

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Week 7: Censorship Round table

This week started off with a day off due to Columbus day.  From there we spent a day stuffing envelopes that are going out to previous members of the Historical Society or those who have done business with us.  These contained a letter and a membership slip asking if they wanted to start or renew a membership with us.  On Wednesday, we held a Censorship Round table.  Roughly forty people arrived for the event in which we had several guest speakers including Paula Giaquinto (Assistant Superintendent), Charles Amand (Editor of the Sentinel), President Antonucci (President of FSU) and moderated by our own Shirley Wagner.  

The event lasted 3 hours and was live-tweeted by several people at the request of Susan Navarre.  The questions that were brought up ranged from if there have been any censorship issues in the local school system, the University or the paper.  This led to discussions of what had been big issues in the past as well as if anyone uses monitoring software to keep an eye on internet usage.  The only yes to this question was from the Assistant superintendent who stated that certain keywords had been blocked to make sure students are not looking at anything inappropriate during school hours.  After questions from the moderator were asked they moved to questions from the audience, These included:

How do you handle informal censorship

Are school uniforms in public schools 

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Week 6

Sick for 2/3 days of work so there isn't much to update on.  All I did on Wednesday was stuff envelopes with membership renewal requests.  If you want one you can message me your address and I can send one your way.  I'll update with more next week.  

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Week 5: Research & Newsletters

This week (Sep 30th - Oct 2nd) I worked on a few things which took up a decent chunk of my time.  The first was clipping out anything in the Fitchburg Sentinel that mentioned the Longsjo classic.  The papers were dated from 1960 or so up until present day.  Tedious, but we finished with time to spare.  With this extra time, I began writing up my piece regarding Professor Sarefields presentation Burned Books, Banned Books.  It took me the better part of a day an a half to finish it, but when I did I submitted it to Susan to see what needed to be edited.  This week I plan on re-writing the article on Stella Forrest.  I had the chance to look at some of the Historical Societies previous newsletters and it's helped me greatly in terms of format and what I should include.  For now, I leave you with a picture of a safe and the rough draft of my newsletter article.

On Wednesday, September 25th, Professor Daniel Sarefield gave a PowerPoint lecture that covered the history of book burning.  This event was part of the Fahrenheit 251 Collaborative Project with Cultural Alliance partners.  Lisa Wong began the event by speaking the current state of available media online including television, movies and more now than ever, books.   Soon after the presentation began, Sarefield splitting his 75 minute speech into three parts listed as Contemporary, Personal and Historical.

            The Fitchburg State professor started out by speaking about Pastor Terry Jones, who in 2010 decided to ignite controversy across the globe by marking September 11th as “Burn a Qu’ran” day.  He later backed down due to the pressure that the media attention brought to his door until March 2011 where he put a copy of the book on trial and burned it.  Other more modern references of book burning that were brought up was the burning of Gaddafi ‘s 1957 manifesto.  According to Sarefield, book burning and banning became heavily driven by political motives.  The ability to maintain what the people read and see in the news and in books can keep people in line and make for much less hassle. 

            One he covered the contemporary view of book burning he moved on to his personal experience with censorship by the government.  Over the summer Daniel, his wife Tracy and their daughter traveled to Istanbul.  During their time there the riots revolving around Giza Park erupted and were quickly silenced by the government.  Facebook, Twitter and YouTube were blocked while protestors flooded the streets.  Television was also controlled as the news said nothing about the conflict as if pretending it was not happening right outside.  It wasn’t until the Sarefields were out of the counter when they were able to see how bad things really were for the protestors in Istanbul.  The government was using their power to control the flow of information in order to gain a political foothold and that has been the case for a long time. 

            When the first book burning took place is a question that can be answered several times, each time with a different answer.  The first rumored book burning took place in 500 BCE when Diogenes Laertius, a Greek philosopher, wrote a piece about the possibility of the Gods not existing.  His writings were quickly gathered up and burned after they expelled him from Athens.  However outside of a reference to this event there is no solid proof that it actually occurred.  It was not until Rome in 181 BCE that a record appears of a book burning occurring regarding text that supposedly “pertained to the dissolution of religion.”   This is our first look at recorded politically motivated censorship. 

            The country North Korea burns books with a sense of patriotic duty.  Burning books that promote immorality within the people or in most cases books that would cause a deviation from certain ideas.  Sarefield ended the presentation by taking questions and sending around two Fitchburg State students to take people’s opinions regarding what book would they ban if they had to.