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One hundred and fifty-two years ago, on Nov. 19, 1863, famed orator Edward Everett – who served as U.S. Representative, U.S. Senator, the 15th Governor of Massachusetts, Minister to Great Britain, and United States Secretary of State, taught at Harvard University and served as its president – delivered a two-hour speech at the Gettysburg National…
Read More »An important reach back into the blog archive as Mass Moments reminds us of the 54th Massachusetts Regiment send-off into Civil War history… 54th Massachusetts Regiment ~ Marches Through Boston May 27, 1863 May 28, 2013 Marie 1 Comment Today MassMoments reminds us that on May 27, 1863 the 54th…
Read More »On a small patch of grass wedged between two busy streets in front of Lowell City Hall sits a twenty-five foot high granite obelisk. Few passersby know that this monument commemorates nineteen year old Luther Ladd and twenty year old Addison Whitney, two Lowell mill workers who, along with Sumner…
Read More »From the archive: On this day ~ January 21, 1861 ~ Sixth Massachusetts Volunteer Regiment Organized January 21, 2013 Marie 1 Comment Edit This is a repost from last year… but an important reminder of the formation and role of the Sixth Massachusetts with many volunteers who were Lowell millworkers. MassMoments reminds…
Read More »A framed and tattered flag from the Civil War was recently unearthed at the Lowell Memorial Auditorium. The elaborate frame notes this citation: “Under this flag at Clinton, L. A. (?) June 3rd, 1863 Solon A. Perkins was killed” History sleuths are at work getting all the information on the…
Read More »Arguably Lowell’s most prominent historical figure, Benjamin F. Butler published his memoirs in 1892 under the title “Butler’s Book.” A. M. Thayer and Co., Printers, Binders, & Book Publishers of Boston, offered the autobiography to subscribers, not an unusual system in that day. The book is 1,154 pages long, counting…
Read More »Lowell National Historical Park Supt. Michael Creasey and Asst. Supt. Peter Aucella have both called attention to the President Obama’s announcement of the newest National Park at Fort Monroe in Virginia, which mentions the historic decision by Lowell’s own General Benjamin F. Butler to declare Southern slaves as contraband of war…
Read More »Cotton production is today’s topic in the Disunion series on Civil War history in the NYTimes. Frederick Law Olmsted shows up as a journalist rather than a landscape architect in this installment. Historian Susan Schulten of the University of Denver is today’s author. Read it here, and get the NYT…
Read More »Guy Lefebvre’s Lowell Gallery is offering for sale for $35 a limited-edition print of a prose sketch about the Ladd & Whitney Monument that he invited me to write on the occasion of the 175th anniversary of the start of the Civil War. The broadside combines the writing and a vintage…
Read More »Here’s the text of the famous 1884 Memorial Day speech by Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., the Boston-born Civil War veteran who served on the US Supreme Court. His parents were the doctor-poet Oliver Wendell Holmes and abolitionist Amelia Lee Jackson. He enlisted in the army in his senior year at Harvard…
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