As part of the Library's symposium Mather Redux: New Perspectives on Cotton Mather taking place on October 18th, the following morning participants will be treated to a walking tour of Cotton Mather's neighborhood--Boston's North End. Led by Alex Goldfeld, President of the North End Historical Society, tour-goers will reimagine the 17th-century streets and buildings where Mather grew up, preached, and shaped the history of Boston and beyond. No small feat considering Boston streets weren't officially named until Mather was 45 years old!

Mr. Goldfeld, author of The North End: A Brief History of Boston's Oldest Neighborhood, will focus on the physical and intellectual contours of this bustling area as Mather lived it. It will also touch on some little-known aspects of Mather's life, such as his involvement with Boston's black community and sponsorship of their first church. The tour will end at the Mather family tomb at Copp's Hill Burial Ground, where scholars from the symposium will offer their favorite Mather witticisms.

The tour will complement the symposium by bringing to life "on the ground" some of the fascinating historical topics that will be covered, such as controversies over singing in church and the state of manly fashion in Mather's Boston.

Tickets for the symposium are still available at http://matherredux.eventbrite.com/.

A cafe in where the home of Cotton Mather once stood

An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands: 

Letters of Carrie Prudence Winter, 1890-1893

selected and edited 

by Sandra Bonhura and Deborah Day

University of Hawai'i Press, 2012

During the 19th century hundreds of Congregationalists, many from small New England towns, traveled throughout the world to work as missionaries. Their stories are remarkable, not only because of the distances they traveled and the difficulties they faced, but because of the success that they had and the lasting influence that they left on the places where they worked. In certain cases, they brought not only Christianity to the indigenous peoples, but also their own New England culture and way of life, which became imbued in the native population through the schools, hospitals, and agricultural reforms that the missionaries started. As historians continue to investigate the complex impact of mission work on local peoples and their culture, a related interest has arisen in exploring the motivations and goals of 19th century American missionaries.

New to the library's collection, An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands: letters of Carrie Prudence Winter, 1890-1893 offers readers the opportunity to discover the history of Congregationalist missionaries through a remarkable collection of primary sources. The book gathers many of the letters and other writings of Carrie Prudence Winter, now held in the archive at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography. The daughter of a Congregationalist pastor, native of Connecticut, and graduate of Oberlin College, Carrie taught at the Kawaiaha'o Female Seminary, a boarding school for native girls in Honolulu, from 1890-1893. Like many of her peers, Carrie left for Hawaii because of a life-long ambition to partake in missionary work. As she tells in her letters, her obligations at the school included teaching the girls religious subjects, as well as in practical industries like sewing. In keeping with the objective of mission schools at that time, the strict rules and carefully prescribed curriculum and daily schedule of the school were designed to mold the native students into young women, who would be prepared to run a home in the style of a hard-working and pious New England wife and mother. In a youthful and energetic voice that pervades all of her writing, Carrie provides details about her students and fellow teachers that illustrate the stresses and joys that came with the work. She also writes about life outside of the school, commenting upon the native Hawaiian customs, foods, and landscapes that she encountered and discussing the illnesses, which afflicted both the missionaries and the native Hawaiians, and the political turmoil beginning to arise in Honolulu.

Although it gives only one person's voice, An American Girl in the Hawaiian Islands provides a wealth of information for anyone interested in Congregationalist missionaries, Congregationalism in Hawaii, or the history of mission schools. The editors, Dr. Sandra Bonura, a professor and researcher of education, and Deborah Day, a former archivist at the Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California at San Diego, put a great deal of effort into producing this volume, as evidenced by the careful transcriptions and impressively exhaustive appendix, which gives a short biography of each person named in Carrie's letters, including the many students, who she taught. The book also benefits from the inclusion of many photographs and documents from Hawaii that place Carrie's letters into visual context. Most importantly, the book demonstrates the significant role that archival collections play in preserving the history of Congregationalism. 

Steven Picazio

Assistant Librarian for Cataloging and Reference