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From Immigration and the Commissioners of Emigration of the
state of New York by Friedrich Kapp, 1870
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Immigration, 1851 and 2015
The movement of people from one place to another always strains societies. Today's debate about who to let in and who to keep out of Europe and the United States echoes similar conflagrations from the past. The Congregational Library & Archives has sermons and pamphlets from the mid-19th century discussing arriving waves of immigrants in the United States.
The Irish, fleeing poverty and increasingly reactionary government in their home country, arrived en masse to the United States in the 1840s. Documents in the CLA's collection illuminate striking similarities between this migration and the arrivals in Europe today.
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Archivist Jessica Steytler's journey from junk drawers to rare documents
Outwardly, the Congregational Library & Archives looks much as it did fifteen years ago, with the card catalog lining the front hall, the reading room preserved, the portraits of the ministers looking down sternly. Archivist Jessica Steytler knows better. The CLA has changed dramatically since Jess arrived in 2000. "Technology has really been booming. We have these tools that didn't exist twenty years ago, or even ten years ago. In some ways, my job has morphed quite a bit," she says. "But I still answer reference questions, I still process collections. Those are the pillars of my job."
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History Matters is Online
Dr. Lori Stokes gave a fascinating lecture in the Reading Room last week. Watch excepts from the lecture to learn how widespread starvation in the early years of Massachusetts shaped Puritan society and religious practice.
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Upcoming Events
History Matters series - Putting the Congregation back into puritan Congregationalism Thursday, November 12, 2015
History Matters series - Dreams of the Red Phoenix
Thursday, December 3, 2015
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