Annual Meeting

    November, 1948

    THE Annual Meeting of the Society was held at the Algonquin Club, No. 217 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, on Saturday, 20 November 1948, at a quarter after six o’clock in the evening, the President, Augustus Peabody Loring, Jr., in the chair.

    With the consent of those present, the reading of the records of the last Stated Meeting was omitted.

    The Hon. Raymond Sanger Wilkins, of Salem and Mr. Edward Ely Curtis, of Wellesley, were elected to Resident Membership, and Mr. Carl Bridenbaugh, of Williamsburg, Virginia, was elected to Corresponding Membership in the Society.

    The Annual Report of the Council was read by Mr. Zechariah Chafee, Jr.

    Report of the Council

    IT is appropriate to begin with a tribute to the men whom we have met to honor tonight. It is one paragraph by James Rawson Gardiner in the chapter on the sailing of the Mayflower in his history of England in the reigns of James I and Charles I. “All these considerations urged the exiles [in Leyden] to seek another home. The ideal of the pure and sinless community which they hoped to found was still floating before their eyes, and was drawing them on as it receded before them. Let us not stop to inquire whether such an ideal was attainable on earth. It is enough that in striving to realize it, they did that which the world will not willingly forget.”

    The Society has held three meetings since the last annual meeting. In December, at the Club of Odd Volumes, Mr. C. E. Goodspeed read a paper. In February, Mr. S. E. Morison contributed the gastronomy and Mr. Edmund S. Morgan the history, again at the Club of Odd Volumes. In April, our President entertained the Society at his house and Mr. Richard Walden Hale, Jr., was the speaker.

    There have been no publications during the year. The Editor has in preparation another volume of Transactions and another volume of Harvard College Records; and Mr. Allis is at work on the Black papers concerning Maine lands.

    Two Resident Members elected at the last Annual Meeting are now enrolled: Kenneth John Conant and Frederick Lewis Weis. Six other Resident Members have also joined us: Samuel Chamberlain, Julian Lowell Coolidge, Bartlett H. Hayes, Jr., Henry Forbush Howe, Carleton R. Richmond, and Sidney Talbot Strickland.

    We have gladly welcomed two Honorary Members. It is very appropriate that one is a descendant of a founder of the Plymouth Colony, Robert F. Bradford; and the other is Leverett Saltonstall, a descendant of a founder of the Massachusetts Bay Colony.

    During 1948 the Society has lost two Corresponding Members, ripe in years and achievements:

    Thomas William Lamont, Corresponding, 1927, died on 2 February at the age of seventy-seven. Banker, benefactor of Exeter and Harvard, owner of the New York Evening Post in its last years of greatness and of the Saturday Review of Literature in its first years of promise. Like the merchants of London, he made possible the adventurous voyages of other men—through the seas of thought. Between the two World Wars, he reversed the course of the Pilgrims and sought to bring fruitful living and new ideas into the Old World. He failed as Raleigh failed at Roanoke, but his example makes us keep on trying.

    Charles Austin Beard, Corresponding, 1928, died on 2 September, aged seventy-three. One of the very few Americans who has had the courage to resign. He gave up his career as professor of history in a university dominated, so he said, by “a small and active group of trustees, reactionary and visionless in politics and medieval in religion.” Suggesting new lines of historical research, he wrote The Economic lnterpretation of the Constitution, but he did not believe in the economic interpretation of the Constitution, for his imaginative insight comprehended all the varied forces which brought about the rise of American civilization and shaped our Republic. Historians who reject the conclusions of his final books still remember that “A man’s life is his whole life, not the last glimmering snuff of the candle.”

    The Treasurer submitted his Annual Report as follows:

    Report of the Treasurer

    In accordance with the requirements of the By-laws, the Treasurer submits his Annual Report for the year ending 14 November 1948.

    Statement of Assets and Funds, 14 November 1948

    ASSETS
    Cash:

    Income

    $11,857.50

     

    Loan to Principal

    7,223.83

    $4,633.67

    Investments at Book Value

    Bonds (Market Value $138,600.88)

    $141,385.04

     

    Stocks (Market Value $112,509.38)

    83,464.31

     

    Savings Bank Deposits

    3,309.91

    228,159.26

    Total Assets

     

    $232,792.93

    FUNDS

    Funds

     

    $213,966.52

    Unexpended Income

     

    18,826.41

    Total Funds

     

    $232,792.93

    Income Cash Receipts and Disbursements

    Balance, 14 November 1947

     

    $11,913.26

    RECEIPTS:

    Interest

    $2,582.50

     

    Dividends

    5.315.30

     

    Annual Assessments

    770.00

     

    Sales of Publications

    89.00

     

    Total Receipts of Income

     

    8,756.80

       

    $20,670.06

    DISBURSEMENTS:

    New England Quarterly

    $2,800.00

     

    Editor’s Salary

    1,500.00

     

    Secretarial Expenses

    860.00

     

    Annual Dinner

    797.51

     

    Storage

    300.76

     

    Notices and Expenses of Meetings

    403.79

     

    Postage, Office Supplies and Miscellaneous

    176.72

     

    Auditing Services

    125.00

     

    Publications

    385.15

     

    Safe Deposit Box

    24.00

     

    General Expenses

    11.25

     

    Interest on Henry H. Edes Memorial Fund added to Principal

    308.56

     

    Interest on Sarah Louisa Edes Fund added to Principal

    1,119.82

     

    Total Disbursements of Income

     

    $8,812.56

    Balance of Income, 14 November 1948

     

    $11,857.50

    James M. Hunnewell

    Treasurer

    Report of the Auditing Committee

    The undersigned, a committee appointed to examine the accounts of the Treasurer for the year ended 14 November 1948, have attended to their duty by employing Messrs. Stewart, Watts and Bollong, Public Accountants and Auditors, who have made an audit of the accounts and examined the securities on deposit in Box 91 in the New England Trust Company.

    We herewith submit their report, which has been examined and accepted by the Committee.

    Willard G. Cogswell

    Arthur S. Pier

    Auditing Committee

    The several reports were accepted and referred to the Committee on Publication.

    On behalf of the committee appointed to nominate officers for the ensuing year the following list was presented; and a ballot having been taken, these gentlemen were unanimously elected:

    • President Augustus Peabody Loring, Jr.
    • Vice-Presidents Hon. Fred Tarbell Field
    • Hon. Robert Walcott
    • Recording Secretary Robert Earl Moody
    • Corresponding Secretary Zechariah Chafee, Jr.
    • Treasurer James Melville Hunnewell
    • Registrar Robert Dickson Weston
    • Member of the Council for Three Years Robert Ephraim Peabody

    After the meeting was dissolved, dinner was served. The guests of the Society were Mr. Mark Bortman, Mr. A. Stanton Burnham, Dr. J. M. Kinmonth, Mr. Storer Boardman Lunt, Mr. David McCord, Commander James C. Shaw and Professor Basil Willey. The Reverend Henry Wilder Foote said grace.

    Mr. Basil Willey, King Edward vii Professor of English Literature in the University of Cambridge, addressed the Society and its guests.