Annual Meeting November, 1949

    THE Annual Meeting of the Society was held at the Algonquin Club, No. 217 Commonwealth Avenue, Boston, on Monday, 21 November 1949, 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 minutes of the last Stated Meeting was omitted.

    Mr. Francis Whiting Hatch, of Wayland, and Mr. Lucius James Knowles, of Boston, were elected Resident Members of the Society.

    The Treasurer reported the terms of the will of the late Albert Matthews, a Resident Member of the Society for fifty years and its Editor for twenty-seven, and the Society voted to accept the bequest mentioned in the will.

    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 1949.

    Statement of Assets and Funds, 14 November 1949

    ASSETS
    Cash:

    Income

    $14,826.48

     

    Loan to Principal

    13,294.06

    $1,532.42

    Investments at Book Value:

    Bonds (Market value $155,768.69)

    $155,830.62

     

    Stocks (Market Value $112,509.38)

    96,849.96

     

    Savings Bank Deposit

    3,376.43

    $256,057.01

    Total Assets

     

    $236,597.52

    FUNDS

    Funds

     

    $236,597.52

    Unexpended Income

     

    20,991.91

    Total Funds

     

    $257,589.43

    Income Cash Receipts and Disbursements

    Balance, 14 November 1948

     

    $11,857.50

    RECEIPTS:

    Interest

    $5,048.15

     

    Dividends

    5,915.85

     

    Income on Albert Matthews Fund

    1,244.01

     

    Annual Assessments

    810.00

     

    Sales of Publications

    140.50

     

    Contributions

    40.00

     

    Total Receipts of Income

     

    $13,198.51

       

    $25,056.01

    DISBURSEMENTS:

    New England Quarterly

    $3,000.00

     

    Editor’s Salary

    1,500.00

     

    Secretarial Expenses

    900.00

     

    Annual Dinner

    616.70

     

    Copies of Forty Acres, the Story of the Bishop Huntington House

    513.00

     

    Storage Charges

    415.72

     

    Publications

    226.30

     

    Portrait of Francis Parkman

    200.00

     

    Auditing Services

    125.00

     

    Notices and Expenses of Meetings

    123.00

     

    General Expenses

    116.90

     

    Postage, Office Supplies and Miscellaneous

    98.66

     

    Binding Books

    74.00

     

    Safe Deposit Box

    24.00

     

    Interest on Henry H. Edes Memorial Fund added to Principal

    417.46

     

    Interest on Sarah Louisa Edes Fund added to Principal

    1,489.33

     

    Interest on Albert Matthews Fund added to Principal

    389.46

     

    Total Disbursements of Income

     

    10,229.53

    Balance of Income, 14 November 1949

     

    $14,826.48

    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 1949, 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 Treasurer’s report was 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. Robert Walcott
    • Samuel Eliot Morison
    • Recording Secretary Robert Earle Moody
    • Corresponding Secretary Zechariah Chafee, Jr.
    • Treasurer James Melville Hunnewell
    • Registrar Robert Dickson Weston
    • Member of the Council for Three Years Robert Dickson Weston

    The Treasurer moved the adoption of the new Suggested By-Laws, which had been unanimously approved by the Council, and of which a printed copy had been sent to each member with a statement indicating his status under the proposed provisions. The Suggested By-Laws abolished all ancestral qualifications for membership, set a zone for Resident Membership, created a new class of Non-Resident Members, abolished Associate Membership, this class being merged into the others, and made certain changes in Corresponding Membership. After an extended debate, in which the opposition was vigorously led by Messrs. Stephen Willard Phillips and James Duncan Phillips, a ballot was had, in which thirty-six voted in favor of the motion and thirteen against. The President therefore declared the motion lost, since the affirmative vote was less than the three-quarters of all the members present at the meeting, as required by the existing By-Laws.

    After the meeting was dissolved, dinner was served. The guests of the Society were Messrs. Robert Greenhalgh Albion, Arthur Stanton Burnham, Wendell Stanwood Hadlock, William Henry Harrison, Harold A. Larrabee, William Caleb Loring and David McKibbin. The Reverend Henry Wilder Foote said grace.

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

    Report of the Council

    THE year has been uneventful. The usual stated meetings, in addition to the annual meeting and dinner, have been held—those in December and February at the Club of Odd Volumes and in April at the home of our President as his happy guests.

    Seven new members have been chosen since our last report, three at the last annual meeting.

    Resident:

    • Edward Ely Curtis
    • Raymond Sanger Wilkins
    • Waldron Phoenix Belknap, Jr.
    • Henry Hornblower, II
    • John Otis Brew

    Associate:

    • Mark Bortman

    Corresponding:

    • Carl Bridenbaugh

    Death has taken six men during the past year, three Resident Members, one Associate Member, and two Corresponding Members, and we learned belatedly of the loss of a Corresponding Member in the year before. They were all ripe in years and had been long on our rolls.

    Allston Burr, Resident, 1932, died 18 January 1949 in his eighty fourth year. Investment banker, Overseer of Harvard and a generous donor. He gave his time and his delightful humor to the task of reviewing our finances.

    Samuel Chester Clough, Resident, 1913, died 1 September 1949, aged seventy-six. After being a draftsman for the Boston Edison Company for thirty-six years, he retired not tired, for he then served the nation four years in the drafting division of the Charlestown Navy Yard. He was much interested in Boston genealogy and history, contributing several papers illustrated with his own maps showing early ownership of real estate in the town.

    George Frederick Robinson, Resident, 1933, died 19 May 1949 at the age of eighty-eight. Historian and beautifier of Watertown.

    Eldon Revare James, Associate, 1938, died 2 January 1949, aged seventy-three. Lawyer, law teacher, law librarian at Cincinnati and Harvard Law Schools and then at the Library of Congress, adviser to the King of Siam and Justice of the Supreme Court of Siam. He was devoted to legal history as an officer of the Ames Foundation, and his spadework on the Pynchon Diary will eventually bear fruit in its publication.

    William Logan Rodman Gifford, Corresponding, 1906, died 22 June 1948 in his eighty-eighth year; only two men chosen earlier still survive. Librarian in the public libraries of New Bedford and Cambridge until 1904, and then of the St. Louis Mercantile Library Association.

    Marcus Wilson Jernegan, Corresponding, 1926, died 19 February 1949 in his seventy-seventh year. Teacher of American history at the University of Chicago for thirty years and author of important books on colonial America.

    James Rowland Angell, Corresponding, 1929, died 4 March 1949 in his eightieth year. Psychologist, teacher at the University of Chicago, and then like his father university president, guiding Yale for sixteen years, and yet a friend of Harvard, lightening the solemnity of the Harvard Tercentenary by his kindly wit.

    The report was accepted and referred to the Committee on Publication.

    Mr. Robert Greenhalgh Albion, Gardiner Professor of Oceanic History and Affairs, Harvard University, then addressed the Society and its guests.