February Meeting, 1956

    A STATED Meeting of the Society was held at its House, No. 87 Mount Vernon Street, on Thursday, 23 February 1956, at three o’clock in the afternoon, the President, Hon. Robert Walcott, in the chair.

    The records of the last Stated Meeting were read and approved.

    The Corresponding Secretary reported the receipt of letters from Messrs. Myron Piper Gilmore, Perry Townsend Rathbone, Walter MacIntosh Merrill, and Charles Akers accepting election to Resident Membership, and from Mr. Gilbert Stuart McClintock accepting election to Corresponding Membership in the Society.

    Messrs. George William Cottrell, Jr., and Paul Herman Buck, of Cambridge, were elected Resident Members of the Society.

    Mr. Whitehill informed the Society of the installation of Francis Parkman’s study on the fourth floor of the Society’s House. Although the room is slightly smaller than the original study in No. 50 Chestnut Street, it is substantially a replica of the room in which Parkman worked, all of the furniture and much of the woodwork being original. Mr. Morison paid the reconstruction the high compliment of saying that it smelled like the original.

    Mr. Stephen Thomas Riley read a paper entitled: “John Adams and Robert Treat Paine.”

    Mr. Mark Bortman read extracts from the Revolutionary diary of the Reverend Joseph Perry of East Windsor, Connecticut, which had recently come into his possession. Perry was present near Boston during the siege from January to March 1776. This diary, edited by James S. Van Ness, was subsequently published in Proceedings of The Bostonian Society, 1963, pp. 19–56.