TRANSACTIONS 1902–1904

    Transactions of the Colonial Society of Massachusetts.

    ANNUAL MEETING, NOVEMBER, 1902.

    THE Annual Meeting was held at the University Club, No. 270 Beacon Street, Boston, on Friday, 21 November, 1902, at six o’clock in the afternoon, the President, George Lyman Kittredge, LL.D., in the chair.

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

    The Corresponding Secretary reported that a letter had been received from the Hon. Francis William Hurd accepting Resident Membership.

    The Report of the Council was presented and read by the Corresponding Secretary.

    REPORT OF THE COUNCIL.

    The Society held its Annual Meeting on the twenty-first of November, and, as usual, five Stated Meetings have since been held. At all these meetings valuable and interesting papers were read and original documents and objects exhibited. It may be noted that the discussions elicited by the papers have been more frequent and are increasing, and it may be added that the more generally the members stand ready to present communications, the greater will be the life and interest in the meetings.

    There have been added to our Roll six Resident Members,

    • James Atkins Noyes,
    • James Hardy Ropes,
    • Marcus Perrin Knowlton,
    • Francis Apthorp Foster,
    • Morton Dexter,
    • Francis William Hurd;

    and one Corresponding Member,

    • Benjamin Franklin Stevens.

    During the year we have lost by death two Resident Members,

    • James Bradley Thayer,
    • Charles Greely Loring;

    and one Corresponding Member,

    • Benjamin Franklin Stevens.

    The Stated Meeting in February took the character of a Memorial Meeting and a printed report of it, with the tributes paid to Mr. Thayer, has been sent to all the members. General Loring was a distinguished representative of one of the oldest and most prominent families of Boston,—a man as honorable in life as in lineage, who had served his country in the great crisis in its history, and, in the later times of peace, did much for the honor and development of his native city as Director of the Museum of Fine Arts.

    In the Council Report of 1898, the importance and value of printing the Vital Statistics of the Massachusetts towns to 1850 was urged. This suggestion has recently been embodied into the law of the Commonwealth, in Chapter 470 of the Acts of 1902, usually known as the Vital Records Bill. Our associate and former Registrar, Mr. Henry E. Woods, was a factor in securing this legislation, and has since been appointed by the New England Historic Genealogical Society editor of Vital Records. Under his scholarly supervision, volumes are being rapidly issued and distributed throughout the Commonwealth.

    In more than one of the Reports of the Council the importance of publishing the records of the ancient churches of the Commonwealth has been urged. The Benevolent Fraternity of Churches of the City of Boston has recently done a great public service in printing, under the able editorship of the Rev. Henry F. Jenks, all the records of the Church in Brattle Square, Boston, 1699–1872. It is hoped that the other churches in Boston will follow the good example thus set by the Fraternity and so make their archives easily accessible in print to. many inquirers.

    In the Report of the Council at the Annual Meeting in 1894, the importance of printing the early Records of Harvard College was referred to. This suggestion also has borne fruit. During the present year, one of our members has made the generous offer to bear the expense of copying and printing so much of the College Records as will fill a volume of our Publications of the usual size.1

    Besides reporting the doings of the Society for the year and its present condition and looking forward to its prospects, it is also the duty of the Council in its Report to state the Society’s needs. The most urgent need is that of larger Publication funds. The Society is hampered in its work by its limited means. It cannot issue its Publications faster than it can pay for them, and to keep free from debt is now its established policy. The generosity of the late President Wheelwright extricated the Society from its financial embarrassment a few years ago, and an increased income at the disposal of the Publication and Printing Committees would enable them to keep abreast of the work.

    A second need, less pressing but still urgent, is that of a permanent home of its own, however modest and plain. In its early years, the Society met by the courtesy of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences in the Hall of the Academy, and, since the Academy’s removal to the Back Bay, it has been dependent for the last few years, by a like courtesy, upon the hospitality of the American Unitarian Association. For this generosity and kindness the Society feels under deep obligations to both bodies. If we had some place of habitation, books, portraits, photographs, engravings, manuscripts and relics of all kinds, would be given to the Society, which are now often offered but withheld simply for the reason that the Society has no proper place for their preservation.

    The fields of work, in many directions, for such a Society as this, the need of it, the rank it should take, the future opening before it if the opportunities within its grasp are fittingly improved, have been dwelt upon in previous reports and need not now be re-stated.

    The Reports of the Treasurer and of the Committee to examine the Treasurer’s Accounts were then submitted, 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 17 November, 1902.

    CASH ACCOUNT.

    receipts.

    Balance, 16 November, 1901

     

    $913.13

    Admission fees

    $60.00

     

    Annual Assessments

    710.00

     

    Commutation of the Annual Assessment from three members

    300.00

     

    Interest

    1,281.89

     

    Sales of the Society’s Publications

    24.40

     

    Mortgages (discharged)

    1,450.00

     

    Withdrawn from Charlestown Five Cents Savings Bank

    375.00

    4,201.29

       

    $5,114.42

    disbursements.

    University Press: printing

    $1,226.63

       

    paper

    182.38

    $1,409.01

     

    A. W. Elson & Co.: photogravure plates and plate printing

     

    191.87

     

    Houghton, Mifflin & Co., electrotype

     

    5.00

     

    Clerk hire

     

    65.50

     

    Eva G. Moore, indexing

     

    50.00

     

    William F. Murray, stenography

     

    13.50

     

    Merchants Parcel and Express Company

     

    14.27

     

    Carter, Rice & Co., stationery

     

    15.00

     

    Hill, Smith & Co., stationery

     

    2.00

     

    Library Bureau, stationery

     

    4.50

     

    William H. Hart, auditing

     

    5.00

     

    Miscellaneous incidentals

     

    318.92

     

    Deposited in Charlestown Five Cents Savings Bank

     

    370.11

     

    Mortgages on improved Real Estate in Boston

     

    2,000.00

     

    Interest in adjustment

     

    10.07

    4,474.75

    Balance on deposit in National Shawmut Bank of Boston 17 November, 1902

       

    639.67

         

    $5,114.42

    The Funds of the Society are invested as follows:

    $25,300.00

    in First Mortgages, payable in gold coin, on improved property in Boston and Cambridge;

    25.11

    deposited in the Charlestown Five Cents Savings Bank.

    $25,325.11

     

    TRIAL BALANCE.

    debits.

    Cash

     

    $639.67

    Mortgages

    $25,300.00

     

    Charlestown Five Cents Savings Bank

    25.11

    25,325.11

       

    $25,904.87

    credits.

    Income

     

    $639.67

    Publication Fund

    $1,000.00

     

    General Fund

    4,325.11

     

    Gould Memorial Fund

    10,000.00

     

    Edward Wheelwright Fund

    10,000.00

    25,325.11

       

    $25,964.78

    Henry H. Edes,

    Treasurer.

    Boston, 17 November, 1902.

    REPORT OF THE AUDITING COMMITTEE.

    The undersigned, a Committee appointed to examine the accounts of the Treasurer of The Colonial Society of Massachusetts for the year ending 17 November, 1902, have attended to that duty and report that they find them correctly kept and properly vouched, and that proper evidence of the investments and of the balance of cash on hand has been shown to us.

    George V. Leverett,

    F. Apthorp Foster,

    Committee.

    Boston, 19 November, 1902.

    The several Reports were accepted and referred to the Committee of Publication.

    The Rev. Edward H. Hall, on behalf of the Committee to nominate Officers for the ensuing year, made the following Report:

    president.

    • GEORGE LYMAN KITTREDGE.

    vice-presidents.

    • WILLIAM WATSON GOODWIN.
    • MARCUS PERRIN KNOWLTON.

    recording secretary.

    • HENRY WINCHESTER CUNNINGHAM.

    corresponding secretary.

    • JOHN NOBLE.

    treasurer.

    • HENRY HERBERT EDES.

    registrar.

    • FREDERICK LEWIS GAY.

    member of the council for three years.

    • GEORGE VASMER LEVERETT.

    The Report was accepted; and, a ballot being taken, these gentlemen were unanimously elected.

    The Rev. Edward H. Hall communicated a Memoir of George Otis Shattuck, which he had been requested to prepare for publication in the Transactions.

    After the Annual Meeting had been dissolved, dinner was served. The guests of the Society were the Rev. Dr. James De Normandie, and Messrs. Solomon Lincoln, Stephen Salisbury, Moorfield Storey, and Winslow Warren. President Kittredge presided.