The Historical is Personal

by LEO LOVEMORE Research Scholar, Recovering New England’s Voices

Ibegan my work on the Recovering New England’s Voices project with a passion for lingering in the layers of history and myth that make up the region in which I was born. My ancestors were along for this ride, too: my Polish immigrant greatgrandmothers who worked in fields and factories, and my Portuguese grandfathers, laborers and fisherfolk who left the Azore Islands to settle new homes in the Massachusetts communities of Salem and Peabody. My colonial English ancestors were here as well: the shipbuilders and merchants from Beverly,

Massachusetts, who benefited directly from the development of exploitative economic systems that persist today. My late dad, who grew up in Lynn, Massachusetts, and passed away in Amherst, Massachusetts, presided over the gathering. Together, we initiated the difficult and also life-giving work of Recovering New England’s Voices—a process that requires coming to terms with historical harms so that we may envision more just and livable futures.

Growing up in Massachusetts, I came to this work versed in the “heroes” of dominant New labored with her sewing.

This work as a research scholar relies upon information from government repositories, local archives, and the previous work of Historic New England staff, community members, and scholars in other fields. In my efforts, I have traveled from Cape Cod to Connecticut to learn about the history of southern New England. Through these travels, I have learned that New England’s rich history and culture results from the contributions of all of its inhabitants, including the earliest Native Americans, Euro-Americans, African Americans, and more recent immigrants. As Roseland Cottage and Casey Farm demonstrate, there are ways to uncover hidden histories and write a more inclusive story about the past.

England history and the many myths that ensured such figures remained at the center of regional historical storytelling. On school field trips, I learned about the “brave” settlers who battled Native people to the point of entitled triumph, which was reflected in the perceived “disappearance” of those communities from their homelands forever. In the local history section of the public library, I poured over stories about settlers stockading my town’s common and the heroic “Angel of Hadley” who “protected” the town’s white settler soldiers during King Philip’s War. These stories put those who looked like me—white New Englanders of European descent—at the center of this region’s story and acted like it was the whole of the history. It was not then, and it is not now.

It was not until graduate school that I began to unravel these claims of truth and belonging. In courses like “Underground Archives” and through books like Wendy Warren’s New England Bound and Jean M. O’Brien’s Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England, I learned that the roots of our most widely accepted “local” histories were forged from deep, collective investments in claiming lands and resources that were just barely “ours.” These experiences showed me that the desire to belong is at the heart of settler colonial placemaking and that white New Englanders desire a story of conquest, ownership, and deservability that justifies the occupation and domination of this land. I learned that by only seeing and doing history from the vantage point of those who control resources and narratives, we replicate the same values and practices that keep wealth, power, and prestige concentrated in the hands of a very small few. It is only by releasing a tightly controlled grip on “Truthwith-a-capital T” that other realities can grow and thrive.

Recovering New England’s Voices is an ongoing lesson in deep listening and deep looking “from the bottom up.” It demands constant self-reflection about the biases and assumptions I bring to the work of seeking out marginalized histories. It invites me to cultivate and practice an ethic of care toward archives, historical spaces, and family narratives that centers accountability and justice. It asks that I rethink my own role as a researcher working both within—and against—institutions that wield the power to define the truth.

I came to this work knowing that archives are sites of power. However, this work has taught me that the power to define truth and reality is also inscribed into the built environment of New England. It is reflected in the houses and landscapes we labor to preserve and the libraries and archives we build to ensure that some accounts of historical reality are documented and preserved while others are never even written down. By looking “sideways” at historical archives and sources, we are regularly surprised by what—and who—comes to the surface.

One of my first tasks in Recovering New England’s Voices research involved culling reams of research compiled by prior historians. Among tall stacks of archival boxes, I came across a copy of the finding aid—a document that outlines the contents of an archival collection—for the Harrison Gray Otis Papers held by the Massachusetts Historical Society. One entry caught my eye: a receipt from the warden of the New

Hampshire State Prison to New England architect Asher Benjamin. The receipt notes Benjamin’s purchase of building stone from the prison for projects commissioned by Otis. Although I have spent a lot of time thinking and writing about the historical roots of contemporary systems of labor and incarceration, I was surprised to see a link to these topics surface in my first days of work.

From my preliminary reading on Otis House, I knew that Otis—a lawyer, politician, and businessman—played a significant role in the commercial development of Boston; specifically, the real estate development of Beacon Hill. I knew that Benjamin was described as a “housewright” and that he published a historically significant carpenter’s manual. I knew he was a friend and colleague of Otis. What I had not realized was that the building materials that Otis and his associates sourced for their major development projects often came down river to Boston, pulled from the infamous quarries and mines of New Hampshire—the Granite State—by pools of convict labor at the New Hampshire State Prison.

I visited the Massachusetts Historical Society and pulled the microfilm that contained some of the papers of Otis. I loaded the film into the computer interface and scrolled through scribbled receipts for evidence of labor and material related to Otis’s development projects in the 1820s. The documents revealed vast networks of labor and enterprise that contributed to the construction of some of Boston’s most prized edifices. I finally landed on the bit of paper I was searching for: a receipt that showed Benjamin paying $1,000 to Daniel Connor, warden of New Hampshire State Prison, for stone used in “the blocks of houses you are building for Hon. H. G. Otis and others.”

This barely legible bit of paper that happened to survive for nearly 200 years due to its association with one powerful businessman and politician opened up new forms of truth related to Beacon Hill. In this receipt, we can hold physical evidence of one of the many ways that marginalized people’s bodies—and the labor such bodies performed—served as the foundation upon which some of Boston’s most iconic and historically celebrated architectural forms were built.

Today, you can visit the row of six houses that Otis constructed on Beacon Street in 1828 to see their broad exteriors made of carved stone. At a current market value of more than $13 million each, these buildings tower over the Boston Common just as they did 200 years ago, showing us what generational wealth and power look like.

What those stone-faced buildings do not tell us is what it was like to extract, cut, and finish such material in