Episode Transcript
[00:00:00] Speaker A: Welcome back. Today we're welcoming Alexandra Elliott, the executive director of the Quincy Historical Society, to stop on by and provide us a little update on how they've been marking America 250 this year and what's ahead for 2027. Alexandra, it's great to see you.
[00:00:13] Speaker B: Thank you. Yeah, no, I'm happy to be here.
[00:00:15] Speaker A: Appreciate the opportunity to catch up with you. You know, you're just across the way over at the Adams Academy, but we don't get to talk to you nearly enough. But there's so much going on over there
[00:00:25] Speaker B: always. Yes.
[00:00:26] Speaker A: Before we talk about anything, we wish the Historical Society A happy 133rd anniversary on Sunday. Thank you so
[00:00:33] Speaker B: much. Yes, it is. Yeah, that's our anniversary of our founding.
[00:00:36] Speaker A: Wow. 1893. Indeed. Yeah. Before then.
[00:00:40] Speaker B: No, before then we did not exist.
We were founded as an organization looking to sort of honor the revolutionary history of Quincy in the area. Old Braintree at the time and. Yeah. And since then, obviously, our organization has evolved to include significantly more of the. The city's history.
[00:00:58] Speaker A: Yeah, absolutely. But only your current location for a little over 50 years. Yes,
[00:01:03] Speaker B: we've been at the Adams Academy since 1972.
[00:01:05] Speaker A: Okay. Is it a good spot for you?
[00:01:07] Speaker B: Oh, absolutely, yeah. No, we're centrally located and, you know, there's really no other space like it in town. So we've been very happy to be the chief stewards of it for a number of years.
And yeah, we're happy to stay where we are for now.
[00:01:19] Speaker A: As I mentioned, we're wrapping up America 250. Right. The semi Queen.
[00:01:24] Speaker B: Yes.
[00:01:25] Speaker A: And it took me all year to figure out how to say that.
How have you been marking that at the Historical Society?
[00:01:29] Speaker B: Oh, gosh, yeah. No, it's been a huge year. Just in general, we've been doing lots of programs, a couple in partnership with the library.
Earlier this spring, I did a program exploring the connection between Abigail Adams and the Thomas Paine's publication Common Sense and how that may have inspired her to write Remember the Ladies that letter.
[00:01:48] Speaker A: Interesting.
[00:01:49] Speaker B: And then we've had a number of other programs and whatnot. I actually gave the keynote address speech at the wreath laying for John Adams last. Last week, I believe it was.
Time flies.
And. Yeah, so it's been a big year and we've still got lots of research that we're working on as well.
[00:02:05] Speaker A: Sure. Do you have school groups, Alexandra? We do,
[00:02:08] Speaker B: yes, we have actually. Very proud to have a 40 year long elementary school program.
So every third and fourth grade student going through the Quincy Public Schools comes to our facility for a field trip. They go around to a number of the different historic sites, but they always make a visit to our museum as well.
[00:02:23] Speaker A: Very nice. Very nice. We. What's currently on exhibit?
[00:02:27] Speaker B: So, currently we've got our core exhibit up. Earlier this fall, we had a traveling exhibit from the Adams Memorial foundation, which is the organization looking to build a memorial properly in Washington. It's
[00:02:38] Speaker A: been going on for a long time. For
[00:02:39] Speaker B: a while. Yep. So they had a traveling exhibit with us for about a month here in September, and then it came over to the library in
[00:02:47] Speaker A: October. Is it getting any closer to having an Adams Memorial? I
[00:02:50] Speaker B: think so.
[00:02:51] Speaker A: There
[00:02:51] Speaker B: was some movement on the legislation for it during the last session, and then it expired. So I think they're pushing to continue the push.
[00:02:59] Speaker A: Okay, this goes back to the late Congressman Delahunt's efforts. I know. Absolutely. Okay, let us know if there's any movement on it.
[00:03:07] Speaker B: Oh, if I find out, I will let you know.
[00:03:08] Speaker A: Please do. And you have your standard displays, right? I think there's. We do, yep. Howard Johnson's display. Yes, indeed.
[00:03:14] Speaker B: So, yeah, we have our core exhibit currently on display. We're actually working on a pretty big refresh of that right now.
[00:03:21] Speaker A: That's
[00:03:21] Speaker B: one of our big things for next year.
[00:03:23] Speaker A: I was just going to ask what's coming up in 2027?
[00:03:25] Speaker B: Yeah, so the big project we're working on right now, and so that's the kind of the big announcement is we're doing a refresh of our core exhibits, the one that we have currently opened in 2005. So it's starting to show a little bit of its age. Some of the digital elements aren't working anymore. So we want to get that up to date. And we have the opportunity now. There's. So the technology has advanced so much, and we just have so many different options of different ways to explore the history and really and, you know, share these stories in new and exciting ways. So we want to bring that up to date a little bit. And we have some very generous support from the Community Preservation Committee that is helping us specifically with the security upgrades and some of the restoration of the collection.
And then, yeah, we're also doing it through private donations.
[00:04:11] Speaker A: Okay, so will it still be Howard Johnson's?
[00:04:13] Speaker B: Oh, there will be some Howard Johnson's in the section. In that section of the exhibit. We're also updating the Four river display, the revolutionary display. Pretty much the entire thing is getting an overhaul.
[00:04:25] Speaker A: Okay. Does. Does AI play a part, Alexandra, in. Not very much. Preservation
[00:04:33] Speaker B: definitely has a Role to play. Yeah. Like, there are some really cool different types of exhibits that I know that AI technology has been used for. Like showing. Showing, like a then and now.
[00:04:43] Speaker A: This is what I'm thinking. Yes.
[00:04:45] Speaker B: And so for that purpose. Absolutely. But when it comes to the actual writing and creating of things. Absolutely not.
[00:04:51] Speaker A: Well, obviously it didn't exist, so it doesn't know.
[00:04:53] Speaker B: Exactly.
[00:04:55] Speaker A: And most of the research is on paper.
[00:04:57] Speaker B: Yes, a lot of it's on paper. A lot of it is still done the old analog way. Although one thing I will absolutely shout out to is some of the research that we've been able to do into the revolutionary period has been because of some of the digitization that's been going on of old newspaper records and of all book records that we just did have access to. And we're not able to search as comprehensively as we are now. So that has been a huge help just in terms of being able to do the research that we can do.
[00:05:23] Speaker A: Yeah. And it also will preserve the original documents, right? Absolutely. Because they don't have to be handled, not
[00:05:28] Speaker B: as frequently.
[00:05:29] Speaker A: So it keeps them for posterity purposes, on display.
You've brought some pictures? I
[00:05:35] Speaker B: have,
[00:05:36] Speaker A: yes. We want to show folks some fun pictures to kind of give a little insight into what's going on behind the scenes.
[00:05:41] Speaker B: Yeah. We have a couple programs coming up and a few series of things that we're working on. So I brought some things to go along with that.
[00:05:48] Speaker A: Thank you for that. Appreciate that. The first one has to do with Sacco and Vanzetti. Yes.
[00:05:52] Speaker B: Yes. So 2027 is the anniversary of their execution. We wanted to be doing more in 2020 that corresponded to the anniversary of the actual crime that was committed.
And there are actually some very interesting Quincy connections to that case.
The jury foreman was actually a former Quincy police officer. I believe that the two defense attorneys were Quincy practicing lawyers as well. So we want it. We're not really going into the case trying to answer the question of did they do it or did they not?
Plenty of other historians have really gone into that and we trust their scholarship. But we want to explore the more local angle of how was it being received in the city at the time, because there was actually some protest and some demonstrations being done around the time. So we want to explore that local angle and talk about some of that history. But we also recognize that it is controversial, for
[00:06:45] Speaker A: sure. Yeah.
[00:06:45] Speaker B: We want to be very, you know, sensitive with how we handle it.
[00:06:49] Speaker A: So get both sides right. A balanced balance view. They were labeled as anarchists by some Right. But martyrs by others. Exactly. There was quite a division. Still to this day, the debate rages over.
[00:07:00] Speaker B: It does. It is so funny how much it's a hundred year old case, but you still get people commenting, like on. When we do blog posts about it, saying like, you know, oh, they were absolutely guilty. Oh no. And you know, no, they weren't. So the debate is still very fresh.
[00:07:14] Speaker A: Yeah. Okay. So that's one thing to look for.
[00:07:16] Speaker B: Absolutely.
[00:07:17] Speaker A: And a mystery.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: Yes, a
[00:07:19] Speaker A: local mystery.
[00:07:20] Speaker B: So this is a really interesting case. This is known kind of as the Tragedy of Quincy.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: Yeah, I never heard of this before.
[00:07:27] Speaker B: It's a weird one. So this was a.
This is actually something that we get inquiries about at least once a year.
[00:07:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:07:34] Speaker B: And it's people asking questions about like, what is the story behind this? Do you know anything else? Because there is a very particular grave marker in Hancock Cemetery to this young couple, John and Hannah Grieve.
[00:07:44] Speaker A: There it is, there
[00:07:45] Speaker B: it is right on the screen there.
And in particular at the bottom of the stone, you can't really read it in this picture, but there is a very interesting epitaph which reads, deluded by the writings of A.J. davis. And usually what we're getting is a question asking, well, what does that mean?
[00:08:01] Speaker A: Right.
[00:08:02] Speaker B: And as we've been doing some research into it, we've basically uncovered that there was a very healthy spiritualist community in Quincy at the. In the latter half of the 18th century and into the. Excuse me, latter half of the 19th century, 1800s and into the early. And into the very early 1900s at the turn of the century.
And so what that it means is that the spiritualist movement was essentially a group of people who believed in the existence of a life after death and that you could communicate with the spirits.
[00:08:33] Speaker A: Okay.
[00:08:34] Speaker B: And in doing so, there was this whole religious movement that developed especially out of the Civil War. There is all of this death and grief coming out of that conflict. And suddenly you have a lot of people wanting to connect with their loved ones. And so they're following these religious leaders who say they're leading seances, that sort of thing. Oh,
[00:08:51] Speaker A: I see. Okay.
[00:08:52] Speaker B: Exactly.
And so this became a major religious movement in the United States at that time. And there was actually a very large community of them here in Queen.
Funny enough, I actually did discover recently that there is still a spiritualist church in Quincy. So I do want to be careful that we are speaking about people's current religious beliefs in quote.
[00:09:10] Speaker A: Interesting. So we
[00:09:10] Speaker B: want to be sensitive there.
[00:09:11] Speaker A: Sure, of course.
[00:09:12] Speaker B: But it's a fascinating Story, a young couple who came out from Zanesville, Ohio, were only in town for a few days, but then their bodies were found in fax and wood a few weeks later. And who were they? What happened to them? And then ultimately their connection to the spiritualist movement, which may have been played a role in their death.
[00:09:30] Speaker A: And they're buried here. And
[00:09:31] Speaker B: they're buried here at Mount Wallace, or, excuse me, at Hancock Cemetery.
[00:09:34] Speaker A: At Hancock Cemetery. Okay. Was the case ever solved?
[00:09:36] Speaker B: It was, yes. So what happened was we don't
[00:09:39] Speaker A: want to give away too much.
[00:09:40] Speaker B: Not too much, but a very short version. The coroner by the name of Bass at the time, he actually put it out into all the newspapers, and this went nationwide. So you actually find newspaper articles about this case all over the place. And finally, someone from Zanesville, Ohio, saw it and then wrote to the father of John Grieve, who then wrote back into the Quincy newspapers and said, this is, you know, this is my son, and here's what was going on.
They had actually faked their death a few years.
[00:10:09] Speaker A: Oh, really?
[00:10:10] Speaker B: Beforehand and disappeared. And
[00:10:11] Speaker A: so nobody knew.
[00:10:13] Speaker B: Is a very interesting story.
[00:10:15] Speaker A: Okay,
[00:10:16] Speaker B: so there is, you know, you've got spiritualism, you've got, you know, a mysterious death, you've got the woman Hannah dressing as a man and pretending to be the half brother of her husband.
It's a really fascinating, convoluted story. So we want to pay some attention to it because it does generate a lot of interest,
[00:10:33] Speaker A: I would think. Yeah. I've worked in Quincy all my adult life, Alexandra. That's the first I've heard of this. So that's an interesting one. Very interesting.
And that leads us to our next topic. You're planning, like, a true crime series?
[00:10:45] Speaker B: Yes. So this will. So each of those topics will be covered in a new lecture series for the coming year, Quincy True Crime. So we want to dive into some of those stories because obviously they generate a lot of buzz, they get a lot of attention, but you don't always get to approach them from the local angle and really explore, like, how they impacted the local community.
[00:11:05] Speaker A: Yes, yes. Okay. So that being kind of throughout the year.
[00:11:08] Speaker B: That would be throughout the year. We don't have specific dates yet. It'll depend on how the research shapes up. But, yeah, we will be doing that throughout the year.
[00:11:14] Speaker A: Okay, so do you have a. Like a staff behind you, you know, gathering all this information?
[00:11:18] Speaker B: Working on it. I have a couple research volunteers who are helping me. Our executive director emeritus, Ed Fitzgerald, will also be helping with it. He's the local expert on the Sacco and Venzetti case. So he'll be taking care of that one.
[00:11:29] Speaker A: Okay. I'm sure Dr. Ed is still very much involved. Absolutely. Retired,
[00:11:33] Speaker B: yes.
[00:11:34] Speaker A: He can't retire.
[00:11:36] Speaker B: Still too much.
[00:11:36] Speaker A: Probably gives him more time to do the things that he loves to do.
[00:11:39] Speaker B: That's what we're working on.
[00:11:40] Speaker A: Right, exactly.
And you're really going to get controversial next year, aren't you?
[00:11:46] Speaker B: Yeah, a little bit. A little bit
[00:11:48] Speaker A: historical and controversial. Yes.
[00:11:50] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. The other main bent of our research going on right now, kind of behind the scenes, is over the last year, obviously, as we're working on the 250th commemorations, we really uncovered some fascinating stories and anecdotes about the Loyalist families here in Quincy and what they experienced. And you
[00:12:07] Speaker A: say Loyalist loyal to the British Crown. Loyal
[00:12:09] Speaker B: to the British crown, yeah. So the families who were not on the side of the patriots, like, completely on the opposite side from, you know, our local heroes, John Hancock, John Adams, etc.
And who ultimately either left the community or had a very interesting time of it after the revolution and had to integrate into this new republic that we created.
And there were quite a few of them up here in the north, precious to Braintree.
And so, as we've been doing this research, what's been so interesting is that we are finding it's really recalibrating how we think about that early revolutionary community, what it looked like, and what it would have been like to be living here at that time.
One of my favorites is actually related to the picture that I brought or one of the other pictures I brought, which marks the site of the Liberty Tree outside of Brackett's Tavern. Yes. So James Brackett and the Brackett family, they were mostly patriarch. And we got up on the screen. Fabulous.
[00:13:00] Speaker A: Right on cue.
[00:13:01] Speaker B: Very good.
So they were mostly a Patriot family, but there were a few loyalists, and there was a buttonwood tree outside of their tavern.
Now, this tavern also happened to be located in the front yard of the Apthorpes, who were a major loyalist family. They were some of the wealthiest people in Boston and in Braintree at the time.
And then you also had, I believe, the Etter family. They were some, excuse me, Swiss immigrants who came and settled during the Germantown formation of that settlement.
And they were all kind of located in this little area, this kind of triangle. That's the intersection of School Street, Elm street and Hancock.
[00:13:42] Speaker A: Right downtown. Right
[00:13:42] Speaker B: downtown. And so in this intersection, you get the planting of an assignment of the Brain tree, Liberty Tree. And it was put Square in the middle of a loyalist neighborhood. Kind of being a little bit provocative
[00:13:56] Speaker A: on purpose, Right? Most
[00:13:57] Speaker B: likely. And so really the only reference we had to it was, as you could see on that sign that was in the picture, this excerpt from John Adams diary describing, well, okay, I just saw it. It's been put up, but it doesn't provide any other context around it.
[00:14:12] Speaker A: Interesting. Yeah.
[00:14:13] Speaker B: So that's a whole new angle that we've been able to explore.
[00:14:15] Speaker A: Alright. And that site is still there. And
[00:14:17] Speaker B: that site is still there.
[00:14:18] Speaker A: Okay. All right. Tells the story. Is it part of the Presidential trail? Yes. So
[00:14:22] Speaker B: that sign is part of the Presidential trail
[00:14:24] Speaker A: or
[00:14:24] Speaker B: the President's trail. Excuse
[00:14:25] Speaker A: me. Yeah, yeah. Interesting. Okay. So it's going to give us a kind of a different perspective on what life. Like right after the war, right?
[00:14:33] Speaker B: Exactly. Yeah. Right before the war and right after the war. Because we can really talk about this as a neighborhood and all of these people living together as neighbors next to each other, and yet they are having some of the most divisive politics at the time.
You know, should we break away from England or should we not? I can't think of a more divisive subject than that.
And so, you know, you have, for example, up in the northern end of what would be Quincy center today, what is now Peacefield, was owned by a family called the Vassals. And they were a loyalist family, very well connected throughout the British Empire. And they've got their mansion right up there across the way, the Dorothy Quincy house. Very famous part of the Quincy family. They had lost it by that point in time. And it was a group of, I think it was spinster cousins from the Ilene family living in the house at the time. So they are also Loyalists. And then you keep going down and eventually you get to John and Abigail Adams and they're all living together,
[00:15:28] Speaker A: all living together in not perfect harmony.
[00:15:31] Speaker B: Not all perfect
[00:15:31] Speaker A: sometimes. Yeah, really interesting stuff.
Something to look forward to.
[00:15:36] Speaker B: We've been finding it very fascinating,
[00:15:37] Speaker A: for sure. And some of the names you're mentioning, Bracket, Vassal streets are named after today.
[00:15:43] Speaker B: It's all of these place names that we're going to be able to identify and recognize a little bit more readily and who they were and what that all comes
[00:15:49] Speaker A: from. We've been putting your website up, your phone number for folks who want to learn more
[00:15:54] Speaker B: if you ever have any inquiries or. That's one of the things that we get a lot of during the week is people wanting to learn more history about that. So please get in touch with us if you have any questions or anything like that.
[00:16:04] Speaker A: Excellent. Thanks so much for stopping by, Alexandra. Thank you for having me. We'll have you back, too.
[00:16:08] Speaker B: Very good.
