Of Christmases Long, Long Ago

While preparing for our spooky themed Archives Crawl in the fall, Special Collections Department interns found a surprisingly large number of ghost stories printed in our historic newspapers. What made this discovery even more fun was the fact that these 19th century ghost stories were not printed during autumn months, as most people would expect; they were mostly printed in the months of December and January. This presented an opportunity to tell tales of one of my favorite, obscure, historical subjects- the tradition of ghost stories at Christmastime.

Christmas ghost stories were popularized during the Victorian Era, but their origins go back much further. So much further, in fact, they predate Christianity itself. People have commemorated the Winter Solstice since prehistoric times. The longest night of the year has always been tied to the concepts of darkness and death but also rebirth and the impending return of light. Many of our ancestors believed spirits would make themselves known during this transitional time. It’s not hard to imagine why ghost stories came into the picture.

From The Hauntings of Cold Christmas by Verity Holloway, printed in folk-horror magazine Hellebore’s Yuletide Special:

The Boston Daily Globe,
Saturday, November 22, 1884

“Ghosts and Christmas are inextricably linked in the British Isles. The darkening days and the dangers of winter weather naturally breed stories of powerful interlopers intent on harm. The Christmas ghost stories of medieval England are bloody affairs, frequently requiring the wandering corpses of the wicked to be returned to the grave by violence or ritual. The horror author M.R. James pointed out the similarities between these tales of winter revenants and those of Scandinavian midwinter sagas. Stories of contagion, the walking dead, and otherworldly torments are hardly what we would call Christmas cheer. But the similarities between medieval English winter stories and their Scandinavian cousins suggest these tales share a bloodline traveling far back into pre-Christian history.

Modern readers may be more comfortable with the Victorian variety of Christmas ghost, cozily antiquated without being alien, and yet the unwelcome return of the dead remained a strong theme throughout the 19th century. Simon Stern prefaces Volume 3 of the Valancourt Book of Victorian Christmas Ghost Stories by saying that the 19th century festive ghost is an entity with no regard for the starkly contrasting boundaries of the wild and the home, the hearth and the snow, the living and the dead: ‘Instead of scaring up an external threat and imagining the home as the safe harbour, it terrorizes the inhabitants with spectral beings who wander between those two spheres.’”

 The clippings above are from the December 24, 1886 edition of The Boston Daily Globe. 

Gleason’s Pictorial Drawing Room Companion, Volume 1, 1851 

The tradition of telling ghost stories at Christmas is still alive and well in the U.K. Although the tradition became relatively popular among Victorians in the U.S., as demonstrated by the clippings above, for modern Americans it is largely a relic of Christmas Past. But remnants of the ritual remain. Charles Dickens’ A Christmas Carol, a Christmas ghost story and one of the most famous stories in literary history, continues to influence the way Americans celebrate the holiday season. "It’s the Most Wonderful Time of the Year," one of the most popular songs of the Christmas genre, says, “there’ll be scary ghost stories and tales of the glories of Christmases long, long ago...”

If you’re interested in starting your own new holiday tradition by reviving a very, very old one, it’s as simple as pulling a favorite eerie book off your shelf and slightly frightening everyone in your household. May your holidays be merry and bright- but also a little bit scary and dark, for old times’ sake.

Alyssa Persson

Processing Archivist

Two Water-hens 🎵🎵

This month, stop by the library to see the Least Water-hen (plate 349) on display in our Audubon case. Featuring both the male and the young hen, the water-hens are shown in a marshy environment. You may think that "male" is a typo here, because hens are female chickens, but in fact the water-hen is not a chicken. Water-hens are aquatic birds from the rail family, and their name comes from their resemblance to chickens.

Audubon fans who have paid close attention for the last few years may have noticed that in December we try to display a bird featured in the "Twelve Days of Christmas!" Birds of America doesn't include any traditional hens or chickens, but the water-hen comes close! We have previously shared four colly (calling) birds, turtledoves, and a partridge!

Visit us from December 9 through January 13 to see the water-hens on display, and our apologies if "The Twelve Days of Christmas" is now stuck in your head!

Elizabeth Roscio

Preservation Librarian

New Exhibit! “From the Good People of Massachusetts,” The Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee Records, 1917-1919

We are proud to share that our new exhibit "From the Good People of Massachusetts," The Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee Records is now on view in the display cases outside the Library (Room 341). Utilizing the Relief Committee collection, the exhibit tells the story of the 1917 Halifax Explosion, the resilience of the people of Halifax, and the goodwill of the people of Massachusetts. The exhibit also highlights the conservation work that the collection received in 2023-2024 and the connection that still remains between Halifax and Massachusetts.

The State Library received the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee Records from the Massachusetts Committee on Public Safety in March of 1921. The collection contains correspondence, reports on the Halifax disaster, and reports prepared by the Relief Committee. The collection also contains meeting minutes of the Committee’s Halifax Branch, sample documents and forms, and copies of thank you letters from Halifax residents who received aid from the Committee. Four blueprints and 79 photographs of the damage in Halifax and the subsequent reconstruction efforts round out the collection.

A glimpse into the exhibit, showing two of the six cases

On the morning of December 6, 1917, two ships, the SS Mont-Blanc and the SS Imo, collided in Halifax Harbor. The Mont-Blanc, which was carrying munitions, caught fire. This led to an explosion and subsequent tsunami that devastated the Canadian city. When news of the explosion reached Massachusetts Governor Samuel McCall, he offered the mayor of Halifax immediate and unlimited assistance. In the weeks following, the Massachusetts-Halifax Relief Committee was established and raised money to assist residents of Halifax who had lost their homes and all their belongings. Ultimately, the Committee raised over $500,000, furnished 1,800 homes, and raised an additional $25,000 in medical and educational funds for people blinded by the explosion.

The materials contained within the Relief Committee’s collection are profoundly moving, perhaps none more so than the letters of appreciation from Halifax residents.

You can see this very letter and so much more from the collection in the exhibit. If you visit during December, you can couple it with a visit to Boston’s official Christmas tree on the Common, a continued expression of gratitude from Nova Scotia to the people of Massachusetts. Visit during our open hours, Monday-Friday from 9:00-5:00, to check it out. This exhibit will run until April 2026.

Exhibits Working Group

State Library Newsletter - December Issue

December is here! In our latest newsletter, read all about our new exhibit and seasonal displays, library resources, new items in our online store, and more!

Pictured here is a preview, but the full issue can be accessed by clicking here. And you can also sign up for our mailing list to receive the newsletter straight to your inbox.

Two Tea Documents on Display

In case you missed it, last December we exhibited a broadside concerning the shipment of tea that arrived in Boston Harbor in November 1773. The question of what to do with this tea culminated in its destruction in the harbor on December 16, a monumental event that we know of as the Boston Tea Party. We're happy to share that the broadside is once again on display this month, along with a companion letter that was issued by the Boston Committee of Correspondence at the same time.

The broadside describes meetings held on November 28, 29, and 30 when residents of Boston and nearby towns gathered to discuss the matter of the tea. Click over to our blog post from last year to read about it in detail.

Serving as a companion to the broadside is the letter issued by the Boston Committee of Correspondence, which serves as a brief cover letter for the broadside. Displaying them together helps us to interpret how news was disseminated throughout the Commonwealth during the Revolutionary Period. Committees of Correspondence were established throughout the thirteen colonies in the 1770s, and the Massachusetts committee got its start in Boston in 1772. Through letter writing, committees formed a network of communication throughout towns in the Commonwealth, as well as between the colonies. Massachusetts’ was headquartered in Boston, and this letter is signed by William Cooper, whose signature appears on many of the 18th century documents in our collection. He served as Boston’s Town Clerk in addition to being a member of Boston's Committee of Correspondence.

As the meetings regarding the shipment of tea were held in Boston, it was the Boston Committee of Correspondence to issue both the displayed broadside and the companion letter. The letter notes that the three-day meeting was moved from Faneuil Hall to Old South Meeting House (a detail also included in the broadside), by writing “On Monday last this and the neighbouring Towns as one Body convened at Faneuil-Hall, ‘till the Assembly were so numerous as occasion’d an Adjournment to the Old South Meeting-House, where it was computed there was upwards of 5000 persons.” Though many individuals attended the meeting in person, the news still needed to be spread throughout the Commonwealth, most pressingly, to provide an account of the matters that were voted upon. As such, an account of the meeting was printed as the broadside, and then it was sent along with the letter to various towns. We are thrilled for the opportunity to display these items together, as intended.

As the Preservation Librarian, I must include a note on the logistics of displaying an item two years in a row. Materials in our Collection Spotlight are only on display for a period of 30 days at a time, as we limit the amount of time that they spend out of dark, climate-controlled storage. The Collection Spotlight case has a microclimate that is conditioned to 68% relative humidity, and its viewing panel is “SmartGlass” which has UV filters and a layer of light-controlling film. When not in use, the glass portion of the case is dark, until it is activated by a button which lights the case for 30 seconds. This allows the case to remain dark for the majority of the time and only illuminated when a visitor wants to view the exhibited item, allowing us to safely display even our most sensitive items on a more frequent basis than if they were in a regular case. While the tea broadside won’t make an appearance every year, the conditions of the Collection Spotlight case ensure that it is safe to display it two years in a row.

Mark the December 16th anniversary of the Boston Tea Party by visiting the library to see these two documents on exhibited together. They are on display from December 2 through January 6. Huzzah!

Elizabeth Roscio

Preservation Librarian

Researching State Hospitals and Using Filters In Our Digital Collections

You might already be aware that accessing old patient records is a topic that has featured in the news recently, for example, the Boston Globe published an article discussing the issue back in August. The Globe article mentions recent bills created to address the issue along with the Overview and Recommendations report published by the Special Commission on State Institutions (SCSI). The Commission’s findings bring to light the state’s mishandling of sensitive records that document the (mis)treatment of patients. The Commission also presents suggestions for ways the state can take responsibility and acknowledge the people effected as well as how to better handle these records moving forward. A copy of the SCSI’s review and recommendations can be accessed here.

In addition to this overview, the Commission produced a full report that contains a detailed history of state hospitals in Massachusetts as well as the known repositories that contain surviving records. The report also includes citations to key legislation that led to the development and administration of these facilities. In light of the SCSI’s publication of this report, I thought it would be helpful to revisit our past blog post on Old Massachusetts Hospital Records and Patient Files which discusses where and how researchers can access patient records. Spoiler Alert: the State Library does not have patient files; however, there is sort of an exception to this – as the SCSI discovered in their research: a report published in 1848 Senate Bill number 47. Although it doesn’t contain detailed patient information, this report does list the names of individuals whose institutionalization was paid for by the State from the year 1838 to 1847.

The 2017 blog post lists several depositories (also listed in the SCSI’s report), namely: the Massachusetts State Archives, Harvard University’s Countway Library of Medicine (especially the Warren Anatomical Museum and Collection), and the City of Boston Archives. The SCSI confirmed that the State Archives has records from the following institutions:

Boston State Hospital
Metropolitan State Hospital
Grafton State hospital
Boston Psychopathic Hospital
Medfield State Hospital
Bridgewater State Hospital
Fernald State School
Westborough State Hospital
Danvers State Hospital
Northampton State Hospital
Tewksbury State Hospital

The Commission determined that surviving materials not kept at the State Archives technically are (or should) still held by Department of Mental Health and the Department of Developmental Services. These are some of the other repositories the that the Commission found which contain records:

• The Yakovlev-Haleem Collection at the National Museum of Health and Medicine
• UMass Lowell -Tewksbury Almshouse Intake Records
• University of Massachusetts Amherst - Belchertown State School Friends Association Records
• University of Massachusetts Chan Medical School Lamar Soutter Library - Samuel Bayard Woodward Collection
• Brandeis University’s Robert D. Farber University Archives -Samuel Gridley Howe Library

The Massachusetts Historical Society also has materials connected to the McLean Asylum for the Insane, Worcester State Hospital, and the Channing Asylum in Wellesley. Information on these MHS collections and more, is available here: Collections of the Massachusetts Historical Society Related to Disability.

The Commission’s research didn’t just stop at tracking down patient records. There is a whole section on issues surrounding burial records (starting on page 165 of the report), but that is a topic for a whole other blog post. In the meantime (which will probably be a while), I strongly recommend reading the SCSI’s full 366-page report – a copy of which can be accessed in our Digital Collections, here. If the page count is too daunting, don’t worry! There is also an 18-page plain text summary of the report which is available here.

So, where does the State Library fit into all of this? As mentioned earlier – we don’t have patient records, but we do have the legislation that created and shaped these institutions – including bills that were enacted (or not enacted), and the acts that got passed by the General Court. As noted, with Senate Bill 47, some of this legislation contains commission reports. If you want to learn more about researching legislation, please consult our Guide to Compiling a Massachusetts Legislative History | Mass.gov. We also have publications issued by these institutions. Our collection of digitized material from Massachusetts state hospitals can be accessed here. These publications are typically the Annual Reports for the institutions, and the contents are primarily concerned with the finances and administration of the facility as reported by the hospitals to the General Court.

Let’s take a closer look at our digital collection from the Northampton State Hospital. Pro Tip: currently, the Sort By feature under Settings on the left of your screen defaults to “Most Relevant” -- you can change that to put them in chronological order.

In these reports you can find general statistics (e.g., age, sex, etc.) regarding the patient population during that year (below is an excerpt from page 26 of Northampton State Hospital’s 1870 annual report):

You can also find information on the expenses of the institution (below is an except from page 32 of Northampton State Hospital’s 1870 annual report):

For instance, the table above shows how many pillowcases were allotted to the 2nd Hall of the men’s quarter.

Sometimes, drawings and floor plans are included (images below are from Northampton State Hospital’s 1874 Annual Report):

Obviously, this data lacks information about the personal stories of the individual patients committed to these institutions – something that more likely would be kept in patient records – which are currently located at the State Archives (see Archive Grid). These files cover a period ranging from 1858 to 1993 (when the hospital closed).

Navigating our Digital Collections 

Our collections are organized in a similar way to how an archival collection is organized. This is a helpful tool for conceptualizing the organization of Massachusetts government.

The collections are nested within one another. Massachusetts State Hospitals → Northampton State Hospital → Annual Reports. If there were non-Annual Report materials, there would be another heading like the Annual Reports one you see in the image, e.g. “Newsletters,” “Board Meeting Minutes,” or even “Documents” (our catchall for monographs and other one-off materials that don’t fall into a specific category).

Check if there are more collections, if it says “Show more” you know that there are more collections with hits for “Northampton State Hospital."

You’ll notice multiple collections called “Annual Reports.” That is because these refer to annual reports from different agencies. We are working on fixing this because, as you can imagine, just about every agency publishes an annual report. 

For right now, you are going to need to click into each of these to find out to which they belong.

Clicking randomly into one of these Annual Reports, we end up in the Worcester State Hospital Annual Reports which evidently had reports that mention the Northampton State Hospital:

For the most part, these hits are from reporting on staff (named) and patient (unnamed) transfers to and from different hospitals. Other collections, such as House Documents or Senate Documents include bills which will help you compile legislative histories on laws that mention the state hospital. If a Digital Collection is a year, e.g. 1946, that represents the Acts and Resolves passed from that year.

If you run into issues navigating our collections, please don’t hesitate to contact us at Reference.Department@mass.gov. One of our Reference Librarians will be happy to assist!


Maryellen Larkin

Government Documents Reference Librarian

Sources:

Boston Globe Editorial Board (August 29, 2025) “Open up records from state mental institutions: Healey’s bill would give public access to records over 75 years old,” Boston Globe. Accessed September 11, 2025.

Report to the Massachusetts Special Commission on State Institutions, 2025.

Special Commission on State Institutions Overview and Recommendations, 2025. 

Author Talk with Paul M. Collins, Jr.

• Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings by Christina L. Boyd, Paul M. Collins, Jr., and Lori A. Ringhand
• Wednesday, December 10, 2025. 12pm - 1:00pm
• In-person and Virtual event. No registration required.
• State Library of Massachusetts - Room 341, Massachusetts State House
• Livestream on YouTube
• Books available for purchase; $15.00 cash or Venmo

The State Library of Massachusetts Author Talks Series welcomes Paul Collins as our December speaker. Collins is a contributing author of the 2023 book Supreme Bias: Gender and Race in U.S. Supreme Court Confirmation Hearings.

Supreme Bias was the recipient of the 2024 C. Herman Pritchett Award, sponsored by the American Political Science Association (APSA) - Law and Courts Section and the 2024 winner of the Choice Award for Outstanding Academic Title, sponsored by the American Library Association.

This is an in-person and virtual event. The livestream available on our YouTube channel courtesy of the Massachusetts House of Representatives Broadcast Services. Tune in at noon!

Be sure to sign up for our Author Talks newsletter and follow our social media channels (Instagram, Facebook, and X) for the latest information on our visiting authors. If you are unable to attend, the recording will be posted to our YouTube channel to watch anytime - view all past recordings here!

About the book: Supreme Bias takes a deep dive into the U.S. Supreme Court confirmation hearings. Specifically, the book highlights the extreme bias that female and people of color nominees face during the judicial confirmation process. The book compiles quantitative and qualitative evidence showing that gender and racial bias affects the interviews; women and people of color are more frequently interrupted, subject to stereo-typed base questioning, and overall critiqued in more negative terms than their white, male counterparts. Despite this alarming evidence, Supreme Bias and its authors provide solutions to combat such bias even in the highest court.

About the author: Paul M. Collins, Jr. is Professor of Legal Studies and Political Science at the University of Massachusetts Amherst. Collins holds a Ph.D. and M.A. in political science from Binghamton University and a B.S. in political science from the University of Scranton. He served as the inaugural Director of Legal Studies at UMass from 2014-2020. Collins works with both undergraduate and graduate students; his research focusing on inequality in our legal system.

Collins is a respected author and scholar; his articles appearing in law reviews and journals, and he currently sits on the editorial board for the Journal of Politics. He has secured grants from the Dirksen Congressional Center and the National Science Foundation for his research. In addition to being an author of four books, Collins' work and commentary has appeared on CNN, USA Today, his writing also included on SCOTUSblog, Slate, and the Washington Post.

Please visit Paul’s blog and UMass site for a complete professional biography, a full list of his academic articles, and for more information on his research and teaching.

As always, this author talk is free and open to all. Assisted listening devices will be made available upon request. If you are able to join us in person for this talk, attendees will be able to participate in a question-and-answer session with the author. Books will be available for purchase; $15.00 cash or Venmo.

Any questions or concerns, please email us at AuthorTalks.StateLibrary@mass.gov. For more information on the State Library Author Talks series, please visit our site.


April Pascucci
On behalf of the Author Talks Working Group