Thursday, May 15, 2014

Brown Bag on Fire and Roses: The Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834

Join us for a Brown Bag Lunch
On Thursday, May 22nd, 2014
State Library of Massachusetts
Room 442, State House
12 until 1:30 PM

Bring your lunch and join us to hear Nancy Schultz talk about the most notorious act of anti-Catholic violence in Boston’s history:  the 1834 riot that destroyed an Ursuline convent school in Charlestown, Massachusetts.  What would cause a mob of drunken men to attack a boarding school for young ladies in civilized nineteenth-century Boston?  Come and find out some of the answers to these questions.  The torching of the school is chronicled in Schultz’s prize winning Fire and Roses: the Burning of the Charlestown Convent, 1834.

Nancy Lusignan Schultz, Ph.D., is Professor of English at Salem State University in Salem, Massachusetts.  In addition to Fire and Roses, she is the author, most recently, of Mrs. Mattingly’s Miracle: The Prince, the Widow, and the Cure that Shocked Washington City, just published in paperback this spring by Yale University Press.  She is also the editor of three books, including the acclaimed Salem: Place, Myth, and Memory.  In March, she appeared on the Travel Channel premiere of the series “Church Secrets and Legends,” in a segment on the Salem Witch Trials.

For more information about these books, please visit www.fireandroses.com and http://www.mrsmattinglysmiracle.com.

To register, please visit:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/JFQ6WJ8You may also call the Reference Department at 617-727-2590 or send an e-mail to Reference.Department@state.ma.us to let us know you will attend.