Events
Special Event: Bring Family Photos Home for the Holidays
Saturday, November 12, 2016
11:00 AM - 3:00 PM
Edmund Fowle House
28 Marshall Street
Watertown, MA 02472
Drtad and Harry Boyajian of Oxford Studios in Cambridge preserved the history of many Watertown families in classic style studio portraiture in the 1940s and 50s. When the bothers left the business, the proofs were given to the Boyajian family. Harry's son, David, has donated photos of Watertown residents to the Historical Society of Watertown.
The HSW invites you to peruse listings sorted by surname and by street address of these family portrait proofs, then visit the Fowle House during a Bring Family Photos Home event to pick up photos of family, friends or neighbors at no charge so you can get them to those who will appreciate them most. Enlarged, framed prints of the photos would make very memorable holiday gifts.
This program is free and open to the public.
For more information, call Joyce at 781-899-7239.
November Public Program
Massachusetts and the 19th Century China Trade
A slideshow lecture by Doug Stewart
Wednesday, November 9, 2016
7:00 PM
Watertown Savings Bank Meeting Room
Watertown Free Public Library
123 Main Street
Watertown, MA 02472
Two hundred years ago, greater Boston was the richest corner of the nation, thanks to the tea, spices, porcelain, silk and other luxury goods that daring local shipmasters brought back from East Asia. The early nineteenth-century China trade merchants of Massachusetts included the new nation's first millionaires. Many Boston area institutions, from McLean Hospital and the Museum of Fine Arts to Theodore Lyman's Waltham estate, were built in part with wealth derived from the China trade.
Between the American Revolution and the War of 1812, Salem was the heart of the China trade. That is why its municipal seal depicts not a Puritan or a witch on a broomstick, but a Sumatran gentleman in a silk robe and slippers with a volcano in the background. In 1807, well before the first income tax law was enacted, import duties paid at the Salem customs house alone accounted for 5% of all federal revenue.
Learn about the impact and influence of the China trade in Massachusetts through this lecture. The involvement of Watertown residents Edmund Fowle Jr. and John Perkins Cushing (known in China as "Ku-Shing") will be discussed.
Ipswich resident Doug Stewart is a freelance magazine writer whose stories have frequently appeared in Smithsonian, as well as Time, Discover and American Heritage. He is also the author of The Boy Who Would Be Shakespeare: A Tale of Forgery and Folly.
This program is free and open to the public.
For more information, call Joyce at 781-899-7239.