Boston’s Immigration talk May 16, 2013

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The Historic Shirley-Ustis House museum will be hosting a talk “Boston’s Immigration as it Impacted Boston and Roxbury” with Anthony Sammarco on Thursday, May 16, 2013 at 6:30 p.m.

From their website:

Anthony Sammarco’s lecture will discuss Boston’s immigration period with a slide presentation that will focus on the city, its tenements, their interiors, and the social service agencies available to immigrants.  Roxbury will also be discussed in the same vein with early slides of the Shirley-Eustis House and neighborhood.

Mr. Sammarco is a noted historian and author of over sixty books on the history and development of Boston and its neighborhoods.  His book, Boston’s Immigrants was written to highlight the diversity of the city. Refreshments will be served following the lecture. Admission for each lecture is $5 for adults, $4 for students and seniors.

Shirley-Eustis House members and their guests are free. For more information about Shirley Place, its architecture, residents, gardens and collections, visit www.shirleyeustishouse.org, call 617-442-2275 or become a fan on our Facebook page to stay connected to our events and announcements.

The Shirley-Eustis House, 33 Shirley Street, Roxbury, MA, built in 1747 for Royal Governor William Shirley, was once a sprawling estate of 33 acres.  It continues to sit majestically in Roxbury surrounded by beautiful gardens and historic fruit orchards and remains the most imposing and best preserved of the four standing colonial governors’ homes in the United States.

Ornament and Identity in the Immigrant-Built Tenements of Boston and New York

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The Shirley-Eustis House in Boston will be hosting a talk “Ornament and Identity in the Immigrant-Built Tenements of Boston and New York (1870-1920)” with Zachary Violette on Thursday, May 9, 2013 at 6:30 p.m.

Here’s more description from their website:

Zachary Violette will examine the ways immigrant tenement builders in Boston and New York used architectural ornament to create meaning in the buildings they built for the poor and the working class at the turn of the 20th-century.  To reformers, the decorated tenements were cheap shams and bad housing as they were making these buildings an important site of contested meaning over questions of taste and property, workmanship and honesty, class, ethnicity, and control of the built environment.  Mr. Violette is a PhD candidate in American and New England Studies at Boston University.

Refreshments will be served following the lecture. Admission for each lecture is $5 for adults, $4 for students and seniors. Shirley-Eustis House members and their guests are free.

For more information about Shirley Place, its architecture, residents, gardens and collections, visit www.shirleyeustishouse.org, call 617-442-2275 or become a fan on our Facebook page to stay connected to our events and announcements. 

The Shirley-Eustis House, 33 Shirley Street, Roxbury, MA, built in 1747 for Royal Governor William Shirley, was once a sprawling estate of 33 acres.  It continues to sit majestically in Roxbury surrounded by beautiful gardens and historic fruit orchards and remains the most imposing and best preserved of the four standing colonial governors’ homes in the United States.

The Memoir Project: Recording the Memoirs of Boston’s Seniors

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from our friends at the BPL:

The Memoir Project: Recording the Memoirs of Boston’s Seniors

Wednesday, May 8 2013, 6:00 p.m., Commonwealth Salon, Central Branch, Boston Public Library

My Legacy is Simply This by Tula Mahl

Since 2008, Mayor Thomas M. Menino and Boston’s Elderly Commission have partnered with a local nonprofit, Grub Street, to produce The Memoir Project. The project has gathered senior citizens from Boston neighborhoods to write down their personal memories. The project guides participants in sharing their stories through writing their memories in bound journals for their families and future generations to learn from and remember. Project staff will describe how the partnership came about and explain the techniques they use for gathering and writing oral histories.

Speakers include:

  • Tula Mahl, Deputy Commissioner of Communications and Policy for the City of Boston’s Commission on Elderly Affairs
  • Christopher Castellani, Artistic Director at Grub Street and author of three novels
  • Michelle Seaton, Lead Instructor and creator of the curriculum for the Memoir Project
  • Judith Klau, Senor Participant from the South End workshop of the Memoir Project

…

Read more about Grub Street and the Memoir Project by clicking here.

 

Tracing the West End Families: Yesterday and Today

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from our friends at the BPL:

Tracing the West End Families: Yesterday and Today

Wednesday, April 24, 2013, 6:00 p.m., Commonwealth Salon, Boston Public Library

Richard Andrew Pierce on West End Families

Richard Andrew Pierce provides insight to those facing the challenges of researching family histories in the unique urban neighborhood setting that is the West End. He is a consultant to the West End Museum and a professional genealogist in Boston. Mr. Pierce has traced the ancestries and missing heirs for hundreds of clients. His books and articles include: The Stones Speak: Irish Place Names from Inscriptions in Boston’s Mount Calvary Cemetery, The Wampanoag Genealogical History of Martha’s Vineyard, and a five-part series of articles on the ancestry of President Kennedy for the New England Historic Genealogical Society’s American Ancestors website.

Iranian Immigrant Stories April 12, 2013

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This coming Friday, April 12, 2013, the American Islamic Congress will present Immigrant Stories by Iranian Women.

As the AIC website explains,

“AIC’s “Muslim Women in the Arts Series” includes as its latest installment a discussion with artist Niloofar Ziae and author and university lecturer Dr. Mitra Shavarini on their experiences as Iranian female immigrants to the US. As part of the evening, Ziae’s artwork will be exhibited and Shavarini will read from her new memoir “Desert Roots.””

For more information and registration, go to the AIC website here.

Also, explore the story of Desert Roots at Dr. Shavarini’s website.

 

The West End: From Early Immigration to Urban Excess, BPL, April 10

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from our friends at the BPL:

The West End: From Early Immigration to Urban Excess

Wednesday,  April 10, 2013, 6:00 p.m., Commonwealth Salon, Central Branch Boston Public Library

James Campano and Duane Lucia on Boston's West End

James Campano and Duane Lucia of the West End Museum present a broad look at an important American urban neighborhood from the seventeenth century to the present time. The West End Museum is a neighborhood museum located at 150 Staniford Street on the ground floor of West End Place, and is dedicated to the collection, preservation, and interpretation of the history and culture of the West End of Boston.

Mr. Campano is the Founder of the West End Museum and Mr. Lucia is the Executive Director.

Dynamic Tensions: Charles Atlas, Immigrant Bodybuilders, and Eugenics, 1920-45 at Mass Historical Society, Tuesday, March 19, 2013

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Charles Atlas ad, from The Black Terror #12, Page 36 November, 1945, by Atomicsteve, from Wikimedia Commons

 

Boston Immigration and Urban History Seminar

Massachusetts Historical Society

Tuesday, 19 March, 5:15 p.m.       

Dominique Padurano, Scarsdale High School

Dynamic Tensions: Charles Atlas, Immigrant Bodybuilders, and Eugenics, 1920-45

Comment: Martin Summers, Boston College

This paper explores the paradox of bodybuilders such as Atlas espousing eugenics principles while highlighting their own allegedly innate weaknesses as a marketing strategy for their diet and exercise regimens. It also argues that both techniques functioned as assimilation strategies for the immigrant and ethnic bodybuilding community at a time when the U.S. was less than hospitable to foreigners.

RSVP required. To respond, email seminars@masshist.org.

Teaching Civil Rights via Common Core, NARA, Waltham, March 7 2013

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 Rosa Parks Turns 100! Teaching Civil Rights via Common Core

Thursday, March 7, 2013 at the National Archives and Records Administration, Waltham, MA

Using records of Jackie Robinson, Rosa Parks, Ella Fitzgerald, the 369th Infantry Harlem Hellfighters in WWI discover more about teaching important topics in civil rights history with the new standards.

Learn more at the NARA-Boston workshops for teachers page by clicking here

 

 

 

Chinese-American Geneology at BPL, Weds., Feb. 27, 2013

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Wednesday, February 27, 2013, 6:00 p.m.
Orientation Room, Central Branch, Boston Public Library

Alice Kane on US Chinese genealogy

Chinese-American and native Bostonian Alice (Yee) Kane presents a historical overview of Chinese immigration from southeastern China to the United States during the 19th and 20th centuries. Among the elements considered are Chinese societal and cultural values, immigration patterns, immigration and naturalization laws, and resources specific to researching Chinese-American citizens as found in courts and National Archives and Records Administration centers.

Ms. Kane previously worked in the Boston Public Library’s Microtext Department before becoming a professional genealogist and researcher.