The Prince Society, or Prince Society for Mutual Publication, (1858-1944) in Boston, Massachusetts, published "rare works, in print or manuscript, relating to America." [1] It was named after Thomas Prince, fifth pastor of Old South Church in Boston. Historian Samuel Gardner Drake founded the society because he "had not been made a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society, and he resented it." [2] Officials of the Prince Society included William Sumner Appleton, John Ward Dean, Charles E. Goodspeed, Edmund F. Slafter, John Wingate Thornton, and William Henry Whitmore. [3] It operated from offices in Bromfield Street (ca.1868) [4] and Somerset Street (ca.1872, 1908). [5] [6] Around 1920 society members "realized at last that a publication society 'on the mutual principle' had become an anomaly in this day and generation." The society continued for several "years of poise before the final leap into the abyss" in 1944. [7]
Sir Edmund Andros was an English colonial administrator in British America. He was the governor of the Dominion of New England during most of its three-year existence. At other times, Andros served as governor of the provinces of New York, East and West Jersey, Virginia, and Maryland.
Sir Ferdinando Gorges was a naval and military commander and governor of the important port of Plymouth in England. He was involved in Essex's Rebellion against the Queen, but escaped punishment by testifying against the main conspirators. His early involvement in English trade with and settlement of North America as well as his efforts in founding the Province of Maine in 1622 earned him the title of the "Father of English Colonization in North America," even though Gorges himself never set foot in the New World.
Samuel Eliot Morison was an American historian noted for his works of maritime history and American history that were both authoritative and popular. He received his Ph.D. from Harvard University in 1912, and taught history at the university for 40 years. He won Pulitzer Prizes for Admiral of the Ocean Sea (1942), a biography of Christopher Columbus, and John Paul Jones: A Sailor's Biography (1959). In 1942, he was commissioned to write a history of United States naval operations in World War II, which was published in 15 volumes between 1947 and 1962. Morison wrote the popular Oxford History of the American People (1965), and co-authored the classic textbook The Growth of the American Republic (1930) with Henry Steele Commager.
Timothy Cutler was an American Episcopal clergyman and rector of Yale College.
John Smibert was a Scottish American artist born in Edinburgh, Scotland, on 24 March 1688, and died in Boston, Massachusetts, British America on 2 April 1751.
Amos Adams Lawrence was an American businessman, philanthropist, and social activist. He was a key figure in the United States abolitionist movement in the years leading up to the Civil War and the growth of the Episcopal Church in Massachusetts. He was instrumental in the establishment of the University of Kansas and Lawrence University in Appleton, Wisconsin.
John Winthrop the Younger was an early governor of the Connecticut Colony, and he played a large role in the merger of several separate settlements into the unified colony.
Reverend Samuel Willard was a colonial clergyman. He was born in Concord, Massachusetts, graduated Harvard in 1659, and was minister at Groton from 1663–1676, whence he was driven by the Indians during King Philip's War. Willard was pastor of the Third Church, Boston from 1678 until his death. He opposed the Salem witch trials, and served as acting president of Harvard from 1701. He published many sermons; the folio volume A Compleat Body of Divinity was published posthumously in 1726.
Arbella or Arabella was the flagship of the Winthrop Fleet on which Governor John Winthrop, other members of the Company, and Puritan emigrants transported themselves and the Charter of the Massachusetts Bay Company from England to Salem between April 8 and June 12, 1630, thereby giving legal birth to the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. John Winthrop is reputed to have given the famous "A Model of Christian Charity" sermon aboard the ship. Also on board was Anne Bradstreet, the first European female poet to be published from the New World, and her family.
The Weld family may refer to an ancient English family, to their possible relations in New England, an extended family of "Boston Brahmins", or to their Irish or Antipodean relations. An early record of a Weld holding public office, is of the High Sheriff of London in 1352, William. In the 16th and 17th centuries people called Weld and living in Cheshire began to travel and to settle in the environs of London, in Shropshire, in Suffolk and thence in the American Colonies, and in Dorset. While the Welds of England had adopted Protestantism, the exception were all three sons of Sir John Weld of Edmonton who married into elite recusant families thus reverting, with their descendants, to Roman Catholicism. The noted Catholic Weld lineage unbroken till the new Millenium is that of Lulworth Castle in Dorset.
Samuel Gardner Drake was an American antiquarian.
The Massachusetts Anti-Slavery Society, headquartered in Boston, was organized as an auxiliary of the American Anti-Slavery Society in 1835. Its roots were in the New England Anti-Slavery Society, organized by William Lloyd Garrison, editor of The Liberator, in 1831, after the defeat of a proposal for a college for blacks in New Haven.
Caleb Rice (1792–1873) was an American politician and businessman. He was the first Mayor of Springfield, Massachusetts when it became a city in 1852, and the first president of MassMutual Life Insurance Company, now a Fortune 100 company.
William Henry Whitmore was a Boston businessman, politician and genealogist.
The Samuel Eliot Morison bibliography contains a list of books and articles written by American historian Samuel Eliot Morison.
The Dedham Public School System is a PK–12 graded school district in Dedham, Massachusetts. It is the oldest public school system in the United States.
William Rice (1821–1897) was a Methodist Episcopal minister, author, and from 1861 to his death in 1897, the President and Executive Director of the Springfield City Library Association. He was an important public figure in nineteenth-century Springfield, Massachusetts.