Summer Updates!

It’s been a very busy season here at the Natick Historical Society! After the very successful series of school programs that we finished this spring, this summer has been filled with new projects. We’ve been renovating, researching and even getting in a little seasonal cleaning! This post should bring our readers up to date on some of our more recent projects and what you can look forward to seeing the next time you visit our museum.

The Natick Historical Society- Now with More Room! 

One of the biggest changes you might notice when visiting the Natick Historical Society museum is that we have rearranged our gallery space. The large exhibit case that previously dominated the entrance to the galleries has been removed. This gives us significantly more space for public programs, school groups and other functions.  The exhibit
it previously housed, “Project Passenger Pigeon” has temporarily flown the coop, so to speak.  However, a new exhibit, focusing on our passenger pigeon specimen, conservation and the history of birds in America will be opening this fall at the Morse Institute Library in Natick Center.

Our bird specimens, patiently waiting to be cleaned 

An especially exciting change has been the redesign of our Birds of America case. The Natick Historical Society has a rather large collection of taxidermy mounts of birds, dating from our early history as a historical and natural history society. Many of these birds are now over a hundred years old and are just as much historic artifacts as they are scientific specimens. Our newly redone case has been painted, cleaned and had new lights installed to really show of the brilliancy of some of our birds plumage. The birds have been carefully cleaned so that they can show of their bright colors and plumage. The bird specimens were originally preserved using arsenic, which in the late 1800’s was not an uncommon practice. This makes interacting with these pieces for long periods of time somewhat dangerous, so our conservation and cleaning of the birds had to be a very careful process.  The birds have now been thoroughly primped and cleaned and are back in their case looking better than ever. We’ve printed new labels for all of the birds and reorganized them within the case so that this unique part of our collection can be highlighted to the extent it deserves.

Finches, warblers, buntings  and more from out new Birds of the Americas case

A Golden Olive Woodpecker, previously called a Guyana Woodpecker, after being cleaned 

One particularly interesting part of this case re-installation was researching the new labels for each of our specimens. Many of the scientific and common names for our birds have changed since 1880. A number of the birds were labeled using the names found in James Audubon’s The Birds of America, which are no longer in use in the scientific community.  Discovering the exact identities of many of our birds proved to be quite the challenge! But, with a good deal of research and some help from our friends at the Broadmoor Audubon Wildlife sanctuary, we have been able to successfully identify all of our birds. To learn more about the early history of the society and some of our bird specimens you can read previous blog entries here.

The next exhibit change that is already underway is our new hallway exhibit. This exhibit, titled “Our Story” will be making its debut this fall. This exhibit will feature several items from our collection and will tell the history of the Natick Historical society as well our building, the Bacon Free Library. Exhibit construction is already underway and we are excited to be able to share the history of our museum with as many people as possible.

We have a very busy fall planned here at the Historical Society, with events every month and several other new exhibits in the works. Be sure to check our Facebook page for updates as they develop and we hope to see you this fall!

Project Passenger Pigeon

NHS' very own Passenger Pigeon specimen, collected and mounted by A.L. Babcock.
Photographed by our Curator Kate Herron.

Birds again you say? Hold that thought! We will continue with our normally scheduled program in the next post, but first, let's pause to consider the famed Passenger Pigeon, its extinction, and what that means for us today.

Did you know that, thanks to our friend A.L. Babcock, the Natick Historical Society has a rare Passenger Pigeon specimen? And did you know that 2014 is being celebrated as "The Year of the Passenger Pigeon?" 2014 marks 100 years since the last known Passenger Pigeon specimen died. Her name (yes, she had a name!) was Martha and her life was documented by a scientist at the University of Chicago as well as the Cincinnati Zoo where she died of "old age" on September 1, 1914 (you can read more about Martha here). How strange indeed to live in a time when we can note the exact time and day an entire species became extinct, find overwhelming evidence of the decline in the historical record, and yet end up with such a result?!

This anniversary provides a critical moment to consider how we today can lead more sustainable lives because, after all, our lifestyles directly affect the animals and habitats we live with and, as the young boy in the video below notes so clearly, "if there is no nature, there is no us."

PICTURE THIS: Passenger Pigeons once lived here in such abundance that one particular flock was noted in southern Ontario, Canada during the 1860s as having been, "1 mi (1.5 km) wide and 300 mi (500 km) long, took 14 hours to pass, and held in excess of 3.5 billion birds." Naturalist Joel Greenberg has written an intriguing book entitled, "A Feathered River Across the Sky," which traces the bird's history, explores how such a common creature could be wiped from the face of the earth so quickly, and the repercussions of this man-made extinction. He's also involved in the making of this upcoming documentary:

From Billions to None: The Passenger Pigeon's Flight to Extinction from David Mrazek on Vimeo.

So just how did these ubiquitous birds become extinct you ask? The short answer is that it all started with deforestation by European settlers in North America, slowly destroying the bird's natural habitat (a problem that persists today and continues to affect animal populations of all kinds). By the late 1800s, the birds were being hunted on an enormous scale as a source of cheap meat (if you are interested in the often strange, fervid, and various ways these birds were hunted, read the third paragraph of this Stanford essay here). When scientists realized how much the Passenger Pigeon population had diminished, it was too late to save them since they only reproduced within large colonies.

It's interesting to note that today, de-extinction efforts are actually underway. As we consider our own Passenger Pigeon here in Natick, what questions must we ask of our own behavior towards nature? How can we make such efforts unnecessary and safeguard our neighborhood, indeed the world, for ourselves, our children, and future generations?

Of Birds, Babcock, and Our Beginnings

“What’s up with all those birds you have?”

“You got rid of the birds!”

“Do you still have any of those old birds?”

These are comments we hear a lot from visitors and those familiar with the museum of the Natick Historical Society. Taxidermied birds native to this area and from all over the world have been a prominent fixture here for quite some time though it was not always clear as to why. They are at once odd and fascinating, generating continued and varied responses of all sorts over the years. In recent years, the society has deaccessioned many of them, allowing us to keep the best examples while making space for our other collections to be displayed. Throughout this process, we were able to find out a lot more about why NHS began collecting birds in the first place and how our feathered friends are so central in helping us trace how our own history fits within the period as a whole. To answer these questions though, we need to rewind a bit...

Amory and Susan (Bancroft) Babcock surrounded by tokens of their work in natural history
including an owl stuffed by Babcock, foliage, posies, and two butterfly studies, also by Babcock.
Image courtesy of the Sherborn Historical Society, Sherborn, Massachusetts.

The year was 1872, the banks of the Charles River were heavily populated with mills, and what we now call route 16 was an unpaved swath of dirt and dust cutting through the small district of south Natick. In March of that year, South Natick experienced a devastating fire that consumed Clark's merchant block (where the Charles River Cafe currently sits) and, perhaps most significantly, the entire holdings of the two year old Historical and Natural History Society of South Natick which was renting rooms within the block. The future of the neighborhood we now call home and the society itself was uncertain at best.  NHS may not have continued to flourish if it weren't for an interesting man by the name of A. L. Babcock.

A copy of Babcock's passport
application for his trip to South America
on behalf of the Natick Historical Society.
Image courtesy of the National Archives.

Amory Lealand Babcock lived just across the Natick town line in Sherborn, Massachusetts and was an avid taxidermist and naturalist specializing in ornithology.  He was well connected within the scholarly community and was also a founding member of the Natick Historical Society. When the young society's collections were lost to the fire, he proposed a daring scheme: since the society had insured their collections, they could give him the money and in return, he would travel to South America to collect a body of specimens valued at that amount. The deal was struck and the host of specimens that Babcock himself collected and prepared would form the new foundation of the collection (and indeed the identity) of the society upon his return.

On November 13, 1873, Babcock and his wife set sail from Boston for South America via the West Indies. After almost exactly one month they dropped anchor in Georgetown, a city in the Demerara region that is now part of present day Guyana (then known as British Guiana). Babcock's letters back home note that he was enthusiastically collecting specimens even while on the brig (the type of ship they traveled on), but he employed a wonderfully visceral euphemism to describe the more unpleasant parts of such a journey, "the sail down the harbor was delightful; but before we were well out of the channel, we commenced paying tribute to Neptune, and as far as myself was concerned, this was long continued, as I was sea sick during the whole voyage, more or less (usually more)."

The couple spent the winter and early spring exploring the area and did indeed collect many specimens for NHS, as he notes, "I intend to make as large collections as possible, in all departments. Insects here are in great variety. I have collected quite a number, and shall soon get many more. I have been so busily occupied by the birds that it has taken most of my time thus far. I have begun a botanical collection, have also got a number of fishes and reptiles. This country is exceedingly rich in almost every thing..."

On the left: One of the auks that Babcock caught while on  board the brig that carried him to South America.
On the right: In addition to taxidermy, Babcock was also an accomplished artist.
This is one of his specimen paintings showing a parakeet that is in the collection of the Sherborn Historical Society.

His collection, when brought back to the historic society, encouraged a huge number of successive natural history donations to the society in the proceeding years and drew interest from near and far. Indeed it was oft noted within the time period as rivaling, if not surpassing, other similar collections in the nation and helped to make Natick a magnetic point of activity around the evolving science of the natural world.

Some of the objects deteriorated over time from lack of proper care while others are still with us today though loaded with arsenic—one of the most popular means of preserving natural materials prior to modern non-toxic methods. In the 20th century, the society shifted its focus towards documenting the businesses and home life of its residents and eventually made the move to deaccession a large portion of the remaining birds. It was such a comprehensive, unique, and high-quality collection that you can now visit them at Harvard's Museum of Comparative Zoology.

Here at the museum of the Natick Historical Society, we still feature two cases that include many of Babcock's own specimens in a style similar to what would have been familiar to him. When you explore our exhibits and wonder about the varied and colorful birds, keep in mind that this place was built on the idea of a museum dedicated not just to preserving Natick history, but to the idea of bringing the world to Natick through a museum that opened up the natural world to its citizens.

Welcome Friends!

Welcome to the blog of the Natick Historical Society, it's nice to have you stop by!

Just a snippet of some of the undiscovered objects in our collections, as detailed below

Our curatorial staff, Jessica and Kate, are driven by curiosity about the stories and objects we discover in our daily work here at the NHS museum in South Natick. Here's just a few we've come across:

• An elaborate pair of colorful knit suspenders belonging to a sea captain who hailed from Natick in the mid 1800's. Who was this bold dresser? Who donated his suspenders to the local museum and why?
• Hand decorated gourd vessels from South Africa dating to the late 1800's. How did they find their way to our small New England town? What connections to the wider world might they represent?
• A vast collection of native and South American birds donated by one of our key founders, A.L. Babcock. How did he collect such rare specimens for the time? What kind of museum and mission might the founders envisioned in those early days?

As we work to develop exhibits and bring collections information up-to-date, our curiosity is peeked by the interwoven connections we uncover between the people, places, and objects of the town. Though our museum is small, we've discovered that it contains within it multilayered and often unexpected stories of Natick.

We've established this blog to better serve and engage our community, making these collections and stories more accessible to you. Kate and Jessica will be utilizing this space to launch a series of posts that will serve as an extension of the exhibits in our museum at the Bacon Free Library as well as in our mobile and temporary exhibits around town.

We hope you will join us in this endeavor by following along, reading, and sharing with us your comments, curiosity, and questions. If there is something more about our collections, exhibits, or Natick history that you would like to know more about, please don't hesitate to leave a comment here on the blog, our facebook page, or in an email. We are more than happy to respond and explore areas of further interest in a future post—stay tuned!