![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/CFAJr..jpg?fit=761%2C1024&ssl=1\")
Thankfully, the founders of Quincy Historical Society did not shrink from the prospect of change. Women and members of the burgeoning Irish community figured prominently in it from the start. (Other immigrant groups were just beginning to arrive.) Nevertheless, the Society\u2019s concept of local history would take time to evolve.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
From Mr. Adams\u2019 speech on that first night, it seems that the Society was primarily interested in the earliest portions of the community\u2019s history and saw its role as a rather passive one of preservation: \u201cUnquestionably, in the sister towns constituting Old Braintree there are many records which may yet be collected and preserved . . .. Once establish the historical receptacle and historical matter is sure to gather into it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Apparently, this approach turned out to be spectacularly unsuccessful. In 1904 the Society re-evaluated and concluded, based on their experience, that \u201ca purely literary association of the old type, devoted to local antiquarianism, would not be supported by the public.\u201d But they saw a light: \u201ca field for usefulness\u201d for \u201ca modern historical society\u201d that \u201cwould participate in popular education by putting history before the people in a shape that would be both serious and attractive.\u201d This has been the Society\u2019s goal ever since.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The Society changed its view not only on how to present history but on what history would be presented. The scope of the subjects in Quincy\u2019s history we would embrace expanded over the decades far beyond the colonial and Revolutionary periods. It came to include much of the industrial and business history, educational, and cultural history through the 20th<\/sup> century. A long-time leader of the Society, H. Hobart Holly once commented on the richness and the diversity of its history: \u201cAny one of Quincy\u2019s historic sites could serve as the historical focal point of a community.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n Today, the Historical Society remains committed to telling Quincy\u2019s history in new ways and also to telling new parts of Quincy\u2019s history. For all the work that has been done, there are great sections of Quincy history still to be preserved and to be told. <\/p>\n\n\n\n Charles Francis Adams, Jr., would have recognized this. In his life he sought not only to preserve the past, but to make it serve the future, for instance when he became a leader of the new movement for conservation and environmentalism and saved the Blue Hills for posterity.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Ironically, Adams, a couple of years before he gave the speech at the Thomas Crane Library, wrote the last truly comprehensive history of Quincy.\u00a0 The Historical Society accepts the implicit challenge to write the chapters that carry the story forward.<\/p>\n\n\n\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" “The Historical Society remains committed to telling Quincy\u2019s history in new ways and also to telling new parts of Quincy\u2019s history. For all the work that has been done, there are great sections of Quincy history still to be preserved and to be told.” <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":194,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"om_disable_all_campaigns":false,"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[10],"tags":[6,12,13,7],"class_list":["post-230","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-the-society","tag-author-ed-fitzgerald","tag-charles-francis-adams-jr","tag-quincy-historical-society","tag-quincy-history"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Untitled-design-3.png?fit=940%2C788&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=230"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":254,"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/230\/revisions\/254"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/194"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=230"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=230"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=230"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![\"\"](\"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/quincyhistory.org\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/05\/Untitled-design-8.png?resize=1024%2C710&ssl=1\")