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UNIVERSITY PRESS:

JOHN WILSON AND SON, CAMBRIDGE.

INTRODUCTION.

THIS Volume contains a record of the transactions of the Society from the annual meeting in April, 1835, to the monthly meeting in March, 1855, inclusive, completing the work contemplated by the Committee on the Early Proceedings, as expressed in their Introduction to the first volume, to which reference is here made. As in that volume, so in this, nothing of importance or of interest has been omitted from the original records. Notes have been made to the text where they were thought to be needed, and letters and documents on file have been freely introduced, wherever they were thought to be appropriate.

Memoirs which had not been written of deceased Resident Members, for the period covered by this volume, eighteen in number, are here supplied; and, as in the former volume, brief sketches are given, in a note at the close of the volume, of those members who either resigned their membership or lost it by removal from the State.

A heliotype of the portrait of President Thomas Lindall Winthrop, from a painting by Osgood, and one of his successor, President James Savage, from a painting

by Wight, both in the Society's collection, are given in this volume; also, a heliotype of the picture in the Society's gallery, known as that of John Rogers, the martyr.

The heliotype frontispiece of the volume is a reduced copy of a large photograph taken by Whipple on the 17th of May, 1855, which was the most numerous group ever attempted by the photographer in that early infancy of the art.

The group comprises twenty-six members of the Society, including those most venerable and distinguished at that period, together with several of the younger officers. It was proposed by Mr. Winthrop, who had then just been elected President, as a complimentary memorial of his immediate predecessor, the Hon. James Savage, who had retired from the Presidency at the previous annual meeting, after a faithful service of fourteen years.

Mr. Savage is represented as seated in the centre, in his accustomed President's chair, - the old Governor Winslow chair, having before him, on a stand, the Indian King Philip's samp-bowl,- then used by the Society as a ballot box,- and with the venerable Josiah Quincy and Jared Sparks on his right hand, and Chief Justice Shaw and Edward Everett on his left. Many of the members were absent from the city, and more than one arrived too late to be included.*

* Mr. Ticknor came in at the last moment, just as the instrument was about to be uncovered and applied, when Mr. Winthrop, the newly-elected President, rose at once and insisted on giving him a chair, retiring to the rear himself.

PROCEEDINGS

OF THE

MASSACHUSETTS HISTORICAL SOCIETY.

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