Discover how one prominent New England woman’s look at her family history was entangled with gender, nationalism, race, memory, and the Colonial Revival. Historian MaryKate Smolenski examines how and why loyalism to the Crown, which divided families and communities during the American Revolution, was edited out of the picture in the 1920s.

Martha Codman Karolik (1858-1948) is best known for her and her husband’s significant donations to the Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Prior to her marriage, Codman’s early collecting focused on her ancestors; she was deeply interested in her family history and also joined lineage-based societies, including NSCDA. Codman was intrigued by one particular ancestor: Katherine Greene Amory (1731-1777), a Revolutionary-era loyalist from Boston. Codman owned several Amory objects, including portraits by John Singleton Copley. In 1923, Martha published Amory’s journal, but deliberately edited the publication to create a family narrative that omitted loyalism.

Codman left a legacy, through print and material culture, that misrepresents the complexity of the Revolution, but also reflected Martha’s twentieth-century interests. Martha’s story, and the one she told about her family, is entangled in the history of gender, nationalism, race, the Colonial Revival, and memory. Examining Codman’s narrative reveals how our understanding of eighteenth-century history and artifacts were shaped by later eras.

BIO

MaryKate Smolenski is a PhD candidate in American Studies at Boston University. She studies the memory of the American Revolution through print and material culture, and is particularly interested in how descendants of Revolutionary-era loyalists remember their ancestors. Smolenski has previously worked with several museums and historical societies, including the Newport Historical Society, History Cambridge, and the GWU Museum and Textile Museum. Prior to starting her PhD, she completed a two-year fellowship at the Preservation Society of Newport County where she re-interpreted an eighteenth-century historic house museum, Hunter House.

VIRTUAL LECTURE: 6:30 pm

Join us from the comfort of your home. This is a VIRTUAL event. Registrants will receive a Zoom link prior to the event.

This program is part of Common Ground in a Fractured Nation: Dialogues on the Past and Future of American Democracy, a new series that uses Historic Wethersfield’s distinctive colonial past to help people see and empathize with one another as we approach America’s 250th anniversary.