Posts Tagged ‘religious history’
Catholic churches have long served as East Cambridge’s cornerstones
By Beth Folsom, 2025 For many who settled in East Cambridge, the Catholic Church was an important and enduring institution. Catholicism was largely a faith practiced by newcomers to the neighborhood in the 19th and early 20th centuries, but despite having a religion in common, members of the area’s various ethnic communities preferred to worship…
Read MoreDr. Martin Luther King’s visits to Cambridge highlight evolution of the Civil Rights Movement
By Beth Folsom, 2025 On this Martin Luther King Day, we celebrate the work and legacy of King in the nonviolent pursuit of full civil rights and legal equality for Black Americans. But the goals, rhetoric and methods of the Civil Rights Movement were not static and, in fact, evolved considerably during the 1950s and…
Read MoreChanging Tides in Cambridge Industry
By the early 20th century, Cambridge was an industrial center with a broad array of factories. People from all over the country and the world came to work here. Why?
Read MoreSelf-Guided Tour: Women Activists of Riverside 50 Years After Suffrage
Stop 1: Begin the tour in Central Square With the passage of the 19th Amendment one hundred years ago this past August (2020), American women won the right to vote. Rather than a culmination, this event marked the beginning of a long fight for equal treatment and equity that is still far from over. Fifty…
Read More“The Absolute Majority of the Population”: Women in Twentieth-Century Cambridge
This article was originally published as a chapter in Cambridge in the Twentieth Century, edited by Daphne Abeel, Cambridge Historical Society, 2007. Inspired by Cambridge Historical Society’s 2020 theme—Who are Cambridge Women?—the author, Eva Moseley, has reviewed the manuscript and made a few updates which are noted in the text that follows. “The Absolute Majority…
Read MoreCambridge, The Focal Point Of Puritan Life (Part Four)
Catch up on part one of this post here! By Henry Hallam Saunderson, 1947 Dealing With Dissenters While the Puritan leaders were carrying forward their highly significant enterprises, they had to deal with forces which endangered the very existence of their Colony, in which increasing thousands of people were investing themselves, their lives, and all that…
Read MoreFounding of the First Church in Cambridge
Address of Alexander McKenzie [at the celebration of the Two Hundred and Seventy-fifth Anniversary of the Founding of Cambridge, 1905] On February 1, 1636, O. S., the First Church in Cambridge was formed. This was the eleventh church in Massachusetts. The first church under Hooker and Stone was about to remove to Connecticut, but…
Read MoreOn A Certain Deplorable Tendency Among The Most Respectable Members Of The Community To Abstain From Church-going— As Observed In The Year 1796 (Part Two of Two)
By Prescott Evarts Read June 10, 1922 Read part one here! In the following year, Prophaners of the Sabbath were included in a list of other criminals who if they could not or would not pay the fines, should be punished by setting in the Stocks, or putting into the Cage not exceeding three hours;…
Read MoreOn A Certain Deplorable Tendency Among The Most Respectable Members Of The Community To Abstain From Church-going— As Observed In The Year 1796 (Part One of Two)
By Prescott Evarts, 1922 There has recently come into the possession of the Cambridge Historical Society, as a gift from Rev. Henry Wilder Foote, a copy of “An Address to the Public from the Ministers of the Association in and about Cambridge, at their stated meeting on the second Tuesday in October, 1796.” The first…
Read MoreSWEDENBORG CHAPEL: Living history
by Ruth Hobeika, 2017 “Planting community” is how the century-old Swedenborg Chapel’s Reverend Sage Cole describes a year-long outreach set to launch in January, joining visions from opposite sides of the country. Anna Woofenden – currently a visiting consultant – is exploring the question of what it means to be a church today, when so…
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