Chris Parsons is an associate professor of history at Northeastern University. According to him, if a city’s history is disorganised or not documented well, it may feel almost as imaginary. Parsons asked his students to locate the first church in Boston, Massachusetts and all of them ended up in different places. The reason is that public historians place more emphasis on the Revolutionary War than on the founding of the place where it started. Boston is a city with a rich history but a lack of signage to show it. This inspired Parsons to start The Birth of Boston. It is a map that reintroduces long-forgotten people and stories into the historical landscape.
He tried to learn about cultural traditions, legal scuffles or the kinds of jobs people held vital to understanding the past. Hence, it should be much easier. The Birth of Boston lets people look beyond the limited number of events captured in public memory via plaques and statues. By using an interactive map, users can learn where someone lived, what they did, and even, in some cases, if they were accused of being witches. In the 19th and 20th centuries, a few curious people had a lot of questions. Parsons found that one woman named Anne Haven Thwing filled 60,000 index cards with the addresses and names of almost two hundred years’ worth of Boston residents.
“She wanted to know where her ancestors lived and to do so, she tried to locate where everyone lived”, Parsons says.
Two graduate students of history at Northeastern University, Molly Nebiolo and Matthew Bowser, who are working with Parsons, helped with Thwing’s records. Collectively, they overlaid this information on a map created by another curious, independent historian, Samuel Clough, bringing together what were once disparate efforts to take stock of a city. Historians and tech wizards together have picked up where Bostonians left off, digitising the lives of their predecessors and, in doing so, giving them prominence alongside better-known markers and monuments.
Shahjadi Jemim Rahman