Abby Epplett, Historian

For all my gallivanting across Massachusetts, I have never toured the Massachusetts State House! Fortunately, the government website provides a virtual tour of these space , allowing me to see panoramic images on the interior from the comfort of my home. This tour highlights nine areas in the statehouse with unique artwork and furniture. 1 st Floor The 1 st Floor of the State House has no artifacts and lists only a few points of interest: house clerk, house council, hearing rooms, house minority, and state bookstore. I wish some explanation had been offered on why this section was left blank, or that details were giving for what business happened in each of the points of interest. 2 nd Floor The 2 nd listed the state auditor, state treasurer, senate counsel, and another hearing room as points of interests in addition to listing several featured areas. Each featured area was represented by a colorful circle on the map of the floor and also in a list underneat

J.R.R. Tolkien was a professional philologist, an Ancient Greek word meaning “lover of words”. This branch of linguistics focuses on etymologies, the historical meaning behind words and how they evolve over time. Because of his interest, an unusually high number of characters within The Lord of the Rings are writers, translators, and linguists.

I had been meaning to watch the Ann & Hope Documentary by David Lawlor from  Run of the Mill , which debuted on YouTube in August 2023, and I finally got around to doing it! This fact-paced film gave the history of the three iterations of Ann & Hope — a boat, a mill, and a department store chain — through twelve chapters, with plenty of interviews, drone shots, music, and animation segments. Rhode Islanders who grew up near an Ann & Hope store will have the chance to reminisce, historians will enjoy the fact-packed content, and cinefiles will appreciate the clever editing. After an opening music video, “Chapter 1: The Creation of the Blackstone River Valley” and “Chapter 2: William Blackstone” focused on the history of the Blackstone valley before the Industrial Revolution. The film introduced park rangers Allison Horrocks (who frequent readers of the blog will remember from Parked at Home ) and Kevin Klyberg of Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park

In my second week of hiatus from texts written by J.R.R. Tolkien, I wanted to talk about documentaries, one of the most popular ways to learn about history, science, and nearly any other topic. Tolkien’s works are pseudo-historical, presented as translations of a heavily edited ancient text with a modern historical essay added to the front as a Prologue and a series of Appendixes added to the back by various authors. Additionally, characters within the book halt the narrative to describe historically and culturally significant people, places, events, and ideas using both prose and song. Today, screens have largely replaced writing, with documentaries serving the population that once read textbooks. A film adaption faithful to the text could utilize the elements of a documentary to convey its layers of world-building information. Defining the Documentary When creating a documentary, filmmakers collect artifacts in a range of media, then turn the varied experiences into a

My latest online exhibit adventure was visiting A Portrait of Tenochtitlan by Dutch technical artist Thomas Kole . Debuting a few months ago in September 2023, this blend of digital models and modern drone photography taken by Andrés Semo Garcia allows visitors to better understand the early 16 th century layout of what is now Ciudad de México [Mexico City] . Translations of the informational signage into Spanish and Nahuatl provided by Rodrigo Ortega Acoltzi add authenticity to the project. Tenochtitlan was the capital of the Mexica empire, a people also known as the Aztecs. Located inside the salty sea that once flooded the Basin of Mexico, the metropolis merged with its twin city, Tlateloco, to become a major place of trade. At its height, the population of Tenochtilan reached 200,000 people, about the size of the nearest city to me, Worcester, MA . As for the entire Triple Alliance [ Triple Alianza , Excan Tlahtoloyan ] formed with the city-states of Tlacopan and T

While researching for the Lord of the Rings: The Animated Musical installment “Prologue, 2 Concerning Pipeweed” , I came across an online exhibit hosted by Forbes House Museum , a historic house in nearby Milton, MA not far from Historic New England’s Eustis Estate , which I last visited in December 2022 and posted about exactly a year ago . This straightforward, to the point exhibit presents a candid look to one wealthy American family’s contribution to addiction and war in China during the Qing Dynasty , or late 18 th to mid-19 th century. The exhibit give a quick introduction and museum statement before diving into six topics concerning the China trade. Introduction & Museum Statement In 1784, American merchants began their trade with China in a range of products, including tea, porcelain, and opium. A long list of Boston Brahmin families — a term once used for wealthy Anglo-Americans who ran the government in colonial, federalist, and early constitutional Am

After my visit to the nearby American Heritage Museum , I walked around downtown Hudson, MA to see a series of quick history stops. I used the Hudson Walking Tour to guide me down Main Street, along with visiting the riverwalk and Assabet Rail Trail.

I am taking a brief hiatus from working directly with The Lord of the Rings and other texts by J.R.R. Tolkien to talk about another facet of my project: musical theater. Tolkien’s works contain songs in a variety of genres along with implied dance sequences. My hypothetical animated musical will honor these creative choices. The reader may ask, why did Tolkien write in this distinctive style? While he was likely inspired by a myriad of historical European traditions — Celtic bards , Nordic skalds , Greek aoidoi , and other ancient singers — his stylistic choices to include lush descriptions of scenery, contemporary slang, and passages of dialog show similarities with lavish Broadway productions. Tolkien did not have the luxury of living in New York City and seeing the latest hit during its first run, and London’s West End did not support the type of musicals seen across the water , but movie editions allowed British fans to catch a glimpse of this new medium. Interestingly, th

For my second stop during last Saturday’s adventure, I visited the American Heritage Museum in Hudson, MA. While the name “American Heritage” might make one think of apple pie, baseball, and fireworks, this museum was actually about military vehicles from around the world with a special focus on World War II. Opened five years ago based on the collections of the late Jacques M. Littlefield via the former Military Vehicle Technology Foundation, the massive 67,000 square foot (6,625 square meter) structure with a state-of-the-art lighting and audio-visual system showcases the largest collection of its kind in an empathetic and engaging way. The museum is part of the Collings Foundation , which tends to focus on aircraft.

Last Saturday, I took my first daytrip of the 2024 museum season. For the first stop, I visited General Artemas Ward House in Shrewsbury, MA. This historic house museum has been owned and maintained by Harvard University since a member of the Ward family donated a much larger property in 1925. The hour-long house tour follows multiple generations of this family, beginning with General Artemas Ward himself, who briefly served as the commander of the Continental Army during the American Revolutionary War, and as second-in-command under George Washington. The house has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1976.

Do you enjoy reading convoluted histories of transcribed and translated documents with discrepancies between surviving copies and a missing original manuscript? Then look no further than The Red Book of Westmarch , also known at The Red Book of Periannath , which is the fiction origin of The Hobbit , The Lord of the Rings , and possibly other works by J.R.R. Tolkien, including parts of The Silmarillion . A highly detailed explanation concerning the creation of this manuscript and its early copies is given in “Note on the Shire Records”, the final section of the Prologue found in The Lord of the Rings: Part One The Fellowship of the Ring . While the confusing contents of this two-and-a-quarter page explanation have been reviewed elsewhere, I will take a few paragraphs to explain what fictitious books were presumably used in Tolkien’s “translation”, the framing device for the work. Then, I will cover a few rediscovered works in the real world, along with several historical hoaxes