In the 1890’s, one of the stated purposes of the Society was “the establishment of a reading room and library devoted to” military history. This was accomplished when the Cadet Armory was built (as is described under the origins and background of the Society. Up to WWII, the society published some fourteen volumes of the papers which had been presented at meetings (including many first-hand accounts of battles of the Civil War). The reading room and library were maintained until the Armory was sold in the 1960s. The collection is now on permanent loan to the Howard Gotlieb Archival Research Center at Boston University.
The present Board of Directors of MHSM would like to re-establish the tradition but in a modernized form, a virtual reading room and library in cyberspace, which can be available to interested parties anywhere in the world. In addition to papers presented to the Society at meetings, we welcome papers from nonmembers and from those with interesting material but with no place to publish it. (Interested authors should contact MHSM for further information.) The Society assumes no responsibility for custody, receipt, or errors arising out or media submitted and offers no compensation to submitters.
HathiTrust
This section highlights several publications of MHSM available online at HathiTrust, a not-for-profit collaborative of academic and research libraries with 17+ million digitized items. The member institution of HathiTrust are steward of the largest set of digitized books managed by research libraries for scholarly interests.
- Constitution, by-laws, and list of members. (press of Rockwell and Churchill, 1892)
- Members, rules,etc. (Lyman Rhodes & Co., printers, 1879)
- Ball’s Bluff; an episode and its consequences to some of us. (Priv. print. by the Salem press company, 1913), also by Charles Lawrence Peirson
- The battle of Cedar Creek, October 19, 1864 : a paper read before the Massachusetts Military Historical Society, December 8, 1879 (Riverside Press, 1879), also by Benjamin W. Crowninshield
- Campaigns in Kentucky and Tennessee including the battle of Chickamauga, 1862-1864. (The Military historical society of Massachusetts, 1908)
- Campaigns in Virginia, 1861-1862 (Pub. for the Military historical society of Massachusetts by Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1895), also by Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight
- Campaigns in Virginia, Maryland and Pennsylvania, 1862-1863. (Pub. for the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, by Griffith-Stillings Press, 1903)
- Civil and Mexican wars, 1861, 1846. (Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 1913)
- Civil war and miscellaneous papers. (The Military historical society of Massachusetts, 1918)
- Critical sketches of some of the federal and Confederate commanders (Pub. for the Military historical society of Massachusetts by Houghton, Mifflin and company, 1895), also by Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight
- The Mississippi valley, Tennessee, Georgia, Alabama, 1861-1864 (The Military historical society of Massachusetts, 1910)
- Naval actions and history: 1799-1898. (Pub. for the Military historical society of Massachusetts, by Griffith-Stillings press, 1902)
- Naval actions, and operations against Cuba and Porto Rico, 1593-1815. (Pub. for the Military historical society of Massachusetts, by E.B. Stillings, 1901) (page images at HathiTrust; US access only)
- Operations on the Atlantic coast, 1861-1865, Virginia, 1862, 1864, Vicksburg. (The Military historical society of Massachusetts, 1912)
- Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts. (Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 1881)
- Papers of the Military Historical Society of Massachusetts. (Broadfoot Pub. Co., 1881)
- The Peninsular campaign of General McClellan in 1862. (J.R. Osgood and Co., 1881)
- Perry’s victory on Lake Erie. (For the Society, by Houghton, Mifflin, 1901), also by Joseph Giles Eaton
- Petersburg, Chancellorsville, Gettysburg … (The Military Historical Society of Massachusetts, 1906)
- The Shenandoah campaigns of 1862 and 1864 and the Appomattox campaign, 1865. (The Military historical society of Massachusetts, 1907)
- The Virginia campaign of 1862 under General Pope (Pub. for the Military historical society of Massachusetts by Houghton, Mifflin and co., 1895), also by Theodore Frelinghuysen Dwight
- The Virginia campaign of General Pope in 1862. (Ticknor and company, 1886)
- The Wilderness campaign, May-June, 1864. (The Military historical society of Massachusetts, 1905)
See which of these are available at your library, or elsewhere.