Saturday Club (Boston, Massachusetts) facts for kids

The Saturday Club was a special group of friends who met once a month in Boston, Massachusetts. They started meeting in 1855. This group included famous writers, scientists, thinkers, and historians from the mid-1800s. They got together to share ideas and talk about important topics.

What Was the Saturday Club?

A group of the Saturday Club members, from a book published in 1896.

The Saturday Club began as informal get-togethers at a place called the Albion House in Boston. A person named Horatio Woodman, who helped publish books and was also a lawyer, first suggested these meetings. He wanted his friends to gather for food and good conversation.

How the Club Started

By 1856, the group became a bit more organized. They set up a few simple rules and started meeting monthly for dinner. Their main meeting spot for many years was the Parker House. This was a hotel built in 1854 by Harvey D. Parker.

Famous Members and Their Impact

The Saturday Club gatherings led to the creation of a famous magazine called Atlantic Monthly. Many club members wrote articles for this magazine. The name "Atlantic Monthly" was suggested by an early member, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr..

The first members of the group included Horatio Woodman, Louis Agassiz (a scientist), Richard Henry Dana Jr., Judge Ebenezer Rockwood Hoar, Senator George Frisbee Hoar, and James Russell Lowell (a writer). Later, other important people joined, like Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr., Cornelius Conway Felton, Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (a famous poet), and William Hickling Prescott (a historian).

Other well-known members were Ralph Waldo Emerson (a philosopher), Asa Gray (a botanist), John Lothrop Motley (a historian), Benjamin Peirce (a mathematician), Charles Sumner (a politician), and John Greenleaf Whittier (a poet).

Being invited to join the Saturday Club was a big deal. It showed that you were accepted into the important social groups in Boston. William Dean Howells, who was from Ohio, was invited in 1860. He later wrote that it felt like an important step in his life. Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. even joked that Howells's presence was like passing on a special tradition. A few years later, Howells became the editor of Atlantic Monthly, which published many works by the club members.

In 1884, Oliver Wendell Holmes Sr. wrote a poem called "At the Saturday Club." In this poem, he remembered the good times they had at the meetings. By then, many of the original members had passed away. Ralph Waldo Emerson's son, Edward Waldo Emerson, wrote two books about the Saturday Club in the early 1900s. A version of the Saturday Club still exists in Boston today.

Images for kids

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  Oliver Wendell Holmes

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  Louis Agassiz

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  Benjamin Peirce

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  Charles Sumner and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, 1863

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  Parker's, School Street, Boston, 1855

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  Ralph Waldo Emerson, around 1872

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  Asa Gray

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  John Lothrop Motley, around 1860