2022 Events & Programs

A Zoom Presentation by Professor Lydia Moland

When the prominent abolitionist Lydia Maria Child and her husband moved to Northampton in 1838, it was with an ambitious goal: to grow sugar beets to undermine the plantation sugar trade. Sugar beets had never been grown in the U.S. before, but abolitionists like Child (1802-1880) were determined to fight slavery in every way they could.  Once in Northampton, Child attempted to help emancipate an enslaved woman who had been brought North by vacationing Southerners. She also sent reports to Boston abolitionists “outing” Northampton residents who supported the slave trade. Ultimately, the Childs’ beet experiment in Florence failed.

But Lydia Maria Child’s time in Northampton was formative for her activism and laid the groundwork for more abolitionist work. Child’s own philosophical thinking, moral courage, and extensive writing made her one of the most important voices among white Americans fighting to end slavery.

Lydia Moland will discuss her new biography of Child, entitled Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life, (University of Chicago Press) and suggest lessons from Child’s Northampton activism that are relevant today.

Presented by Historic Northampton and the David Ruggles Center for History and Education

A Walking Tour with Wayne Perrea

Wayne Perrea will lead two walking tours to the ruins of the Loudville Lead Mines, which are located where Northampton, Easthampton, Westhampton, and Southampton meet. The mines operated intermittently in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
 
Perrea, local historian and Loudville native, has spent decades assembling a history of the site’s operations. On the walk, Perrea will describe the geology, methods of extracting lead and silver, and the challenges the miners faced.

Lead was found in the area in the 1670s by Robert Lyman, who lived in Northampton and is the namesake for Robert’s Hill Conservation Area, Robert’s Meadow Brook, and Robert’s Meadow Reservoir.

In partnership with the New England Forestry Foundation, which owns the 148-acre Hartnett-Manhan Memorial Forest.

We need your muscle and cheers to move the historic Shepherd Barn so we can install a new foundation beneath it to preserve the structure long-term.

Timber framer Alicia Spence will direct volunteers to slowly and carefully slide the barn 35 feet off its footprint. With four ropes and ten people per rope, we will together pull the barn along a specially made track.

A Zoom Conversation marking Lisa Thompson’s retirement

During the past four decades, Lisa Thompson has played a key role in the arts and art spaces in Northampton—as a dancer, mentor, curator, and active agent in the creation of the City’s vibrant arts scene.   

During this special zoom conversation marking Thompson’s retirement as A.P.E.’s Associate Director, she will share stories from the past as well as her thoughts on the future of Northampton’s arts and culture. Followed by a Q & A session. 

Proceeds benefit A.P.E.’s Creative Coaching Fund and Historic Northampton.

On Saturday, October 22 at 4 PM, come to a festive musical celebration on the grounds of Historic Northampton. The concert lineup features the Smith College Chamber Singers, Groove, Smiffenpoofs, Smithereens, Vibes, Noteables, special guests the Mount Holyoke Nice Shoes and more!

Donations will be accepted to support the Friends of Hampshire County Homeless Individuals.

There will be a raffle for gourmet candy and gift certificates. Please bring a chair or blanket.

Sponsored by Cornucopia, Boho Chocolate, the Downtown Northampton Association, Firetype Chocolate, State Street Fruit Store, and Sweeties.

With Emma Winter Zeig of Historic Northampton

Learn about the people buried at Bridge Street Cemetery who have a special connection to Historic Northampton.

Hear the words they wrote in their letters, poems, and diaries that are archived in our collections: hear from parents sending their child off to college, a girl witnessing the dawn of moviemaking, and a soldier seeing battle for the first time.

With Emma Winter Zeig of Historic Northampton

Get to know your historical neighbors in a walking tour of Bridge Street Cemetery. We will "meet" some Northampton residents–like Revolutionary War patriot Joseph Hawley, Samuel Bartlett of witchcraft accusation fame, Indigenous spinner and weaver Sally Maminash, Sylvia Church, a woman who was enslaved in Northampton, and a family who were all killed in the Mill River Flood. Along the way, we will examine changing artisanry and symbolism of gravestone design.

With Tom Ricardi

Tom Ricardi is one of the nation’s most respected bird of prey rehabilitators and educators. He will bring some of the permanently injured owls, hawks, and eagles from his Birds of Prey Rehabilitation Center in Conway, Massachusetts to Historic Northampton and describe each bird’s natural history and why their populations have changed over time.
 
A retired Fish and Wildlife game warden and licensed wildlife rehabilitator, Ricardi has spent the last 50 years nurturing thousands of injured birds of prey back to health at his Birds of Prey Rehabilitation Center in Conway, MA. He was the first person in the U.S.  to successfully breed permanently injured bald eagles in captivity and has released dozens of eaglets into the wild. His goal is to help people appreciate, respect, and assist in the conservation of these important raptors and their habitats.

All donations collected will benefit Tom’s Birds of Prey Rehabilitation Center at his home in Conway, MA.

Sponsored by Greenfield Savings Bank

A Zoom Presentation by Dr. Greg Walwer, Archaeological Consulting Services

Last spring, archaeologist Greg Walwer and his team surveyed the soils in and around the 1805 Shepherd Barn and 1719 Parsons House. Their investigation was in anticipation of the restoration of the barn and regrading around the Parsons House, and it was done to make sure no significant archaeological features were hidden below the soil surface.
 
Walwer will tell the stories revealed by 1,000 unearthed fragments—clay pipes, ceramic pieces, coal lumps, metal hinges, shoe buckles, and more.

A Walking Tour with Bob Zimmermann and Laurie Sanders

Join Broad Brook Coalition president Bob Zimmermann and Historic Northampton’s co-director Laurie Sanders for an exploration of the human and natural history of the Beaver Brook Greenway. Learn about the family that lived here during the early 1900s, who ran a sawmill, operated a large farm, and planted daffodils around their home. Fast-forward to today and learn about how this became a conservation area, how the timber-frame wildlife blind was built, and the natural history of the adjacent beaver marsh and surrounding uplands.
 
Co-sponsored by Broad Brook Coalition and Historic Northampton, in partnership with the Leeds Civic Association.

Proceeds to benefit Broad Brook Coalition, Historic Northampton and the Leeds Civic Association.

A Tour with Local Author Ellen Meeropol

Join local author Ellen Meeropol on a walk and talk around the former Northampton State Hospital and the Village Hill neighborhood, the setting and inspiration for her new novel. The Lost Women of Azalea Court begins one November morning, when 88-year-old Iris Blum goes missing from a fictional six-bungalow development on the grounds of the long-closed hospital, where her husband was the last head psychiatrist. Their daughter, the neighbors, and the police detective suspect Dr. Blum of being involved in Iris’s disappearance and dig into his past. The neighbors, family, and detective narrate this story together, uncovering ghosts, secrets, and lies.

The tour will stop at historical landmarks. Hear short scenes from the novel set in those places and think together about the challenge of both honoring our local history and telling a good story.

Ellen is the author of five novels, including Her Sister’s Tattoo and Kinship of Clover. She lives in the Village Hill neighborhood. Books can be pre-ordered through the Broadside Bookshop and will be signed after the walk.

With Northampton Neighbors

Come join the fun and watch Historic Northampton and lots of your friends and favorite organizations be silly and celebrate Northampton’s first DoozyDo Parade. The parade, organized by Northampton Neighbors, promises to be a joyful, inclusive, unconventional celebration in—and of—the City of Northampton. It will include people of all ages, as well as local organizations, businesses, local bands and musicians, roller derby devotees, bagpipers, floats and antique cars, and teams of kids, adults and seniors joining in the fun.

Northampton Neighbors is a volunteer-based organization providing free programs and services to help seniors in Northampton, Florence, and Leeds live independent, engaged lives in their homes and communities.

The parade will begin outdoors at the Northampton Center for the Arts at 33 Hawley Street and end outside the Academy of Music.

 A Zoom Presentation by Dr. Daniel Bullen

In this Zoom lecture, Daniel Bullen will discuss his interpretation of Shays Rebellion (1786-87), which is the subject of his new book Daniel Shays’s Honorable Rebellion: An American Story.

Telling the narrative from the people’s perspective, Bullen asserts that Shays, and thousands of other farmers, protested flagrantly unjust economic policies that forced some farmers off their land, while profiting financiers. Through five months of protests, the farmers kept the peace and later won reforms they sought.

Daniel Bullen holds a Ph.D. in American literature.  He is the author of two other books, The Love Lives of the Artists: Five Stories of Creative Intimacy and The Dangers of Passion: The Transcendental Friendship of Ralph Waldo Emerson and Margaret Fuller.  He lives in Easthampton, Massachusetts.

A Zoom Presentation with author Dr. Jean M. O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe)

Professor Jean O’Brien (White Earth Ojibwe) will discuss how local historians in New England, writing between 1820 and 1880, promoted the myth of Indian extinction, if they wrote about the Indigenous population at all.

Local historians erased Indians from the record by focusing on “firsting,” which refers to the practice of listing the firsts of the proud English (e.g. first born, first settlement) and then “lasting,” in which local histories told of the tragic disappearance of the last members of the Indian population, who had not disappeared at all.  

During the discussion, presenters will read from the historical record (found in the Leverett Library and in Amherst’s Jones Library Special Collections), which demonstrates how western Massachusetts “firsted” and “lasted” its Indigenous people and often “replaced” them with monuments.

In addition to Firsting and Lasting: Writing Indians Out of Existence in New England (University of Minnesota Press, 2010), Dr. O’Brien is the author of Dispossession by Degrees: Indian Land and Identity in Natick, Massachusetts, 1650-1790 (Cambridge: 1997) and Monumental Mobility: The Memory Work of Massasoit (with Lisa Blee) and Why You Can’t Teach U.S. History without Indians (University of North Carolina Press, 2015). Dr. O’Brien holds a Ph.D. in history from the University of Chicago.​

Sponsored by On Native Land: Leverett Advocacy and Education Group.

Follow-up your walking tour of Northampton’s Chalk Art Festival with an evening of music, poetry, story-telling….and a special performance by Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra!

Please join us to enjoy and/or share one of your talents: music, poetry, comedy, dance, name yours!  Bring a blanket, picnic, and friends.  Performance time is 5-10 minutes, and child performers are encouraged.
 
Bonus: Chalk will be available all day at Historic Northampton to create your own chalk art on our driveway and parking area. Art by children encouraged.

Open Mic Night is held in partnership with the Downtown Northampton Association, Downtown Sounds, the Fiddle Orchestra of Western Massachusetts, the Graves Avenue Association, the Northampton Community Music Center, Northampton Neighbors and the Ward 3 Neighborhood Association.

With Hayley Spizz, Certified Instructor

Since the 1830s, when Sylvester Graham first championed the benefits of exercise, to the present, Northampton residents have promoted and participated in a wide variety of physical activities.

This summer, join Hayley Spizz on Historic Northampton’s grounds for an hour of Shake Your Soul, a fluid and fun movement event. Experience the joy of dance, release tension, nurture your body and soul, and delight in this dynamic practice.

Hayley Spizz is a Certified Instructor in Shake Your Soul: The Yoga of Dance.
 
All ages and all levels of movement/dance experience, and fitness are welcome.  No registration required. Free.

A Chamber Music Concert to Benefit Historic Northampton &
The Pioneer Valley Symphony

Arrive at 5:30 pm to meet the curators and explore Historic Northampton’s exhibit, Making it on Main Street.

At 6:30 pm, settle in with your picnic for a concert of chamber music with musicians from the Pioneer Valley Symphony Orchestra. Bring your own picnic and lawn chair/blanket. 

This event is open to the public by donation to benefit both Pioneer Valley Symphony and Historic Northampton. Both organizations are 501(c)(3) not-for-profit organizations.

With Fiddle Orchestra of Western Massachusetts

Bring your acoustic instrument and find how easy it is to learn a tune by ear! 
FOWMers (as we call ourselves) play not only fiddles but other instruments as well. Or, relax on the lawn and listen as we celebrate the Jubilant & Joyful days of summer swooning along with traditional tunes from the New England, American South, Celtic, Quebecois, and Scandinavian heritages, along with original compositions by contemporary musicians.

Free Admission.  Donations will benefit Historic Northampton and the Fiddle Orchestra of Western Massachusetts.

With Les Boulevardiers

Join us for a fun, jazzy evening of music.
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Les Boulevardiers, an ensemble with diverse musical backgrounds, is united by a shared love of swinging vintage jazz, sultry tango, and fresh arrangements of the great American songs.

​The cabaret and café-concert instrumentation is accordion, clarinet, cello, piano, guitar, mandolin, string bass, and percussion. Les Boulevardiers often collaborate with singers and dancers to create unforgettable events. Les Boulevardiers are based in Massachusetts.

With Fiddle Orchestra of Western Massachusetts

Historic Northampton and the Fiddle Orchestra of Western Massachusetts (FOWM) invite you to tap your toes, bob your head, and let your feet dance along with some Midsummer Melodies on the lawn.  

Our tunes bring the joy of old-time music into modern times. The repertoire includes music from the New England, American South, Celtic, Quebecois, and Scandinavian heritages, along with original compositions by contemporary musicians.

Free Admission.  Donations will benefit Historic Northampton and the Fiddle Orchestra of Western Massachusetts.​

A Public Reading of Frederick Douglass’s Fourth of July Address

Reading Frederick Douglass Together brings people together to read aloud Frederick Douglass’s speech, What to the Slave is the Fourth of July?

The event will take place on Sunday, July 3, 2022 at 11 am outdoors on the grounds of Historic Northampton.  Copies of Douglass’ speech will be distributed to all in attendance. The public can take turns reading passages from it in succession.  People may simply attend or attend and read. The event is free and open to the public.

The speech was first delivered in 1852, in Corinthian Hall in Rochester, New York to the Ladies’ Anti-Slavery Society. The themes addressed in the speech still resonate with Americans more than 150 years after they were written.  Now more than ever, the speech forces us to reckon with the legacy of slavery and the promises of democracy.
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Frederick Douglass had strong ties to the Northampton Association of Education and Industry in Florence and spoke in downtown Northampton in the 1840s about slavery and the abolitionist movement.

Reading Frederick Douglass Together is a statewide initiative coordinated by Mass Humanities. ​Now in its 13th year, the program will take place in communities across Massachusetts. 

With Laurie Sanders

Join co-director and naturalist Laurie Sanders to explore along a stretch of the Mill River that is rich in natural and human history. For centuries, it has been among the most popular walks in Northampton.

With Emma Winter Zeig of Historic Northampton

A Second Walk in Bridge Street Cemetery

Visit more of Bridge Street Cemetery’s “residents” as we read aloud from their letters and diaries. We will think about how they are commemorated as we hear them describe in their own words the Northampton they left behind. Registration is required. Each walk is limited to 20 participants.

A Walking Tour with Co-director & Naturalist Laurie Sanders

Join co-director and naturalist Laurie Sanders to explore along a stretch of the Mill River that is rich in natural and human history. For centuries, it has been among the most popular walks in Northampton.

with co-director and author Elizabeth Sharpe

Join co-director Elizabeth Sharpe on a hike to the ruins of the Williamsburg reservoir dam in Williamsburg, Massachusetts.  On May 16, 1874, the 42-foot tall earthen dam suddenly burst, unleashing one hundred acres of water onto the valley below. Within an hour, the flood devastated the villages of Williamsburg, Skinnerville, Haydenville, and Leeds; 139 persons were dead.  It was the first major dam disaster in US history.

Dr. Sharpe will discuss the dam’s siting, construction, the flood itself, and the inquiry into who was responsible.  Elizabeth Sharpe is the author of In the Shadow of the Dam: The Aftermath of the Mill River Flood of 1874 (Free Press, 2004).

The trail is approximately 1.5 miles total, of moderate difficulty, with some steep, slippery and rugged portions.  This program is offered in conjunction with Williamsburg Woodland Trails.

A Walking Tour with co-director & naturalist Laurie Sanders

During the last twenty years, the City of Northampton has protected more than 100 acres in the Parsons Brook Greenway. This landscape is underlain by outwash plains that were deposited 16,000-13,000 years ago, when braided glacial streams, choked with sands and sediments, flowed into Glacial Lake Hitchcock. Today, this area includes a mix of habitats, nearly all of which have been highly manipulated by people during the last fifty years.
 
Join co-director and naturalist Laurie Sanders on a two-hour loop in a portion of the conservation area, through abandoned gravel pits and oak and pine woods, past ponds and marshes, and beside a stretch of Parsons Brook that reveals exposures of 200-million year old sandstone.

With John Brady

Geologist John Brady will lead a walk on Main Street and describe the geologic origins of the building stones used to construct some of downtown Northampton's most iconic structures–from the Court House and First Churches to City Hall and beyond. This walk will expand your view of Northampton's architecture and give you a new appreciation for some of the 400 million years of earth's history that the building stones reveal. Meet at Historic Northampton, 46 Bridge Street, Northampton. Registration Required. Each tour is limited to 15.

A Zoom Presentation by Dr. Margaret M. Bruchac, Associate Professor of Anthropology, Associate Faculty in Cultural Heritage, and Coordinator of Native American and Indigenous Studies at the University of Pennsylvania.

Dr. Margaret Bruchac will describe the lives and work of several 19th-century Indigenous healers, including Rhoda Rhoades (1751-1841), who treated people in Northampton and other western Massachusetts locales.

Rhoades doctored people at her home in “Indian Hollow,” a section of Huntington later destroyed by the construction of the Knightville Dam. She cured illnesses using special diets and traditional medicines made with boneset, Joe Pye weed, wake robin, and other indigenous plants. Rhoades’ neighbors recalled that she grew, “every kind of flower imaginable,” and used them to make an herbal medicine called “The Extract.”

Dr. Bruchac will discuss her research on these gifted Native healers, revealing how their knowledges were exploited by patent medicine peddlars and Yankee physicians. She will also discuss her approach to restorative research, including living history performances in the character of “Molly Geet, the Indian Doctress” at Old Sturbridge Village museum.

A Zoom Presentation by Dr. Christopher Clark
Professor of History, University of Connecticut

In April 1842 (180 years ago), a group of radical abolitionists formed the Northampton Association of Education and Industry, a utopian community they sustained for four-and-a-half years. How did their activism contribute to the campaign against slavery? What did they learn about living in community? And although the Association itself broke up in 1846, how did its members help found the village of Florence that still thrives today?

Christopher Clark teaches American history at the University of Connecticut. Three of his books—The Roots of Rural Capitalism: Western Massachusetts, 1780–1860; The Communitarian Moment: The Radical Challenge of the Northampton Association; and Letters from an American Utopia (edited, with Kerry Buckley)—concern the Northampton region. He lives in Northampton with his wife, Margaret Lamb, and dog, Lotty.

This event is co-presented by Northampton Neighbors, Historic Northampton and the David Ruggles Center for History and Education.

A Walking Tour with co-director and naturalist Laurie Sanders

In the midst of an otherwise built-up landscape, cracks in the sidewalk, roadside edges, and other “neglected” patches are places where a variety of plant species–grasses, wildflowers and trees–have taken hold.  Although usually dismissed as “weeds,” these plants have fascinating life histories (many come from other parts of the world) and when considered up-close, their flowers and features are beautiful. What’s more, larger, untended patches often support a variety of butterflies, bees, ants and other insects. 
 
On this outing, we’ll begin to identify and inventory some of the most common “weeds” in downtown Northampton.

A Zoom Presentation by Dr. Sarah Lynn Patterson
Assistant Professor, University of Massachusetts Amherst

Over seven decades, from 1830 until 1900, tens of thousands of Black men and women from different walks of life attended meetings publicly advertised as “Colored Conventions.”

Professor Sarah Lynn Patterson will discuss the rise and the fall of the Colored Conventions movement as a way of understanding dialogues about progressive politics at the turn of the twentieth century.

Professor Patterson is a founder of the award-winning archive www.ColoredConventions.org and an editor and contributor to The Colored Conventions Movement (UNC Press, 2021).

Sponsored by Whalen Insurance

A Zoom Presentation by Astronomer James Lowenthal

Today in the United States, only about 20% of us can see the Milky Way from where we live. In this illustrated presentation, astronomer James Lowenthal will discuss the night sky and describe steps we can take to bring back the spectacular views of the Milky Way and its stars. The simple changes he proposes will also save money on wasted electricity, improve public health and safety, and protect the naturally dark sky that many species depend on to thrive.

James Lowenthal is a Professor of Astronomy at Smith College, where his research focuses on the origins of galaxies like the Milky Way, which are billions of light years away and formed billions of years ago. He is also active in efforts to protect the night sky from light pollution at the international level, including the United Nations, down to the local, including helping to lead Northampton City Lights. He lives in Northampton with his wife and daughter.

In partnership with the International Dark-Sky Foundation

With Laurie Sanders

Join co-director and naturalist Laurie Sanders for a walk down Hockanum Road to the site of the former Hockanum Ferry on the Connecticut River. The return leg will coincide with the sunset, which is one of the most beautiful times to be in the Meadows.  We will view the Holyoke Range and appreciate the broad floodplain that shaped so much of Northampton's history.

To and from the river, we'll hope for flocks of migrating Canada geese and ducks … and possibly an aerial performance by a woodcock (or two).  The walk on March 18th will also include a bonus: the rise of the full moon.

With Tom Wartenberg

Can picture books be more than a means of getting children to sleep? Tom Wartenberg thinks so.
 
In his new book, Thinking Through Stories: Children, Philosophy, and Picture Books, Wartenberg describes how picture books are a great way to get children thinking about the central issues in Western philosophy, such as: How do I know that I’m not dreaming now? Is it morally acceptable to deceive someone by telling them a white lie? What is the best way for a person to be happy?

Wartenberg, who has been working with elementary-school children for more than twenty years, will explain why he is such a champion of children’s picture books and why he thinks that it's important for children to be introduced to philosophy from an early age.
 
In partnership with Broadside Bookshop, R. Michelson Galleries, and the UMass Center for Philosophy and Children.