2026 Past Events & Programs

After a sold-out performance this spring, we’re proud to bring Rhythm & Rails back for two more performances at the perfect venue: Northampton’s Union Station.

Rhythm & Rails is a multimedia performance that animates the complex history of railroads in America with narration, theatrical cameos, archival images, and railroad-themed music.

Here in Northampton and across the country, railroads changed the pace of life, the movement of people and goods, and the country’s economic and social history. These changes were recorded in letters, photographs, literature, and in thousands of songs—from American roots, folk and rag time to blues, jazz, pop, and rock. Come hear this social history in tales and tunes performed by some of the Valley’s most talented musicians and actors!

Please join us for a festive halloween a cappella concert supporting families experiencing homelessness with the Hampshire Support Alliance. There will be a bake sale, kid’s costume contest, a raffle, and performances by local a cappella groups.

As part of We Want More History Day, Historic Northampton will be offering two tours on Saturday, September 26.

Bridge Street Cemetery Tour

Get to know your historical neighbors in a walking tour of Bridge Street Cemetery.  We will “meet” some Northampton residents – from students to soldiers to enslaved people. We will get to know many of them through their words, in letters, poems, and diaries that are archived in the Historic Northampton collection. Along the way, we will also examine changing artisanry and symbolism of gravestone design.

Gallery Talk: Slavery and Freedom in Northampton, 1654-1783

Join us for a closer look at some of the stories highlighted in our current exhibit, Slavery and Freedom in Northampton, 1654 to 1783.

The 45-minute talk will reveal more about the lives of enslaved individuals, their choices about family and freedom, the legal arrangements that kept slavery in place, and how enslaved labor fueled the Northampton and regional economy.

To mark the 250th, this fall Historic Northampton, in collaboration with Plays in Place, will premiere two new plays. These dramas take us into the lives of two Northampton residents who, in the lead up to the American Revolution, are each fighting for their own autonomy and freedom.

The Widow’s Land

by Betel Arnold

In 1765, Bathsheba Hull, a Black woman living with her children in her home on an island in the Mill River, receives an eviction notice from the white town officials.

This new play follows her fight for her home, her position as a free woman in colonial Northampton, and her children’s future.

Hold These Truths

by Harley Erdman

In May 1774, Massachusetts is on the cusp of open rebellion against the crown following the oppressive acts of its royally appointed governors, most recently General Gage. The province is about to take the lead in defiantly calling for a first-ever “Continental Congress” in Philadelphia to coordinate the disparate colonies’ actions.

Northampton’s Joseph Hawley is a preeminent Patriot leader and lawyer. Hold These Truths explores Hawley’s life and his struggles with mental illness in the lead up to the first Continental Congress.

During the American Revolution, drums, drumming, and drummers played a critical role in field communication in both the American and British armies. Drumming was not only heard over long distances, but the rhythms conveyed specific messages to the troops–to assemble, to keep pace, or to hold fire for a conference with the enemy. 

In this special demonstration, the three members of the Massachusetts Bay Drummers–Lance Piantaggini, Joe McSweeney, Chris Mulqueen–will use rope tension drums like those used during the Revolutionary War to play specific rudiments and rhythms that were used during the War. The drummers will share information about the history of the rope drum, compare past drumming to contemporary marching snare drum performances, and take questions from the audience. The trio will be dressed in uniforms inspired by Captain Jacob Allen’s company of Colonel Bailey’s Massachusetts 2nd Regiment.

In the years leading up to the American Revolution, Northampton’s Joseph Hawley III (1723-1788) was one of the most important Patriot voices in Massachusetts. A close associate of John Hancock and John Adams, Hawley was considered one of the nation’s “founding fathers,” yet today, few people know his story.

In this lecture, independent researcher Philip Kantor will describe Hawley’s life—from a childhood marked by his father’s suicide and his own bouts of depression to his work as a lawyer, town leader, and legislator. Kantor will delve into Hawley’s ideas about independence and the role he played in suppressing a counter-revolutionary movement that threatened the success of the American Revolution.

A brief Question & Answer, moderated by Harley Erdman, will follow.

Hawley is the focus of Hold These Truths, a new play by Northampton playwright Harley Erdman, and one of two dramas that will be performed in Historic Northampton’s Shepherd Barn (The Hull/Hawley Plays-September 17-October 4).

Back by popular demand!

Take in the beauty of the Connecticut River in a dragon boat and learn about the rich natural and cultural history in the stretch between Elwell Island and the boundary of Hatfield. The outing will begin with a paddling lesson by members of the Paradise City Dragon Boat team, followed by a paddle with commentary by co-director and naturalist Laurie Sanders about the environmental and human history of this part of the Connecticut River.

This is an active outing. Participants are expected to be fit enough to paddle and to handle themselves in the boat. All equipment provided, no prior paddling experience necessary.
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All proceeds shared between Historic Northampton and the Paradise Dragon Boat Team, which “paddles together to unleash fierce joy and strength in cancer survivors and supporters of all ages.”

During the month of August, museum educator Emma Bresnan will offer gallery talks about our current exhibit, Slavery and Freedom in Northampton, 1654 to 1783.

The 45-minute talk will reveal more about the lives of enslaved individuals, their choices about family and freedom, the legal arrangements that kept slavery in place, and how enslaved labor fueled the Northampton and regional economy.

Admission is by pay-what-you-wish donation. No pre-registration necessary.

Enjoy a summer concert this Thursday by the Fiddle Orchestra of Western Massachusetts as they play from their Summer 2026 Tune Book.
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Come tap your toes, dance on the lawn, and take in joyful music in the company of friends on a beautiful summer evening.

Bring a lawn chair or blanket. Bring a picnic.

Elizabeth Stordeur Pryor, daughter of iconic comedian Richard Pryor and a professor at Smith College, will speak about her new book, Something We Said: Richard Pryor, a Notorious Word, and Me.

Recently chosen as one of the New York Times’ “Nonfiction Everyone Will Be Reading This Summer,” Pryor’s book is partly a memoir about growing up the Black Jewish daughter of Richard Pryor, but also an exploration of the historical and contemporary use of the N-word.  Pryor is considered one of the leading scholars about the history of the N-word, one of the most perplexing words in the American lexicon and a word her father helped put on the pop culture map.

The conversation will be moderated by I’Maya Gibbs, a PhD candidate in the W.E.B. Dubois Department of Afro-American Studies at UMass Amherst.

A Q&A and book signing will follow.

With a welcome by Representative Lindsay Sabadosa and opening remarks from Dr. Sarah Stefana Smith of Mount Holyoke College.

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

Come to Listen or Come to Read

Come to listen or come to read a passage.  Copies of Douglass’s speech will be distributed to all in attendance. The public can take turns reading passages from it in succession.

Free and Open to the Public

200 chairs will be available. Feel free to bring your own chair. During the reading, the grounds are closed to dog walking. Certified service dogs only, please.

State Representative Lindsay Sabadosa

The Northampton event is organized in collaboration with State Representative Lindsay Sabadosa.

Kick off your holiday weekend with a concert celebrating contemporary Americana and roots and in the company of some of the Valley’s most talented musicians.

Jim Henry, Paul Kochanski, and Chris Brashear originally came together seven years ago to perform a one-time Doc Watson Tribute show. The collaboration felt so good and natural, they created the Deep River Ramblers and have been playing together ever since.

With a mix of fiddle, guitars, mandolin, dobro, and bass, their repertoire includes songs drawn from contemporary Americana and roots music, including well-known and inspirational voices like Doc Watson, Nanci Griffith, Levon Helm, Muddy Waters and John Prine, as well as their own well-crafted originals. Get ready to dance, sing along, and spend an evening with friends.

In 1927, thirty-five years after the infamous Fall River axe murders, an Irish woman, working in her kitchen in Anaconda, Montana, opens a newspaper to read about the death of the alleged murderer, Lizzie Borden. The woman is Bridget Sullivan, the Bordens’ former maid. As Bridget recalls those years, her memories turns the accepted narrative on its head.

Lace Curtain Irish is a solo, one-act play telling Bridget’s version of what may have happened in Fall River, Massachusetts in the months leading up to August 4, 1892. Two shows only with a talk-back session after the play with playwright Carolyn Gage and performer Katie Migdal.

In memory of the local artists, activists, musicians, politicians, and entrepreneurs ​who played a role in Northampton’s revitalization in the 1980s and 1990s.

Sixty portrait photographs by Paul Shoul will run on a continuous loop as an outdoor slideshow projected on Parsons House 58 Bridge Street, Northampton, MA 01060.

Sorting through thousands of his photographs, Northampton resident and internationally known photographer Paul Shoul has chosen sixty portraits in memory of the local artists, activists, musicians, politicians, and entrepreneurs who played a role in Northampton’s revitalization in the 1980s and 1990s. Shoul will narrate this special slideshow and be on-hand for conversation.

For as long as Northampton has existed, slavery has been a part of its history.

In this walking tour of upper Main Street, Elm Street, and Green Street, museum educator Elizabeth Sacktor will lead the group to local sites that reveal Northampton’s direct involvement and complicity in the slave economy.

Among other locations, we will visit the land where Joab Binney and Amos Hull Sr. were enslaved and stop at the houses where abolitionist Lydia Maria Child and slave trader Thomas Napier were next-door neighbors.

Finally, we’ll loop over to the site of a Northampton factory that made tools for southern plantations. Together these stories help tell Northampton’s legacy of slavery, which extended from the 17th-century to long after slavery became illegal in Massachusetts in 1783.

Historic Northampton’s Elizabeth Sacktor will lead a walking tour of downtown Northampton as seen through the theme of immigration in the 19th and 20th centuries. The tour will be a non-chronological exploration of how Northampton’s many immigrant populations worked and built community amid changing sentiments and discrimination.

• Hear the stories of two Irish men executed for a crime they did not commit.
• See the former home of a successful Jewish family who turned their clothing business into a Northampton staple.
• Learn about the ways Puerto Rican women made a name for themselves for their fine needlework.
• Visit the site of a former Chinese Laundry and learn about the U.S.’s first laws limiting immigration based on race.

Together, we will ask questions about what it means to be American, what it means to be from Northampton, and how our home is shaped by the communities with whom we share it.

As part of our Native Strategies Project, Dr. Drew Lopenzina, of Old Dominion University, will host an illustrated lecture about the life William Apess, a Pequot minister.

In the aftermath of the American Revolution, white leaders of the new republic foresaw the demise of Indigenous nations, as prophesied in the vision of “manifest destiny.” Pequot minister William Apess, however, spoke to a different kind of historical prophecy, one that challenged the narrative of extinction of Indigenous people. In his writing, Apess called on the Indigenous memories of both King Philip’s War and the American Revolution to construct a radical new narrative that promised a sustained Native presence.

William Apess was one of the nation’s most important Native intellectuals. Born into poverty in Colrain, Massachusetts, in 1798, Apess moved to Connecticut where he was bound out as an indentured servant. At age 14, he joined the American Army and served in the War of 1812. He later became an itinerant Methodist minister and was a popular and controversial speaker in the Connecticut Valley and beyond. In 1829, he wrote the first published Native autobiography, A Son of the Forest. Throughout his life, Apess lectured on the traumas of the past and engaged in activism to improve the quality of life for Native people. He died in 1839 in New York City.

Sixty portrait photographs by Paul Shoul will run on a continuous loop as an outdoor slideshow projected on Parsons House at 58 Bridge Street in Northampton.

Sorting through thousands of his photographs, Northampton resident and internationally known photographer Paul Shoul has chosen sixty portraits in memory of the local artists, activists, musicians, politicians, and entrepreneurs who played a role in Northampton’s revitalization in the 1980s and 1990s. Shoul will narrate this special slideshow and be on-hand for conversation.

The images will be projected onto the front of Historic Northampton’s Parsons House and run on a continuous loop.

Paul Shoul is a Northampton-based photojournalist.

Join Historic Northampton’s Elizabeth Sacktor for a walking tour of the Bridge Street Cemetery. We’ll explore how gravestones, and their locations in the cemetery, help us understand how Northampton women have been remembered, or nearly forgotten.

The tour will visit the graves of ten women buried between 1776 and 1923, from early 18th century midwives to the first Indigenous woman to attend Smith College.

Each woman has a story to tell, and by examining the grave itself and the material remnants of their lives, we will uncover these stories together.

Above the Oxbow: History and Memory on Mount Holyoke The Oxbow & Mount Holyoke​A Two-Part Lecture Series presented by Forbes Library and Historic Northampton Event Details Join us for a special talk by Danielle Raad who will speak about Mount Holyoke and its history. Drawing from her new book Above the Oxbow: Stories Entangled with […]

Rhythm & Rails, a multimedia performance, draws to the stage some of the Valley’s most talented musicians and actors to animate the complex history of railroads in America.

The arrival of the railroad in the United States in the mid-nineteenth century profoundly affected the nation’s history. Here in Northampton and across the country, railroads changed the pace of life, the perception of space and time, the movement of people and goods, and the country’s economic, technological, and social history. The impact of railroads on the lives of people across America was recorded in letters, photographs, literature, and in thousands of songs—from American roots, folk and rag time to blues, jazz, pop, and rock.

At the center of Rhythm & Rails is Northampton’s railroad history, but the performance takes us to other parts of New England and the country using a blend of railroad-themed music, narration, theatrical cameos, and archival images.

A presentation by Jonathan Moldover that will focus on the history of the Oxbow – from its underlying geology to the reasons why Hudson River School artist, Thomas Cole, chose this view in 1836 as emblematic of American ideology.

In his illustrated presentation, Moldover will share eyewitness accounts of the 1840 flood that cut off the oxbow and provide vivid descriptions of the changes that followed: the rise and fall of the lumber and pulp industries on the “island”; the immigrants who came to work in the mills and built homes along Island Road and Ferry Avenue; the construction of Interstate 91; followed by the creation of the Oxbow Marina, now the largest marina on the Connecticut River.

Like many towns in New England, Northampton’s economy and society were shaped by slavery. Before the Civil War, Northampton residents produced crops and goods that were sold to support Southern slave labor, and local cotton mill owners relied on slave-grown cotton. Southern white families vacationed at the Northampton water cures, and some sent their children to Northampton’s elite private schools.

In this Zoom talk, Historic Northampton’s Elizabeth Sacktor and UMass PhD student Anaëlle Cama will present their new research on life at the Watson plantation before the family moved to Northampton.

To mark International Dark Sky Week, Northampton City Lights presents its fourth annual Night Fest. This year’s celebration of the night includes Mayor Gina-Louise Sciarra reading the city’s International Dark Sky Week Proclamation followed by an exploration of the world of local moths by Smith College’s Dr. Mariana Abarca.

There will also be opportunities to check out an array of citizen science projects and to view the night sky through telescopes, weather permitting. Northampton City Lights’ mission is to protect human health and wildlife, bring back the stars and the Milky Way, and improve safety and quality of life for all by fighting light pollution in Northampton, MA.

​Free, family-friendly, and open to the public.
Rain or shine

Before the 1973 landmark Supreme Court decision Roe v. Wade, which legalized abortion in the U.S., one million women each year collectively paid more than $750 million for abortions. In this talk based on her new book of the same name, Katherine Parkin reveals that the abortion market between 1962 and 1972 was an economic force which involved loans, advertising, and travel, as well as the costs of the procedure itself. These funds were organized by women themselves through women’s organizations, social networks, and even within college campuses.

Charles C. Burleigh (1810-1878) was a nationally recognized abolitionist and activist in his time but has been largely forgotten in ours. Burleigh lived in Florence, where he co-founded the Free Congregational Society of Florence.

In this zoom presentation, historian and Burleigh scholar Jennifer Rycenga will bring Burleigh’s struggles and accomplishments to light. In addition to being a towering figure in the abolition movement, Burleigh was one of the most eloquent critics of the death penalty. He combined a clear moral vision of human equality with tireless writing, editing, and activism.

Throughout history and in many cultures, the work of caring for the dead and dying has been the work of women. In this lecture, Historic Northampton’s Elizabeth Sacktor will explore 19th-century New England women’s personal and professional networks of death labor. She will discuss women shroudmakers, undertakers, and makers of hair jewelry who lived in Northampton and elsewhere in the valley.

In the early 19th-century men began to encroach on this historically female dominated field, attempting to “professionalize” labor women had been doing for centuries for little to no pay. Sacktor will discuss how New England women navigated this change and declared their own labor as valuable, marketable, and deserving of pay.

Co-director Elizabeth Sharpe will provide an introductory overview of the history of women’s caregiving and death in the home. At the Five College Women’s Research Center and at the Mt. Holyoke College Archives and Special Collections, she researched “Nineteenth-Century Women Reflect on Aging, Death, and Caregiving.”

Join a gallery talk to explore the exhibit with Historic Northampton’s museum educator Elizabeth Sacktor.

Learn more details of the lives of local enslaved individuals and the narratives of enslaved people becoming free. We will share information about the legal arrangements that kept slavery in place, how enslaved labor fueled the Northampton and regional economy, and the research at Historic Northampton, Forbes Library, and elsewhere in the Valley that underlies the exhibit.

​​As we explore the exhibit, we will discuss personal connections to this local history and discover what questions we still have about slavery in Northampton.

Free. Donations are welcome. No registration is required.