Abby Epplett, Historian

On Thursday, June 29 at 7:00 p.m. I watched a webinar via Zoom that focused on the life and work of American painter George Clair Tooker . The talk, called George Tooker: Modern Life & Magical Realism , was lead by Jane Oneail of Culturally Curious . I last heard Oneail speak a month ago in May when she presented Revolutionary Design: Modern Architecture in New England . Like last time, the event was sponsored by the Greater Manchester Integrated Library Cooperative or GMILCS , which describes itself as “a nonprofit consortium of public and academic libraries in New Hampshire”. The talk began with an introduction to the life of George Tooker. He was born in Brooklyn, NY in 1920 to an Episcopalian family. His mother was half Cuban, and Tooker considered himself to be mixed-race but passed as White. He began painting around 1927 at age seven, and by the time he was a junior in high school, he was accepted into the prestigious Phillips Andover Academy in Massachusetts. ...

A few weeks ago, I visited Moore State Park in Paxton, MA. This beautiful public park covers about 400 acres of woodlands, meadows, and waterfalls on Turkey Hill Brook . Locals know the site for its flowering bushes, including azaleas, mountain laurels, and rhododendrons, and the site has the remains of buildings from the 18 th through early 20 th centuries. The park is even listed on the National Register of Historic Places as Moore State Park Historic District . More recently, in 2003, the American Chestnut Foundation planted blight-resistant trees in the park.

Yesterday, June 22, at 6:30 p.m., I joined rangers from Blackstone River Valley National Historic Park during their walkabout “Wonders of Whitinsville”, an hour-long tour of the mill village with an overview of the Whitin family and local industrial history. Part of the material overlapped with the Whitinsville Self-Guided Tour available on the National Park Service website , but the three rangers leading the tour provided plenty of additional information about the number of textile looms in the mill buildings, family dynamics, and the relationship between mill owners and mill workers.

Back in late May 2023, I visited Rocky Point State Park , formerly an amusement park in Warwick, RI managed by Rhode Island State Parks (RISP) with funding from the City of Warwick and the Department of Environmental Management (RIDEM) . Together, these organizations have transformed the area into a kite flying field, oceanfront beach, and ADA compliant trails, along with supporting the Rocky Point Park Pathways Project by Leadership Rhode Island . Since 2017 , a series of pathway signs detail the history of the park using text and images.

A few weeks ago in May 2023, I visited Browne House in Watertown, MA , yet another restored late 17 th century building owned and maintained by Historic New England (HNE) . Lest you become bored by my obsession with houses constructed in a style known as First Period , American colonial , or Post-Medieval English , fear not! For this house is different and special, as they all are. Browne House was officially the “first fully documented restoration” of an old building in the United States. While not a perfect restoration, and certainly contrary to modern standards, the house shows not only how the Browne family may have lived at the time the house was constructed sometime between 1694 and 1710, but also how early 20 th century historians and architects learned to reconstruct old buildings.