Abby Epplett, Historian

For the third year in a row, National Historic Marker Day takes place on the final Friday in April, which is today, April 28, 2023. The William G. Pomeroy Foundation , self-described as “a philanthropic organization based in Syracuse, NY”, created this day to encourage volunteers to clean markers and learn about local history. I first learned of this holiday back in early November 2022 while attending the New England Museum Association (NEMA) Annual Conference in Springfield, MA. (My three-part summary of this three-day conference is available here , here , and here .)

Earlier today — Wednesday, April 26, 2023 at 6:00 p.m. ET — I attended the webinar Venice, Crete, and the Birth of the Modern World hosted by the National Hellenic Museum (NHM) in Chicago, IL. I previously attended another NHM event, Tragedy, Comedy, & Democracy in Ancient Athens , held earlier this month. Just like last time, the fast-paced and occasionally humorous talk was given by Dr. Katherine “Katie” Kelaidis , director of the museum. Dr. Kelaidis explained that as an island “closer to Jerusalem than to Paris”, Crete is a crossroad between the East and West. The largest island in the Mediterranean served as a stop for traders and militaries, leading to influence from cultures in the Middle East and Ethiopia. The culture has been part of the Greek world for thousands of years. The Minoans , who were Pre-Indo-European settlers of Mediterranean islands, lived in Crete until the Greeks pushed them out of the area in 900 BC during the Greek Dark Ages . Later, during

Last October, I made a few Quick History Stops in Southern New Hampshire on the border with Massachusetts just north of Fitchburg, MA. This fun day trip, which included longer stops at Cathedral of the Pines and Historic New England’s Barrett House , also featured apple picking at Washburn’s Windy Hill Orchard, climbing Mount Kidder, and visiting the childhood home of Uncle Sam.

Early tonight, at 5:30 p.m., I watched “Early Rhode Island Family Cemeteries and Their Stories”, a webinar hosted by Historic New England via Zoom. The presenter, Robert (Bob) A. Geake , is an archivist and board member Warwick Historical Society , author of eight books, and a frequent contributor to Small State, Big History , a self-proclaimed “Online Review of Rhode Island History”. As stated by Jane Hennedy , who manages Casey Farm and Watson Farm in southern Rhode Island, Geake’s next book is Death in Early New England: Rites, Rituals, and Remembrance , will come out in July. I last met Geake during Lincoln's Birthday at Arnold House in Lincoln, RI, where he is a tour guide. Geake’s presentation utilized beautiful pictures of churches and cemeteries found in the tristate area of Rhode Island, Massachusetts, and Connecticut. Cemeteries familiar to me included The Old Cemetery circa 1774 on Hill Street in Whitinsville, MA ; Ballou Cemetery in Cumberland, RI (RIHC

In October 2022, I visited Barrett House , my last Historic New England (HNE) stop in the regular season. Located about fifteen miles north of Fitchburg, Massachusetts in the small town of New Ipswich, New Hampshire, the home is an easily accessed destination for anyone living in southern New Hampshire, central Massachusetts, and even northern Rhode Island. Barrett House is a three-story whitewashed Federal style house originally called Forest Hall . Wealthy businessman and politician, Charles Barrett, Sr. , along with his wife, Rebecca Minott Barrett , built the house as a wedding present for their oldest surviving son, Charles Barrett, Jr. , and his new wife and their niece, Martha Minot Barrett . Rebecca’s oldest brother Captain Jonas Minot spelled the family surname with one t instead of two. Jonas had served in the American Revolutionary War and evidently accrued as much wealth as his sister and brother-in-law, as he provided all the furniture for the house.

Yesterday, on Thursday, April 13, at 7:00 p.m., I watched the final installment of the 2023 season of Parked at Home by the Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BRVNHP) . Park rangers Mark Mello and Allison Horrocks spoke about the connection between music, factory work, and protests during the Industrial Revolution. Horrocks began the presentation by reviewing the themes of Parked at Home 2023, which focused on labor and work in company towns or on the frontier. She reminded the audience of the parks they had virtually visited over the seven weeks: Yellowstone National Park Ellis Island & Statue of Liberty in New York City Eisenhower National Historic Site in Gettysburg, Pennsylvania Reconstruction Era National Park in South Carolina Ste. Geneviève National Historical Park in Missouri Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Site in Skagway, Alaska The soundscape of each site is unique and inescapable. Horrocks explained that while we

Back in October 2022, I visited Cathedral of the Pines in Rindge, NH, a non-denominational memorial including a bell tower, gardens, trails, and a small museum. The space is dedicated in memory of Lt. Sanderson “Sandy” Sloane and other members of the United States military who died in war, especially World War II. Free and open to the public, this organization provides a comprehensive educational and historical experience, allowing visitors to learn more about a man and his family within the context of a global crisis while providing a place for veterans and military families to process personal trauma.

On Monday, April 10 at 6:00 p.m., I attended a virtual talk, “Tragedy, Comedy, and Democracy in Ancient Athens”, presented via Zoom by Dr. Katherine Kelaidis of the National Hellenic Museum in Chicago, IL. Dr. Kelaidis began the talk by defining the meaning of tragedy as understood in Ancient Athens . In the 5 th century BC, the city-state or polis hosted a festival called Dionysia in honor of Dionysus , a god also called Bacchus or Bromius. He represented wine and theater, making him an excellent choice for the festival. Very few plays submitted to the festival have survived to the modern era, with notable examples written by Aeschylus , Sophocles , and Euripides . Everything in Athens was a competition, including intellectual and athletic events. Athenians compared competition to democracy, where all members of society tested themselves against each other. Dr. Kelaidis explained that the philosopher Aristotle lived about a hundred years after the peak popularity of

On Thursday, April 6 at 7:00 p.m., I attended the sixth installment of the 2023 Parked at Home series hosted via Zoom by Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BRVNHP) and Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor . During this penultimate discussion on the theme of community, park rangers Mark Mello and Allison Horrocks of BRVNHP were joined by Barak Geertsen of Klondike Gold Rush National Historical Park in Skagway, Alaska. Mello began the talk by describing community as “a central piece of the human experience”. Many communities in the Blackstone River Valley took the form of mill villages, where a factory owner also owned the identical worker housing, stores, and even the church building. The first of these mill village — the town of Slatersville in North Smithfield of northwestern Rhode Island, which was previously called Buffam’s Mill — was created by English-American brothers John and Samuel Slater with investments from Moses Brown and hi

During my trip to Salem back in October, I made several quick history stops around the city. All of these stops are free to view from the sidewalk, and several are included in an audio tour. Stops included an alternative medicine clinic, the statue of the city’s founder, a collection of historic building, a 17 th century cemetery, and witchcraft tourist traps.

Last October, during my trip to Salem, MA, I visited Phillips House , an elegant Federal style mansion built in 1821 and operated by Historic New England (HNE) . This tour is vastly different from other historic tours in Salem because it focuses neither on the 1690s around the time of the Salem Witch Trials, nor on the early 19 th century during the peak of maritime trade. Instead, the tour is told through the eyes of five-year-old Stephen “Stevie” Phillips , who moved into the newly renovated house with his family in 1912. As the last in the line of many Stephen Phillipses, he is best remembered today by a scholarship that bears his name .

On Thursday, March 30 at 7:00 p.m., I attended the fifth installment of the 2023 Parked at Home series hosted via Zoom by Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BRVNHP) and Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor . During this Parked at Home talk, park rangers Mark Mello and Andrew Schnetzer of BRVNHP were joined by Claire Casey of Ste. Geneviève National Historical Park in Ste. Geneviève, MO , one of the newest parks in the National Park Service. The talk began with a brief presentation by Schnetzer as he described commonalities between the Blackstone Valley area and Ste. Geneviève. He recalled the beginning of English colonization in New England, including the first settlements at Jamestown , the Pilgrims in Plymouth Colony during the 1620s, and the Puritans in Massachusetts Bay Colony from the 1630s onward. At the same time, French colonists arrived in Nouvelle France , hoping to become rich from fur trapping and fishing in areas like Acadia

Back in early October of 2022, I visited Gedney House in Salem, MA, one of the oldest properties owned by Historic New England (HNE) and on the National Register of Historic Places since 1974. Built in 1665 by Eleazer Gedney (1642-1683), whose day job as a shipwright or boat builder gave him plenty of carpentry experience, the house was intended for twenty-three year old Gedney and his wife-to-be, sixteen year old Elizabeth Turner Gedney (1648-1677). The house is among a handful of extant structures from the First Period of American architecture, part of the early British colonial era in what is now the United States. It predates the better known House of Seven Gables , made famous by American author and Salem resident, Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804-1864), who wrote a book by the same name . Salem was a small community, and Gedney's brother-in-law, John Turner (1644-1680), built the House of Seven Gables in 1668.

On March 26, 2023, at 2:00 p.m., multiple cultural organizations based in Uxbridge, MA collaborated to host award winning author Nathaniel Philbrick as he talked about his latest book Travels with George: In Search of Washington and His Legacy . The talk was hosted at Community House of the First Evangelical Congregational Church , near the Town Common and across the street from Unitarian Church, now the home to the Uxbridge Historical Society (UHS) . The Uxbridge Free Public Library , also located by the Common, assisted with registration, while the Samuel Slater Experience , a museum in nearby Webster, MA, had a booth at the event. Vice President of the UHS, Jim Beauchamp , read opening remarks, also acknowledging his wife, Mary Beauchamp , as the Chairperson of the Uxbridge Historical Commission . This event was truly a community effort with an impressive turnout to match. Philbrick began his talk by recalling on a phrase used by American politician Tip O’Neill (D-MA),

On Thursday, March 23 at 7:00 p.m., I attended the fourth installment of the 2023 Parked at Home series hosted via Zoom by Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BRVNHP) and Blackstone River Valley National Heritage Corridor . During this Parked at Home talk, park rangers Allison Horrocks and Mark Mello of BRVNHP were joined by Richard Cordon of Reconstruction Era National Historical Park (RENHP) in the Sea Islands, including the city of Beaufort, South Carolina on Port Royal Island . Horrocks began the presentation by noting the commonalities between BRVNHP and RENHP. Both parks are comprised of multiple historic sites connected by themes, with evolution of industry as the theme of BRVNHP. Horrocks reminded the audience about the different definitions of reconstruction. Lowercase r  reconstruction refers to rebuilding, repairing, or restoring a physical structure, just as people in the Blackstone Valley have worked on historic mill buildings, while the upp

Early today — Wednesday, March 22 — at 4:00 p.m., I attended the webinar “ Phillis Wheatley Peters in Material Memory ” hosted by the American Antiquarian Society (AAS) in Worcester, MA . This talk featured five speakers who each held a unique perspective on the life and work of Revolutionary War era African-American poet Phillis Wheatley Peters . The first presentation was given by Honorée Fanonne Jeffers , an English professor at the University of Oklahoma and author of The Age of Phillis , published by Wesleyan University Press in 2020 and long-listed for the 2020 National Book Award in Poetry . Jeffers described her first encounter with the works of Wheatley Peters while an English student at Talladega College , an HBCU in Alabama. In 2003, she read The Trials of Phillis Wheatley by Dr. Henry Louis Gates, Jr. When Jeffers became a Robert and Charlotte Baron Artist Fellow at the AAS in July 2009, she read the memoir of Margaretta Matilda Odell , a White woman and f