Abby Epplett, Historian

Back in June, I visited Monumento a los Héroes de la Restauración (Monument to the Heroes of the Restoration) in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros in the Dominican Republic. In my last post, I described las plazoletas (little plazas) around the monument. My second stop was las escaleras (the stairs). Beautifully cast bronze statues line the steps of the monument. The most popular statues depict members of a political triad just before the Restoration:

In late June 2023, I visited the Dominican Republic and learned about the history and culture of the country. My first stop was Monumento a los Héroes de la Restauración (Monument to the Heroes of the Restoration) in the city of Santiago de los Caballeros, part of the Cibao region. Originally constructed as part of the Dominican independence centennial celebration in 1944 by Dominican architect Henry Gazón Bona as El Monumento a la Paz de Trujillo (The Monument to Peace from Trujillo) in honor of a dictator, the current iteration of the monument instead honors those who served in the military, government, and other organizations during Guerra de la Restauración (War of the Restoration), which lasted from 1863 to 1865. The figures appearing on las plazoletas (little plazas), las escaleras (the stairs of the monument), and in el museo (the museum) are also found throughout the country. In part one of a three post series about the monument, I focus on las plazoletas.

I recently finished watching the first season of  Slatersville: America’s First Mill Village , which was directed, edited, and produced by award-winning local filmmaker Christian de Rezendes of Breaking Branch Pictures . I last met de Rezendes, along with  Slatersville researcher-producer Gail Denomme , at North Smithfield Heritage Day on July 8 , where they led tours using the history featured in the documentary. The series itself was nominated for a 46 th Boston/New England Emmy Award in the documentary category and won the music composition/arrangement category for its score composed by  Stephen Gilbane . Besides its high artistic merit, the documentary shared stories of Slatersville and its residents that had never before been published. “Episode 1: The Mental Smugglers” covered the life of Samuel Slater , a mill worker from Belper, England , an industrial town in the Amber Valley within the county of Derbyshire . Slater memorized the entire text...

On Tuesday, July 25 at 8:00 p.m., I watched the online program “Linn Westcott’s Wildly Diverse Railroad Photography” presented by Kevin P. Keefe and sponsored by the Center for Railroad Photography & Art (CRP&A) , a train photography collection based in Madison, WI . Keefe is former editor and publisher of the aptly named Trains , a magazine and online platform all about real railroads and railroad models. His book Twelve Twenty-Five: Life and Times of a Steam Locomotive published by Michigan State University Press was a 2017 Michigan Notable Book from the Library of Michigan . Keefe knew Westcott while working for Kalmbach beginning in 1974. Today, Kalmbach Media “connects enthusiasts to their passions with magazines, books, digital products, videos, online stores, social media, and more.” Their primary areas of focus include everything associated with trains, model building, space, and general science. Westcott was the editor of the Kalmbach publication Model ...

Today — July 20, 2023 — was the second full online day of the Smithsonian National Education Summit , with the Welcome Reception held two nights ago and the first full online day on Wednesday . I attended three history-focused sessions inspiring students and teachers to learn about their past in order to change their school, community, country, and the world for the better. Inspire Creative Changemakers During this fast-paced session based on an article by the same name published on July 13 , six Smithsonian educators used artifacts from their respective museums to demonstrate how to teach students to become creative changers , or “people who intervene to in creative ways solve a social problem”. The educators used routines like “See Wonder, Connect Times Two” from Harvard’s Project Zero to lead the audience through thinking critically about the objects. The lively text chat for viewers was monitored by Stephanie Greenhut , a Smithsonian Learning Lab product owner. ...

Earlier today — Wednesday, July 19, 2023 — I attended several sessions during the first full day for the online version of the Smithsonian National Education Summit after the Welcome Reception last night . Two of the sessions had a strong focus on history and presented ways to share concepts with students and visitors of all ages, inspiring them to deeply engage with artifacts and artwork.

Early today — Tuesday, July 18 at 6:00 p.m. — I watched the online Welcome Reception to the Smithsonian National Education Summit . Held online over the next two days, and in-person throughout this week, the summit brings educators together from across the United States to discuss improvements in American education. The theme for this year is “Together We Thrive: Fostering a Sense of Belonging” and has a special focus on the experiences of Black male students. Dr. Monique M. Chism, who works as the Smithsonian’s Under Secretary for Education , hosted the opening panel. She noted that students are getting the lowest test scores in decades after the COVID-19 pandemic, and teachers are leaving the field. This effect is felt by Black male students more than other demographics, as they are disproportionately suspended and expelled and most likely to dropout of high school and college. On the stage to discuss education were Secretary of the Smithsonian, Lonnie Bunch III ; Distric...

Besides visiting Historic New England’s Dole Little House , Museum of Old Newbury , and the Lower Green Area of Newbury , I also made several quick history stops while visiting the Newbury & Newburyport region, as I was unable to see these stops my previous trip to the area in September 2022 . Locations included a house and a memorial in the Upper Green Area of Newbury, along with historic buildings and one live horse in Downtown Newburyport.

Along with visiting Historic New England’s Dole Little House and the Museum of Old Newbury during my last trip to the Newbury & Newburyport region in June 2023, I visited the Lower Green Area of Newbury. Back in 2010, Preservation Massachusetts listed this area as one of the ten most threatened historic sites in the state. Stops include places maintained by the Sons and Daughters of the First Settlers of Newbury (SDFSN) ; a stewardship property protected by a Historic New England (HNE) Preservation Easement Program , and historic signage created by the Massachusetts Bay Colony Tercentenary Commission (MBCTC) .

Early today — Saturday, July 8, 2023 — I spent a few hours at North Smithfield Heritage Day, an annual event hosted by the North Smithfield Heritage Association (NSHA) in collaboration with multiple other organizations and vendors. This event was free and open to the public with plenty of parking and easy to navigate sidewalks. Slaterville Walking Tour The first event I attended was a walk through Slatersville , a village of North Smithfield. The tour started at 9:00 a.m. and lasted for about 90 minutes. It focused on life in the mill town during the early 20 th century. The walk was led by park ranger Allison Horrocks of Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BRVNHP) and by Christian de Rezendes of Breaking Branch Pictures , whose latest work is the Emmy award winning documentary series Slatersville: America’s First Mill Village . Using a path similar to the self-guided walking tours available on the park service website, this tour started at He...

On the same day I visited Dole-Little House, I also toured the  Museum of Old Newbury , located in Newburyport, MA. Founded as the Antiquarian and Historical Society of Old Newbury , the organization has existed since 1877 and spent its nearly 150 years “collecting, preserving, and presenting the history of Newburyport, Newbury, West Newbury, Byfield, and Plum Island”. The organization has known many locations but since 1955 has been in Cushing House , once the home to American politician and diplomat, Caleb Cushing.

Several weeks ago during Historic New England (HNE) Open House Day on the first Saturday in June, I visited Dole-Little House in Newbury, MA . This property — built with materials from another house around 1715 for either cattleman Richard Dole (1650-1723) or his nephew Richard Dole (1689-1778) — is rarely open to the public. The Dole and Little families were long-time North Shore residents, as cattleman Richard Dole’s father Richard Dole (1622-1705) was among the first European colonists to settle in the area. A distantly related branch of the Little family owned Spencer-Peirce-Little Farm , another HNE property in Newbury that I visited in mid September of last year .

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.

This blog celebrates its first birthday today. Abby Epplett, Historian began on May 31, 2022 with the publication of “How Do You See the World?” Experience & Mapparium about the Christian Science Plaza in Boston, MA. This is the 125 th blog post. I have published about one article every three days over the course of a year. In addition to writing on Blogger , the platform hosting this blog, I have republished seven articles on the crowdsourced blog Mainly Museums , and another post is on the way. Other publications and activities related to this blog include Instagram  posts and stories, tweets on Twitter, and reviews on Google Maps. My blogs are occasionally featured in online newsletters sent out by local organizations.

On Thursday, May 25 at 7:00 p.m., I watched the Zoom webinar Revolutionary Design: Modern Architecture in New England hosted by Jane Oneail of Culturally Curious . This organization is based in Manchester, NH and focuses on history throughout New England. Each program is sponsored by a New England organization, with this webinar funded by Manchester City Library . Oneail focused her talk on five buildings, each constructed by a different architect.

A few months ago, I received a perfect gift, the revised and expanded second edition of Old Testament Parallels: Laws and Stories from the Ancient Near East . Few other readers will be quite so pleased by the book as I was, but for those who are interested in mythology from Egypt, the Akkadians, and other ancient cultures, this is an easy-to-read primer. Authors Dr. Victor H. Matthews of Missouri State University and Dr. Don C. Benjamin of the Kino Institute of Theology wrote the book with the intention of creating “a readable, affordable, and portable anthology of ancient Near Eastern law and stories”, beginning with their first edition published by Paulist Press in 1991. I read the 1997 edition, which includes black-and-white illustrations and runs about 380 pages in length. Along with this book, the authors co-wrote The Social World of Ancient Israel 1250-587 B.C.E. in 1993, while Dr. Matthews published Manners and Customs in the Bible in 1988. I knew a conside...