Abby Epplett, Historian

The 2024 season of Parked at Home hosted by Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BRVNHP) returned last night — March 8, 2023 at 7:00 p.m. — with guest speaker and park ranger Samantha Baranski of First State National Historical Park (FSNHP) in Delaware.

I am revisiting small towns in the Blackstone River Valley as I wait for museum season to begin. Today’s stop is Uxbridge, MA. These quick history stops is based on a class that I taught through Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Tufts University .

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, 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...

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...

Despite all my travels, I have never done Quick History Stops for local towns. Since I completed updates on my adventures from last museum season, and the next season does not start until April, I will be revisiting small towns within the Blackstone River Valley to showcase all the history they have to offer. The first stop is Whitinsville, a village of Northbridge, MA and one of six sites in Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park . These quick history stops have some overlap with the Wonders of Whitinsville ranger-led walking tour from June 2023 and is based on a class that I taught through Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Tufts University . Overlooking the mills and Mumford River is the James Fletcher Homestead built in 1770. James Fletcher constructed a blacksmith shop near his home in 1772. Twenty-one years later, in 1793, Paul Whitin  married Fletcher’s daughter Betsey . By 1809, Whitin and Fletcher established Northbridge Cotton Manufacturing Comp...

Earlier today — Sunday, August 14 — I was a Volunteer-In-Parks (VIP)  at Blackstone River Valley National Historic Park (BRVNHP)  during “World War II Comes to the Valley”, an event that took place at Open Sky Community Services in the historic village of Whitinsville, Massachusetts . This park also contains Slater Mill , where I volunteered during World Ranger Day .

To generate new ideas for upcoming trips, I recently read the book 50 States 5000 Ideas written by Joe Yogerst , fact-checked Meg Weaver , and published by  National Geographic  in February 2017, and distributed by Simon & Schuster . The full-color paperback edition has 288 pages of facts and photographs and makes an excellent coffee table book for roadtrippers or a basic starting point for people who want to begin traveling but do not know where to begin. Since the book covers a lot of ground, and not always successfully, the author highlights major attractions and large cities, along with a few smaller towns, but does not give details on most location. I experienced several frustrations while reading the book. States and provinces appear in alphabetical order, rather than by region, meaning New Mexico is listed between New Jersey and New York, rather than with Utah, Arizona, and Nevada. The side bars and colored boxes with additional information interrupted ...

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...

This past Saturday — July 6, 2024 — I visited three stops in the Passport to History developed by Old Colony History Museum , along with one bonus stop. Attleboro Area Industrial Museum was the second stop on my trip. I had been meaning to visit this museum since learning about it at the Industrial History New England Lunch on Day 1 of NEMA Conference 2022 , so this visit checks off another item from my very long museum bucket list.

Held annually on the Sunday closest to August 14 or Victory Day, which celebrates the end of World War II, the 2023 edition of “World War II Comes to the Valley” did not disappoint. Like last year , this event took place at Alternatives’ Whitin Mill in the historic village of Whitinsville, MA . The complex is operated by Open Sky Community Services with events planned by its arts and culture arm, ValleyCast . I last visited its plaza during the “Wonders of Whitinsville” Ranger Walkabout hosted by Blackstone River Valley National Historical Park (BRVNHP) in June 2023, and I attended the Blackstone Valley Mill Explorations event in December 2022. This latest event was a collaboration between many organizations with volunteers (like me!) provided through Blackstone Heritage Corridor .