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events
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150th ANNIVERSARY CELEBRATION OF LONGWOOD PROGRESSIVE FRIENDS MEETINGHOUSE, KENNETT SQUARE, PENNSYLVANIA, SUNDAY, MAY 22, 2005
From 1855 until 1940, the Longwood Meetinghouse, near the entrance of Longwood Garden in Kennett Square, Pennsylvania, was the site of an annual gathering of radicals and reformers. Lucretia Mott, a Quaker abolitionist and perhaps the most famous woman of her day; Sojourner Truth, the ex-slave turned abolitionist and woman's rights lecturer; William Lloyd Garrison, editor of the
Liberator; Robert Purvis, a founder of the American Anti-Slavery Society; and others joined with Chester County Quakers in making Longwood a national center for the discussion of reform. This year the Kennett Underground Railroad Center, Longwood Gardens, Western Quarterly Meeting, and the Chester County Convention & Visitors Bureau are working together to plan a commemoration of this historic building. We are planning a program, to last from 2:00 p.m. to about 3:30 p.m. on Sunday, May 22, 2005, in a tent just inside the gates of Longwood Gardens.
Christopher Densmore, curator of the Friends Historical Library at Swarthmore College, will speak about Longwood and the Progressive Friends movement. The Kennett Community Chorus will sing several songs, including James Russell Lowell's "Once to Every Man and Nation," a favorite of the abolitionists. There will be a presentation on the 1862 visit of some Longwood members to President Lincoln urging him to free the slaves. There will be time for individuals to speak if moved to do so. In addition, visitors will want to tour the Meetinghouse and the burying ground across the road. We will have an alphabetical listing of the gravesites' locations.
We ask that this announcement be circulated widely, so people can begin planning and sending word to their far-flung relatives who might be interested. If you have questions, suggestions, or offers of help, please contact Mary Dugan at
[email protected] or 610-347-2237.
All are welcome, especially descendants of the founders, whose names appear below:
Eusebius Barnard, Sarah D. Barnard, Simon Barnard, Vincent Barnard, William Barnard, Beulah Borton, Thomas Borton, Cyrus M. Burleigh, George Chapman, Ann Coates, Hannah Cox, John Cox, Hannah M. Darlington, Joseph A. Dugdale, Ruth Dugdale, Sarah B. Dugdale, Ann Fulton, James Fulton, Bartholomew Fussell, Rebecca L. Fussell, Thomas Garrett, Alice Eliza Hambleton, Enoch S. Hannum, Castner Hanway, Esther Hayes, Barclay Ivins, Ebenezer James, Richard Janney, Henrietta Walcott Oliver Johnson, Rowland Johnson, Benjamin Kent, Jonathan Lamborn, Mahlon B. Linton, Dinah Mendenhall, Isaac Mendenhall, Isaac Meredith, James Meredith, Thamazin Meredith, Esther Moore, James Painter, Jacob L. Paxson, Jesse Pennock, Mary J. Pennock, Moses Pennock, Elijah F. Pennypacker, Amos Preston, Harriet Purvis, Robert Purvis, Benjamin Pyle, Fannie Schofield, Sumner Stebbins, Enoch L. Taylor, James Truman, Mary A. Truman, Edward Webb, William Webb, Ephraim Wilson
JOHN BROWN DAY AT ELIZABETHTOWN, NY, ON MAY 14, 2005, WITH ADDRESS BY DAVID W. BLIGHT
[The following information abstracted from press releases.]
John Brown Day 2005 with renowned historian Dr. David W. Blight and writer/performer Sandra Weber on Saturday, May 14. Dr. Blight will deliver keynote address on "How to Weigh John Brown's Body in Our Age of Terrorism" at 12 noon at Old County Courthouse, Elizabethtown. At 1:30 there will be a caravan to the John Brown Farm State Historic Site, Lake Placid, and at 2:30, a performance by author and storyteller Sandra Weber at the John Brown farm. Pack a picnic lunch and water, and dress for the weather.
Dr. Blight has been studying, teaching and writing about New World slavery for over forty years, and he currently serves as the Director of the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance, and Abolition, at Yale University. He is also a member of the National Advisory Board of the National Underground Railroad Freedom Center at Cincinnati and has been a consultant to several documentary films, including the 1998 PBS series,
"Africans in America" and "The Reconstruction Era" (2004).
Among his many books and publications are the widely-praised Race and
Reunion: The Civil War in American Memory (Harvard University Press, 2001), which received seven prestigious book awards;
Beyond the Battlefield: Race, Memory, and the American Civil War (University of Massachusetts Press, 2002); and
Frederick Douglass's Civil War: Keeping Faith in Jubilee (LSU Press, 1989).
Blight has also lectured and written extensively on WEB DuBois, Frederick Douglass, abolitionism, American historical memory, and African American intellectual and cultural history. As of the 2000 and 2004 editions, he is one of the authors of the bestselling American history textbook for the college level,
A People and a Nation (Houghton Mifflin). He is also series advisor and editor for the Bedford Books series in American History and Culture. He teaches summer institutes for secondary teachers and for park rangers and historians in the National Park Service.
The John Brown 2005 Celebration marks the 205th birthday of the abolitionist and settler who made the Adirondacks his home and final resting place. It continues a tradition dating back to the 1930s of making an annual pilgrimage to Brown's grave.
The event is free and open to the public. All are advised to dress for the weather and to pack a picnic lunch.
For information, call Martha Swan at "John Brown Lives!" at
325-354-4046.
FIRST ANNUAL TEXAS SLAVE DESCENDANTS SYMPOSIUM (HOUSTON), JUNE 16-19, 2005
The First Annual Texas Slave Descendants Symposium will be happening in Houston, Texas at the Buffalo Soldiers National Museum and in Richmond, Texas with the Fort Bend Museum. Please mark your calendar for June 16-19, 2005. The story of Texas Slaves will be told through the eyes of Storytellers and traveling productions. Tours, live descendants and roundtable discussions and entertainment are planned. Please call
832-242-6915 for more information.
This symposium will largely seek to gather more information and tell the stories of real slaves on the Underground Railroad out of Texas. [From: Melissa Thibodeaux
[email protected]]
ALBANY (NY) TOURS, SUMMER 2005
[From Paul Stewart [email protected]]
These are the dates for our summer and fall season walking tours for 2005 of Underground Railroad locations in downtown Albany, New York. Each tour will start from the Albany Visitor Center at Quakenbush Square. They last about one-and-a-half hours. The ground covered is about a mile.
We ask $7 per adult over age 16. People younger than that can come for free. The funds go to support the work of the Underground Railroad History Project of the Capital Region, Inc., a non-profit 501(c)(3) organization. This work involves providing talks on the local figures in the Underground Railroad story in the region to more than a thousand young people and hundreds of adults each year, producing a newsletter three times a year on local UGRR topics, restoration of the Stephen and Harriet Myers Residence on Livingston Avenue in Albany, occasional special speakers, continuing research on local UGRR history and the annual UGRR
conference that has taken on a state-wide focus. Tours begin at 2:00 PM:
Sunday, May 29th
Sunday, June 26th
Sunday, July 24th
Sunday, August 21st
Sunday, September 18th
Sunday, October 9th
Please plan to attend or share this information with friends. This is a great opportunity to learn some of the history of the area, its relation to slavery, and its relation to the Underground Railroad story. Please note that our focus has been and continues to be on the African American Abolitionists and the freedom seekers that have come through our community. There are more than 70 freedom seekers (fugitives from slavery as they are often called) whose stories we try
to tell. --Paul Stewart
BOOK ON AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY OF HINSONVILLE, CHESTER COUNTY, PENNSYLVANIA
Susquehanna University Press has just published a book about Hinsonville, the nineteenth century African-American community surrounding the piece of land purchased for Ashmun Institute, the predecessor of Lincoln University, near Oxford, Pennsylvania.
Initial research for the book was conducted in the 1970s by
Lincoln University history professor Paul Russo and his undergraduate students.
Dr. Russo's untimely death from cancer interrupted the work in the late '70s,
but his widow Marianne (herself a former LU faculty member) picked up the
project in 2000 and ushered it to a successful conclusion. The result is the
book, Hinsonville, A Community at the Crossroads: The Story of a Nineteenth-Century African-American Village, and you can read about it at the following website:
http://www.susqu.edu/su_press/defaultInformation/Hinsonville.htm
UNDERGROUND RAILROAD CONFERENCE IN TROY, NEW YORK, FEBRUARY 24-26, 2006
On February 24, 25, and 26, 2006 The Underground Railroad History Project of the Capital Region, Inc. will hold its 5th annual Underground Railroad Conference. This will be held in Troy, New York, with the conference location to be announced. Mark your calendar as this will be a special program to mark the fifth year of this popular and developing conference!
[From: Paul Stewart ]
Christopher Densmore
Friends Historical Library of Swarthmore College
May 05, 2005
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