EVENTS
Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA
1630: from shawmut to boston
WALKING TOUR, THURSDAY, SEPT 24, 2026, 5:30-7PM
ROXANNE REDDINGTON-WILDE
Stroll through history with our original walking tour, 1630: From Shawmut to Boston! Meet the people, places and ideas of 1630s Boston - built on the Native land but created in a Puritan English image. Places are limited, so register now! Price: $10/person.
We start in 1630 on the slopes of the Shawmut peninsula. The English Puritan founders of the Massachusetts Bay Colony looked to create an ideal society as seen through their own – and no one else’s – eyes. Boston, as they renamed the place, became its center. Meet the people, places and ideas that turned Shawmut into Boston.
“LAND AS IDOL”: JUSTIFYING LAND EXPROPRIATION
DANIEL RICHTER WITH BRAD LOPES
ONLINE, WEDNESDAY, SEPTEMBER 30, 2026, 7:00-8:30pm ET
Age of Exploration, papal bulls, terra nullius? What were the justifications that English Puritans used to explain their expropriation of Native land? Renowned historian Daniel Richter tackles the question of justification in an exploration of theory and practice of colonial land annexation. “Land! Land! Hath been the Idol of Many in New-England,” lamented Puritan clergyman Increase Mather. Join this trenchant presentation, moderated by Aquinnah Wampanoag educator Brad Lopes.
harvard’s slave legacy
FREE WALKING TOUR, THURSDAY, OCTOBER 1, 2026, 3-5PM
For more than a decade Harvard has researched its links to enslavement, culminating in a bold report that confronted its past. Now you can explore the landscape of slavery that remains of Harvard’s harsh history in this free walking tour offered by Harvard staff. There’s always more to learn, so the Partnership of Historic Bostons will be there too. We start at 10 Garden Street, Cambridge, and end at the Old Burying Ground, where Cicely, an enslaved women, is buried. We’ll see six sites that mark Harvard’s history with enslavement, but leave plenty of time for reflection and discussion.
smallpox in boston: a walking tour
OCT 4, 2026, 2-3:3PM
MICHAEL PROCHILLO
Smallpox: the very rumour of it was terrifying. Join our insightful, unique walking tour tracing the landmarks of smallpox in Boston. Up to 90% of some Native tribes n Massachusetts perished, a devastation that made the colonial seizure of land all the easier. Colonists, too, were struck by smallpox, as the gravestones in Boston burial grounds attest. And, as today, they faced the dilemma: to vax or not to vax? It was a controversy so heated that vaccine-proponent Cotton Mather’s house was bombed. Join us to find out about early medicine, mortality and this deadly disease.
stolen relations: UNCOVERING UNTOLD STORIES
PANEL DISCUSSION, OCT 7, 2026, 7-8:30PM
LINFORD FISHER, CHERYLL TONEY HOLLY, PAULA PETERS AND LORÉN SPEARS
From the first moments of European colonization, Native people in the Americas were captured and enslaved - most of them remaining unnamed and unknown. Now you can find the names and lives of thousands of them, thanks to the groundbreaking Stolen Relations project. The result of collaboration between reearchers at Brown University and a dozen regional Native nations, the Stolen Relations database tells the stories of nearly 8000 people. Find out what this remarkable database has to offer - rich documentation, suprisingly intimate details, and many names - from the core team involved in its creation.
PURITANS IN THE 21ST CENTURY: A SYMPOSIUM
AMERICAN ANCESTORS, IN PERSON AND ONLINE, SATURDAY, NOV. 7, 9AM-5PM
HOLLY BREWER, JOHN COFFEY, DAVID HALL, ABRAM VAN ENGEN, MEREDITH NEUMAN, ADRIAN WEIMER
Join luminaries of Puritan history in this remarkable day-long symposium in the gorgeous setting of American Ancestors in central Boston or online. From Christian Nationalism and American exceptionalism to enslavement and religious toleration, how valid are the myths surrounding the Puritans? Do the Puritans matter today? Held in honor of Francis J. Bremer, this symposium makes the case for the Puritans and their too-little understood role in American history. It is hosted by six leading historical organisations: American Ancestors, Colonial Society of Massachusetts, Congregational Library & Archives, First Church Boston, Massachusetts Historical Society and the Partnership of Historic Bostons. $25/person, $10 for students, free online.
THERE AND YET NOT THERE: THE LIFE OF ZIPPORAH ATKINS
ONLINE, THURSDAY, DECEMBER 3, 2026, 7-8:30PM
DOROTHY CLARK
“There, but yet not there.” That’s how independent researcher and historian Dorothy Clark describes the life of Zipporah Potter Atkins, the first Black woman in Boston known to have purchased her own home, in 1670. Her story shows how free Black people in early New England challenged the assumptions around them. But it also reveals, through the trail of property records, wills, church documents and maps, the elusive, little documented nature of early Black history. Through this original presentation - first given here! - Dorothy Clark helps us to consider who is remembered, who forgotten, and why.
“You knocked it out of the park with this lecture. Have signed up for them all.”
—attendee, Enslavement & Resistance series