David Ruggles Center Newsletter, January 2025
10
Jan, 2025
24
Jan, 2023
14
Dec, 2022
Fall Field Trips with Elementary and High School Classes
The Ruggles Center, in collaboration with Grow Food Northampton, recently hosted approximately 160 fifth graders from Northampton’s four elementary schools. We also led tours of high school students from Springfield’s SciTech and Central High Schools, as well as Northampton High School. Over a series of crisp fall mornings, the 5th graders walked between the Sojourner Truth statue, by her house on Park St., through the historic Park St. Cemetery, and down Meadow St., stopping at the Hill-Ross Homestead, finishing at the Lydia Maria Child garden at Grow Food. The high school visitors were also able to spend time at the DRC museum.
Fifth grade teachers had received a packet of readings, designed for elementary students, based on the DRC website. Tom Golscheider also made some introductory visits to the high schools, and was able to use his interactive curriculum with the Northampton students. Many of the students were familiar with David Ruggles and Sojourner Truth, as well as our local Underground Railroad history. In a cemetery scavenger hunt, they learned about African American community members that were buried there, such as Basil Dorsey, Sarah Askin, Henry Anthony, Laura Knowles Washington and George Hoderstia. In the garden, they pulled out sugar beets and worked with flax stalks, pulling out the strong silky threads, and learned about David and Lydia Maria Child and the free produce movement.
Our team – Tom Goldscheider, Kim Gerould, Kevin McQuillan and Irene Rosenthal, of the Ruggles Center, and Ellena Baum of Grow Food – agreed that this collaboration was hopefully only the beginning of working together to share our history with more students and their teachers.
10
Feb, 2021
David Ruggles Center Newsletter, January 21
2020 challenged all of us in unexpected ways. Small museums like the David Ruggles Center were no exception. We had to close our doors to the public in the spring, but continued to work behind the scenes.
Northampton’s Community Preservation Committee approved funding to nominate the Florence Abolition and Reform National Historic District to the National Register of Historic Places. Kathryn Grover and Neil Larson, who prepared the successful NR applications for the Ross Homestead and the Dorsey/Jones House, made extensive progress with this work. The formerly enslaved citizen Basil Dorsey built 191 Nonotuck Street in 1849. With nine other Northampton freedom seekers, he organized a rally at town hall to resist the infamous Fugitive Slave Law of 1850.
The DRC worked with the City to restore five broken African American gravestones and the double marker of Charles and Gertrude Burleigh at the Park Street Cemetery. We raised $3250 in our GoFundMe campaign which was used to hire Ta Mara Conde of Historic Gravestone Services. Ta Mara donated the restoration of the gravestone of George Hoderstia who had been “Born a Slave in Maryland,” as his marker attests.
The DRC regularly hosts school groups for field trips. Last year we used a grant from Mass Humanities to create an interactive curriculum for middle and high school students. With DRC staff guidance students interpret primary sources for themselves and lead their own walking tour of the village based on what they have learned. Visit our website to explore the Curriculum, a valuable resource for anyone interested in this history. Check out our write-up in the Daily Hampshire Gazette.
We had to suspend group visits, special events, and most walking tours for all of 2020. As a result, critical sources of revenue were lost. Supporters responded, donating over $12,000 to our Fall fundraising campaign. We are especially grateful to them during this difficult time. The money will be used to cover the museum’s modest operating expenses until we can welcome visitors again. If you too wish to donate, please visit our website, or send a check to Box 60405, Florence, MA 01062.
We look forward to re-opening the Ruggles Center as soon as we safely can. We want to remain part of the urgent conversation about history and racism in America. For now, we are planning a number of Zoom events and are exploring a new round of grants. We recently accepted a major donation of archival materials that will be incorporated into our existing collection. Please check our website in the coming months for events and opening date. We value your continued support and ask that you share posts from our Facebook Page.
10
Aug, 2020
Past Informs the Present: DRC designs curriculum on landmark anti-slavery community
This article by Steve Pfarrer was published in the Daily Hampshire Gazette on 7/31/2020.
In the 1840s, a unique community grew up in a rural, mostly unsettled part of Northampton: a mix of white and African American families and residents whose numbers included not just committed abolitionists but people dedicated to genuine equality for all races and sexes.
What later became known as Florence was home then to the Northampton Association of Education and Industry (NAEI), a communal organization founded on principles of profit sharing, equality and non-sectarianism. The area also became a stop on the Underground Railroad and a home both to free Blacks and formerly enslaved people.
Sojourner Truth and David Ruggles, two of the most noted African American abolitionists, called Florence home for a time as well, and a regular visitor was Frederick Douglass, destined to become the most noted Black statesman of the 19th century. And by 1850, according to the Federal Census, 60 African Americans lived in Florence (and 150 in all of Northampton).
Now that history will get a fresh look through an interactive, online curriculum that’s been developed at the David Ruggles Center for History and Education (DRC) in Florence. The all-volunteer staff at the Ruggles Center, which examines several aspects of life in Florence, Northampton and the Connecticut River Valley from that era, sees an opportunity to give students a means for linking local history to the larger story of America — and to current events.
“This is social history, and it’s also very relevant to what’s happening in the country right now,” said Tom Goldscheider, an independent historian and a member of the DRC General Committee. In a nod to the protests that have erupted nationwide this summer following the killing of African Americans by police, Goldscheider said, “We want to show students how people right in our backyard worked for change, to create a more equitable society.”