The Drinking Gourd Project

Who We Are

Founders
Polly Attwood, Maria Madison, and Susan Ryan

Executive Board
President: Maria Madison
Vice President: Polly Attwood(Concord-Carlisle Human Rights Council and METCO liason), Linda Ziemba (Museum Installations Specialist), Nancy Ehrlich (Materials Anthropologist)
Treasurer: Liz Clayton
Clerk: Lorell Gifford Ambrose (Webmaster)
Board Member: Donna Thomas (Graphic/Map Designer)
Board Member: Ronni Olitsky (Event Planner, Concord-Carlisle Human Rights Council President)
Board Member: Kelly Goode (Documentary Manager)
Board Member: Anne Forbes (Architectural Historian)
Board Member: Larry Sorli (Preservation Architect)

Additional DGPers
Nancy Nelson: Superintendent, Minute Man National Historic Parks
Leslie Obleschuk: NPS Interpretation & Education
Judith Broggi: MMNPS Interpreter & Re-enactor
Sue Merlino: Concord Bike Tours
John and Nancy Butman: Documentation & Historical Support

Advisory Board
Current DGP ADVISORY BOARD members have been extremely generous with their time and support in championing the Robbins House Interpretive Center:

    • Professor Lois Brown, editor of “Memoir of James Jackson,” Elizabeth Small Professor of English, Mount Holyoke College
    • Dinah Buechner, (President of Lookout Foundation)
    • Jayne Gordon, Director of Education & Public Programs, MA Historical Society
    • Professor Robert Gross, author of “The Minutemen and their World,” Draper Professor of Early American History, University of Connecticut
    • Carol Gupta, author of “Concord’s Great Meadows: A Human History”
    • Professor Elise Lemire, author of “Black Walden: Slavery and Its Aftermath in Concord, Massachusetts,” Doris and Carl Kempner Distinguished Professor of Literature, Purchase College, SUNY
    • Professor Joanne Pope Melish, author of “Disowning Slavery: Gradual Emancipation and ‘Race’ in New England, 1780-1860,” Associate Professor of History, University of Kentucky
    • Professor Sandra Petrulionis, author of “To Set this World Right: The Antislavery Movement in Thoreau’s Concord”
    • Jan Turnquist, Director, The Orchard House
    • Charles Willie, Charles William Eliot Professor Emeritus, Harvard University
    • Professor Jack Larkin, Affiliate Professor of History at Clark University, Chief Historian and Museum Scholar Emeritus at Old Sturbridge Village
    • Kate Atkinson Kaplan, Nonprofit Organization Management
    • John Boynton

    Additional Consultants
    Legal: [Confidential]
    Preservation Architect: Larry Sorli
    Public Historian: Prof. Robert Gross
    Literary Historian: Profs. Lois Brown & Elise Lemire?
    Circuit Rider: Steve Moga
    Landscape Architect: Dave Fisher
    Arborist: John Bakewell
    Archeologist: Martin Dudek

    Partners
    • The DGP works closely with the Town of Concord and in partnership with the Minuteman National Park Service, as the site by the North Bridge where the Robbins House has recently been relocated is owned by the Town of Concord and leased by the NPS. Decisions affecting the Robbins House are made in conjunction with the Minuteman National Park Service.
    • The DGP also partners with the Old Manse, under the guidance of The Trustees of the Reservation, to provide programming and services.
    • The DGP is a member of the Concord Historical Collaborative.

    “Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed citizens can change the world. Indeed, it is the only thing that ever has.” — Margaret Mead, (1901 – 1978)