PRESS RELEASE
Contacts: Liz Clayton
The Drinking Gourd Project
107 Brister’s Hill Rd, Concord, MA 01742
978.318.3910
Or Louise Axon
978.371.5652

The Drinking Gourd Project Sponsors Traces of the Trade Event

Concord, MA – The Drinking Gourd Project will present a screening and discussion of Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North. This award-winning film documents – the DeWolfe family’s exploration of their slave-trading legacy. Their journey retraces the Triangle Trade – from Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba. A discussion with DeWolfe family members will follow the film. This free event will be held on March 5th from 7:00 – 9:00 pm at the Concord Art Association, 37 Lexington Rd,. Concord, MA.

Historian Jayne Gordon will link the film to local history – discussing the life stories and struggle for freedom of early African residents of Concord, as well as the town’s leadership in the Abolitionist movement. Additionally, Concord teachers will share how they are bringing this history to life with their students.

The Drinking Gourd Project is dedicated to shedding light on Concord’s “untold revolutions.” The Town’s role in the American Revolution and in the literary and philosophical ‘revolution’ of Transcendentalism has long been celebrated. Less well known are the struggles and contributions of Concord’s African residents and the leadership that women of Concord provided to yet another revolution – the abolition of slavery on the United States. For decades, the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society sponsored speakers, raised funds, wrote and distributed publications, signed petitions, sheltered fugitive slaves, and assisted African Americans in the community. Long before Emerson and Thoreau spoke out against slavery, their wives, daughters, and female friends were crusading abolitionists. Mary Merrick Brooks and others worked with leading figures in the movement, including William Garrison, Wendell Phillips, John Brown and Harriet Tubman – all of whom spoke and fund-raised on Concord.

The Drinking Gourd Project currently is leading an effort to save the Caesar Robbins house, built in 1780 by a freed man and Revolutionary War patriot. The only remaining house in Concord built by an 18th century African resident, the cottage was home to six generations of Caesar Robbins family. They lived there from 1780 to 1881, a period that witnessed the African American struggle for freedom against the backdrop of our nation’s fight for independence and civil rights. The last African inhabitant of the house was Peter Hutchison, who is registered as Concord’s first African voter, and is also the subject of Emerson’s poem, “Peter’s Field.”

With assistance from the Town and private donors, the group plans to move the house close to its original location near The North Bridge and restore it as an education center focused on Concord’s African and Abolitionist history. In addition to private donations to fund moving, preserving and restoring the house, the group is asking Concord voters to support warrant articles 35 and 36 at Town Meeting, Warrant article 35 provides CPC funding for restoring the house; Warrant article 36 provides a long-term lease for a parcel of land nest The North Bridge as the new location of the Caesar Robbins house.

For further information, contact The Drinking Gourd Project at drinkinggourd.cchumanrights.org.

# # #

You’re invited to join
Concord’s Untold Revolution
with a screening & discussion of

This award-winning film documents one family’s journey to retrace their legacy of Northern slave-trading — from their old hometown in Rhode Island to slave forts in Ghana to sugar plantation ruins in Cuba, and their powerful & inspiring message of restorative justice. A discussion led by family members follows.

• When: Friday, March 5th, 7:00 pm

• Where: At the Concord Art Association/Underground Railroad station

• What: is Concord’s Untold Revolution?!

• the amazing stories of our early African residents — their struggle for freedom, their contributions and their triumphs
• together with heroic stories of the well & lesser known abolitionists in Concord: Thoreau, Emerson, Alcott, Mary Brooks, Ann Bigelow, so many more…
• the effort to save the Caesar Robbins house, built in 1780 by one of Concord’s earliest freed slaves and Revolutionary War Patriot, now for sale
• and the mission to move his house near its original site by the Old Manse and capture these untold stories in a Robbins House Educational Center for our students, scouts, visitors and all to hear!

Support is urgently needed to help secure the Caesar Robbins house before April’s town meeting, so that Community Preservation Act funds can be passed for its preservation in Article #35 & the town is allowed to lease land next to the North Bridge parking lot for its future site, Article #36. Come March 5th to learn more.

Your hosts,
The Drinking Gourd Project

Concord’s role in the American Revolution and in the literary and philosophical ‘revolution’ of Transcendentalism has long been celebrated. Less well known, is the leadership that women of Concord provided to yet another revolution – the abolition of slavery in the United States.

For decades, the Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society sponsored speakers, raised funds, wrote and distributed publications, signed petitions, sheltered fugitive slaves, and assisted African Americans in the community. Long before Emerson and Thoreau spoke out against slavery, their wives, daughters, and female friends were crusading abolitionists. Mary Merrick Brooks and others worked with leading abolitionists, including William Garrison, Wendell Phillips, John Brown, and Harriet Tubman – all of whom spoke and fund-raised in Concord. Local children also supported the cause – 195 Concord school children signed a petition requesting that Lincoln “free all slave children.” Today, copies of this petition, together with Lincoln’s response, hang in the 3 Concord public elementary schools – a tribute to the pioneering work of Concord’s women abolitionists.

PRESS RELEASE
Contact: Liz Clayton
The Drinking Gourd Project
107 Brister’s Hill Rd., Concord MA 01742
978.318.3910

Community Preservation Committee Supports Caesar Robbins House

The Drinking Gourd Project (DGP) received a strong show of support from the Community Preservation Committee (CPC), this past week. In a letter from the CPC to the Project members, the CPC recommended funding for the DGP’s proposal for acquisition, sustainability, preservation and restoration of the Caesar Robbins / Peter Hutchinson house.

This show of support goes a long way in assisting the DGP to envisioning a civil liberties museum that could exist near the North Bridge parking lot, restoring the Robbins house as the Caesar Robbins Educational Center. “The Caesar Robbins house project is a high priority for us,” said CPC Vice Chair Lynn Huggins. The final decision on funding the Caesar Robbins Center will be determined at the April 2010 Town Meeting.

The Caesar Robbins / Peter Hutchinson house at 324 Bedford St. is the only remaining house in Concord built by an 18th Century African Concord resident, and former slave, Caesar Robbins. Mr. Robbins was a Revolutionary War patriot; he and six generations of his descendants lived in the home for nearly 100 years. They lived in the house from 1780 to 1881, a period that witnessed the African American struggle for freedom against the backdrop of our nation’s fight for independence and civil rights. The last African inhabitant of the house was Peter Hutchinson, who is registered as Concord’s first African voter, and is also the subject of R.W. Emerson’s poem “Peter’s Field”. Much of what is known about these extraordinary citizens was documented by H.D. Thoreau.

The Drinking Gourd Project would like to move this house closer to its original site near the Great Meadows across from the Old Manse, closer to Caesar Woods and Peter’s Path (eponymous locations designated by earlier Concord Town Planners). The house would become an educational center to highlight Concord’s African American, abolitionist and civil liberties history in conjunction with the Minuteman National Park staff. The history of the educational center would cover the antebellum period through Concord’s agrarian movement, the Civil War, the Emancipation Proclamation, and Bill of Rights.

The DGP plans first to purchase the property and house. The CPC support would take the DGP a long way toward this initial goal. “Unlike other CPC funding projects, the Caesar Robbins house could disappear if purchased by someone else. The CPC’s warrant article for the Caesar Robbins House will request a bond application for funding, so that funds aren’t tied up should any of the CPC’s contingencies not be met,” explained Lynn. The CPC detailed a list of conditions in their letter, to be addressed by the DGP before town meeting. Happily, these conditions are already in process. They include:

• Obtaining a professional current, fair market appraisal of the property with and without the house on it. (Scheduled for mid-January, 2010)
• Getting an engineering survey of the property, which has wetlands buffer issues. Also obtaining an engineering survey of the building to make sure it can be relocated. (Scheduled for mid-January, 2010.)
• Securing an agreement with the land owner of the future site. (There are two possible sites near the North Bridge Parking lot, and the DGP is currently exploring which site would be most viable.)
• Applying for non profit corporation status, so that the DGP can use the CPA funds to purchase, move, and restore the house as an educational center. (Paperwork has been signed and is ready to submit pending our lawyer’s approval.)
• Providing a plan for the future use and configuration of the building. (The DGP is currently working with a number of professionals as they put together their plan.)

Meanwhile, the Drinking Gourd Project fundraising and awareness campaign has been in full swing.

The Barber family’s challenge for matching $2-to-$1 donations (for every $2 raised, the Barbers will contribute $1, up to $10,000) has achieved over half of its goal so far: the DGP has raised $12,000 in donations, and needs to raise an additional $8,000 to gain the full benefit of the Barber’s $10,000 contribution. Your donations are a show of confidence to the CPC for this project, and worth 1 1/2 of their face value! (Please see drinkinggourd.cchumanrights.org to help save this untold piece of Concord’s history.) A remarkably generous individual donor has contributed $30,000, bringing total fundraising to date to $48,000.

During the Concord Holiday Shopping evening and the Tree Lighting event, the Drinking Gourd Project sold gift bags of Concord Antislavery Cake and Fair Trade Coffee, raising $600 dollars. The Antislavery cake is made from the authentic recipe of Mary Merrick Brooks, Concord’s leading Abolitionist of the 1800s, who served her tea cake at all Concord Antislavery Society meetings and sold it at Antislavery Fairs to raise money for William Lloyd Garrison’s newspaper, The Liberator. Minuteman Technical High School students baked 30 loaves of Mary Brook’s tea cakes according to the original recipe, learning local history with their baking lesson.

On March 5th, the Drinking Gourd Project is sponsoring a screening of the film Traces of the Trade: A Story from the Deep North, documenting the Rhode Island DeWolf family’s legacy of slave trading, and dispelling the myth that slavery and slave trading was a southern institution. This film aired nationally on PBS in 2008; details are available at tracesofthetrade.org. Family members Dain and Constance Perry will hold a discussion after the film, a service they’ll provide free as their effort to help support this worthy project. Proceeds from the screening and accompanying sales of Concord Antislavery Cake will go toward the Barber’s donation offer to preserve the Caesar Robbins house.

The more research DGP members do on the Caesar Robbins house for the CPC funding process, the more convinced they become that the Robbins House Educational Center will further humanize the history already drawing hundreds of thousands of tourists from around the world to this exceptional town each year.

# # #

A Battle Road Scenic Byway Community Forum
~ Highlighting Byway Resources in Concord ~
Monday, December 14, 2009
7:00 p.m. – 9:00 p.m.
141 Keyes Road
First Floor Conference Room
Concord, Massachusetts 01742
Join us on December 14 in Concord to discuss the many resources, intriguing stories and themes that the Battle Road Scenic Byway has to offer!
Review and provide input on proposed byway boundaries, learn about the corridor management planning process currently underway and help shape strategies for conserving this important community asset.
For more information on the project, see www.battleroadscenicbyway.org or contact Christine Wallace at cwallace@mapc.org or 617-451-2770 ext. 2060.

September 15, 2009
Contact: Jim Igoe or Erin Kelly, 617-723-3383

Historic house in Concord, home to several generations of early African-American families faces extremely unstable future, and impending demolition

The Caesar Robbins House in Concord has been named one of Massachusetts’ “Most Endangered Historic Resources”. Since 1993, this list is compiled annually by Preservation Massachusetts, the state’s historic preservation advocacy organization.

The house serves as physical evidence of Concord’s Black Heritage, built by one of Concord’s freed slaves, Caesar Robbins in about 1780. Robbins was freed along with several others as a result of a series of 1780’s court decisions declaring slavery unconstitutional in Massachusetts. Architecturally, the house is a significant example of a house-type rare in Concord today-the l-story five bay, one room deep cottage of the 18th century. Historically, the house served as the meeting place for at least one Concord Female Anti-Slavery Society.
More »

Members included:

Mrs. D. Gerrish, President

Miss Helen Louisa Thoreau, Vice President & Founding Member
Thoreau’s sister
The Thoreau home was a haven for fugitive slaves.
(1812–1849)

Mrs. Tewksbury, Treasurer

Mrs. Mary Brooks, Secretary & Founding Member
“Perfectly fearless” Mary Merrick Brooks, wife of Concord lawyer Nathan Brooks, was the cornerstone of the Concord anti-slavery efforts and she corresponded quite frequently with Wendell Phillips, understanding that his visits played an important role in raising anti-slavery awareness in Concord. The Brooks home was situated at the intersection of Main Street and Sudbury Road, where the Concord Free Public Library is now located. It was moved to 45 Hubbard Street in 1872, prior to the Library’s construction.

Susan Barrett, Founding Member
In October of 1837, not long after a visit from Sarah and Angelina Grimké, the Concord Female Antislavery Society was formed. Its founding members included Mary Brooks, Prudence Ward, Susan Garrison, Cynthia, Sophia and Helen Thoreau, Mary Wilder, Susan Barrett, Maria Prescott, and Lidian Emerson.
More »

Brooks Cake Recipe

To raise funds for the antislavery cause, Mary Brooks baked and sold
her signature tea cake, widely known as Brooks Cake. It was served at
all Concord anti-slavery meetings. This tea cake tastes great with jam.

Ingredients

One pound flour (4 cups)
One pound sugar (2 cups)
Half pound butter (2 sticks)
Four eggs
One cup milk
One teaspoonful baking soda
Half-teaspoonful cream of tartar
Half-pound currants (8 ounces), add in half of it
Makes two loaves
(Directions not given in original recipe.)
This makes two loaves; and, if such faithful hands and careful eyes as
hers attend to its making, it will be fit for the banquet of the gods. The
devoted woman lived to see the cause for which she so earnestly
labored as successful as was always her recipe for “Brooks Cake.”

— from the writings of William S. Robinson, 1877

Notes:

Mary Merrick Brooks was the daughter of a slave owner, the wife of a conservative senator, and the leading, most persistent abolitionist in town! The Brooks house was moved from its original site where the main Concord library now stands, to 45 Hubbard St. in 1872.

Join Minuteman National Park Park staff and volunteers for programs in the Untold Stories series. All programs are free and open to the public.

“Our Friend the Fugitive”
Sunday, September 6th, 2:00 P.M.
Sunday, October 25th, 2:00 P.M.
Minute Man Visitor Center, Lexington

The Wayside sheltered slave owners, the enslaved African of the Whitney family, and fugitive slaves. Join Park Volunteer Jane Sciacca and explore the actions of Casey, the Alcotts and the extended Hawthorne family as they faced the realities of slavery. Free.

Friends of Minute Man National Park
174 Liberty Street, Concord, Mass. 01742 ~ 978.318.7822 ~ info@friendsofminuteman.org

A descendant of former enslaved persons, Peter Hutchinson and his wife Nancy Dager of Danvers raised fived daughters (see #26). It is believed that Peter Hutchinson was the first African resident to vote in Concord in 1881 and is buried in Sleepy Hollow Cemetary.

Jack Garrison was a self-emancipated person from New Jersey. He married Caesar Robbins’ daughter Susan and lived with Susan and their eight children in a second room added onto the Robbins’ house. A photograph of Jack Garrison hangs prominently in the Concord Museum.

Caesar Robbins was enslaved in Concord until the Revolution, after which he lived on the edge of the Great Field with his wife Catherine, by approval of nearby landowner Humphrey Barrett. Two of their children, Peter Robbins and Susan Robbins Garrison, raised large families here. Caesar Robins’ first house passed out of African Ownership in the end of the 19th century. Efforts are under way to preserve this home presently located at 334 Bedford Street.

334 Bedford Street

Thomas Dugan was a self-emancipated slave from Virginia. He was the third former enslaved person to own land in Concord. He and his first wife Catherine had five children. When Catherine died, Thomas married Jennie Parker of Acton, who may have been born in Africa, and after whom Nut Meadow Brook was renamed Jennie Dugan’s Brook, due to her and her husband’s contributions to the community. Thomas and Jennie Dugan had three children. One of them, Elisha Dugan, lost his father’s land and subsequently lived in the woods. He was memorialized by Thoreau in his poem The Old Marlborough Road. Thomas Dugan introduced the rye cradle to Concord and taught local farmers to graft apple trees.

Formerly an enslaved woman, Zilpah White lived in a one-room house on the common land that bordered Walden Road. She made a living spinning flax into linen fibers. In Walden, Thoreau notes that, like other former enslaved persons, she too was harassed. He describes her living conditions as “somewhat inhumane.” And yet her ability to provide for herself at a time when few if any other Concord women lived alone was a great accomplishment.

When local squire Duncan Ingraham moved to Medford in 1795, his man Cato asked if he could marry a local (currently or formerly) enslaved person named Phyllis and bring her along. Duncan replied that Cato could marry but only if he stayed behind in Concord, severed his ties with his master, and sought no further financial assistance from him. Cato chose Phyllis over a secure financial future and Duncan thus abandoned him to his fredom, providing him with only a small house and permission to live in it on an acre of sandy land in Walden Woods. In Walden, Thoreau bemoans Cato’s early death. He and his family died of diseases associated with malnutrition. Thoreau was inspired to live in Walden Woods due to these courageous individuals.

After 25 years of enslavement, Brister Freeman became the second former enslaved person to own land in Concord. Brister’s Hill is named after the area where he and another former enslaved person purchased an acre of “old field.” Brister and his wife Fenda, who told fortunes, had three children. Brister worked as a day labororer and endured frequent harassment from locals and local officials. Impressed by what brister had been able to accomplish in such a hostile environment, Thoreau compares him in Walden to Scipio Africanus, the great Roman general.

Colonel James Barrett was like many other wealthy and titled Concord men in the 1700s in that he owned humans, including a young man named Philip who is listed in a 1775 militia roll call. For a school assignment, one of James’ sons drew up a mock bill of sale in which he imagined selling Philip to a Cambridge resident.

Ralph Waldo Emerson was an abolitionist who also assisted John Brown, leader of the Harper’s Ferry Raid in 1859.

28 Cambridge Turnpike

A few yards down from the Wayside, Casey’s plaque is a reminder of one of Concord’s courageous self-emancipated slaves. Casey lived in a small house on what had been Samuel Whitney’s property. Casey spoke often of being stolen from his wife and children in Africa and insisted that he visited them every night. The plaque states: “in 1775 Casey was Samuel Whitney’s enslaved person. When the Revolutionary War came, he ran away to war, fighting for the colonies, and returned to Concord a free man.

A slave-owner’s daughter, Mary Merrick Brooks was undoubtedly Concord’s leading abolitionist. Moved from the Concord Free Public Library site to 45 Hubbard Street in 1872, the Brooks house was originally the Black Horse Tavern.

45 Hubbard Street

William Whiting’s home was at the center of a neighborhood of antislavery activity. This area included houses owned by Samuel Hoar and his son Ebenezer, as well as various Thoreau homes.

169 Main Street

Dr. Josiah Bartlett delivered babies for six decades in the mid 19th century and was an active aboliionist.

35 Lowell Road

House and schoolroom (which he ran with Mary Mann, also an abolitionist) — Franklin Sanborn (one of the “Secret Six”) was an outspoken leader of the abolitionist movement and a frind and supporter of John Brown of the Harpers’s Ferry Raid. After John Brown was hanged, his daughters Annie and Sarah moved to Concord in 1860 and lived with the Alcotts, among others, while attending Sanborn’s School.

Abiel Heywood Wheeler transported escaping slaves to train connections.

One of Concord’s leading politicians and chair of the Free Soil Party (opposed to expansion of slavery into western territories), Samuel Hoar was a moderate senator sent to South Carolina to protest the arrest of Massachusetts African American seamen who were jailed when they disembarked their ships in South Carolina ports. He was run out of town in South Carolina, which aroused greater abolitionist support in Concord, and helped persuade Ralph Waldo Emerson to speak out against slavery.

John Cuming was a country doctor, Lt. Col. in the French and Indian War, and presided over 70 town meetings before and during the Revolution. He could not have done this without help to run his farm, which he found in his slaves Jem and Brister (who proclaimed his freedom after serving in the Revolutionary War alongside John Cuming). Brister’s Hill and Spring were named after him (See Brister and Fenda Freeman under Walden Pond)).

Col. Whiting was vice president of the state Anti-Slavery Society, and sheltered runaway enslaved people as an active participant in the Underground Railroad. Abolitionists William Lloyd Garrison (who published the antislavery newspaper The Liberator), Wendell Phillips, and John Brown were all guests in this house.

An important haven on the Underground Railroad: one enslaved man the Bigelows assisted was Shadrick Minkins, an escaped slave working in Boston who was captured for return to Virginia after the 1850 Fugitive Slave Act. Vigilance Committee member Lewis Hayden lead the crowd that rescued Minkins from his hearing in Boston, and brought him to the Bigelows at 3 am on Feb. 16, 1851, on his way to Canada, where Minkins became a restaurant owner and barber.

Mary Rice was a station master on the Underground Railroad who helped erect and regularly put flowers on John Jack’s grave. Along with Mary Peabody Mann, Mary Rice gathered hundreds of school children’s signatures on a petition to President Lincoln, asking him to end slavery. Copies of this petition and Lincoln’s response will hang in Concord’s 3 elementary schools in Fall 2009.

The Concord School of Philosophy, on the grounds of Louisa May Alcott’s Orchard House, used The Drinking Gourd Project Map as a resource during its Summer Conversational Series and Teacher Institute, July 12-17, 2009.
——————————————————————————————————
“Striking a Blow for Freedom: The Alcotts and Abolition”
——————————————————————————————————
This year’s series focused on the Alcott family’s dedication to the 19th century reform and antislavery movement and Concord’s ties to the John Brown raid on Harper’s Ferry in 1859.

Event Website

The Drinking Gourd Project got its name from this song which urged slaves to “follow the drinking gourd,” or Big Dipper, north to freedom.

When the Sun comes back
and the first quail calls
Follow the Drinking Gourd
For the old man is a-waiting for to carry
you to freedom
If you follow the Drinking Gourd.

Follow the Drinking Gourd, follow the
Drinking gourd.
For the old man is a-waiting for to carry
you to freedom
If you follow the Drinking Gourd.