Community Preservation Committee Supports Caesar Robbins House
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.
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