Historic Northampton Events
November 2022
Help Us Move the Barn! A Free Community Event
Saturday, November 5, 2022 | 2 - 4 pm

On the Grounds of Historic Northampton
We need your muscle and cheers to move the historic Shepherd Barn so that we can install a new foundation beneath it to preserve the structure long-term. By next summer, the restored barn will be an exhibit and performance space placed back onto its original footprint.

Timber framer Alicia Spence will direct volunteers to slowly and carefully slide the barn 35 feet off its footprint. With four ropes and ten people per rope, we will together pull the barn along a specially made track.

Register ahead to volunteer to pull the ropes or sign up at the event.

All are welcome to watch and cheer on the volunteers. (No registration needed for watching and cheering.)

Free cider and cider donuts.
Celebratory music by the Expandable Brass Band.
Sponsored by Joe's Cafe and Greenfield Savings Bank.

Barn (Fund) Raiser
Buy a peg and write a secret message for the future.
Sliding scale donation: $50-250 per wooden peg
Two new timber frame sheds will be added to the restored
Shepherd Barn using traditional woodworking methods.
We will need 150 wooden pegs as fasteners.

Support the restoration project by purchasing a peg.
Then write a message on your peg.

No one will see your message until (or if) the barn is taken apart
and restored again in the far and distant future.
 
Pegs will be available at the barn move event on November 5th.


If you cannot attend the barn move event,
Now and Then: Lisa Thompson
and the Arts on Main Street (and Beyond)
Thursday, November 3, 2022 at 7 pm
During the past four decades, Lisa Thompson has played a key role in the arts and art spaces in Northampton—as a dancer, mentor, curator, and active agent in the creation of the City’s vibrant arts scene. 
 
During this special zoom conversation marking Thompson's retirement as A.P.E.’s Associate Director, she will share stories from the past as well as her thoughts on the future of Northampton’s arts and culture.
 
Followed by a Q & A session. 
 
Register for the Zoom link. Sliding scale admission: $5-25.
Proceeds benefit A.P.E.'s Creative Coaching Fund and Historic Northampton. 
Exploring Northampton
An Excursion to the Loudville Lead Mines

Wednesday, November 9, 2022 | 1-3 pm
Saturday, November 12, 2022 | 1-3 pm
Wayne Perrea will lead two walking tours to the ruins of the Loudville Lead Mines, which are located where Northampton, Easthampton, Westhampton, and Southampton meet. The mines operated intermittently in the 17th, 18th, and 19th centuries.
 
Perrea, local historian and Loudville native, has spent decades assembling a history of the site's operations. On the walk, Perrea will describe the geology, methods of extracting lead and silver, and the challenges the miners faced.
 
Lead was found in the area in the 1670s by Robert Lyman, who lived in Northampton and is the namesake for Robert's Hill Conservation Area, Robert's Meadow Brook, and Robert's Meadow Reservoir.
 
In partnership with the New England Forestry Foundation, which owns the 148-acre Hartnett-Manhan Memorial Forest.

Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life
A Zoom Presentation by Professor Lydia Moland

Wednesday, November 30, 2022 | 7 pm
Co-sponsored with the David Ruggles Center for History and Education
When the prominent abolitionist Lydia Maria Child and her husband moved to Northampton in 1838, it was with an ambitious goal: to grow sugar beets to undermine the plantation sugar trade. 
Once in Northampton, Child attempted to help emancipate an enslaved woman who had been brought North by vacationing Southerners. She also sent reports to Boston abolitionists "outing" Northampton residents who supported the slave trade.

Ultimately, the Childs' beet experiment in Florence failed. But Lydia Maria Child's time in Northampton was formative for her activism and laid the groundwork for more abolitionist work.
Lydia Moland will discuss her new biography of Child, entitled Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life (University of Chicago Press), and suggest lessons from Child's Northampton activism that are relevant today. What does it mean to change your life when the moral future of your country is at stake? When confronted by sanctioned evil and systematic injustice, how should a citizen live?

Copies of the book are available for purchase at the Historic Northampton Museum Store.

Register for the Zoom link.
Sliding scale admission: $5-25.

All proceeds will be split between Historic Northampton and the David Ruggles Center.
HISTORIC NORTHAMPTON
46 Bridge Street
Northampton, MA 01060