Black History Month

We are a little late in doing this post, however we will have a couple more soon. One of our efforts, now, is to get a scrolling timeline view established on our site that is related to Thomas Gardner, the Cape Ann crew, and the U.S. over the past 400 years. The Gardner Annals Volume I, Issue 1 published our first attempt at collecting this type of information. Those annals entries had been first published in several Gardner's Beacons (see Volume II, Issue 6 for the first of these) and were interleaved for the TGA collection to report several events by year. In the TGA issue, we organized the entries into 'Before 1592', 'Between 1592 and 1674', and 'After 1674' which puts the focus on the life of Thomas Gardner.

The idea is to take these entries as an index (even Table of Contents), with additional information, and make it a learning device. Let me tell you about a case in point. Since the beginning, we have been working as if New England did not have any hand in the slavery issue. Beyond, we must add, providing the impetus for the abolitionist's efforts. We have written a lot about the long arm of New England, as in, Kansas is a State started by New Englanders for the express purpose of being an example of non-slavery life. John Brown spent a bit of time there, under his own and an assumed name. However, on reading Nutfield Genealogy, we see that Samuel and Moses Maverick were slave traders. Professor Gates, in his Finding your roots, recently had a descendant of the Mavericks who is a TV personality.

Yesterday, USA Today, in a topical article, had a side bar that was a timeline related to the African American experience in the Americas. The involuntary migration started early. I did not find this timeline on-line but found one that is as good: Key Moments in Black History. The first entry is 1619 and deals with Virginia. The USA Today timeline started post Columbus. So, we will be looking for other timelines on this subject.

Heather, of Nutfield, then mentions the 1779 Slave Petition. On further search, other sites came to fore, such as: Slavery in New Hampshire. Not picking on the State of Rev. Bachiler; we're just getting started. There have been several books on the subject of slavery in New England. I referred to one instance that dealt with Harvard.

Another book dealt with events in New Hampshire, including the petition for freedom by slaves of the well-known families, such as the Whipples. The Whipple slave was with his master when he signed the Declaration of Independence. The chapter concludes with a story of General Washington trying to get back a slave of his who had fled to New Hampshire.

So, given our themes of Culture, History and Technology, we will look at all aspects of life over these past hundreds of years, especially with an eye toward things that are still pertinent but overlooked (or, are unknown).

Remarks: Modified: 02/19/2019

02/19/2019 --