SATURDAY, JULY 18th, 2026 11:00AM
32 NEW ASHFORD ROAD, WILLIAMSTOWN, MA
The American Revolutionary era and its aftermath presented tremendous challenges to families across the Northeast. Members of diverse communities and sovereign nations contended with rapid upheavals, relocations, food and resource scarcity, and contested allegiances and visions of the future. This presentation illuminates the experiences of Native American, African American, and Euro-colonial families who strategized to protect their needs and goals. Featuring the intertwined stories of Violet Freeman, Ruth Waukeet, and Mary Stiles, it explores how they envisioned and pursued wellbeing, material security, stability in cherished places, and other priorities. For each, concepts like “freedom” and “independence” held distinct meanings. These meanings profoundly shaped their pathways forward, across great distances and disparate forms of power and opportunity. This presentation also considers methods for approaching Revolutionary stories that are only partially present in conventional written archives, but that invite close reckoning with other sources and forms of memory.
