Upcoming
Member Events
June 24, 4:00-6:00 PM
Salem Athenaeum
August 4, 5:00-7:00 PM
Historic New England
Thank YOU for your interest in supporting the Essex National Heritage Commission through our membership program. YOUR membership matters! |
||
Connect with us online! View photos, share experiences... |
|
|
Summer 2010
Essex Heritage Member Events: Celebrating Partner Anniversaries!
Thursday, June 24, 4:00-6:00PM
The Salem Athenaeum: Celebrating 200 Years!
337 Essex Street
Salem, MA 01970 (map it)
As the Salem Athenaeum celebrates its 200th anniversary, you are invited to this special library and cultural center to learn about it as it exists today and throughout the past two centuries. Although its current home on Essex Street dates to 1907, the Athenaeum has a rich history that extends to 1760. As a result this institution has grown with the United States itself.
Director Jean Marie Procious, and honorary curator, Elaine von Bruns, will walk us through the public and private spaces filled with collections, including their current exhibition, "Delights and Curiosities. " Discover the fascinating books and artifacts housed here and learn the importance of this resource for research and study as well as a gathering place for writers, readers, and life-long learners. Light refreshments will be served.
Would you like to join us? RSVP required.
Members of Salem Athenaeum and Essex Heritage: FREE admission, RSVP HERE.
$15 for non-members. Please register online.
(a portion of the proceeds from this event will go to the Athenaeum)
Parking: Free street parking may be available on Essex Street. Metered municipal lots are located further along on Essex Street. Travel straight through the traffic light at North Street, and the lots are on either side of the next intersection.
Wednesday, August 4, 5:00-7:00 PM
Celebrating Historic New England's Centennial Year!
Cogswell's Grant
60 Spring Street
Essex, MA 01929 (map it)
Join us for an exploration of Cogswell’s Grant, including tours of the house and collections, a look at the timber-framed 18th and 19th century barns, and a glimpse into four centuries of coastal farming here in Essex.
Cogswell’s Grant has been a working farm on the banks of the Essex River since 1636, and in the 20th century was the summer home of Bertram and Nina Fletcher Little, preeminent collectors of American folk art.
One hundred years ago, William Sumner Appleton founded the Society for the Preservation of New England Antiquities, known today as Historic New England. With thirty-six historic properties, ten of which are found in Essex County, today, Historic New England is the oldest, largest, and most comprehensive regional preservation organization in the country. Light refreshments will be served.
Essex Heritage members attend FREE;
Non-members $15.
RSVP HERE
Spring 2010 Events Included:
Thursday, April 22, 2010 • 10:30 AM - 12:30 PM
The Saugus River
Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site
244 Central Street, Saugus, MA (map it)
It’s Earth Day and National Park Week and school vacation! Bring the kids for family fun at Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site.
In addition to being the 17th century site of the first successful
integrated manufacturing facility to produce both cast iron and wrought iron in North America, Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site is also home to a segment of the Saugus River that provides important habitat for a variety of aquatic life. Join the National Park Service and the Saugus River Watershed Council as they lead us on a walk through time as we follow the water’s edge and discover the importance of this property’s past, present and future. Understand the fragility of the tidally influenced Saugus River’s diverse ecosystem and meet some of its inhabitants, as we follow a small piece of the Saugus River Nature Trail. Thanks to a recent 18-month renovation project, the river turning basin has been restored to accommodate a more accurate interpretation of this historic waterfront and is now a healthier habitat for aquatic and native plant life. Rangers and special guests will share changes that have taken place here over 400 years, exploring why the restoration and counting fish are important. We may even see some critters up close. So bring the kids and dress for fun and the weather!
Explorers FREE; Please RSVP here!
For mapquest directions click here...
Saturday, May 15, 2010 • 1:00 - 3:00 PM
The Mighty Merrimack
Lawrence Heritage State Park
1 Jackson Street, Lawrence, MA (map it)
Step out this spring! Join us for a walk along Lawrence's North canal with DCR interpreter, Jim Beauchesne. Discover the power potential of the Merrimack River, historic textile mills, and the formative history of the industrial revolution that lives on through thoughtfully assembled interpretive exhibits and preserved artifacts. We begin at the restored boardinghouse, now home to the Lawrence Heritage State Park Visitor Center. Follow Jim’s lead along the esplanade of a nineteenth-century canal, past giant mills, in the footsteps of the Bread & Roses strikers, to the base of the Great Stone Dam. See this 19th-century engineering wonder from a new and not often visited perspective. A ~1 mile round trip, all within a National Historic Register district!
Parking: limited parking is available in a small lot at Lawrence Heritage State Park, there is also street parking available as well as a garage on Appleton Street about one block away.
Explorers FREE; Please RSVP here!
Non-Explorers $15 donation register online here
proceeds generated from this event will be pooled and contributed to Friends of Lawrence Heritage State Park and the Essex Heritage Explorers Program.
For mapquest directions click here...
Winter 2010 Explorers Events, included...
Thursday, December 17,2009 • 5:00 PM - 7:00 PM
Holiday Storytelling
at Peabody Leatherworkers Museum
205 Washington Street, Peabody, MA 01960
Let us take you back in time! Join us for a captivating evening…the Explorers Program, in collaboration with the Peabody Leatherworker’s Museum presents award winning storyteller Andrea Lovett. Andrea Lovett presents an original fictional story, tailored to describe the holiday season around the turn of the century that will illuminate the life of Peabody leatherworkers and their families during this poignant era of Peabody’s history! Following the story, you are invited to come along for a special introduction of the new museum and its self-guided tour with the museum’s curator Merritt Kirkpatrick with a chance to meet and chat with Andrea personally! Light refreshments will be served.
Andrea Lovett has been professionally storytelling since 1992 around the country and around the world! Andrea enjoys New England History and has developed many of her own historical stories over the years. Andrea is the founder of the forum MASSMOUTH The Power of Story which provides a space for the living art of story telling in Massachusetts, and is also a past president of the New England League of Storytellers. Andrea has a wide array of experiences and knowledge to draw upon.
In the 19th and 20th centuries, Peabody, MA was referred to as "The Leather Capital of the World."Men, women and children worked in Peabody's many leather factories and businesses earning a decent wage in return for hard work. Peabody’s contributions to our material culture and the nation’s industrial evolution are found here. The Peabody Leatherworkers Museum honors the thousands of individuals who spent mornings before school, summers during college or lifelong careers laboring in leather. Come together and experience our shared history.
Explorers Free; Non-Explorers $15 Please RSVP.
Limited parking is available behind the museum, additional street parking is also available. For mapquest directions click here...
(Image above from peabodymuseums.org)
Thursday, January 28, 2010 • 1:30 PM – 4:00 PM
Conserving Our Collections
Northeast Document Conservation Center
100 Brickstone Square, Andover, MA 01810
Explorers are invited to participate in a behind-the-scenes tour of the Northeast Document Conservation Center (NEDCC). NEDCC is a nonprofit, regional conservation center specializing in the preservation of paper-based materials for libraries, archives, museums, and other collections-holding institutions, as well as private collections. The Center offers conservation treatment, high-quality digitization, preservation microfilming, and educational programs on a variety of preservation topics.
You will tour the paper and book conservation labs where many of the nation’s most significant cultural heritage materials have been treated, including the Emancipation Proclamation, the journals carried on the Lewis and Clark expedition, Babe Ruth’s personal scrapbook, the Massachusetts founding documents, and the letters of Ernest Hemingway, as well as items from family collections such as, diaries, maps, photographs, landscape and architectural plans, and other paper materials.
Please RSVP here, space is limited! Explorers Free; Non-Explorers $15
For Mapquest directions click here...
Thursday, February 18, 2010 • 4:30 PM – 6:00 PM
Behind-the-Scenes at the Lynn Museum
Lynn Museum and Historical Society
590 Washington Street, Lynn, MA 01901
Join Lynn Museum & Historical Society’s President, Steven Babbitt, for a special behind-the-scenes tour at the Lynn Museum. Explorers are invited to view the eclectic collection and hear fascinating background stories! Our knowledgeable host will share rarely seen items and discuss the future of collection. The presentation will highlight the many challenges that museums face and illuminate the vital functions community institutions/organizations serve in sustaining a sense of place while providing a repository for culturally significant collections.
Parking Note: There is limited parking at the Museum, 8-10 spots, immediately beyond the Museum Courtyard. Additional, free two hour street parking is available. The Museum entrance is located on the Courtyard side of the building.
Explorers FREE; Non-Explorers $5 Please RSVP here!
For mapquest directions click here...
Fall 2009 Explorers Events included...
Wednesday, October 14, 2009 • 3:30 - 5:00 PM
An Essex Country Place
Stevens-Coolidge Place, 137 Andover Street
North Andover, MA 01845
Experience a behind-the-scenes tour of this treasured Essex estate and garden. Currently owned and operated by the Trustees of Reservations, this former home to John Gardner Coolidge and Helen Stevens Coolidge, is a fine example of a rural retreat. Tucked away in North Andover, this Colonial Revival home and grounds were designed to bring the outdoors in and the indoors out – to be enjoyed and lived in. Through its unique and thoughtful details and eclectic collections the property maintains the character of its family who owned the property continuously from 1729 until its final bequest to the Trustees of Reservations in 1962. This is a last-chance-for-the-season experience you won’t want to miss! Be sure to dress warmly since a portion of the tour will take place in the garden. Please RSVP
For directions via MapQuest click here...
Sunday, November 1, 2009 • 1 - 2 PM
Discovering Moneyed Methuen
The Tenney Gatehouse, 37 Pleasant Street
Methuen, MA 01844
You are invited to explore the Tenney Gatehouse. Now home to the Methuen Historical Society, the gatehouse was a c.1830 farmhouse remodeled to become the entry point to Grey Court, Charles Tenney's rolling estate. The gatehouse serves as a monument to Methuen’s fathers of industry, housing thoughtfully displayed heirlooms and images that chronicle Methuen’s ascendancy at the turn of the 19th and 20th centuries and is rumored to be haunted. Enjoy local history and light refreshments as Methuen Historical Society President, Joe Bella, connects the past to the future and shares stories of Methuen’s magnates and how they have forever changed the landscape of
Essex County. Please RSVP here!
Explorers Free; Non-Explorers $15
Sunday, November15, 2009 • 9:30 - 11:30 AM
Exploring the North Shore's Summer Retreat History
Willowdale Estate, 24 Asbury Road
Topsfield, MA 01983
Experience a distinguished home and stroll the grounds of an exceptional property with the Massachusetts Department of Conservation and Recreation (MA DCR) & staff from the Willowdale Estate. Barbara Buls, DCR Regional Interpretive Coordinator will lead us on an easy walk of the grounds of the Bradley Palmer State Park that surround Willowdale Estate while recounting past events and conjuring images of days gone by.
Following, Explorers are invited for an intimate tour of Willowdale Estate's unique Arts & Crafts Mansion and its newly improved manicured grounds - a treasured North Shore gem finding prominence once again! Experience the architectural beauty of the distinguished turn-of-the-century home and appreciate its Courtyard Butterfly Garden. Nestled in the woods of the Bradley Palmer State Park, this visit will also include a guided stroll on the Park's trails. Built in 1901 by US attorney and industrialist, Bradley Palmer, as a hunting and summer retreat, Willowdale Estate is a stunning example of American Arts & Crafts handiwork and architecture. Finding new life through the MA DCR Historic Curatorship Program, the property has been restored to its former splendor by the Forsythe-Fandetti family and is now enjoyed by guests as a unique wedding and event venue with exclusive in-house catering. Estate staff will share the story of the man and his manor including fascinating architectural details found throughout the home. Afterwards, enjoy light refreshments from the Willowdale Kitchens! Experience will begin and end at the Willowdale Estate parking lot. Please RSVP here!
Summer 2009 Explorers Events included...
Thursday, July 23, 2009 4:30 - 6:00 PM
The Wooden Boat
Lowell's Boatshop, 459 Main Street
Amesbury, MA 01913
Celebrate our maritime heritage! Explorers are invited for an evening on the Merrimack River on the beautiful and historic Amesbury riverfront. Discover the birthplace of the legendary fishing Dory. Founded by Simeon Lowell in 1793, the boat shop designed and produced some of the finest small fishing vessels used by American mariners. A "working museum" where visitors can see boats under construction, museum staff will share the story of the shop as it continues to make history in the 21st century. Might we go for a row? Followed by a wine and cheese reception.
NOTE: If you are planning to attend this event, please call to let us know. Also be sure to dress for the weather, as there may be rain in the forecast. Light rain gear, umbrella and jeans with comfy shoes are appropriate as we may have a chance to row a dory on the Merrimack River.
RSVP HERE
Directions using MapQuest!
Spring 2009 Explorers Events included...
Sunday, April 19, 2009 1:00 - 3:00 PM
Exploring the Great Marsh
Crane Estate, Argilla Road
Ipswich, MA 01938
Join us at The Trustees of Reservations' Crane Estate in Ipswich, and experience the Great Marsh firsthand! Local naturalist and Trustees volunteer John Nove will lead a discussion of the remarkable biodiversity of the Great Marsh, highlighting the vital role that this salt marsh plays in the ecosystem. John's walk will lead us around and over Castle Hill, past the expansive marsh, tidal estuaries, beaches, and dunes. The spring bird migration will be underway, so bring your binoculars. Sightings in recent years have included nesting Piping Plovers.
Directions: From Rte 128 N (towards Gloucester), take exit 20A (Rte 1A N) and follow for 8 miles to Ipswich. Turn right onto 133 E and follow for 1.5 miles. Turn left onto Northgate Rd. and follow for .5 miles. Turn right onto Argilla Rd. and follow for 2.3 miles. Turn left at the Crane Estate entrance. Gate house attendants will direct you to the parking area behind the farm building complex. Explorers FREE, Non-Explorers $15.
RSVP here...
top of page
Special Partnership Event...Sail into Summer!
Thursday, May 21, 7:00 - 8:00 PM
A Lecture & Presentation by Thad Koza at the
Custom House Maritime Museum
Newburyport, MA 01950
Essex Heritage is pleased to announce this special partnership event in collaboration with the Custom House Maritime Museum in Newburyport.
Thad Koza, renowned tall ships author and photographer, is presenting his audiovisual program of the 2009 tall ships visiting Boston this summer at the Custom House Maritime Museum on May 21 at 7:00 pm, including the Friendship that comes to Newburyport in August. This hour-long lecture will cover over 20 of the magnificent ships along with the men and women that are a part of Sail Boston 2009. Thad’s photography will give you amazing looks at the ships. His stories will make you feel like part of the crew!
Koza has been following the tall ships around the globe for over three decades. His photography and articles have appeared in many national publications, such as, Cruising World, Sea History, Classic Boat, Traditional Boats & Tall Ships, The NY Times, The Boston Globe and more. His book, Tall Ships: The Fleet for the 21st Century, is in its third printing.
Discounted tickets are available for CHMM and Explorers members at $7.00, for non-members $10.00. The lecture starts at 7:00 pm with tickets sold the day of the lecture starting at 6:30 pm. Directions to The Custom House Maritime Museum can be found here. You can also call 978-462-8681 for information.
Sunday, May 31, 2009 8:00AM - 10:30 AM
For the Birds!
Parker River Wildlife Refuge,
Hellcat Wildlife Parking Area (4)
Newburyport, MA 01950
The Parker River Wildlife Refuge is a favorite for spotting our flighted friends, especially in May. From sand dunes to salt marsh, the refuge provides a stunning backdrop and an ideal resting point for migratory birds, from sparrows to egrets. Join Explorers with special host Steve Grinley, owner of Bird Watcher's Supply & Gift as he shares his 40 years of birding expertise, leading Explorers on an outdoor adventure. We’ll meander over boardwalks and dikes, and enjoy views of ocean, fresh and saltwater marsh as we try to catch a glimpse of the incredible variety of life that the Great Marsh supports. Grab your binoculars, wear comfy shoes and dress for the weather! Explorers attend Free; Non-members $15.
RSVP here...
top of page
Winter 2009 Events included...
Thursday, January 22, 2009 5:30-7:00 PM
Art and Asia in Ipswich
Ipswich Historical Society's Heard House Museum
54 South Main Street, Ipswich, MA 01938
Discover the China trade behind the walls of the Ipswich Historical Society’s Heard House Museum. These reflect a unique time in our nation's history when the United States was pursuing relationships with nations of Asia to establish independence in politics and trade. The resulting connections and excursions to the Far East, brought home exquisite examples of art and china from around the world.
In this special evening, Explorers will also get acquainted with the work of artist and Ipswich native, Arthur Wesley Dow. An important piece of American art history, Dow’s work reflects distinctively American landscapes and places using traditional Japanese printing techniques. Experience how Asian influence penetrates the artistic sensibilities of this artist whose timeless contributions to the teaching and understanding of art continue to influence artists today, most notably through his book Composition, first published in 1899. The Dow collection of the Ipswich Historical Society is . Explorers attend FREE, non-Explorers $15.
Limited parking is available at 54 South Main Street, The Heard House Museum. Additional parking is available at the municiple lot next to the Ipswich Visitor Center, a short walk from the Museum.
For Mapquest directions click here...
top of page
Friday, February 27, 2009 4:30-6:00 PM
Continuing the Collection: The Phillips Library
The Phillips Library, Plummer Hall
132 Essex Street,
Salem, MA 01970
Please join Phillips library director, Sid Berger, and librarian, Barbara Kampas, for a special evening at the Peabody Essex Museum’s Phillips Library. Explorers are invited for an exclusive tour of the Library and its gracious Plummer Hall, which (reputedly) contains the first period rooms in any U.S. museum! Our knowledgeable hosts will share little seen items including some of the library’s recent acquisitions from China and other pieces that emphasize the depth of the Essex-Asian connection.
As the research and documentation division of the Peabody Essex Museum, The Phillips Library is internationally renowned as a primary resource for maritime history, genealogic research, New England history as well as American Decorative Arts, and of course, Asian art and culture. The Phillips Library is the repository of the best-documented city/county in the U.S. Be sure to take part in this exclusive evening of discovery with our insightful hosts. Explorers attend Free; Non-Explorers $15.
top of page
Fall 2008 Events included...
A presentation by historian Emerson Baker on
Witchcraft, Warfare and Native Americans in Essex County at the
Robert S. Peabody Museum of Archaeology
Phillips Academy, Andover, MA 01910
Explorers heard Emerson Baker, author of the recently published book The Devil of Great Island: Witchcraft and Conflict in Early New England and professor of History at Salem State College, make the connection between these dynamic topics.
The year was 1692. Massachusetts was losing a war to the Native Americans of New England and their French allies, and frontier settlements in Essex County were in a state of panic. Many participants in the witchcraft outbreak had been involved in the war as captives, war refugees, or soldiers, and their suffering is reflected in the infamous Salem witchcraft outbreak.
top of page