Third act driven by collector William Guthman, asking to buy the retrieved powder horn from the Putnam heirs. Sale in 1988. Finally sold/donated to Historic Deerfield in 21st century. #DubSem2025
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Second act in the Putnam horn’s history was as a family heirloom. Subject of the earliest drawing of a powder horn design. Then displayed, including at Centennial Expo. Loaned to Ohio Historical Society in 1934, lost by 1970s. #DubSem2025
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Stephen O’Neill surveys “Drums in the Revolution & Early Republic” thru a material-culture lens. #DubSem2025 Cabinetmaker Robert Crossman of Taunton made two surviving drums, 1739 and 1740.
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Falk analyzes a Mohawk Valley chest labeled Jacob Kniskern 1778—probably not the date of making, but a dire year being remembered. Two nieces born 1775 were likewise given chests marked 1778. Likewise, the Petrie sisters got chests marked 1775—not their birth or marriage years. #DubSem2025
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Our last #DubSem2025 panel, “Objects of Memory,” starts with Cindy Falk on how artist William Murray fashioned family records for people in the Mohawk Valley, records later submitted with pension applications. Murray also painted icons of Continental soldiers into those records.
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Barbara Rimkunas reports that Revolutionary War veterans headed most black households in Exeter, NH, in the 1790s, but there was little first-hand information about them. Had to work through accounts from older white people. #DubSem2025
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Next, David Naumec tells #DubSem2025 about seeking to recover stories of Revolutionary War veterans of color at Historic New England sites. Getting around cliché lore, some of which might even turn out to be reliable.
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After lunch at the Deerfield Inn, #DubSem2025 resumes with Tim Hastings speaking on African-Americans in New Hampshire invoking the memory of the Revolution to promote contemporary freedom/equality. Case study: Pomp Spring (d. 1807), called “President of the African society” in Portsmouth.
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Alexandra Cade shows that the first sheet music celebrating the Bunker Hill Monument in 1836 depicted the obelisk complete, though it wasn’t done till 1843. #DubSem2025 “The Freemen’s Quick Step” from 1840 pictured the tower still in progress at a rally and translated brass band to piano.
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Jim Bennett traces the public readings of the Declaration of Independence in Boston. From the 1880s to 1971 the readers became high schoolers, many from immigrant families. Press coverage celebrated patriotic assimilation. In 1910 the ceremony became a reenactment, barring girls. #DubSem2025
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The 1925 Lexington pageant, written by Sidney Howard, starts with the local battle but continues thru the full Founding, expansion, Abolitionism, and the labor movement (but not the Communist Revolution!). Freedom pushes forward into the future. #DubSem2025
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By staging the pageant in an amphitheater, Lexington could recreate the landscape of 1775 that had been overwritten in the center of town. #DubSem2025
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Kate Criscitiello now speaks of Lexington’s historical pageants in 1915 and 1925. The first was even filmed. The first commemorated a century of peace with Britain (then at war) while the second was Sesquicentennial. #DubSem2025
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One major priority in marking the “Knox Trail” in the 1920s was to create a driving route. That meant deviating from what the commission’s expert thought was the most likely route. New York revised its trail in 1975 based on more research. Further sites might deserve recognition. #DubSem2025
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At #DubSem2025 Ben Haley reveals there was hardly any interest in Henry Knox’s trek in 1776 until around 1920. A Massachusetts commission started to research the route using other sources on typical travel of the time. Knox’s own diary has sparse info.
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The crowd was not expecting to see a photograph of John Paul Jones taken 110+ years after he died. #DubSem2025
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#DubSem2025 starts today’s session with Gerry Ward of the Portsmouth Historical Society on the man, the myth that was Capt. John Paul Jones. Once he was a household name called the founder of the American navy. Now not even Led Zeppelin keeps his name alive for some young people.
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“The Painter’s Fire” is officially published on Tuesday, but there are copies available at #DubSem2025: www.hup.harvard.edu/books/978067...
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We’re back after dinner to hear John Davis of Historic Deerfield introduce Zara Anishanslin, whose #DubSem2025 keynote address will introduce her new book “The Painter’s Fire: A Forgotten History of the Artists who Championed the American Revolution.”
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Just a little discussion of how the men who started the Bunker Hill Monument couldn’t get it up, and women had to come to help. #DubSem2025
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Sarah J. Purcell speaks at #DubSem2025 about women’s crucial financial contribution to the building of the Bunker Hill Monument and the sale of souvenirs in the mid-1900s.
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Buell’s scrapbook was itself a scrap, an unfilled account book from the 1830s. She first inventoried her own collection of antiques, then who came to see them. Eventually included fabric samples and clippings, sewn over original accounts. #DubSem2025
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#DubSem2025 resumes with Mariah Kupfner’s analysis of Sophia Buell’s scrapbook and other collections of fragments deemed meaningful because of their Revolutionary connections.
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Cambridge’s Centennial celebration in 1875 and the 250th of English settlement in 1680 were tinged by that generation’s memory of fighting in the Civil War. Writers tied those causes together while overlooking African-Americans. #DubSem2025
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Cambridge was central in the Revolutionary War’s first year. In 1875 it tried to be an equal partner with Lexington & Concord, then emphasized General Washington [supposedly] taking command on July 3 on Cambridge common. #DubSem2025
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Beth Folsom of History Cambridge completes the “Institutions of Memory” panel at #DubSem2025 by discussing how Cambridge commemorated the Centennial in 1876. (She’d planned to cover other anniversaries, but there was so much to explore in just one.)
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Around 1970 a formal vote of directors at the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum ended the portrayal of “ghostly” things at the house. #DubSem2025
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#DubSem2025 continues with Elizabeth Pangburn’s examination of Dr. Henry Huntington’s conversion of his ancestral home into a historic museum. In the mid-1900s he hosted family reunions in where everyone dressed in colonial garb. But simultaneously he remade the house nearly unrecognizably.
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As a true son of Concord, David Wood sings some of “The Concord Hymn” to us at #DubSem2025. He glosses “embattled” as drawn up for battle rather than besieged.
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At #DubSem2025 David Wood is discussing what weaponry was buried in furrows at James Barrett’s farm on April 19, 1775. We agree they weren’t cannons; we disagree about which town that artillery was likely moved to.
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