On January 26th, from 7:00-8:00pm, the Suffield Historical Society will host a free Zoom program with Elizabeth Normen, author of Venture Smith’s Colonial Connecticut, a new book for middle schoolers and about the founding of Connecticut as told through the 1798 first-person narrative of Venture Smith. She will speak about this new approach to understanding that the story of Connecticut’s founding is the story of three primary groups of people: Native Americans, Europeans, and African/African Americans. She will also share research by scholars that has added to Smith’s narrative, providing rich details about his later life in Haddam Neck and our understanding of the complexity of the colonial economy.
The Suffield Historical Society sponsored an online class during the months of October and November in order to prepare a Witness Stones Memorial for Tamar, who was an enslaved woman who lived at least twenty eight years of her life in Suffield from 1770-1798. Solomon Smith, son of the famous African American colonial figure, Venture Smith, purchased Tamar from Luther Loomis in 1798 to be his wife.
Click on the Zoom link https://tinyurl.com/y5dt2fpb and join our community program. All Suffield Historical Society meetings are open to the public, and newcomers are most welcome. Email Bill Sullivan with questions: bsullivan@suffieldacademy.org American History Teacher, Suffield Academy; Trustee, Suffield Historical Society.
Elizabeth Normen is publisher of Connecticut Explored, the magazine of Connecticut history (ctexplored.org), and two books for students: Where I Live: Connecticut for grades 3-4 (whereilivect.org) and Venture Smith’s Colonial Connecticut for grades 5 – 8 (venturesmithcolonialct.org). She co-edited African American Connecticut Explored, a book of 50 essays by 30 scholars about 400 years of African American history in Connecticut published by Wesleyan University Press in 2014. She also contributes to Grating the Nutmeg, the podcast of Connecticut history (gratingthenutmeg.libsyn.com).
