Welcome to Historic Northampton
CURRENT EXHIBITION
Slavery and Freedom in Northampton,
1654 to 1783
1654 to 1783
For at least 129 years, slavery was part of the fabric of everyday life in Northampton. At least 50 enslaved individuals lived here from the town’s English settlement in 1654 until 1783 when slavery was abolished in Massachusetts.
This exhibit features 34 life-sized silhouettes of men, women, and children who were enslaved. On each silhouette are details about individual lives based upon information gleaned from historic documents. Their histories reveal aspects of enslavement and examples of freedom, and resistance to oppression.
|
Exhibit Information
Dates
Open through December 11, 2026
Hours
Wednesday - Sunday
11 am to 4 pm Where
Historic Northampton Main Gallery
46 Bridge Street Northampton, MA 01060 Admission
By Donation |
|
|
Next Gallery Talk
|
|
Sunday
April 19, 2026 at 3 pm
April 19, 2026 at 3 pm
Image credit : Bill of Sale for "Boston," a man of "about ninteen years of age," sold by Ephraim Breed to Joseph Parsons, Jr. in 1715 from the collection of Forbes Library with a silhouette of Boston made by Design Division.
Historic Northampton in collaboration with Forbes Library presents
From the Plantation to Northampton: Slavery & The Watson Household
A Zoom Presentation by Elizabeth Sacktor and Anaëlle Cama
Thursday, April 23, 2026 at 6:30 pm
|
On Zoom
Register for the Zoom link |
|
Perhaps no 19th-century Northampton family had more direct ties to slavery than the Watson family. During the early 1800s, Henry and Sophia Watson owned a cotton plantation in Greensboro, Alabama, where they enslaved at least 228 people. In 1861, at the start of the Civil War, they moved to Northampton, a town known for its prominent abolitionists, with their six young children and Henry’s sister. They bought an estate on the property that became Childs Park.
In this Zoom talk, Historic Northampton’s Elizabeth Sacktor and UMass PhD student Anaëlle Cama will present their new research on life at the Watson plantation before the family moved to Northampton. They will focus on the lives of several enslaved women – Ellen, Eveline, Ann, Phillis, and others – who likely sewed the Watson family clothing now in Historic Northampton’s collection. They will also explore how the Watsons and their children profited from wealth derived from slavery and sharecropping and became benefactors to local institutions.
|
Portrait Photograph of the Watson Family dated September 7, 1870.
|
The Oxbow & Mount Holyoke
A Two-Part Lecture Series presented by Forbes Library and Historic Northampton
A Two-Part Lecture Series presented by Forbes Library and Historic Northampton
The Connecticut River Oxbow:
The Story of a Changing Landscape and Community by Jonathan Moldover
Saturday, April 25, 2026 at 4 pm
|
Above the Oxbow:
History and Memory on Mount Holyoke by Danielle Raad
Saturday, May 2, 2026 at 4 pm
|
at the Calvin Coolidge Presidential Library and Museum
Forbes Library, 20 West Street, Northampton, MA 01060
Forbes Library, 20 West Street, Northampton, MA 01060
|
|
|
Acknowledging Indigenous History
|
Here, we acknowledge that we stand on Indigenous land, inhabited by Native American people for roughly 11,000 years, since the glaciers receded. This place that we now call Northampton was known to Native people as Nonotuck or Norwottuck. Nonotuck homelands stretched across both sides of the Kwinitekw (now called the Connecticut River), including the present-day towns of Amherst, Hadley, Hatfield, South Hadley, Northampton, and Easthampton.
Nonotuck people were closely connected, through trade, diplomacy, and kinship, to other Native communities in the region: the Quaboag in present-day Brookfield; the Agawam in present-day Springfield; the Woronoco in present-day Westfield; the Pocumtuck in present-day Deerfield; and the Sokoki in present-day Northfield. During the early 1600s, these Native groups engaged in reciprocal trade relations with English colonial settlers and with other Native nations. |
By the late 1600s, however, the pressures of colonial warfare forced many Native families to relocate, taking shelter in other Native territories. We offer condolences for the Nonotuck people who were forced to leave their homeland, while also offering gratitude for the Native communities that took them in.
Despite the loss of land due to colonial settlement, a number of Native nations have persisted across the territory that we now call “New England.” These include: the Nipmuc to the East; the Wampanoag and Narragansett to the Southeast; the Mohegan, Pequot, and Schaghticoke to the South; the Stockbridge-Munsee Mohican to the West; and the Abenaki to the North, among others. Recognizing that the entirety of the North American continent constitutes Indigenous homelands, we affirm, honor, and respect the sovereignty of these and hundreds of other Indigenous Native American and First Nations peoples who survive today. |
See Facebook and Instagram
for new ways to stay connected to Historic Northampton.
for new ways to stay connected to Historic Northampton.