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.
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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 |
"Faces of Downtown"
A Slide Show Tribute to Northampton in the 1980s and 1990s
Sixty portrait photographs by Paul Shoul will run on a continuous loop
as an outdoor slideshow projected on Parsons House
58 Bridge Street, Northampton, MA 01060
as an outdoor slideshow projected on Parsons House
58 Bridge Street, Northampton, MA 01060
Friday, June 12, 2026
8:00 to 9:30 pm
Free. Seating available. Outdoors.
8:00 to 9:30 pm
Free. Seating available. Outdoors.
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Native Strategies:
Tracking Indigenous Families in Western Massachusetts During the American Revolution |
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Indigenous Prophet of Democracy:
William Apess, King Philip, and the American Revolution
An Illustrated Lecture by Dr. Drew Lopenzina, Old Dominion University
William Apess, King Philip, and the American Revolution
An Illustrated Lecture by Dr. Drew Lopenzina, Old Dominion University
Wednesday, May 27, 2026 at 6:30 pm
Registration required. Sliding scale admission $10-$35.
The Flex Space
Northampton Community Arts Trust building
33 Hawley Street, Northampton, MA 01060
Northampton Community Arts Trust building
33 Hawley Street, Northampton, MA 01060
Drawing of William Apess (1798 - 1839) from
Son of the Forest: The Experience of William Apes, A Native of the Forest by William Apes, (New York: Published by the Author, 2nd Edition), 1831. |
In the aftermath of the American Revolution, white leaders of the new republic foresaw the demise of Indigenous nations, as prophesied in the vision of "manifest destiny." Pequot minister William Apess, however, spoke to a different kind of historical prophecy, one that challenged the narrative of extinction of Indigenous people. In his writing, Apess called on the Indigenous memories of both King Philip's War and the American Revolution to construct a radical new narrative that promised a sustained Native presence.
William Apess was one of the nation’s most important Native intellectuals. Born into poverty in Colrain, Massachusetts, in 1798, Apess moved to Connecticut where he was bound out as an indentured servant. At age 14, he joined the American Army and served in the War of 1812. He later became an itinerant Methodist minister and was a popular and controversial speaker in the Connecticut Valley and beyond. In 1829, he wrote the first published Native autobiography, A Son of the Forest. Throughout his life, Apess lectured on the traumas of the past and engaged in activism to improve the quality of life for Native people. He died in 1839 in New York City. Learn More |
Funding provided by a grant from Mass Humanities through the Massachusetts Cultural Council and by the SCP Foundation.
Lace Curtain Irish: A One-Woman, One-Act Play
Written by Carolyn Gage
Performed by Katie Migdal
Saturday, June 13, 2026 at 7 pm
Sunday, June 14, 2026 at 2 pm
The 1805 Shepherd Barn at Historic Northampton
66 Bridge Street, Northampton, MA 01060
66 Bridge Street, Northampton, MA 01060
"Bridget Sullivan" in Lace Curtain Irish
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In 1927, thirty-five years after the infamous Fall River axe murders, an Irish woman, working in her kitchen in Anaconda, Montana, opens a newspaper to read about the death of the alleged murderer, Lizzie Borden. The woman is Bridget Sullivan, the Bordens’ former maid. As Bridget recalls those years, her memories turns the accepted narrative on its head.
Lace Curtain Irish is a solo, one-act play telling Bridget's version of what may have happened in Fall River, Massachusetts in the months leading up to August 4, 1892. Two shows only with a talk-back session after the play with playwright Carolyn Gage and performer Katie Migdal. Registration required.
General Admission. No assigned seating. Sliding scale admission $20-$50. Mass Cultural Council Card to Culture: $0. Learn More |
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Acknowledging Indigenous History
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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. |
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