Museum Hours
Wednesday - Sunday 12 noon to 5 pm

Face masks are required for all visitors age 2 and older, even if you are vaccinated.
Face masks in both adult and children's sizes are available near the front entrance
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Acknowledging Indigenous History
October 2022

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.
Upcoming Events
Historic Northampton and the David Ruggles Center for History and Education present
Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life
A Zoom Presentation by Professor Lydia Moland
Wednesday, November 30, 2022 at 7 pm
When the prominent abolitionist Lydia Maria Child and her husband moved to Northampton in 1838, it was with an ambitious goal: to grow sugar beets to undermine the plantation sugar trade. Sugar beets had never been grown in the U.S. before, but abolitionists like Child (1802-1880) were determined to fight slavery in every way they could. 
Once in Northampton, Child attempted to help emancipate an enslaved woman who had been brought North by vacationing Southerners. She also sent reports to Boston abolitionists "outing" Northampton residents who supported the slave trade. Ultimately, the Childs' beet experiment in Florence failed.

But Lydia Maria Child's time in Northampton was formative for her activism and laid the groundwork for more abolitionist work. Child’s own philosophical thinking, moral courage, and extensive writing made her one of the most important voices among white Americans fighting to end slavery.  Lydia Moland will discuss her new biography of Child, entitled Lydia Maria Child: A Radical American Life, (University of Chicago Press) and suggest lessons from Child's Northampton activism that are relevant today.

Register for the Zoom link.
Sliding scale admission: $5-25.

Learn More
Lydia Moland's new biography of Lydia Maria Child is available for purchase at Historic Northampton's Museum Store.
Online resources to explore Northampton history at home
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