Updates

Updates from the Amherst Historical Society & Museum

Lydia Maria Child

Lydia Maria Child

March is Women's History Month, and Dr Lydia Moland of Colby College has recently published a new biography of the abolitionist author Lydia Maria Child, who spent 2 years in Northampton.  From the Chicago University Press website:  By 1830, Lydia Maria Child [1802 -...

read more
Regicide in the Family

Regicide in the Family

The History Bites lecture series returns, beginning its Spring 2023 lecture series at noon on Friday, March 3, over Zoom.  Here is the Zoom link. ... What if you had someone in your family tree who played a role in the beheading of King Charles I in 1649, the only...

read more
Re-Orienting Dickinson

Re-Orienting Dickinson

In Black History Month, we can take note of the talented Amherst College graduate Anna Smith (Amherst College '22), whose historical research led to the creation of the Reorienting Dickinson website. 'During her first semester at the college, she took “Global Valley,”...

read more
The Joy of Collecting Rare Books

The Joy of Collecting Rare Books

Tuesday, February 21, at 6PM at the Jones Library Woodbury Room Kenneth Gloss, proprietor of the internationally known Brattle Book Shop in Boston’s Downtown Crossing section, will give an in-person presentation on the value of old and rare books Ken, who is also a...

read more
The magic of old photographs

The magic of old photographs

Pictured above: Mr. & Mrs. Spencer Miller and Spencer Miller, Jr. 1895There is a charm in finding an old photograph; in seeing an image of a place you know, but taken when it was a hundred years younger. The trees are smaller, the neighboring buildings are...

read more
Henry Wilson

Henry Wilson

Our September 23 History Bites presentation is now online. Lincoln Annibali, a student at Hofstra University, shared with us his enthusiasm for Henry Wilson. You may view the presentation here.  Born in 1812, Henry Wilson was an American general, senator, and later...

read more
Amherst Historical Society Year in Review

Amherst Historical Society Year in Review

With the passing of the old year, we at the Amherst Historical Society can take a moment to review the events of the past twelve months...  We brought on Diana Lempel as a temporary curator, to work with our collection and plan new exhibits.  We continued our History...

read more
Christmas Traditions

Christmas Traditions

This Christmas season, we are once again looking at Stephen Nissenbaum’s 1996 book The Battle for Christmas. This readable scholarly analysis of our modern celebration of Christmas makes a detailed case for the idea that it is a 19th-century creation, and a deliberate...

read more
The Storm and the War that Changed Amherst

The Storm and the War that Changed Amherst

On September 9 we hosted a Zoom lecture by Blair Kamin, entitled The Storm and the War that Changed Amherst.  In his lecture he describes the effects of the hurricane of 1938, which uprooted many trees on the Amherst College campus, facilitating a redesign of much of...

read more