Local History: Slavery in Early Maine, Tuesday April 23
March 5, 2019
Local History Talk
Slavery in Early Maine:
The Truth Revealed
Tuesday April 23 | 7 – 8:30 PM
The library’s Local History series features authors and experts on local history topics. The series continues with historian Patricia Q. Wall, author of Lives of Consequence: Blacks in Early Kittery and Berwick in the Massachusetts Province of Maine (Portsmouth Marine Society Press, 2017).
Based on nearly six years of research, Mrs. Wall’s findings not only refute the old myth of slavery’s scarcity in this region in the 17th and 18th centuries, they clearly point to significant impact of the labor and skills of enslaved Africans, Native Americans and people of mixed African, white and/or Native American heritage on slave-owning families and on economic development of some of Maine’s earliest coastal towns. This author’s work is particularly rich in historical detail and casts new light on hundreds of long-overlooked Black persons. It offers a model for similar research in other New England towns.
Mrs. Wall has been involved for more than forty years in educating the public about early American history through writing, museum work, and talks with thousands of grade school students and their teachers. Her historical novel, Child Out of Place, set in Portsmouth’s Warner House, has long been a classroom favorite during Black History Month.
