A large obelisk lists the names of the male founders of Hartford buried in the Ancient Burying Ground, but this is not the whole story. This program will look at the lives of women, ranging from the daughters, wives, and widows of those men to the Native, African, and African-American female servants and enslaved women who managed the households and kept Hartford running. Led by Dr. Katherine Hermes of the Ancient Burying Ground Association and Uncovering Their History, the program will also explore the lives of people like Ruth Moore who was the first woman of color to leave a will in colonial Hartford, and Sarah Onepenny, a leading elder of the Wangunk.
Featured image courtesy of coramarshall.com
Speaker bio
Katherine Hermes earned an A.B. in History from the University of California at Irvine; a J.D. from Duke University School of Law; and a Ph.D. from Yale University. She has taught early American history at the University of Otago in New Zealand (1992-1997) and at Central Connecticut State University (1997-2022), where she also served as Department Chair. She is currently publisher and executive director of Connecticut Explored magazine, a non-profit history publication produced for readers interested in Connecticut’s past. She has created and been involved with a number of digital public history projects. She currently serves on the Board of Trustees of the Institute for American Indian Studies.
Funding for this project is made possible by the State of Connecticut and the National Endowment for the Humanities, both of which provide significant support to Connecticut Humanities.
