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The Connecticut Role in Slavery Was Worse Than You Think

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By Meghan Friedmann in New Haven Register on February 26, 2019.

GUILFORD — For many, Harriet Beecher Stowe — the Connecticut-bred woman behind the book “Uncle Tom’s Cabin —represents one of the country’s most famous abolitionists.

But Dennis Culliton, the Guilford history teacher behind the Witness Stones project, wants to illuminate another, largely untold piece of Stowe’s history: though Stowe and her like-minded relatives seem seemed to form the “epitome of an enlightened New England family,” they also benefited from slavery, a reality common throughout the region. Continue reading.

 

National Recognition for Witness Stones in Teaching Tolerance

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Photo Credit: Shana Sureck and Ian Christmann from Teaching Tolerance Magazine

Please read the feature article, “Bearing Witness” by Jenifer Frank, in the Spring 2019 issue of Teaching Tolerance:

Hana started her school paper with a description of Guilford’s town green—and for good reason. The beautiful, centuries-old space is the hub of this Connecticut coastal community. Residents like Hana, who attends Adams Middle School in Guilford, stroll beneath its shade trees, browse at the quaint shops on its perimeter and gather there for the town’s annual Holiday Tree Lighting. Continue Reading.

Teaching Tolerance is on a mission is to help teachers and schools educate children and youth to be active participants in a diverse democracy. They provide free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from kindergarten through high school. Educators use their materials to supplement the curriculum, to inform their practices, and to create civil and inclusive school communities where children are respected, valued and welcome participants. The program emphasizes social justice and anti-bias.

Guilford Project Researching Slavery Finds Descendant Living in Connecticut

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Photo credit: Meghan Friedmann

By Ed Stannard in the New Haven Register on November 4, 2018

GUILFORD — Patricia Wilson Pheanious was sitting on the porch of her Ashford home when her husband came out and told her that someone was on the phone and wanted to talk about her ancestry.

Dennis Culliton, co-founder of the Witness Stones Project, in which markers are placed where enslaved Guilford residents lived or worked, had found a living descendant, the sixth-great-granddaughter of Montros and Phillis, Africans brought from Barbados to Connecticut in 1710.

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