Witness Stones Project, Inc.

Restore History, Educate, and Honor Humanity

Lecture

Witness Stones Holds First Summer Workshop

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Witness Stones Summer Workshop on the Guilford, CT Green

Last week, the Witness Stones Project conducted its first Teachers’ Workshop inviting educators from West Hartford, Middletown, and Guilford. At the workshop they learned, shared, and discover the project whose aim is to: Restore the History and Honor the Humanity and Contributions of the Enslaved Individuals Who Helped Build Our Communities.

We spoke about Bristow, Mimbo, and Joachim, three of the enslaved persons that our communities have remembered or will remember through the Witness Stones Project. We also spoke of the issues of memory and failing to come to terms with our past. We looked at the documents that uncover the lost history and return the color to the fabric of our community’s history.

Thank you to Connecticut Humanities for funding the workshop with a Quick Grant, the Noah Webster House & West Hartford Historical Society for hosting day two of the workshop, and the Middlesex County Historical Society for hosting day three! The expertise of historians and educators from all three communities provided a framework to continue the project in each community.

Especial thanks to Anne Farrow, Debby Shapiro, Tracey Wilson, Liz Devine, Lauren Gullette, Sally Nyhan, Doug Nygren, and Tom Bushnell for leading the discussions. Thank you to our friends at Guilford, Connecticut Park and Rec Department for hosting day one. And an ongoing thank you to the Guilford Preservation Alliance and the Guilford Foundation for their continued support.

Through Local History, A Stronger Sense Of Place

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Witness Stones Project Founder an Executive Director Dennis Culliton joined Leah Glaser, Professor of History and Coordinator of the Public History Program at Central Connecticut State University, Chuck Arning, National Park Service Interpretive Ranger and A/V Specialist, John Tuohy, author and historian for the city of Ansonia, Connecticut, and Regan Miner, consultant for the city of Norwich, Connecticut, and the Norwich Historical Society for a panel discussion on WNPR’s Where We Live program.

The topic of the show’s program was a lesson in public history. How are towns and cities across Connecticut and the Northeast engaging residents with the past?

We invite you to listen here: Through Local History, A Stronger Sense of Place

 

 

Slavery in New England

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Dennis Culliton and Douglas Nygren spoke to the Connecticut Academy of Arts & Sciences (Photo: Gregory Tignor and Monica Aspianto)

 

Minutes of the 1464th Meeting of the Connecticut Academy of Arts and Sciences by Gregory Tignor and Monica Aspiantoon on February 13, 2018

The President introduced Douglas Nygren who introduced the guest speaker with the following statement. “When I approached Gregory last April about our doing a presentation on the Witness Stone Project and slavery in Guilford, he booked us for February because it is Black History Month.  That sounded appropriate. I didn’t know, however, how appropriate the talk would be. Charlottesville had not occurred, and the project we had imagined was just an idea. The plan was to honor those enslaved in Guilford with memory stones that would be placed in the sidewalk. They would bear the enslaved person’s name and vital data. We hoped to have a school component, but didn’t know whether that would be possible and we didn’t know how the town would receive our project. We have been surprised and grateful at how receptive the town has been. Continue reading.

Guilford Aims to Come to Grips with Town’s Past Slavery

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Our panel discussion was a great hit! Thank you, Lauretta, from the Guilford Free Library for your assistance, the Harriet Beecher Stowe Center for providing Oliver Scholes as a moderator, our panelists for their expertise, and all of the attendees for sharing their minds and hearts about how our study of slavery in the past can make a difference in the present!

By Ed Stannard in the New Haven Register on September 13, 2017

About 100 people met Wednesday to face the reality of being part of a culture that is still stained by the truth that white people owned black Africans in their own town.

The meeting, held at the Guilford Free Library, was organized by the Witness Stones Project, which plans to embed granite and brass memorials in the sidewalks outside where enslaved people lived in Guilford.

The crowd heard from a panel, then talked about their experiences among themselves and with the rest of the gathering. The fact that slavery was not just a Southern institution was repeated by many, as were the experiences of people witnessing or facing racism in their own lives.

Dennis Culliton, chairman of the Witness Stones Project and an eighth-grade history and language arts teacher at Adams Middle School, told of the history of slavery in Guilford, which began “in the 17th century with the Indian servants of William Leete to the 18th century with the bill of sale of Bocha, a Carolina Indian to Samuel Scranton in 1713 to the record of birth of Pompey to Montros and Phillis in 1729.”

There were about 60 slaves in Guilford in 1774, Culliton said, declining to three in the 1810 census. “The death of the last enslaved person in Guilford is Pompey at 89 years old in 1819,” he said. Continue reading.

 

Doug Nygren of Guilford talks about being inspired by memorial stones to Jews killed in the Holocaust in Germany to create Witness Stones in Guilford. Video by Ed Stannard–New Haven Register

 

The Rev. Ginger Brasher-Cunningham, pastor of the First Congregational Church in Guilford, talks about growing up in Birmingham, Alabama, during the Civil Rights Movement. Video by Ed Stannard–New Haven Register

 

Marji Lipshez-Shapiro of the Anti-Defamation League of Connecticut, describes incidents of racial and ethnic hatred in Connecticut. Video by Ed Stannard–New Haven Register.

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