New Insights into Indigenous and Enslaved Peoples in Portland
On Wednesday, November 16, Holly K. Hurd, Executive Director, and Laura F.
Sprague, Consulting Curator, Tate House Museum, will present an illustrated Zoom program at 5:30 pm. The lecture will be moderated by Aimee Keithan, PhD, Research Associate, University of York. They will highlight new research about colonial Portland and perspectives on Indigenous and Enslaved people that will expand the interpretation of historic Tate House. Recent interpretations shared with visitors to the historic site in Portland’s Stroudwater neighborhood have focused primarily on the lives of George and Mary Tate, of a wealthy merchant class family, who built the house in 1755 and lived there until 1794. With the support of a Maine Humanities Council grant, Tate House Museum has been working to expand its narrative to understand the lives and work of enslaved people in the neighborhood and
perspectives and representations of Indigenous people who also lived in the region. The lecture will include research about Colonel Thomas Westbrook and Samuel Waldo and describe how their actions affected Native people as well as what is known and not known about enslaved people and domestic servants in Stroudwater. Tate House Museum’s objective is to engage in important community conversations about Maine’s colonial history to make its
educational offerings more inclusive and to tell a more complete story.
Registration for the lecture is free and open to the public. Information about ticketing is available at www.tatehouse.org. Please direct questions to Holly Hurd at hkhurd@tatehouse.org.