RSVP by July 31st for HCT Annual Meeting on Aug. 12th (space is limited)

Space is limited for this event,
so please register by emailing:
events@harwichconservationtrust.org

HCT members, please join our 31st Annual Meeting & Celebration on Monday, August 12th from 4:30-7:00 p.m. generously hosted by the Wequassett Resort on Pleasant Bay.

We’ll honor the Garden Club of Harwich as HCT’s 2019 Conservationist of the Year and we’ll honor the Woodworkers Club of the Chatham-Harwich Newcomers as HCT’s 2019 Volunteer Group of the Year.

Then in a special presentation titled “Exploring the History Beneath Our Feet” led by Professor Tim Earle and historian Scott Ridley, we’ll hear about the archeological aspirations and history related to HCT’s 49-acre Pleasant Bay Woodlands. Originally purchased from the Quason family in the 1730s, this unique 49-acre property was farmed by the Kendricks for more than 200 years until the 1940s. Unlike the gaps in records for most early Cape parcels, a trove of original Kendrick Farm documents help to tell a story of the transition from native to settler use of the land. In addition to the document record, a parallel archaeological record is being unearthed in a five-year project. What is beginning to unfold, generation-by-generation, is a rich micro-history, not of only one family, but the region in which we live. Thanks to HCT donors, the 49-acre landscape and the stories held within it were preserved in 2014.

Speaker Bios:

Earle and Ridley are part of the team for the Pleasant Bay Woodlands Archeological Research Project. The project is led by Elizabeth DeMarrais, a Massachusetts native and senior lecturer in Archeology of the Americas at University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom, and also by John Steinberg, research scientist at the Fiske Center for Archeological Research at UMass Boston.

Tim Earle is the former chair of the anthropology department at Northwestern University and author and editor of several books including Organizing Bronze Age Societies (Cambridge University Press, 2010). Tim’s projects on complex societies, social inequality and economic anthropology have taken him around the world. He is a life-time summer resident of South Orleans and has an abiding interest in the people and history of the Pleasant Bay area.

 

 

Scott Ridley is a writer and historian. His research on Captain John Kendrick of Harwich resulted in the book Morning of Fire: John Kendrick’s Daring American Odyssey in the Pacific (HarperCollins/Morrow, 2010). The book helped to spark interest in the archaeological project now taking place at Pleasant Bay Woodlands. Scott is descended from early Cape settlers and has lived in Harwich for 25 years.