New Hands-On History Workshop

"Worcester and the American Revolution"
With Ray Raphael

Are you curious about history? Do you want to delve deeper into a topic by discussing it with an expert? Would you like to examine the AAS collections firsthand? Then come join us for a new series of hands-on history workshops.

This highly interactive workshop will allow participants to interact with Ray Raphael, a leading historian of our nation’s birth, and explore a variety of historic images, newspapers, books, maps, and/or manuscripts from the AAS collections.

Raphael's work claims that American independence did not begin with the battles of Lexington and Concord, but rather a year earlier in Worcester when in the summer of 1774 more than 4,000 militiamen from thirty-seven surrounding communities lined Main Street as Crown-appointed officials were forced to walk a gauntlet and resign their commissions. Similar peaceful demonstrations by common citizens throughout rural Massachusetts seized political power and effectively ended Royal authority throughout the Commonwealth.

This workshop will also explore the role AAS founder Isaiah Thomas and his fellow colonial printers played in instigating and fighting the war. Thomas moved his press from Boston to Worcester on April 16, 1775, and the first two imprints he created in Worcester did much to shape public opinion about the beginning of the American Revolution on both sides of the Atlantic.

Cost:
$65 for Friends of AAS Members and AAS Members
$75 for non-members

Registration includes pre-readings, materials, refreshments, and lunch.

REGISTRATION

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