Welcome!!
Essex County Revolution 250 is an initiative of Essex Heritage in partnership with Massachusetts Rev250 and dozens of regional museums, heritage sites, and organizations, with the intention of raising awareness and highlighting the diverse stories of Essex County, Massachusetts residents, free and unfree, during the American Revolutionary period.
The goal of Essex County Rev250 is encourage citizens to engage in our Revolutionary past through material resources, commemorative events, and educational programs throughout the Heritage Area. As projects and programs are developed by our regional partners, they will appear on this website, which will serve as a central promotional location for Essex County Rev250.
Stay tuned for more!
Suggested Goals for programming:
- Highlighting underrepresented voices.
- As we design and create these programs, we should ensure that all voices of the past are represented. We should be telling more than the story of the white, male, upper class residents of Essex County. This includes the stories of black residents, women, and Loyalists, to name a few.
- Connecting to new audiences.
- Cultural institutions in general have a perpetual problem of attracting the same crowd of people to events, year-in and year-out. We encourage partners to think seriously about how we are going to design and market programming that reaches out to new attendees.
Suggested Themes for 250 Anniversary Events:
- Privateering and the North Shore as a center of commerce.
- Connects the region, a shared history distinct to this area.
- Connects with the Maritime Atlantic trade. A fantastic way for visitors to see how the events in their backyard affected the world stage.
- Provides a great platform to highlight underrepresented voices. (Women running events while men are away at sea, working class residents, and sailors who were black, indigenous, Asian, or various other identities.)
- A Gathering Storm: From 1773 – 1775.
- There seems to be a big gap in both the classroom curriculum as well as the public mindset between the events of the Boston Tea Party and The Battle of Lexington & Concord. Essex County played a pivotal role in this time, even acting as the seat of government.
- Then & Now
- Highlighting the growth and change of Essex County by comparing snapshots from different centuries. This can be done in the framework of people, by tracing the genealogy of residents, but can also be accomplished with buildings and institutions. Comparing the starting years of churches, banks, universities, etc with their current iterations.
Suggested Structures for 250 Anniversary Events:
- Timeline of Anniversaries
- Unsurprisingly, the timeline of events is a great structure for when to hold events, and how to partner with other organizations.
- Scenic Byway
- The Scenic Byway is a fantastic resource for planning events, creating a geographic framework for when to host events and who to partner with.
This site is managed by the Essex National Heritage Commission.
Questions or Comments? Don’t hesitate to reach out!
info@essexheritage.org
Resources
Here is a collection of featured resources. Find all of our resources, including Resource Links & Docs and Recordings of Previous Meetings, by clicking the button below.
