The community is invited for a first glimpse of the Handy House on Saturday May 21 1PM to 4PM at 202 Hix Bridge Road. This open house event is the first of many opportunities for the community to visit the Handy House and to learn about plans for the preservation and future use of this historic property. Although the Historical Society is not ready to offer in-depth tours, this is a great chance for visitors to begin to get to know the house and property. Visitors to the house will be able to see both the special architectural integrity that this property has retained over 300 years as well as the wear and tear of those three centuries!
7PM, Thursday May 19th at Westport Public Library Manton Community Room
408 Old County Road, Westport MA 02790
In 1756, with the French and Indian War barely a year old, nearly fifty Massachusetts provincial soldiers, including some from Bristol County, fell into an ambush on the shores of Lake George that all but wiped out their unit. Only a handful escaped to British-held Fort William Henry. Ten bodies were later recovered from the scene of the fighting, but the fate of the other men remained unknown for nearly a year: a half-starved escapee from Montreal brought news that thirteen had survived the massacre and were captives in Canada. Some of those survivors managed to escape; others did not return until the end of hostilities five years later. Some never returned; and in a remarkable example of what a later generation would call “Stockholm syndrome,” one joined his captors – and paid the ultimate penalty for it.
Dr. Len Travers is an Associate Professor of History at his alma mater, the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth, having earned his Master’s and Ph. D. at Boston University. He is the author of Celebrating the Fourth: Independence Day and the Rites of Nationalism in the Early Republic (1997) and co-editor of The Correspondence of John Cotton, Jr. (2009).