Daily Archives: October 20, 2021

Saturday, October 30, 2:00 pm – 3:00 pm – Victorian Flowers We Still Love

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On October 20, from 2 – 3, at Berkshire Botanical Garden, Thomas Mickey discusses the new book All about Flowers: James Vick’s Nineteenth-Century Seed Company . He illustrates how this nineteenth-century seed company influenced both gardeners and the kind of garden that became essential, the Victorian flower garden. James Vick’s story has not been told yet. He is known in his hometown Rochester, NY, but he played a key role in gardens everywhere in nineteenth century America, whether of the wealthy, the middle class, the working class, or the city dweller.  Vick inspired gardeners everywhere with his own passion for gardening with flowers and his desire to spread the love of floriculture. Vick published yearly seed catalogs and a popular monthly garden magazine. He systematized the seed business: growing seeds, drying them, packaging them, and shipping them around the country, well before Sears or Montgomery Ward sent out their first catalogs. 

Thomas Mickey, from Quincy, MA, is Professor Emeritus of Communication Studies at Bridgewater State University, where he taught public relations writing and directed student interns. He is also a graduate of the Landscape Institute at the Boston Architectural College. He is a Master Gardener and has been gardening for over 30 years. Professor Mickey posts weekly on his blog americangardening.net. He is the former garden writer for the Seacoast Media company that publishes newspapers on New Hampshire’s seacoast and southern Maine. He is the author of three books, including Best Garden Plants for New England. The Council on Botanical and Horticultural Libraries nominated his book America’s Romance with the English Garden for its annual Literature Award. The UK magazine Spectator named the book ‘best garden book of the year’. He is a past speaker with The Garden Club of the Back Bay.

BBG members $15, nonmembers $20. Register at https://www.berkshirebotanical.org/events/victorian-flowers-we-still-love

Wednesday, November 10, 6:00 pm – 7:00 pm – Mutiny on the Rising Sun: A Tragic Tale of Slavery, Smuggling, and Chocolate, Online

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Recently uncovered information about a relatively unknown story of mutiny and murder illustrating the centrality of smuggling and slavery in early American society with ties to the respected Old North Church of Paul Revere fame in Boston, will be discussed in an online talk sponsored by the Boston Public Library on November 10 at 6 pm, online . This presentation will be held on Zoom, and the link to attend will be sent to registrants the afternoon of the event. Register HERE.

Mutiny on the Rising Sun recounts the origins, events, and eventual fate of the Rising Sun’s final smuggling voyage in vivid detail. Starting from June 1743, it narrates a deeply human history of smuggling, providing an incredible story of those caught in the webs spun by illicit commerce. On the night of June 1, 1743, terror struck the schooner Rising Sun. After completing a routine smuggling voyage where the crew sold enslaved Africans in exchange for chocolate, sugar, and coffee in the Dutch colony of Suriname, the ship traveled eastward along the South American coast. Believing there was an opportunity to steal the lucrative cargo and make a new life for themselves, three sailors snuck below deck, murdered four people, and seized control of the vessel.

The case generated a rich documentary record that illuminates an international chocolate smuggling ring, the lives of the crew and mutineers, and the harrowing experience of the enslaved people trafficked by the Rising Sun. Smuggling stood at the center of the lives of everyone involved with the business of the schooner. Larger forces, such as imperial trade restrictions, created the conditions for smuggling, but individual actors, often driven by raw ambition and with little regard for the consequences of their actions, designed, refined, and perpetuated this illicit commerce.

Author Jared Ross Hardesty puts Old North Church under the spotlight as parishioners of the church who were formerly well-regarded and even helped pay for the famous steeple turn out to be involved in the slave trade. Captain Newark Jackson is the central figure, who was formerly honored with a chocolate shop in the North End named after him (2013–2019), but his name has now been removed from the store due to these revelations.

At once startling and captivating, Mutiny on the Rising Sun shows how illegal trade created demand for exotic products like chocolate, and how slavery and smuggling were integral to the development of American capitalism.

Jared Ross Hardesty is Associate Professor in the Department of History at Western Washington University and author of Unfreedom: Slavery and Dependence in Eighteenth-Century Boston and Black Lives, Native Lands, White Worlds: A History of Slavery in New England.  For this program,Jared will be interviewed by Tessa Murphy, Assistant Professor of History at Syracuse University an expert on the history of the Caribbean and its connections to the greater Atlantic world.

For additional reading, we recommend the following articles:

Friday, October 22, 2:00 pm – 3:30 pm Eastern – Where the Wildness Pleases: Woodlands and Parks – Green is Not the Only Color, Online

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Curiously the High Weald is one region in Great Britain where those celebrated English earth movers, Lancelot Brown and Humphry Repton, are notably absent. Fear not, the undulating and craggy ancient Wealden landscapes create a range of microclimates, and from the nineteenth century this canvas became host to an array of trees and shrubs rich in colour and texture from the four corners of the earth. This Gardens Trust October 22 online lecture explores and analyses eight sites which illustrate both plantsman’s paradise and artist’s palette on a landscape scale. Explore the notable collectors as patrons, hunters and gardeners, their history and current status. The area is also home to global seed collections, ecological and botanical research notably within the Millennium Seed Bank.

Featured landscapes and gardens: Ashdown Park, Bedgebury Pinetum, Borde Hill, High Beeches, Scotney Castle, Sheffield Park, Stonewall Park, and Wakehurst Place. £5 through Eventbrite. https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/where-the-wildness-pleases-woodlands-and-parks-tickets-169774789967