Author: Michelle Shen

By Ramin Ganeshram, Executive Director, September 3rd, 2019

This past Labor Day weekend, while folks were rushing to and from vacation spots we at WHS were taking a trip of a different kind: Myself and board chairperson, Sara Krasne, headed to Philadelphia to receive a prestigious national award for excellence in the museum field.

The award was for our 2018/19 exhibition Remembered: The History of African Americans in Westport which told the story of the significant contributions, achievements and struggles, of black Westporters to the town from its 17th century settlement as enslaved people through to the present time. By examining our colonial New England town, we were able to tell a story that resonates nationwide

It was particularly special to receive this award in Philadelphia—the heart of America’s movement toward Independence and its second capital city.

Perhaps what was most awe-inspiring was being in the same company as museums across the country doing excellent work unearthing the hidden histories of a wider group of Americans than ever before—women, people of color, LGBTQ Americans and differently abled individuals.

Together we are following the charge of cultural organizations—particularly history museums—nationwide to re-examine the past in a holistic way, using primary source material and rigorous research to tell those stories that have been erased.

For many this begs a bigger and quite legitimate question: Why?

Why, many have asked us, not leave well enough alone? Why re-examine a history so many have come to know and love? Why drag “skeletons” out of the closet?

At the simplest level, we are following the standards of the most respected governing institutions in our field such as the American Alliance of Museums which advocates that organizations like ours “conducting primary research do so according to scholarly standards.”

In other words, we use original documents and documentary evidence to present the facts of what happened way back when. Unfettered by a need to editorialize or cast themselves in any light other than the norms of their time, the writers and recorders of this material were, for the most part, purely honest about what happened and how they felt about it.

In pursuing these practical goals as defined by those with the best professional knowledge, we reap greater rewards. We are lucky enough to do work that creates a more inclusive community—that leaves no one out by showing that everyone’s stories matter.

That “someone” could be one of the original Bankside Farmers or a Native Pequot person driven from their land or an enslaved African American in Greens Farms or a Jewish landholder forced to flee Manhattan during the Revolutionary War because of abuse at the hands of the British. It includes artists, performers, merchants, laborers, immigrants, mothers, fathers, activists. It encompasses the most prominent Westporters as well as the most invisible ones.

Our work—and our charge as a museum—is to fill the gaps in our history with untold truths that make our community whole.

The greatest reward that we’ve reaped, however, is not these accolades. It is the environment we’ve built at WHS through support and teamwork of our staff, Board of Directors, and Advisory Council Members.

Beginning in 2014-15 and continuing for the next three years, WHS Board of Directors and Advisory Council participated in a program run by the state of Connecticut for small museums and history organizations. That program, called StEPs, allowed these prominent community members to engage with and examine the operations of the organization and vote for a strategic plan that encompassed sweeping change to bring the museum to the next level. Enacting those changes has been our major focus over the last 24 months and has included everything from the physical space to collections management to programming and the quality of our exhibits.

While all of these stakeholders have been integral to our success—joining meetings and learning sessions every step of the way, there is one group that has been most important of all: You.

The public has been, in many ways, our most important partner in transforming WHS into a place where all feel represented with excellence—with a good dose of fun thrown in, of course!

And so, we say thank you—to all of those who have made WHS what it continues to be—a museum that has been amply rewarded with the privilege of reinvigorating history for everyone.

By Ramin Ganeshram, Executive Director, May 15th, 2019

Those who love history often find themselves thinking about it nearly all the time and in many contexts. Here at WHS our focus is on American history as demonstrated through the local Westport story, but that doesn’t mean we aren’t interested in new discoveries about Ancient Egypt, or 19th Century Europe or Imperial China or the Pre-Colombian Western Hemisphere…you get the idea.

It should come as no surprise, then, that even in our off-hours we at WHS chat with each other about history–from discussing what historical novels or bios to read next to what heritage sites we’ll visit over summer vacation to which are our favorite songs on the Hamilton sound track (mine are You’ll Be Back and Right Hand Man, for the record.)

That’s why, when I was faced with an intriguing dilemma related to work that I had been personally doing as a historical novelist over the last decade, I enlisted the after-hours aid of Sara Krasne who is WHS’ Archives Manager and current chairperson. More than that, Sara is a talented genealogist and possibly an even bigger history geek than I am.

And, together we solved a 218-year-old mystery that had stumped historians for decades revealing new information relating to none other than the life of President George Washington.

So, what was our intriguing find?

While Washington was president, living in the President’s House in Philadelphia, he kept four to nine enslaved people with him as servants at any time—subverting the Pennsylvania Gradual Abolition law that would ensure their freedom. His enslaved cook, a man named Hercules, was famous in his own time. The hero of my novel, I and others have called Hercules “America’s First Celebrity Chef.”

Hercules escaped on Washington’s birthday in 1797. Washington never gave up trying to hunt him down but died in 1799 having never apprehended the cook. Hercules was last seen in New York in 1801—and from there the trail went cold.

When, in 2019, a portrait long thought to be Hercules was revealed to be a fake it was an upsetting though not surprising revelation for those of us who particularly studied the enslaved people owned by the first president. You can read more about that discovery in this front page article from the Philadelphia Inquirer here.

But why did we at WHS care?

On a personal level, the portrait graced the cover of my novel. More than that as those of you who have visited WHS’ award-winning exhibit Remembered: The History of African Americans in Westport can attest, the difficulty in rebuilding a picture of the lives of enslaved people cannot be overstated. Without that portrait, a tangible link to a remarkable figure was gone.

I dwelled and ruminated on a lead based on what the painting probably represents—most likely a free African person of import as depicted by similar period paintings done in Dominica (present day Dominican Republic) and I decided to try to find a link between Hercules and the Caribbean. It was a big task and I needed to enlist the help of a researcher who was skilled enough to work with limited and rare public records. Enter Sara Krasne.

The Dominican lead wound up to be a dead end, but Sara’s genealogy training uncovered something far far more important.

Following the line of reasoning that Hercules was hiding in plain sight, Krasne did what no other researcher had done previously—searched for Hercules with the surname of his owner previous to Washington—Posey.

Miraculously, she hit pay dirt: She found Hercules Posey, of the right age, born in Virginia, buried in the Second African Burying Ground in Manhattan on May 15, 1812.

Uncovered by Sara Krasne, this death record indicates the chef died 207 years ago in lower Manhattan.

We dug some more, finding Hercules Posey in the New York City directory for 1809, 1810 and 1811 as a laborer. This last fact was disappointing but what we had found was still enough for historians at both Mount Vernon and the National Park Service in Philadelphia to agree we had found him. Then, the best news of all—a fellow historian in Boston found another directory that listed Hercules as a cook. With the help of a rare books librarian at Columbia University, where I am an alum, I was able to corroborate this over two years of that directory as well.

Among Washington scholars and, more particularly, among those of us who study the history of enslaved African Americans, what Sara and I found is monumental. In asking a simple question that those of us who were trained to look at things one way had overlooked, Sara turned years of accepted scholarship on its head.

“It is a rare thing indeed to be able to find out what happened to an uncaught enslaved runaway in eighteenth-century America.  Ramin Ganeshram and Sara Krasne have done an amazing job, finding Hercules in New York City, where he labored as a cook, while living in plain sight in a primarily African American neighborhood, under the name Hercules Posey,” said Mary Thompson, a research historian at Mount Vernon who has spent years piecing together the lives of enslaved people. Her  book The Only Unavoidable Subject of Regret”: George Washington, Slavery, and the Enslaved Community at Mount Vernon  is well regarded among historians. Mary went on to say “The records they found include the fact that Hercules was born in Virginia in 1748, something else that was not known before, and died in New York City on May 15, 1812.  Through their work, the cemetery where he was buried has even been identified.  We are thrilled with these new discoveries.”

I share this story with you as an example of the level of research and care that we at WHS apply to the study of history—whether we are on or off the job. As representatives of WHS doing this kind of quality work, we have gained the Society recognition from major and respected institutions worldwide, even when that work is not WHS specific.

Just imagine what we’ll come up with as we apply that rigor and dedication to mining our vast archives at WHS? Stay tuned… we’ve got lots in store as we bring the best secrets of Westport History to light.

Join our acclaimed archivist for her new series, Genealogy FUN-damentals! Learn more about the ins and outs of doing family research on your own, resources you’re familiar with along with lesser known avenues of discovery. For more details click here!

Sara and I have created a petition to get NYC Parks Department to place a plaque memorializing Hercules in a public park across the street from his final resting place. For us at WHS, updating the public record with new and verified fact is of utmost importance. Please consider signing here.

Through the years, the town of Westport has both been home to actors and directors as well as the backdrop for both the big and small screen. Films like The Man in the Grey Flannel Suit from 1956 and 2018’s Land of Steady Habits used Westport as a foil to explore hidden themes of the somber side of suburban life.

Outside of town cameos, The Westport Historical Society has had its own share of roles as “character actor.” Happily, our parts have largely been of the comic sort.

It may come as a surprise to many but at Westport Historical Society we like nothing better than to laugh at ourselves. Stop by on any given day and  what you’ll notice after you enjoy our eye-opening new exhibits, engaging programs and newly renovated gift shop is the fun banter, the laughter and general high spirits. Even though we’re always working hard to fulfill our mission in the best 21^st century style, we have a lot of fun too.

We take our mission very seriously. Ourselves? Not so much. (Anyone who follows our Instagram account Betsy_and_Sam will tell you that.)

That’s why nobody is getting a bigger laugh at the current send up of the Society (Rebranded as the “Westport Historical Guild”) on ABC’s hit comedy, American Housewife. A regular feature of the current (and past seasons) the “Guild” is a passion of the main character’s husband, Greg who is ever at the ready for a re-enactment or an onion pie baking contest (an homage to the town’s onion farming history.)

Certainly, the Guild’s denizens are over the top. One member has a humidor especially for his 18^th century pantaloons collection. Others engage in a friendly game of “mead pong” at the Guild’s annual gala in a barn that looks suspiciously like the interior of our own Cobblestone Barn.

(As a point of historical fact, mead is so 12^th century—not our sort of thing at all. Honey beer, though, that’s another story! Make sure to check out our Garden Cocktail Party June 8^th to try some.)

If we’re honest we can certainly see a bit of ourselves in these portrayals. The show is informed by the memories of its writers– former Westporters who, presumably, hit the Historical Society in elementary school for an annual tour.  Who among us hasn’t met a history buff with such exuberant passion for his or her subject that they border on the comical. Sometimes, we are guilty of that ourselves.

And since history is our bag, I’d be remiss not to point out that our comic chops go way back. In the late 1950s the hit show I Love Lucy decamped from New York City to Westport, where Lucille Ball as Lucy Ricardo tried to acclimate to suburban life including joining the Westport Historical Society. (It should be pointed out that in Desi Arnaz portraying a Cuban immigrant band leader, Ricky Ricardo, as married to all-American girl Lucy, in I Love Lucy was groundbreaking in its own way.)

The Historical society along with our friends at the Westport Garden Club and the Westport Woman’s Club also get the Lucy treatment the series as America’s beloved redhead turns the town upside down with her zany antics.

In the show’s final episode, Lucy accidentally backs over the beloved Minute Man statue, causing her to wail in a frenzy “I’ll be drummed out of the Historical Society!”

It is true that we’d never find the destruction of the Minute Man a laughing matter but drumming Lucy out of WHS? Never!

“We the undersigned residents of 22 ½ Main street, respectfully petition the town government to help us secure decent, low-rent housing for ourselves and our families.” As reported by the Westport Town Crier on December 22nd 1949, these words formed a petition from the residents of the building which housed 70 people including four WWII veterans which was presented to the Westport Board of Selectmen.

In honor of Black History Month, we will look into the plight of the residents of 22 ½ Main Street. These residents made up the lion’s share of Westport’s African-American population, many of whom had been in the community since the 18th century when their ancestors were enslaved. The building at 22 ½ Main Street was the epicenter of a neighborhood that existed in alleyways between Elm Street and Main street with “1/2” numbers for their street addresses. The residents of 22 ½ Main Street represented citizens originally from the South who had come north to communities like Westport to seek work in what later became known as the Great Migration.

It was a community that fought to survive in the heart of Westport, despite those who sought to exile them.

The Town Crier reported that 70 people were living at 22 ½ Main Street, and just a few months earlier in March, a doctor who had been sent to the housing complex reported that he found 24 people living in 25 rooms. Dr. C. W. Gillette had been assigned to ascertain whether the complex were the source of a public health menace by First Selectman Albert T. Scully. It seems that “concerned citizens” of the town were worried about overcrowding and unsightly conditions in the courtyard off Main Street.

The town prosecutor’s office initiated complaints via a declaration of violations which stated that “a serious condition, perilous to their health and morals and to the town as a whole,” exists at 22 ½ Main Street. Although the statement was harsh, it didn’t mention slum conditions in any other part of town.

Town officials couldn’t get behind any of the various solutions offered over the years, though the “slum conditions” of 22 ½ had been considered a problem since before WWII. The idea of closing the building was often proposed, but the town officials didn’t know where the residents would then live, so they kicked the proverbial can further down the road for the next group of people to try to solve.

Through all of the controversy, the building’s owner, Mr. Peter Guglieri, said that he had offered to make whatever improvements to the building that the town officials would suggest, if they would only assure him that the current tenants wouldn’t be moved out after the improvements were made. He also stated that he didn’t know of any violence or illegal activity occurring on the property. So the question of conditions “perilous to the morals of the town”, as the prosecutor’s office stated seems questionable at best.

The few records and newspaper articles that exist about this settlement seemed to indicate the residents were hardworking, God-fearing folks that were just trying to get by in a town that was caving into the pressures of a Jim-Crowe era society. In several city directories, the Antioch Baptist Church, sometimes listed as the “Westport colored church” was at 28 Main Street or 22 ½ Main Street. The pastor was listed as a resident of New York and it is surmised that he may have been a traveling preacher that would commute to Westport for the weekly services.

In December 1949, an RTM meeting was held and a heated debate ensued about public housing and who would be eligible to apply. A group of African Americans, mostly those living at 22 ½ Main Street attended the meeting and their elected spokesperson was Mrs. Roscoe Richardson. She was at first rebuffed by the moderator, but after the crowd began to chant “let her speak,” her statements were heard. She described their living conditions as a “slum”.

The Housing Authority Chairman, Mr. Charles Cutler, answered Mrs. Richardson’s speech by stating that the “Negro delegation” would be eligible to apply for the rental of units in the new housing project, after the needs of veterans were taken care of, and further he said that two of the forty-two families being considered were “Negro families.” From the Town Crier’s reporting, this seems to have been enough at the time to satisfy the crowd.

When Westport Historical Society asked if the Fire Department could find any records from the time about a fire investigation at the property as arson, none could currently be found. This may be because they did not survive the test of time, or perhaps that no real investigation was done. Because this area was considered a blight on downtown, it seems many saw the fire as a “good riddance” situation.

Newspaper accounts paint the picture that the people living at 22 ½ Main Street recognized that their living condition was poor, that the owner of the building knew it, and that the town leaders knew it as well. It’s a sad comment on history that the only “solution” came via the destruction of the building.

Some families stayed in the unburned portion of the building for several months trying to find alternate housing but, in the end, almost every single person who had lived there moved on.

Mrs. Sheila Johnson gave an interview to the Westporter-Herald which appeared in the May 25th, 1950 edition of the paper, in which she says “I guess Westport has finally succeeded in getting rid of us… well, I hate to leave the Town, my Mother lived here 20 years you know and I have been here 18 years. But maybe it’s for the best. There’s no use staying where you’re not wanted.”

This heartbreaking statement echoes through the years. These Westporters only wanted to live in clean, affordable housing. Was that really so much to ask?

To learn more about the history of African-Americans in Westport please visit our online exhibit portal featuring the award-winning exhibition Remembered or email archives@westporthistory.org with questions or to schedule a research appointment.