Page 14 THE SAUGUS ADVOCATE – FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 4, 2022 A two-year historical project ends with a guide to help researchers in their quest to explore the history of African Americans in Essex County By Mark E. Vogler “The report identifies a sysO n Tuesday – the beginning of February and the start of Black History Month – the Salem Maritime National Historic Site posted a 173-page online book that its creators hope will spur more interest in research in the history of Americans in Essex County. Titled “African Americans in Essex County, Massachusetts: An Annotated Guide,” it includes five pages about the Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site. “The collections of the site do not have many items that focus on the history of African Americans in Saugus,” the guide notes about the Iron Works. But it also adds that there is the potential for more research: “Using primary sources in other repositories—such as documents associated with the many bankruptcy proceedings against the iron works between the 1650s and the 1670s that are held by the Baker Library at the Harvard Business School, and in the Massachusetts Archives, as well as other primary and secondary sources related to Lynn and Saugus history—there are several points where African American history can be more deeply explored at Saugus. (It should be noted that Saugus separated from Lynn in 1815).” Release of the guide concludes a two-year project, funded by the National Park Service and administered by the Organization of American Historians, to identify resources on Black history in Essex County archives. temic exclusion and marginalization of Black people in archival records,” according to a statement issued by the Salem Maritime National Historic Site, which announced the guide’s release. “Consequently, lived Black experience remains underrepresented, or sometimes totally absent, in historic interpretation and public memory of 17th, 18th, and 19th century Essex County and New England. The report seeks to address this absence by providing a comprehensive guide on how and where to locate resources for sharing honest and inclusive Black history.” Dr. Kabria Baumgartner and Dr. Elizabeth Duclos-Orsello, the guide’s primary investigators, visited a combined 20 repositories to identify and compile archival evidence. The report provides an overview of each repository, its key holdings and stories to be told of African American experience. Dr. Baumgartner and Dr. Duclos-Orsello further identified an overview of themes and recommendations for projects, programs and exhibits that may emerge from the report. “This guide is meant to help students, teachers, scholars who are doing academic papers and others who are engaged in various research on black history in Essex County,” Dr. Emily Murphy, curator at the Salem Maritime National Historic Site and the Saugus Iron Works National Historic Site, said in an interview this week. “The story of African Americans in Essex County is there. It’s just very well hidden. And, in some cases, it’s been deliberately removed from historical memory. When the Abolition Movement started in the mid-19th-century, a lot of people wanted to forget that a number of enslaved African Americans were living in Massachusetts at the time,” she said. “But there is a way to research the archives to find some of those hidden stories. We need to reexamine some of these records, like documents in bankruptcy court and some of the records available about property and land transfers,” she said. The section on the Saugus Iron Works was based on a report authored by Dr. Murphy titled “Salem Maritime Curatorial White Paper African Americans at Saugus Iron Works.” “The papers that have survived that record the business dealings of the Iron Works do not directly mention any enslaved people; the records of clothing, food, and housing either refer specifically to Scots, or are for a “servant,” which could mean either an indentured Scot, an indentured English person, or an indentured or enslaved African,” Dr. Murphy writes in her “White Paper.” “However, the Iron Works contracted much of the timber harvesting and bog ore gathering to local farmers or other families in the neighborhood, and this is the most likely place for enslaved labor to have been utilized at the Iron Works. A potential research project would be to examine what is known about the families who supplied the iron works, especially the wealthier farmers who would have been the most likely in the community to own slaves.” The Saugus highlights of the newly published guide include extensive mention of the “Curatorial White Paper” that was written by Dr. Murphy: “This document covers the history of the Iron Works industrial site, as well as its connections with families and other businesses in Lynn. Murphy discusses the ownership of Samuel Appleton Jr., the Taylor family, and the Roby family. “Her work reveals that there is little formal evidence of enslaved persons at the Iron Works farm, but it does uncover evidence of an ‘old infirm negro man’ from the inventory of James Taylor (after his death) PROJECT | SEE PAGE 15
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