by Patricia Q. Wall
Based on careful research conducted over many years by Patricia Q. Wall, this book presents the first detailed look at the lives of more than four hundred black individuals who lived in Kittery and Berwick, Maine, from the seventeenth century until about 1820. Pat has patiently combed the available public and private documents to find whatever scraps of information had been recorded about these African Americans. Because most lived their lives in the shadows of historical record, much has been lost. As Pat reveals, however, in addition to the personal trajectories of their own lives, they also played important roles in the life of their towns. Thanks to her research, we have a much better understanding of the importance of the Black, Native American, and mixed-race populations in southern Maine, both in qualitative and quantitative terms.
About the Author
For the past forty-eight years, Patricia Quigley Wall has been involved with New England’s colonial history through professional museum work, research, teaching, and writing. More recently, after meeting Valerie Cunningham and learning of her ground-breaking research on Black history in early Portsmouth, New Hampshire, Mrs. Wall wrote an historical novel, Child Out of Place (Fall Rose Books, 2004, for ages 10 and up), based on a fictional, early nineteenth-century Black family in that locale. Six years later, its sequel, Beyond Freedom (Fall Rose Books, 2010), followed that family into Boston’s 1812 Black community on Beacon Hill. Both books were based on meticulous research.
Since 2004, Mrs. Wall has visited with more than 11,000 school children throughout New England, given numerous lectures and teachers’ seminars—all in an effort to awaken greater awareness of the importance of this region’s early African American history.
Born in Clearfield, Pennsylvania, Mrs. Wall grew up in the Philadelphia suburb of Germantown and is a graduate of Temple University (BA ’53) and Pennsylvania State University (MS ’64). For sixteen years, Mrs. Wall, widow of the late Robert A. Wall, was associated with the Darien Historical Society, Darien, Connecticut, as a board member and then as executive director. After moving to Kittery Point, Maine, in 1986, she worked at Strawbery Banke Museum for several years before retiring to become a volunteer docent and board member of the Warner House Museum. For five years she also served as events coordinator for the Portsmouth Historic Sites Association, a small group of house museums and historical sites in Portsmouth. Mrs. Wall now lives in Exeter, New Hampshire.
Product Details
Foreword by Portsmouth Historical Society Past Executive Director Kathleen Soldati, and Black Heritage Trail of NH Executive Director Jerrianne Boggis. Preface by Valerie R. Cunningham, Trustee emeritus, Black Heritage Trail of NH. Gerald W.R. Ward, editor.
Published by Portsmouth Marine Society.
2017 Softcover, 240 pages, illustrated,6×9, ISBN: 978-0-915819-46-1 $20.00
Available from Portsmouth Historical Society Museum Shop, 603-436-8433.
Also available on Amazon.
Services Provided
Book design and layout by Grace Peirce.