quiet during your talk any time you want to interrupt me go ahead and ask questions i like this to be interactive but i do more in you that the talk with nobody in the audience talking is about an hour or so but more questions and more discussions we have a kind of you know like the now and i don't know how long you're planning on being out and i saw i guess we'll just play it by ear ok but i will tell you something about stories they aren't just entertainment don't be fooled they're all we have you see all we have to fight off illness and death you don't have anything if you don't have the stories so they try to destroy the stories that the stories be confused or forgot they would like that they would be happy because we would be defenseless and the reason i like this this much is because it reminds me of when i was in fourth grade i grew up in rutland so fourth grade of course vermont history and i was so excited i lived in rutland ira's time irish french canadian i'm lebanese there was to tell you part of town there was the french part of town th was the coldest part of town i mean you know you get the idea and i was so excited that we were getting a vermont history textbook to study from some of you may have had green anybody had a little green people like me and all the people around me in the community and i wondered what about all those italians doing their one of the polish doing over there and of course that this is what happened that was not what was in the textbook and i kept deeply disappointed yes and i know i don't know why because i didn't think i have been to other people that i know i've asked for but i was really disappointed there weren't any women in the book either so what happened to me was then i you know my interest was pete and i kept looking at my history in my geography books subsequent to that and by the time i was in eighth grade of course i never found anybody white me in any of the books you see women in any it was so i continue my education and i went to high school i went to college i found a little bit more pride i think in my gender as i went to college in the sixty's in the early sevent and then i started teaching in swat in vermont that was my first job teaching fourth grade just what they gave it they gave me the same will to teach for modern history  written somebody needs to write another book and somebody needs to do some more research on what the real people in vermont with real people in vermont were so i made it since then and now was eight hundred seventy two and so since the it's been really my life's play my life's work to make up stories that haven't been told before so with that little background this is just another one of these untold a story that i'm going to tell you tonight the story started i forgot about this little subtext the story itself i think is really interesting just all by itself but there's a subtext to the story in the subtext of what is progress when i talk to people about progress or and he or i see people and hear people talking about progress they are going to do this  like this top line here that's what people usually think about is progress you can do it in their body language progress but as i've been studying history i think it's more like the second line i think that's progress goes down it goes down it  my question of course was where did he get the money to buy a hundred and in the eighteen you know eight hundred sixty s so he answer to that question brought me to huntington and heinz for because he got the of this you can see a little bit closer here i don't have a clicker i can point that hill horse going down here like this into honey so this was the earliest map i found it and everybody told me that there weren't any earlier maps in this eight hundred fifty seven map so i thought well this is the only this is the earliest map i'm ever going to find it was wonderful because i had jay peters on there this is he's the second generation of peter's on the hill but i still had mrs clarke and she was the first generation ye no no paul what i almost said earlier but i'm not going to call it actually in my book i only call it the hill so i'll just call it the hill today because it wasn't called lincoln hill until after the civil war  but i just call it the hill right so i started out with only two names i knew that they were the peters i knew they were the clarks and it was interesting how the you are on the census reports because on the census of the seventy nine thousand eight hundred there was a column for white men a column for white women and a column for us and the peters in the clarks were in the others call now it's possible that they were black  really had to make myself prove that they were black most people in that call were black at that time but the interesting thing was that this tells just those three columns i think tells the history of racism in our country because we still think about people who are not way even today i think we have a really hard time getting that out of our heads so that in itself i think it's really interesting i've only showing  these really quickly just to show you how those two names i had prince peter's and i had should clark those are the only two names and after many many years researching i just did i was able to discover that the these were extended families of their their children were born lived on the hill mary lived on the hill almost every child they got married on that hill their spouses move to the hill they people didn't move off the hill generally some of them did but for the most part people were coming to the hill this was a special place this was seemed to be a really safe and special place for african americans at that time so here family started again new milford connecticut on on these on this side of the ocean anyway so it turns out that there were a lot of people any time we found in the it wasn't a piers or clark but they were african american they turned out to all be related i didn't know that first took me many years figure that but it turns out they were related  really well i can i can't answer that question about the peters because i don't know i haven't been able to figure peters out and i said that when i wrote the book i also there it was great so i was able to find something like this this is the earliest map i've been able to find the hill on the hinds for side this one did not i don't think this went into hiding but you can see here the farm was amazing it meant that you had made it you had made it so even if i didn't do any more research on these families this map told me a lot about these families so i know of the clark massachusetts so i got that from his pension records just the fact that he had a pension also tells me that he was not doing well because in those days in order to apply for a pension you had to be destitute and you had to prove that you were could start reading those names to my left this is a picture of prince prince peter's i'm sure you know that for the first this is a reenactment from somewhere maybe you shouldn't use this one because i don't have permission to use this picture for you so now if he had been in sleigh he would have been free by his service in the revolution that was what blacks got from fighting in the revolution they were this however fighting during the revolution was one of these high points for talking about this was one of the high points during the revolutionary war people believed that all peoples blood was exactly the same everybody was the same if you are inferior for any reason you were only inferior culturally and that could be changed that could be taught out of you so this was a this was a wonderful but this is the land the way it looks now this is just a little picture one of the things i did to research was go up and walk walk all the way and with a lot of different people who had a lot of different expertise geographers archaeologists historians  up there and of course there's the wall the ubiquitous walls that are all over and then the other pictures a picture of the black summer terry that's just right about on the border between heinsberg and huntington doesn't look like a cemetery today you would never recognize it but there is that still that feel strong standing up on the front that that probably marks and a really early grave but there were pete there's people alive i remember when this was an intact summer terry and they remember when it was destroyed there really was just vandalized destroyed you know which is unfortunate because now there's there's this feel so and there's a few shards picture that i found on the web somewhere you know they really had to hack their way through jungle like conditions for us conditions to get out to the top of the hill where where they decided to live with the clarks decided to live at the top but the interesting thing about that i always wondered why would they choose the top why did they choose some place a little bit lower down they wouldn't fit so much work to do but the top of the hale gets four hours a day on the bottom of the  hill face the southwest you know once they clear the trees which are really six feet wide at that time once these clear goals then they had a really good chance of making a good living which they did but another reason i think is that they really they really wanted to be isolated they were you know when white streaming into the state at that time they were you know uplift feeling great you know streaming in state after after the revolution you know they had thrown up the great britain they were free they were you know powerful people but when blacks are streaming into the state they didn't have that same feeling they were really deeply disappointed that slavery still existed in this country and they also were very deeply disappointed that they were treated like slaves they were treated like servants  they had fought in the revolution and they helped you know throughout the great britain too so it really was dangerous i mean there are stories of black children being taken away from their parents because people felt that blacks couldn't raise their children correctly so they were taken away in an indentured forcefully so there's a lot of stories like that people say well why did they pick this such isolated place and those are some of my firies i don't know why because they didn't leave any i haven't found anything that they say why they chose this isolated  in that general store i coul book for heinz for i found that there were people from heinz for there were coming to the store they would say to get miss clark or the butter or the in those days and different people made different tasting butter so these women are obviously making some pretty tasty butter up there and they were they were bringing it into the general store somebody was going to the jungle store gradually i think coming out of this isolation that they were in  a bi racial church but she will clark was a real leader in this church i found him throughout the records being put on committees to go investigate we were people in the community and it was always a  three man there were two whites and they were here and i only found one instance of anybody minding that there was a black me and coming in chastising them for the way they were acting only once ten years of these records so he was obviously pretty well accepted the family was accepted in the church their children joined the church peter's joined the church now this church they join was a really man started his free will baptist church and they never joined his church at some point they moved from this church to another baptist church in huntington because i think trouble with the church hides for which  but they still joy the conservative baptist church in huntington the free will one and i don't know why except that i think people look at the really conservative baptist church as being  all awfully large together which we think is contrary to the gospel and because we have not come forward and made a confession to the church they have forfeited their right of being in fellowship with the church until they shall truly and voluntarily make th confession that the offense to me they were gone they were out of there there's no record of a any committee going and talking to them they were just there's just this one piece in the record they were generally if i didn't know these people were black i wouldn't know it from any of these town records that nobody ever talked about it nobody ever mentioned it i found this is from huntington i found here that the too next to it that means that they had two children in the school so that was really interesting i never found records from heinz for but i did find all the honey school records and  hundred thirty three original some of the original people who start dying prince peters i think his wife had already died by the time he put in there that pension record because he never mentioned his wife on that pension records so i think she died with the cars with their buildings things on each other's lane and they're not building they have their own easily with they're not building their buildings on most recently and they're building their buildings next to other people's houses next to their relative's house so that was an interesting piece for me to find to discover and i often thought about whether that went back to traditions in africa because they were that far removed from you know african african relatives an african mainly because if there were debts to be paid they wanted to know what was there to sell to pay the debts so in just about everything was owned by the man so i mean anything could be sold now by the time prince peters dies the whole piece about everybody's blood being the same god now gone from whites minds now that it has been proven figure has been proven now because scientists have measured people's measured people's legs measured people's heads and they have proof now that whites are far better and blacks are minds by this time back in the church he's back in the church an eight hundred thirty seven at this horrible racist time in our country one of the worst i mean girls like but really one of the worst times what is he doing there i ask myself and i did find in the church records you keep reading the church records and you find after prince peter's diaries after and after she died his father and we really want you to come back to the church so he went back in eighteen thirty said he went back immediately to the church on the other hand they are married by now did not it took her five years to go back and i think it was because it took her five years to forgive whatever you know whatever she felt they had done to her but then then there's the question why did they ask  this is a list of people in the church who have the mo in the boy you know what you're clear about it i don't know exactly why human nature maybe you know quite a bit of money so he's in a very nice list here these are the  guess thirty five i know i know that's why it's so odd that this person you know he was probably a relative somebody really important  go so they will put him out there is one of the you know one of the big men of the church probably well i don't know how particular they were about being exactly accurate but there were plenty of tax records and i found the tax records are wonderful and i went year by year through tax things they would count in your net worth would be counted the animals and so that was interesting you could see with cows are really popular when sheep are really became really popular you know because this was eight years after she had died and she still hadn't gotten her third and she wrote to the judge she wrote to the court complaining about this that she knew what her rights were and she wanted her third so the interesting thing about this is how but they were never attacked i don't know why but they sure had one so i think this is this is in the right place it's right next summer terry and when i finally came to my senses and looked at the house carefully take years to kill the same number of animals back to the north along with some forty eight dollars ten years so you know what the keeping of course there are your fifty acres and he said no so that was part of the deal this is not a mortgage this is just a friendly trades never a mortgage you don't own my property so he took her to court so there's a big long court case about this but he finally i mean this is really interesting time this scientific racism i was talking about he takes a white woman to court he testif against a white woman he beat her in court and the judge ordered her to take the animals to take the wall and that he had a year to get the forty eight dollars and he at the end of the next year he ha forty dollars eighty paid or the forty eight dollars that's just i find it incredible that that happened but this you know this is a friendly farm a neighborhood and a lot of people think that people were these  individualists because that's the you know the myth we all are but it just isn't true the farming neighborhood was more important than the family during these days the everybody worked together helped each other out she died as you can see eight hundred fifty six years old he gets married twice again there's a lot of kids there's a lot of mainly sons with charlotte yet five sons and the because he was pretty sure he was going to die for you so did die and their next job was to take him in lower him down into the grave and then they were supposed to come back to the house and get some money but it said on the no you know cemetery very rich family in town and you can see how this is taking care of and it's not just because it's not because there's family around taking care of it anymore it's because it's a really nice house and it has as much as the clarkston and they weren't getting that much out of their cows or theirs so that's just an interesting piece survive they were doing pretty well they had four oxen by this time which meant they were probably renting their out to their neighbors who didn't have any maybe they're renting their labor out at the same time another way to make some money but  a sixty this is on the evil they're still doing pretty well they're not specializing like some of the other farmers with joy which is one thing that could spell doom for their farms they don't have a lot of animals which means they have to buy one or from somebody or even back one all from south america this is not a friendly neighborhood economy anymore letters to the editors of different magazines and newspapers is one of those things that you write that he wanted to be in this you this is the first black woman this is the only one to be and so he asked to be transferred to the south be so i actually could see his handwriting bogglingly don't have this handwriting because he was just reading the newspapers and then i get whatever you put in the newspapers but here's aaron freeman's beautiful  hate to this day they know his name and he's the one that took the land away from them right after this to get away from their family day to this day i can't hundred sixty eight south carolina constitutional convention at some point all the southern states have to rewrite their conventions to be accepted back into the union he's fair he talks a lot and he  affect the way the constitution is written in the things that he's really interested in is protecting interest against charleston protecting laboring man against  carolina whether they were black or white they were buying them but you know you can see he's thinking about here thinking about huntington when he's when he's doing that in eight hundred sixty eight that it's not that top line but i think the reason we think it's the top line is because we only teach the point at the top so if you're teaching the point it like progress like because we like happy endings like nice story and if we talk so we teach up to here and then we stop because that's too down on the other side of the hill it's a picture in a family painting this is the second house the first house was beyond this house and when they built the second house they use the other house for firewood well i always been interested in how far back as along the road  be near the road i think it might have been dangerous to be near the road but so there's i know there's something back there and that could be and i've talked to some of the roxas and they said well we've got this thing back there we've always called the back that's my theory but you know there has been a lot of work down archaeology and ethnic markers of archaeology to spend a little bit started but there hasn't been a lot i mean trying to talk to get out of archaeology folks to take a look at this place to start comparing it to other places where everybody knows african americans are looking and seeing if there's is there really something different about it from you know the patterns of white folks they got plenty of data you know white