Franklin County

Vermonters have strong ideas about the importance of their mountain topography. Where did our pride in Vermont’s landscape come from, and why is it that we see our shared identity as rooted in the land? Evolving human ideas about the Vermont mountains form the base of this lecture.

The story begins with the state’s founders and moves forward through Vermont history to explain how environmental understandings changed over time. This lecture by historian Jill Mudgett is timely and relevant in its relationship to current interdisciplinary scholarship, and offers us tools to understand the origins and meaning of our own strongly-held attachments to the Vermont landscape.

Historian Jill Mudgett tells the story of an Indigenous man from southern New England who came to central Vermont during the late 19th century and was the victim of a murder. Recreating community connections in a rural Vermont hill town, this story is about poverty, racism, disability, and gendered violence against women, but is also an account of Indigenous movement and choice despite great obstacles.

Between 1880 and World War II, painted theater curtains were artistic features of most New England villages and towns. Christine Hadsel provides a glimpse into the world of talented and often sophisticated artists who were part of the rural cultural scene, illustrating the rich cultural history of small-town Vermont before World War I.