Devin Lander on The Communication of Experience is Art: The Millbrook Commune and Psychedelic Multimedia Art.
Mar
20
7:00 PM19:00

Devin Lander on The Communication of Experience is Art: The Millbrook Commune and Psychedelic Multimedia Art.

State Historian Devin R. Lander will present on the Millbrook Commune’s involvement in the emerging psychedelic multimedia art scene of the 1960s. The presentation will include not only discussion of the artwork produced by Timothy Leary’s Millbrook group, but also the philosophical underpinnings of the group’s quest to communicate the psychedelic experience through artistic means.

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James Merrill on ‘The Indian & Mob Affairs’: Natives, Colonists and the Dutchess County Land War
Feb
20
7:00 PM19:00

James Merrill on ‘The Indian & Mob Affairs’: Natives, Colonists and the Dutchess County Land War

In the mid-1760s Dutchess County became a literal and figurative battleground as Wappinger Indians, colonial farmers, and local landlords fought over the past, present, and future of these lands. First Natives and their tenants combined forces to contend for their rights in New York courts. Losing that fight, they took separate paths in search of justice: tenant farmers set up a “Mob Government,” unrest that culminated in a firefight with British troops and a show trial of the “Mob Men” in Poughkeepsie; Wappingers, meanwhile, led by sachem Daniel Nimham, sailed to England to plead their case with King George III. This controversy, long forgotten, has much to tell us about Natives and newcomers, about power and resistance, about connections between then and now.

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Bob Ulrich on How the Dutch, Not the British, Invented America
Jan
16
7:00 PM19:00

Bob Ulrich on How the Dutch, Not the British, Invented America

For years, the British have received credit for "inventing" America, but it was the Dutch who truly deserve recognition for founding what has become one of the greatest cities in the world. You'll hear how modern America began with the Dutch colony of New Amsterdam and though it lasted only 40 years before the English took over, these were crucial years that laid the foundation for the diversity, tolerance, and commerce that define New York City today.


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Oct
19
7:00 PM19:00

Life at the County Home: The Experience of Residents at the Dutchess County Poorhouse and Infirmary, 1864-1998

A talk by Will Tatum, Dutchess County Historian.

From 1864 until 1998, Dutchess County government operated a facility to care for indigent and ill residents in the town of Washington. Initially consisting of a poor house, insane asylum, and pest house, this facility transformed into an almshouse in the 1870s, then into an infirmary in the 1930s. Drawing on surviving poorhouse records, newspaper accounts, and scrapbooks kept by residents, this presentation will explore how life for denizens of the poorhouse changed over its 134 years of operation.

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Sep
21
7:00 PM19:00

Exploring the Anthony Family Collection, A Recent Donation to the MHS

This month’s program will focus on a collection of material from the Duncan/Anthony Family that was donated to the historical society last summer.  The material includes many family photographs, postcards, letters, datebooks, and ephemera.  The presentation will cover multiple generations of the family beginning in the middle of the 19th century and going up to the late 20th century, but will revolve around a Black woman, Sarah Duncan, who worked as a laundress and cook in the houses of many of the prominent Gilded Age families that made Millbrook their home around the turn of the20th century.  The program will be an opportunity to examine Millbrook’s history during that period from a different perspective than the one many of us are accustomed to and examine what is possible to discover – and what remains hidden - from a trove of family artifacts. 

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