Thanks to New Hampshire Humanities and Ben and Kate Smith for their financial support in hosting a great event on Saturday night–Digging into NH History. Dr. Robert Goodby from Franklin Pierce University gave a lively presentation on the archaeological history of New Hampshire and the early people who settled here 11,000 years ago, the Abenaki.
Did you know that the Abenaki culture extended throughout New England and Quebec long before the Pilgrims arrived? And did you know that a pandemic in 1616-1617 nearly completely wiped them out killing 90% of the population? Despite this tragic fact, Abenaki continued to have a presence in New England and despite our acidic soils and freeze and thaw landscape in the winter have left us with many artifacts that tell the story of their culture and lifestyle.
While most of us learned that New World Settlers arrived in either 1620 with the Pilgrims or 1492 when Columbus sailed the ocean blue, in fact there were already “settlers here” as far back as 11,000 years ago just after the glaciers receded.
We had a wonderful crowd of over 40 attendees and Bob enjoyed his first real in person presentation in 18 months! Once again the Dana Meeting House provided a lovely place for folks to gather and share ideas!
We hope to invite him back next year for an encore presentation!