Historic Northampton

Programs & Events

Northampton Abolition Tour (East)
with tour guide Steve Strimer

Saturday, August 2nd at 10 am
First Churches of Northampton at 129 Main Street


Fourth Meeting House
Erastus Hopkins House
Town Hall built 1814
First Church
Erastus Hopkins House
Town Hall

Join tour guide Steve Strimer for a walking tour of Northampton abolition era sites, focusing on the eastern section of downtown.

The tour will begin at First Churches - the site of the fourth meeting house which was destroyed by fire in 1876. Here the convention for anti-slavery in 1836 attracted 1500 people to Northampton. The tour will continue down Main Street to the site of the 1814 Town Hall where Sojourner Truth gave her first anti-slavery speech and where Frederick Douglass endured a shower of rocks in 1844 as he exhorted the crowd to side with his people. From there the tour continues up King Street to the house sites of Underground Railroad agents J.P. Williston and Erastus Hopkins and the site of the boyhood home of Arthur and Lewis Tappan, founders of the American Anti-Slavery Society. On Cherry Street, see the house owned by John Brown, who escaped slavery and settled in Northampton with the assistance of David Ruggles and J.P. Williston.

MassHumanities Research for this program was funded in part by MassHumanities, which receives support from the Massachusetts Cultural Council and is an affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.