05/04/2024
10:00 am
Event Type
Join us for a free community walk as part of the global Jane’s Walk program on Saturday, May 4, in Waldoboro. The walk takes place twice, at 10 a.m. and 2 p.m., at the Sylvania/Hoffses House site in Waldoboro. The tour will last no longer than 90 minutes and begins at 467 Friendship Road in Waldoboro.
How does history help us imagine new beginnings in Waldoboro? Join us for a walk around the abandoned Sylvania factory lot, adjacent Hoffses House, and the woods and river that border them.
We’ll consider how this particular spot in town helped support economies of farming, fishing, and shipbuilding, as well as how it saw power struggles play out between Protestant sects, proslavery and antislavery factions in America, England and America at large, and the area’s native inhabitants and its earliest colonial settlers.
It all happened in this one place, whether a violent confrontation with the indigenous peoples, a visit by President John Adams, or slaves escaping from the South. Here lived working class families next to professional and governmental elites. A farm abutted a country estate. Worry over land and money neighbored the town’s Fourth of July recreation. The proximity of difference accentuated political division but also political change. Industry diverged and converged (around shoes!—over 150 years apart). And while the people polluted the land, they also stewarded it.
We’ll follow their lives and feelings as they cross and converge in this one space of time. Wear comfortable footwear for a walk in the woods.
For more information on the tour, go to janeswalkme.org/walk/crossings-and-convergence-a-history-of-waldoboro-in-one-place-2.
