About Uncovering Black Stories at The Ashley House: A Curator’s Tour

This thought-provoking tour explores the lives, experiences, and resilience of Black people connected to The Ashley House and the wider Sheffield community, including Elizabeth Freeman and others whose stories have long been overlooked. Led by Curatorial Fellow Livy Scott, the tour examines how archival research and material evidence can help illuminate lives that have often been marginalized or omitted from traditional narratives.

This program offers an opportunity to engage with ongoing efforts to recover and interpret Black history in the Berkshires. Participants will consider the role of Black labor, family formation, community networks, and resistance in shaping local history, while also reflecting on the challenges historians face when reconstructing lives from incomplete historical records. The tour highlights the importance of inclusive interpretation and demonstrates how expanding the historical lens can transform our understanding of familiar sites and stories.

As visitors move through the house, they will encounter a more expansive history that challenges familiar narratives and invites us to consider whose stories are remembered, whose are forgotten, and what it means to recover them today.

Space is limited and preregistration is required. The tour requires walking and standing for 1 hour and climbing a steep spiral staircase. There are no public restrooms at this site, please stop by the nearby Bartholomew’s Cobble Ranger Station instead.

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