GUILFORD — On Saturday, June 25, the 18th-century settlement of Packer Corners will be the focus as the town of Guilford's yearlong 250th anniversary celebration continues with a summer series of Saturday “Neighborhood Days.”
For six Saturdays into early August, the series will highlight the four villages of Guilford and two other neighborhoods.
Each of these days will also include an extended activity: a walk to nearby points, sponsored by the town's Conservation Commission.
This Saturday will have multiple purposes: to highlight the early settlement, with its one-room schoolhouse and interesting history; to feature the African-American Prince family; to visit the site of their homestead and the possible grave site of Abijah Prince; and to visit obscure sites, with a further optional walk to the Town's most hidden cemetery.
Abijah Prince and Lucy Terry Prince were freed slaves who were married in Deerfield, Mass. in 1756. They lived in Guilford during its early decades as a town. They had a homestead near the settlement of Packer Corners. They were harassed by wealthy white neighbors, the Noyes family, and eventually, the Guilford selectmen voted to have them protected from their neighbors.
Abijah Prince was more than 20 years older than Lucy Terry Prince. He died in Guilford and is buried near their homestead.
Lucy Terry Prince was a remarkable woman, a published poet and renowned storyteller, famous for having acted as her own attorney to argue for her rights in court. Family lore has it that she returned to Guilford to visit her husband's grave every year until her death in 1821.
Scholar Gretchen Gerzina and her husband Anthony have a special interest in the Princes. In 1997, they returned to live in Vermont, just a few miles away from where they met as college students and rented an old farmhouse during their senior year. Of their move to Guilford, Gerzina says:
“We never expected to move back there, but 25 years after our graduation, I visited an old friend after a college reunion, and the next thing we knew, we were having a house built down the road from her. Something - we didn't yet know what - seemed to have called us to this place.
“Shortly after we settled in, my mother asked me if I knew about a black man named Abijah Prince, who'd also lived in Guilford, centuries earlier, and sent me a mention of him from a book. When not long afterward, my husband later ran across another mention of Bijah, I knew I wanted to know more about this man. I hadn't realized at first that Bijah was the husband of the legendary Lucy Terry - the poet and storyteller who had defended their rights in the highest courts - and that they had lived just down the road from where we now had settled. Why would former slaves build a life for themselves and their children in Vermont, a state that still remains one of the whitest in America?
“I began taking notes, foolishly thinking that I could track the entire story down in a matter of months, and that I could do the whole thing from my little village, with occasional trips to Massachusetts. As the months turned into years, and the short drives turned into overnight stays in several states, my husband and I began to feel that we were being pushed from behind, by some unknown force, along a trail with the Princes' names on it.”
The result was the 2008 publication of Mr. and Mrs. Prince: How an Extraordinary Eighteenth-Century Family Moved Out of Slavery and Into Legend, now available in paperback and published by Amistad Books/HarperCollins. Gerzina will be signing books during Saturday's event. The Guilford Historical Society will bring a number of copies that day, and the book can be purchased for $14.
Saturday's event begins near the crossroads of Packer Corners, at the site of the former tavern. From there, Gerzina will lead a walk - and for those who wish, transport can be provided - through the old settlement and down the road to the place where the Noyes and Prince families had their homesteads.
The cellar hole of one grand Noyes residence is still extant. Legend has it that Abijah Prince's nearby grave was identifiable well into the 19th century but was inadvertently plowed under by a farmer. In any event, it is long since unmarked, but a member of a family that has long owned land there will show where the site might have been.
Those who wish to do so may bring lunch, and beverages will be provided. The Prince portion of the event ends at 2 p.m.
At that point, those interested in an extension of the walk can join Guilford Conservation Commission Chair Linda Hecker for a hike along the abandoned road to Green River and the Burrows Plains Cemetery.
Hecker is the closest resident to this old and obscure burying ground, which was almost lost but is now protected by the Town's Cemetery Commission. The reason for its obscurity, in addition to the remote location, is that the markers are only flat pieces of stone on the ground, not the more familiar vertical type.
Given the location of the stones, presumed to mark each end of each grave, it has been theorized that this may be a cemetery of children, many of whom died in the early days of rural Vermont.
What now seems wilderness was, two centuries ago, a settlement -- the Burrows family was holder of one of the original 100-acre lots - and many signs of that habitation are still in evidence. Hecker will point out some cellar holes on the walk.
For information on the day, call Linda Hecker at 802-257-1961 or Don McLean, Guilford 250 co-chair and a neighborhood resident, at 802-257-1961.