BILLERICA, MA — The Middlesex Canal Association will hold its Winter Meeting on Sunday, February 14, from 1pm to 2pm, at the Middlesex Canal Museum and Visitors’ Center (71 Faulkner Street, North Billerica). The event is open to the public.
The featured speaker will be noted artist, author, and educator, Tom Dahill, Professor Emeritus of Fine Arts at Emerson College. The topic of his talk will be the two watercolors of the Middlesex Canal Summit Pond (circa 1822) in North Billerica. Both were assumed to be painted by Jabez Barton during his courtship of Rebecca Farmer Rogers, daughter of William and Hannah (Farmer) Rogers. A View from William Rogers House (Billerica Historical Society) provides a priceless early image of the floating towpath and the North Billerica Mill Village. The William Rogers House (New York Historical Society) portrays the scene from a point on or near the causeway at the east end of the summit pond. The William Rogers House was built about 1807 reportedly partly from funds earned by William in service of the Canal Proprietors, and stands today on Rogers Street.
For those planning to attend Professor Dahill’s lecture on the Barton watercolors, additional background information can be found in the following two publications:
- Seaburg, Carl; Seaburg, Alan; & Dahill, Thomas. The Incredible Ditch: A Bicentennial History of the Middlesex Canal. The Anne Miniver Press for the Medford Historical Society, 1997.
- Seaburg, Alan. Life on the Middlesex Canal. The Anne Miniver Press History of American Transportation Publications, 2009.
A short business meeting will follow the lecture.
(NOTE: The above announcement is from the Middlesex Canal Association’s website.)
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