reprinted from SeacoastOnline.com Sept 2, 2018
The Black Heritage Trail of New Hampshire, which shares the 300-year-old history of the state’s African-American people, announced its first walking tour in Hancock.
To date, the BHTNH has only offered guided walking and trolley tours along the Portsmouth Black Heritage Trail. The Hancock and additional tours scheduled later this season in Milford, mark the first step in the BHTNH having a truly state-wide presence.
The BHTNH recently received Yankee Magazine’s Editor’s Choice Award in the Summer 2018 Travel Guide for Best Walking Tour in New Hampshire. With tours scheduled through October, the BHTNH offers numerous opportunities to learn about black history in the state.
“To extend our reach into new areas, like Hancock and Milford, and eventually throughout more communities, allows us to bring more understanding and awareness of black history, which is really a part of New Hampshire’s history,” said JerriAnne Boggis, BHTNH executive director.
Hancock, which can be described as a “quintessential New England village” in the state’s Monadnock region, appears to be a place where time has stood still. However, buried just beneath the Colonial veneer of this seemingly all white town is a vibrant history of early black settlers who worked, bought land, built homes, challenged the church and struggled for freedom. Today, all that is left are the abandoned artifacts of that early life: their roads, their walls, their cellar holes and their scant records.
The tour, scheduled for 10 a.m. Sunday, Sept. 9, will explore the forgotten stories of Hancock. Guests will learn about the anti-slavery riot here, Jack Ware, a former enslaved man, and members of the Due family on this part-walking, part-driving tour, titled “Asserting Freedom: A Tour of Cellar Holes & Sites in Hancock, NH.” Tour guide and Sankofa scholar Eric Aldrich works for The Nature Conservancy and is an avid explorer of the Hancock area. When not moving trail cameras around in the woods of Hancock, he is seeking cellar holes and researching the lives of the characters that lived there.
Guests are requested to wear appropriate footwear as there is half-mile walk to see old cellar holes. The tour will begin at the Town Office at 50 Main St. where parking is available. Cost is $25 per person.
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