Patriots’ Paths recovers the lost stories of how our towns made history immediately before, during and in the wake of the American Revolution.

Farmers, widows, Loyalists, spies, local merchants, youth – all had a view and a voice in the growing struggle to articulate individual rights and liberties.

Using extensive research with primary sources, these local stories have been woven into a dramatic script presenting the moving story of how Groton came to embrace and prepare for Revolution.

A joint program with Groton History Center, Freedom’s Way National Heritage Area, & Old Groton Meeting House Preservation Fund

Joshua Vollmar, one of our outstanding student interns, gave a talk on Bancroft based on his research and paper, “Major General William A. Bancroft: Groton’s Gilded Age Tycoon”.

After Joshua’s talk and accompanying exhibit, we drove over to Gibbet Hill and hiked up to the “castle”.

An oral history with Roy Johnson in 2011 in which he speaks about some farming and other industries of Groton’s past: pig farming, haying, ice harvesting, charcoal, poultry, and greenhouses.

Jeffrey Boutwell returns to Groton and speaks about George Boutwell’s role in ending slavery.

In the spring and summer of 1862, George Boutwell was Abraham Lincoln’s point man in advocating for emancipation, both as a moral duty and a military necessity, at a time when the President had to be cautious about getting ahead of public opinion. 

George Boutwell’s voice, the voice that made Lincoln’s Emancipation Proclamation a reality by stating publicly during the summer of 1862 what the president for political reasons couldn’t yet say: that the Civil War would not be won until we “take slavery by the throat and destroy it.”

Indeed, as writer, historian, and science policy specialist Jeffrey Boutwell puts it, “For seven decades, George Boutwell sought to “redeem America’s promise” through racial equality, economic equity, and the humane use of American power abroad.”

Made possible by a grant from the Commissioners of Trust Funds.

Jeffrey H. Boutwell, Ph.D., giving an online presentation for the Groton History Center on February 28, 2021.

A key figure in American politics from 1840 to 1905, George S. Boutwell sought to ‘redeem America’s promise’ of racial equality, economic equity, and a humane foreign policy, issues that today reverberate in divisive debates over Black Lives Matter, wealth inequality, and the uses and abuses of American power abroad. As Massachusetts Governor, Representative and Senator, as well as Commissioner of Internal Revenue for Abraham Lincoln and Secretary of the Treasury for Ulysses Grant, he helped frame and enact the Fourteenth and Fifteenth civil rights amendments, investigate civil rights abuses in Mississippi, and lay the foundation of the modern American economy. At age 80, he was selected as President of the Anti-Imperialist League to work with Andrew Carnegie, Mark Twain, William James and others to oppose American annexation of the Philippines.

A resident of Groton from 1991 to 1995, Jeffrey Boutwell had a thirty-year career focusing on nuclear weapons arms control and other international security issues for the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and the Pugwash Conferences on Science and World Affairs, which received the 1995 Nobel Peace Prize during his tenure. He’s the author of The German Nuclear Dilemma and numerous other books and articles and has a Ph.D. in political science from M.I.T. He started writing his biography of George S. at the onset of the Covid-19 pandemic in March 2020 and looks forward to having it published in 2022 as “Redeeming America’s Promise: George S. Boutwell and the Politics of Race, Money and Power, 1818-1905.”