For immediate release: October 21, 2019
Contact: Susan Strano, Marketing Director
[email protected]
802-447-1571 ext. 204

Images:
William Lloyd Garrison
Based on a portrait by William Swain
Newburyport, 1825

Walloomsack Review Marks Its 25th Issue
Anti-slavery crusader William Lloyd Garrison featured

The fall installment of the Bennington Museum’s Walloomsack Review marks its 25th issue. The first printing, published in October, 2008,  featured on the cover a picture of Mary Sanford. Inside was a story by Anthony Marro of Mary Sanford’s Two Worlds. This copy also addressed Why Walloomsack? written by Bill Budde who was the editor at the time.

Since that first edition, many fascinating topics have been addressed among them from Vol. 9, September 2012, Johann Michael Kasler, Hessian Soldier by Charles L. Byler; Vol. 5, May 2011, “Let’s Talk of Graves, and Worms, and Epitaphs”: Rev. Jedidiah Dewey and his Gravestone, written by Jamie Franklin; Vol. 15, Spring 2015, John Spargo, Socialist Founder of the Bennington Museum: Activist, Muckraker, and ‘A Man of Many Feuds, by Anthony

Marro; and from Vol. 16, Autumn 2015, The Sound of Silence: Investigating an Acoustic Shadow at the Battle of Bennington by Michael P. Gabriel. “This is just a small sampling of the many varied topics covered in twenty-five issues,” states Tyler Resch, librarian at the Museum and editor of the publication. “There are so many fascinating stories we have generated, I am certain we can go on for another twenty-five issues with no trouble.”

Anthony Marro and Tyler Resch, took over the role of co-editors beginning with the second issue and more recently, this position has been covered solely by Resch. Many of the articles in this and issues up to and including Vol. 18, can be found on the Museum’s website. Copies of most are found in the Museum Store and can be ordered online. Visit the Store’s Website store.benningtonmuseum.org for more information.

Volume 25

Volume 25 features a portrait on its cover of the 19th century anti-slavery crusader William Lloyd Garrison. Through his 35-year editorship of an aggressive weekly journal, The Liberator, Garrison was credited by many to have been influential in ending slavery in the United States. His journal ceased publication on passage of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution. Garrison also edited a weekly newspaper in Bennington for six months (1828-9) called the Journal of the Times. The location of his print shop is marked by a large boulder on the Old Bennington Village Green – and pictured on the back cover of this Walloomsack Review. The story of Garrison’s life and activities on both his journals is told by J.F. Kennedy, along with a list of about twenty-five prominent Vermont abolitionists, most of whom were members of the Vermont Anti-Slavery Society.

From just across the New York border, this edition has a story that describes the sometimes violent “Anti-Rent Wars” in the mid-19th century, in which tenant farmers along the Hudson River protested the high rents charged by large landowners, who were called Patroons. The knowledgeable article was written by Michael P. Barrett, director of the Burden Iron Works Museum and Hudson Mohawk Industrial Gateway in Troy, N.Y.
Perhaps one of the most explosive articles in this edition is titled “Blown off the Map.” It is about Bennington’s early gun powder works, which had a habit of exploding unexpectedly. The article, never before published, was discovered among papers of the late Richard Sanders Allen, a prominent Vermont writer in the 1950s and ‘60s. Not be left out is a story from the Dorset Historical Society’s curator Jon Mathewson of an amusing poem with a bite written by Mark Whalon, who delivered mail around East Dorset in the 1940s.

The 25th edition of the Walloomsack Review is edited by Tyler Resch, research librarian of the Bennington Museum. Copies at $4.95 are available at the museum’s shop, the Bennington Bookstore, Bennington Potters, Northshire Bookstore in Manchester, and Battenkill Books in Cambridge, N.Y.

Now Available for All
Bennington Museum is entering into an agreement with EBSCO, a leading provider of research databases,
e-journals, magazine subscriptions, e-books and discovery service to libraries of all kinds. For more than 70 years, they have partnered with libraries to improve research with quality content and technology. Through this partnership, articles from Walloomsack Reviews will be available for scholars and others seeking deeper knowledge of historical topics such as those covered in the publication.

About the Museum

Bennington Museum is located at 75 Main Street (Route 9), Bennington, in The Shires of Vermont. The Museum is open daily, 10 am to 5 pm June through October. It is wheelchair accessible. Regular admission is $10 for adults, $9 for seniors and students over 18. Admission is never charged for younger students, museum members, those presenting an EBT card, or to visit the Museum Store. Visit the museum’s website benningtonmuseum.org or call 802-447-1571 for more information.

Bennington Museum is a member of ArtCountry, a consortium of notable art and performance destinations in the scenic northern Berkshires of Massachusetts and southern Green Mountains of Vermont, including The Clark Art Institute, Williams College Museum of Art , Williamstown Theatre Festival (20 minutes away); and MASS MoCA (25minutes away). Visit ArtCountry.org for more information on these five great cultural centers.