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Guyette, Elise A.

College of Education and Social Services

2007

Ed. D.

Between 1795 and 1865, a number of African American families created farming communities on Lincoln Hill in Hinesburgh and Huntington, Vermont. In this dissertation, I examine the economic, spiritual, military, social and political lives of these families to resurrect their histories. I explore 70 years of social change as I begin to reconstruct the experiences of these pioneers who chose to live in the first state to outlaw adult slavery. In this study, I interpret how they and their white neighbors negotiated new ways of blacks and whites living and working together in the midst of an increasingly racialized country. In the dissertation, I argue that the people of this northwestern Vermont hill community acted differently in their own spaces than the prevailing racist philosophy might have dictated. I demonstrate how the people of color on the Hill and some of their white neighbors created their own principles for living in the new postrevolutionary world, a rural world that made room for cross-racial fiiendships and collective support in their farming economy. As the ideology of the inferiority of blacks bumped up against the hard realities of the rural life on the Hill, the needs of family and neighborhood often, but not always, took precedence over the prevailing ideology of the country. Using a constructionist epistemology, I employ a blending of ethnographic, archeological and historical methodologies to analyze primary sources such as town land records, vital statistics, Grand Lists, court records, cemeteries and the ground they made their own. The result is a cultural micro-history that adds to our scant knowledge of rural blacks in early America. This story breaks down many prevailing myths and stereotypes and offers new narratives and perspectives concerning Vermont settlers and early Vermont farming communities. It is a story that needs to be part of the curriculum in our schools so our young students can begin to break down their misconceptions concerning the early history of our country and replace stereotypes with more accurate images. As such, I will use this research to write historical fiction and non-fiction for children and young adults so that the story of Lincoln Hill can be widely available to varying age groups.