Join us for an evening of community, conversation, and history at Historic Beverly’s Annual Meeting.

Free and open to the public!

Schedule
6:00 PM Doors Open & Refreshments
6:15 PM Annual Business Meeting
7:00 PM Featured Program: Networks of Innovation: A Brief History of Massachusetts Manufacturing

Light refreshments will be available.

Featured Talk

Networks of Innovation: A Brief History of Massachusetts Manufacturing

Horace Mann observed in 1845, “The people of Massachusetts, to a greater extent than those of any other State in the Union, are a mechanical people.” Across the Commonwealth, networks of manufacturers were as innovative and entrepreneurial as today’s firms in Silicon Valley and along Routes 128 and 495.

In this engaging talk, University of Massachusetts Lowell Professor Robert Forrant explores the history of this culture of creativity, with particular attention to the region’s machinery builders and the broader industrial ecosystems that shaped Massachusetts and the nation.

About the Speaker
Robert Forrant is Distinguished University Professor of History at the University of Massachusetts Lowell. He is the author of ten books and has served as principal historian on numerous projects funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities and the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities. His newest book, co-edited with Mary Anne Trasciatti, Where Are the Workers: Interpreting Labor and Working-Class History at Museums and Historic Sites, was published by the University of Illinois Press in 2022.

Before entering academia, Forrant spent nearly fifteen years as a machinist at the American Bosch Company in Springfield, Massachusetts, experience that deeply informs his scholarship on labor and industrial history.