Sue Russell moved to Canterbury from Newport five years ago and was quick to join the town’s historical society.
When she found an old cellar hole in her front yard, she contacted Bill Adams, a local cellar hole expert, for information about who the cellar belonged to and what it may have been used for.
In their investigation, the two began looking through town records, old deeds and census data. As one of the lead investigators of the Canterbury Cellar Hole Survey Committee, Adams is very familiar with mining town history.
Russell and Adams have yet to identify the cellar’s original owners, but last year, while Adams continued his research, he had a realization.
“It just hit me that I haven’t read or written a thing about any woman yet. And it was, like, ‘Oh, that’s right, women were not part of that whole thing. Let’s see what we can do about that,'” he said.
In the fall, he started the Historic Canterbury Women’s Committee to tell the stories of the town’s notable women, inviting the community to “bring someone’s life out of the darkness, into the light.”
Russell was more than happy to join the project, and she now serves as the group’s leader.
The six-person committee has been combing through the town’s nearly 300-year history, highlighting women who may not have been “movers and shakers,” as Russell put it, but who had an impact on the community.
“Most of the history is the men, right? And so I ended up focusing on the wife of a Revolutionary War hero, Samson Battis,” said Russell.
Lucy Carey was an enslaved black woman in Concord who moved to Canterbury after Battis, a formerly enslaved black man who had been granted freedom for his part in the Revolution, indentured himself to her owner. Battis worked a year in exchange for Carey’s freedom.
Through town records and census data, the committee was able to find that Carey lived into her 90s with support from the town. They also traced her lineage through the Civil War, which Carey’s great-grandson fought in.
Russell also tells the story of Ruth Gilman, later Nickerson, who grew up in Canterbury in the early 1900s.
Anne Emerson, a trustee of the Historical Society, obtained Gilman’s diary written in 1915, when Gilman was 17 years old. It follows her day-to-day life on her family’s Canterbury farm and her summer working at an ocean resort in Chatham, Massachusetts.
“It was so exciting. I then told Bill, ‘I have to write a story about her,'” said Russell. “But then, when you write a story, you need to go, ‘Well, what does that mean? Or where did she go, or who is this family and who’d she end up marrying?'”
Gilman frequently indicated in her diary that she was going out with her brother when she sat down to wait and decided to write in the meantime. Russell couldn’t figure out what she was doing.
Until, that is, she came across the Facebook page of Ralph Nickerson, who had posted a 1914 Boston Globe article detailing his grandmother’s successful hunt of a 150-pound doe.
“That’s what she’s doing. She’s hunting. You know, like, ‘oh my goodness, that’s what she’s doing,'” Russell said.
Russell messaged Nickerson, introducing herself and the committee. After he sent more photos, she asked to meet with him.
“We go see him. Have a wonderful chat, get more stories out of that. Then he goes, ‘Well, I’ve got a 1916, and I’ve got a 1923 diary,'” she said. Nickerson also talked about his memories of his grandmother before her passing in 1987.
The meeting reinforced what the committee suspected: that women had left their imprints, and that their history was still alive.
The committee writes women’s stories and publishes them on the Canterbury Historical Society’s website. Once the group has enough, they plan on publishing the stories as an anthology.
They hope to release the project in time for Canterbury’s tricentennial next May, though they are also considering continuing their work after that deadline.
“It’s an ongoing thing, where this can be ongoing. But we could get some key people, some key great stories out there,” said Russell.
