Connie Crosby and Muriel D. Roberts
Parting Ways Revisited: A Remarkable Story of African American Families and Community Connections from Plymouth to Boston and Beyond
Crosby and Roberts will tell the stories of four African American families (Plato and Rachel Turner, Cato and Althea Howe, Prince and Nellie Goodwin, Quash and Phillis Quandey and their son Quamony Quash and his wife Ellen) and how they navigated their way through the Revolutionary War and into a post-war world that promised liberty and freedom in the early republic and beyond. Originally enslaved in Plymouth, by the late 1770s these families began settling on 106 acres of Plymouth common land. The story continues through the 19th-century as one Turner family son bought a small farm in Bridgewater and another son remained at Parting Ways. The five Turner family daughters left Plymouth, married, and settled on the north slope of Beacon Hill in Boston and became integral members of the Black community surrounding the African Meeting House. One of those families joined Captain Paul Cuffe’s return to Africa in 1815 to Sierra Leone. The results of archeology, historical research and family genealogy are used to tell the stories of this remarkable early settlement. This research began with community-based efforts in the 1970s undertaken by the Parting Ways Museum project in Plymouth and continues today with community members and the descendants of Plato and Rachel Turner.
Connie Crosby, MA, has a BA in American and African American History from Colby College and an MA in Anthropology from University of California, Berkeley where she was a graduate student of Dr. James Deetz in Historical Archaeology. She was Research Coordinator for the Parting Ways Museum project in the late 1970s and volunteered time in the 1980s and 1990s on grants, historic preservation issues, continuing research, archaeology, and museum exhibits. In her 25 years as an Historic Archaeologist and Researcher, she also worked for the Museum of African American History (African Meetinghouse Site, Southwest Corridor Archaeology Project); the Massachusetts Historic Commission, consulted for many other museums, conducted archeological field schools, wrote articles and gave dozens of public talks and professional papers. She also received commendations from the Massachusetts House and Senate for her contributions to an exhibit on African American Communities at the Commonwealth Museum in Boston. In 1998 she left her career in archaeology to pursue her passions in art making and rowing. She collaborated with the Wildlands Trust of Southeastern Massachusetts on creation of the Willowbrook Farm Preserve, a major land preservation project in Pembroke, Massachusetts. She became a member of Hull Life Saving Museum, Community Rowing, Inc. and volunteered her time with the Girls Row Boston (now Let’s Row program at CRI). She became a rowing coach and national and world champion rower at the master’s level, and has won the Head of the Charles.
Muriel D. Roberts, Family Historian and Genealogist, attended Jersey City State College as a Performing Arts/Theater major. She is a fourth-generation resident born, raised, and educated in Jersey City, New Jersey, with ancestral locations in Colonial New York, New Jersey, Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Georgia, South Carolina, and Virginia. The Girl Scout organization was an integral part of her life, a legacy of her mother’s membership from the age of 10 to 92. She was a girl member through the ranks, a camp counselor, volunteer leader, and a local Council employee serving as Program Manager/Field Executive for 23 years. She was an original member of the Kennedy Dancers and Dance instructor at Docampo’s Music and Dance Academy, Union City, NJ. She also served as a Lay Eucharistic Minister, Chalice Bearer, Lector and Intercessor, Altar Guild and Vestry member in the Episcopal Church of St. Paul and Incarnation. She became a DAR member on April 5, 2021, honoring a new DAR Forgotten Patriot, Plato Turner of Parting Ways, from Plymouth, Massachusetts.
