Oct 8
The Boston Massacre: A Family History with Professor Serena Zabin
Carls in the Akron area are invited to
The Boston Massacre: A Family History
with Professor Serena Zabin
Wednesday, October 8, 2025
Time
5:30 p.m.
Location
The University of Akron
Simmons Hall Auditorium
277 E. Buchtel Avenue
Akron, OH 44325-0701
The story of the Boston Massacre—when on a late winter evening in 1770, British soldiers shot five local men to death—is familiar to generations. But from the very beginning, many accounts have obscured a fascinating truth: the Massacre arose from conflicts that were as personal as they were political.
As part of the University of Akron's George W. Knepper Endowed Lecture series, join us as Serena Zabin discusses her book, The Boston Massacre: A Family History, in which she draws on original sources and lively stories to follow British troops as they are dispatched from Ireland to Boston in 1768 to subdue the increasingly rebellious colonists. The book reveals a forgotten world hidden in plain sight: the many regimental wives and children who accompanied these armies. We see these families jostling with Bostonians for living space, finding common cause in the search for a lost child, trading barbs, and sharing baptisms—becoming, in other words, neighbors. When soldiers shot unarmed citizens in the street, it was these intensely human, now broken bonds that fueled what quickly became a bitterly fought American Revolution.
Cost
This program is free and open to all.
Driving and parking information can be found on The University of Akron's website.
Serena Zabin is the Stephen R. Lewis Jr. Professor of History and the Liberal Arts at Carleton. Her research focuses on families, gender, and politics in the era of the American Revolution. She is the author of Dangerous Economies: Status and Commerce in Imperial New York and the prizewinning The Boston Massacre: A Family History. At Carleton, she has served as the chair of the history department, the director of the American studies program, and the Broom Fellow for Public Scholarship. In that last role, she and her students crafted civic engagement projects in partnerships with public history organizations in Minnesota, Boston, and Washington, DC. In 2024–25 she was awarded the Robert C. Ritchie Distinguished Fellowship in Early American History at the Huntington Library to work on her new research project, American Affections: The Life of Mary Fish Noyes Silliman Dickinson, 1736–1818.
Questions?
Contact Alumni Relations via email at alumni-office@carleton.edu or 800-729-2586.