Check out our past events below!
Past Events
Whether you missed an event or want to rewatch some of our exciting weekly presentations, we've got you covered.
Stephen Hopkins is My Name
Written by Pam Eaton; Presented by Toby Wilson
November 5, 2020
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Stephen Hopkins is My Name, is a poem telling the story of the life of Mayflower passenger Stephen Hopkins. It starts with Hopkins’ birth and early life, his marriage and the births of his children. It continues with his decision to join the Jamestown Colony in Virginia in 1609, the hurricane which caused his ship, the Sea Venture, to wreck in Bermuda (with all cast and crew surviving) and the eventual building of two small ships to escape Bermuda and sail on to Jamestown ten months later.
Stephen Hopkins returned to England in 1616, learning his wife had died. He married Elizabeth Fisher a few years later and arranged to sail on the Mayflower with his whole family in 1620.
The poem continues with the story of the Mayflower voyage, the signing of the Mayflower Compact, the exploration of Cape Cod and ends in Plymouth after the first winter. Although Stephen Hopkins never settled in Eastham, two of his children did, Constance and Giles.
Toby is an actor, director, producer and a member of the Performing Company of Eventide Theatre in Dennis.
October 29, 2020
The Ranlett Tool Museum
Narrated by Mark Herman; Photography & Videos by Sylvia Sullivan & Marca Daley; Videographer - Marca Daley
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Located at the Swift-Daley Complex, right next to the Eastham Post Office, the Ranlett Tool Museum invites visitors, young and old, to try their hand at not only identifying old tools but using them, too.
In this short film, Curator Mark Herman takes you on a tour of the museum, explaining how it got its start; describing just some of the many old tools in our collection; and showing highlights of our year, with the 4th grade visit, Tool Discovery Day, and the creativity of our blacksmiths at the working forge.
September 24, 2020
1869 Schoolhouse Museum Tour
Presented by Patty Donohoe and Marca Daley
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Located on Nauset Road across from the Cape Cod National Seashore’s Visitors Center, in Eastham, MA, the old School House invites visitors, young and old, to explore the one-room schoolhouse that served Eastham’s young people from 1869 to 1936. This ‘virtual tour’ is for children (and those young at heart); and two little visitors, Nate & Eva, offer refreshing insights on what they think of life in the schoolroom.
In another wing of the building, the main museum room, the ‘tour’ focuses on seven other exhibits that explore Eastham’s relationship to past peoples, as well as its surroundings. These exhibits range from one on the First Peoples who inhabited this land for thousands of years, to those who arrived on the Mayflower in 1620, to those who first settled in Eastham in 1644. Exhibits on two well-known Eastham personages are also explained: one dedicated to Captain Edward Penniman, and one to Henry Beston, author of The Outermost House.
Other exhibits on the tour feature shipwrecks and whales in the “Ship’s Corner”; “Breeches Buoy” rescues by The Nauset Life-Saving Service, and Eastham’s older means of transportation “by land and air, as well as by sea.”
September 17, 2020
Dill Beach Camp
Presented by Mo Andujar and Marca Daley
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Located at the Swift-Daley Complex in Eastham, MA, Cape Cod, the Dill Beach Camp tells a compelling story of Eastham's relationship with its neighbor to the east: the Atlantic Ocean. Built in 1935 as a Duck-Hunting camp, the shack barely survived the hurricane-blizzard of 1978, but found a new home with the Eastham Historical Society and is a favorite stop with summer visitors.
This presentation introduces you to the era of the Outermost House, when beach shacks frequented by hardy, independent, resourceful types like Henry Beston still dotted the sand spit south of Coast Guard Beach. Summer life was simple, and the sea was omnipresent. We invite you to return to that era for a glimpse into life on the beach.
Mo Andujar is First Vice President of the EHS and Curator of the Swift Daley House & Dill Beach Camp. Marca Daley volunteers in the Archives, and as a docent at the Swift Daley and School House museums.
August 27, 2020
Virtual Eastham Walking Tour
Presented by Jully Burau-Seybert
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Join Eastham-local Jully Burau-Seybert on a virtual historic walking tour of Eastham! Jully starts with the arrival of the Pilgrims and their First Encounter with the Nauset Indians. She includes stories of Sea Captains and tales of the environment. She also includes stories of historic homes and buildings, as she walks through Eastham's Historic District.
August 20, 2020
Preventing Wildlife Casualties Caused by Rodenticides, Lead, & Fishing Debris
Presented by Stephanie Ellis
Filmed by Lower Cape TV
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Wild Care, Inc. is a nonprofit wildlife hospital located in Eastham that is dedicated to the rescue and release of injured and orphaned wildlife on Cape Cod. Wild Care operates a Wildlife Helpline and rehabilitates over 1,800 animals per year; everything from Bald Eagles to White-footed Mice.
For the past several years, Wild Care has seen an increase in the number of wildlife that have been negatively impacted by the use of rodenticides (rat and mouse poison), lead poisoning, and derelict fishing debris. Join Stephanie Ellis, Wild Care's Executive Director while she discusses how we can reduce these impacts, humane alternatives to rodent control, and also tips for co-existing with our wild neighbors. Join her for this informative talk.
August 13, 2020
A History of Captain Penniman: Whaling Captain, Gentleman Farmer, and Eastham Citizen
Presented by Susan Abott
Filmed by Lower Cape TV
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Captain Edward Penniman was one of the most successful whaling captains of the 19th century. He was born in Eastham and lived his whole life here, except for the 22 years that he was at sea hunting whales. We’ll talk about Captain Penniman’s extraordinary whaling career, his home on Fort Hill and his life in Eastham after he retired from whaling.
Bio: Susan Abbott is a volunteer at the Cape Cod National Seashore, where she has been giving tours of the Captain Penniman House and the Three Sisters Lighthouses for five years. She lives in Eastham, right around the corner from the Penniman house, and is always eager to learn more about her famous and fascinating neighbors, the Pennimans.
July 30, 2020
The Remarkable Constance Snow
Performed by Patty and Myleigh Donohoe
Filmed by Lower Cape TV
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Constance Hopkins Snow was a remarkable and important person in Eastham’s history. Nearly orphaned as a child, crossing the Atlantic on the ship,“Mayflower,” surviving the first winter in Plymouth, meeting and marrying Nicholas Snow, birthing twelve children in the New World, and being among the first 49 English settlers of Nauset (later Eastham,) were just some of her 71 years of life experiences.
Patty Donohoe and her granddaughter, Myleigh Donohoe, will portray Constance, first as a young woman of Plymouth in 1624 and later near the end of her life in Eastham in the fall of 1677.
Constance Hopkins Snow is Patty's 10th great grandmother and Myleigh's 12th great grandmother.
July 23, 2020
Tale of Two Worlds: European Collision into the Nature of Cape Cod
Presented by Todd Morgan Kelley & Marcus Hendricks
Filmed by Lower Cape TV
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Join storytellers Todd Morgan Kelley and Wampanoag and Nipmuc Marcus Hendricks for their Tale of Two Worlds presentation. Sixteenth century European exploration competed for the new frontier of the North American eastern seaboard for future trade, influence, settlement and power of state.
By the seventeenth century those agendas had advanced. The 1606 French exploration of coastal New France (New England) followed by the 1620 Mayflower fourteen years later both nearly foundered off Chatham. The intention of these two voyages were fundamentally different yet profoundly intertwined.
Prior to the Mayflower, Indigenous culture in the northeast was at its height. By the time of the Mayflower’s arrival great populations of Indigenous People were decimated by “Indian Fever.” Join us for this timely presentation about The Tale of Two Worlds: European Collision into the Nature of Cape Cod!
July 26, 2020
The Archaeology of Cape Cod: 13,000 Years of Native History
Presented by archaeologist, Dan Zoto
Hosted on Zoom
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Join Dan Zoto for a virtual presentation through time as he explores the rich Native American history of Cape Cod. Dan will use the results of his recent analysis of the Eastham Historical Society's artifact collections to highlight technological and cultural changes over thousands of years of Native life on Cape Cod. Learn how people adapted to the Cape's dynamic environment as it changed from a small rise on a vast coastal plain to the narrow peninsula ringed with bays, estuaries, and salt marshes that it is today. Questions and answers will follow a 40-minute presentation.
Bio: Dan Zoto is an archaeologist living on Cape Cod. He holds a bachelor's degree in Anthropology from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst, and a master's in Anthropology from the University of Connecticut. Dan works as a Principal Investigator-Archaeology at Gray & Pape, Inc. in Providence. He has worked on over 100 archaeological projects throughout the northeast, including numerous surveys and excavations on Cape Cod. He has also done extensive public outreach work with the Cape Cod Museum of Natural History. His research interests include New England's Native American history, stone tools, lithic sourcing, and coastal archaeology.