Annabelle Svahn

Melina Robertson

The museum is pleased to partner with The Governor's Academy for the seventh installment of our popular "Student Symposium" series. Two local histories—each of them framed below—will be presented by Academy seniors Melina Robertson and Annabelle Svahn. The November 14th program in the Academy’s Frost Building will begin at 7:00pm, with a reception preceding at 6:30. The program is free and open to the public, but advance reservations are required. Sign up below or contact us at 978-462-2681 or info@newburyhistory.org.

“The Franco-American Orphanage in Lowell, MA” by Melina Robertson '20

Though Ms. Robertson’s grandmother was not orphaned, she spent a year of her childhood in an orphanage. Why? What caused Theresa Maurais’s parents to send her in 1943 to an orphanage in an imposing brick mansion (the Ayer estate) that Lowell’s Franco-American community and the parish of St. Joseph’s Catholic Church had founded around the turn of the 20th century? In Ms. Robertson’s quest for an answer, she learned about highs and lows in the immigrant experience of her maternal grandmother’s French Canadian family and community in Lowell. And she discovered that the Franco-American Orphanage was itself a grail. How so? That you’ll have to discover for yourself by coming to hear her presentation.

Melina Robertson, a senior at The Governor's Academy from Byfield, is a passionate student of history, literature, and science. In her free time, she enjoys participating in the school's theater and softball programs.

“Jewish Immigrants in early 20th-century Portsmouth, NH” by Annabelle Svahn '20

At the turn of the 20th century, five brothers fled pogroms in the Ukraine and landed in America, all of them settling in Portsmouth’s run-down dockyard neighborhood of Puddle Dock. Ironically, Abraham Millhandler—the youngest brother who would pursue the American Dream as Abraham Shapiro—settled across the street from the former home of Thomas Bailey Aldrich, whose 1892 poem “Unguarded Gates” defied the welcoming promise of Emma Lazarus’s poem on the Statue of Liberty. There, in that portside district of working class immigrants, the Shapiro brothers, their wives, and children navigated local and national cross currents of anti-Semitic bigotry, xenophobic white nationalist nativism, and acceptance born of demand for cheap labor in some cases and, in other cases, of America’s professed creed and aspiration. In the Shapiro brothers’ story, Ms. Svahn revives a moral for our own time of conflict over immigration.

Annabelle Svahn, a senior at The Governor's Academy from Newbury, is an avid lover of history and creative writing. In her free time, she enjoys competing on Evenstride's equestrian team and is a historic role player at Strawbery Banke Museum in Portsmouth, NH. Annabelle’s paper will be published in the winter issue of The Concord Review.

Thursday, November 14
Reception 6:30pm, Program 7:00pm
The Governor’s Academy, Frost Building. The Frost Building is #13 on this campus map.

Sign up below, or contact us at 978-462-2681 or info@newburyhistory.org