<div><font face="times new roman,serif" size="4"><strong><em>Dear Friends,</em></strong></font></div>
<div><strong><em><font face="times new roman,serif" size="4">Please let your friends know about this Tour coming up this coming Saturday. Hope you can make it.</font></em></strong></div>
<div><font face="times new roman,serif" size="4"><strong><em>Steve</em></strong></font></div>
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<div><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" size="4"><strong><em>Second Saturday Tours of Florence History:<br></em>NORTHAMPTON ASSOCIATION OF EDUCATION AND INDUSTRY<br></strong></font></div>
<div><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" size="4"><strong>Saturday, July 12 leaves from Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue at 10:00 am<br></strong></font></div>
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<div><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" size="4">Before there was a Florence, Massachusetts there was the Northampton Association of Education and Industry. Established from the remnants of the Northampton Silk Company in what was then known as Broughton's Meadows, the NAEI sought to reorganize society on a cooperative basis. Its constitution, adopted April 8, 1842 made emphatic this goal of reform:<br>
It is impossible to survey the present condition of the world . . . without perceiving the great evils that afflict humanity, and recognizing many of them as the direct consequences of existing social arrangements. Life is with some a mere round of frivolous occupations or vicious enjoyments, with most a hard struggle for the bare means of subsistence. The former are exempted from productive labor while they enjoy its fruits: upon the latter it is imposed as a task with unreasonable severity and inadequate compensation.<br>
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<div><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" size="4">Its four-and-a-half-year run ended not in an explosive breakup but a gradual transition to what NAEI historian Christopher Clark has called "the neighborhood community." By the time of its last meeting on November 7, 1846 many of its leaders were already settling into private homes in Eaton's Village Lots bordered by modern day Pine, Park and Maple Streets. By 1852 these utopian hangers-on had founded the village of Florence and began to build the great industries and institutions that fueled its expansion through the rest of the century.<br>
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<div><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" size="4">On Saturday, July 12 at 10 a.m. local historian Steve Strimer will lead a guided tour of the numerous sites that remain from the days of the NAEI when Sojourner Truth, Lydia Maria Child, William Lloyd Garrison, David Ruggles, Frederick Douglass, Wendell Phillips and others brought the struggle for immediate emancipation and equal rights before the people of Hampshire County. The tour will leave from the Sojourner Truth Memorial Statue at the corner of Park and Pine Street Florence. Donations will benefit the newly formed David Ruggles Center for Early Florence History and Underground Railroad Studies (</font><a href="http://www.davidrugglescenter.org/"><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" size="4">www.davidrugglescenter.org</font></a><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" size="4">). </font></div>
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<div><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" size="4">The next tour is scheduled for Saturday, August 9 and will emphasize the Watercure of David Ruggles and Charles Munde. If you have questions contact Steve Strimer at </font><a href="mailto:stevestrimer@gmail.com"><font face="trebuchet ms,sans-serif" size="4">stevestrimer@gmail.com</font></a></div>