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History of Amherst is highlighted in library series

AMHERST – Aine Donovan, executive director of the Ethics Institute at Dartmouth College, will present “From Honor to Integrity: An Exploration of What it Means to Adhere to the Common Good” from 7-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 9, at the Amherst Town Library.

This is the first program in “Let’s Talk History,” a five-part adult evening series at the library, Since Amherst is celebrating its 250th anniversary, all five programs will weave informative pieces of Amherst history into the presentation.

Donovan will include local history and some of the work she’s doing with Justice David Souter on civic responsibility. She’s currently working on a new book, “Reconstructing Honor.”

Scandals in business, governments and schools have become commonplace, but has it always been so? Is the societal moral compass spinning out of control, or do we merely have a different value orientation? Donovan’s presentation will explore the notion of honor as an element of societal cohesion and whether honor exists in the 21st century.

Donovan is the executive director of the Ethics Institute, a consortium of faculty concerned with teaching and research in applied and professional ethics. She received her doctoral degree from the University of San Francisco in 1994, and taught at several colleges before becoming executive director at Dartmouth’s Ethics Institute.

Donovan received a faculty appointment to Dartmouth Medical School in 2002 and to the Tuck School of Business in 2003.

The second program in the series, “Amherst Stories: Places, People and Events,” will be from 7-8:30 p.m. Tuesday, March 16, in the main reading room. The presentation will bring together a panel of Amherst residents, Bill Wichman, Jackie Marshall, Bill Veillette and Bob Rowe, to share Amherst stories in history and engage in an exchange with the audience.

Wichman will give an introduction and review Amherst maps. He will reconstruct the changes in town lands over the history of the town, from “howling wilderness” in 1735 to the present.

Marshall will present information about Amherst’s ethnic past. Rowe and Veillette will tell the story of the widow Anna Ayer’s murder and Daniel Farmer’s subsequent trial, conviction and hanging in Amherst in 1821-22. More than 3,000 people attended the trial and 10,000 viewed the hanging, which was the last to occur in Amherst.

Wichman moved to Amherst in 1967. A retired systems engineer, he edits the Newsletter for the Historical Society of Amherst.

Marshall is a professional genealogist, genealogy chairman of the Historical Society of Amherst and assistant museum curator of the Wigwam and Chapel museums.

Rowe is a 40-year resident of New Hampshire, a retired attorney and former New Hampshire judge. He is a member of the state House of Representatives for Amherst and Milford.

Rowe has written four books describing the Colonial and Federal periods in Amherst. Rowe and his wife, Helen, reside in Jones Tavern, the first tavern in Amherst Village and the site of inquisitions of suspected Tory sympathizers during the Revolutionary War.

Veillette is a 12-year resident of Amherst. He is treasurer of the Amherst Historical Society and former executive director of the New Hampshire Historical Society.

Other programs in “Let’s Talk History” are “Meet Henry David Thoreau” at 7 p.m. March 23, “Vera Meyer Plays The Glass Harmonica” at 7 p.m. April 13 and “And Now … Mark Twain!” at 7 p.m. April 20.

To register for the series, call 673-2288, e-mailing library@amherst.lib.nh.us or visit www.amherst.lib.nh.us and select Calendar of Events.