November Lunch & Learn – “All the World’s Sorrows: Hannah Worcester Hicks and the Civil War in the Cherokee Nation.”
The Bartlesville Area History Museum is excited to announce our, "November Lunch and Learn" event will feature guest speaker, Dr. Michelle M. Martin. Dr. Martin completed her BA and MA degrees in history at Western Michigan University. From 1997-2015 she lived in Kansas and Oklahoma where she taught history at the community college and university levels and worked as a museum professional and historical consultant to the television and film industries. She earned her doctorate in history (and a minor in museum studies) at the University of New Mexico in 2022. Her areas of interest include Native American history, the U.S. West from 1800-1925, interracial marriage and family in North America, and Public History. Her current project explores an interracial marriage in the Muskoka Nation during the Indian Territorial period.
Join us as Dr. Martin discusses how during the American Civil War women and children in the Cherokee Nation suffered tremendously. Hannah Worcester Hicks, the daughter of famed missionary Samuel Austin Worcester, and her Cherokee husband Abijah Hicks lived near Fort Gibson as the war raged in the western Ozarks. Hannah’s diary provides community members, her descendants, and scholars with insight into the chaos of war in the Ozarks, the important connections between the Cherokee Nation’s citizens and communities like Van Buren and Fort Smith, and the intense division at work in the Cherokee Nation at a critical time for the nation’s survival. Hannah's tragic story illustrates the human cost of war in Indigenous nations and western Ozark communities.
This event will be held Friday, November 15th, from 12:00 p.m. - 1 p.m. Attendees are encouraged to enjoy the museum’s current exhibit, “Social Life and Early Traditions,” on display from October 7th through December 31st. Tables and chairs will be set up for people who bring a lunch and little ones may enjoy our Faces and Places coloring station.
The Museum is open Monday through Friday 8:00 a.m. - 4:00 p.m. (closed on weekends and holidays) at 401 S. Johnstone Avenue, 5th Floor. Museum entry is free but donations are always welcome. No reservation is necessary. If you have questions, you may reach Bartlesville Area History Museum staff at (918) 338-4290 or eat0@eau0eav0eaw0.