|
The EIHS 2025 season featured several public presentations on a range of topics that
piqued interest among EIHS members and friends.
On January 13, we learned about the Gullah-Geechee culture and history of the Sea
Islands off Georgia and South Carolina from Martha Bireda, Director of the Blanchard
House Museum of African American History and Culture of Charlotte County. While
learning about Gullah healing practices, herbal medicines and an ethos of community
sharing, attendees were treated to sassafras tea and sesame candies popular on the
Sea Islands.
On February 10, EIHS President, Ellie Bunting, and Board member of the EIHS and
Friends of Matanzas Pass Preserve, Terry Cain, shared lessons from the precarious
history of establishing the 600-acre Estero Bay Aquatic Preserve (Florida’s first) and
the 60-acre Matanzas Pass Preserve (adjacent to the EIHS Historic Cottage) that
shelters native flora and fauna. These unique ecosystems — threatened by
development or encroachment from their inception to the present day — are a hard-won legacy that we must be vigilant to preserve.
Perennially popular speaker, Robert Macomber, on March 10 regaled the EIHS about
The Freedmen’s Bureau in Florida after the Civil War — including one fact-finding
mission to then-desolate southwest Florida. Macomber traced resistance in both the
southern and northern US to aiding free slaves’ integration into post-war society, and
the heroic efforts of military and civilian teachers to help educate and empower them.
| 
