(376 Amherst Rd & Rt 202)
Help celebrate the 150th Anniversary of the signing of the Emancipation Proclamation by ringing the bell at the Pelham Historical Society Museum (the former Pelham Congregational Church 1840) on New Year’s Day.
On January 1 at 2:00 pm, churches and towns throughout the valley will ring their bells to recognize the moment the Emancipation Proclamation was signed, the document that led to the permanent end of slavery in the United States.
Join us at 2:00 PM up the hill at the museum and help us ring our bell. Please dress warmly, as there is no heat at the museum.
At 2:00 pm on New Year’s Day, January 1, 1863, using his war powers as president, Lincoln signed the Emancipation Proclamation, providing that all persons held as slaves would be ‘then, thenceforward, and forever free’. The Emancipation Proclamation made the permanent abolition of slavery a Union war aim and provided the legal framework for the emancipation of nearly all four million slaves as the Union armies advanced. Hearing of the Proclamation, many slaves escaped to Union lines as the army units moved south. At the end of the Civil War, slavery was forever outlawed in the United States with the ratification of the Thirteenth Amendment to the Constitution in December, 1865.