We are so excited to invite you 4/30/26. 6-7 via zoom and live!

Taking Charge of Destiny: Black Activists and Freedom Seekers on Wayne County’s Underground Railroad by author Nick Patler

Available via zoom and broadcast live at Wayne County Historical Museum’s Community Room; 1150 N A St. Richmond, Indiana 47374

Nicholas Patler is a historian focused on African American history. He has a master’s in liberal arts from Harvard Extension School, and a master’s in arts from Bethany Theological Seminary in Richmond, Indiana, where he researched and wrote as his thesis, “An Early ‘Human Rights’ Movement on the Frontier: Building an Underground Railroad Community in Wayne County, Indiana, 1820-1850.” His recent published work is Pinchback: America’s First Black Governor (who had spent some time in Indiana as a young man). He also wrote a deeply researched essay on an Indianan, Mattie Cunningham Dolby, who would go on to become the first woman and the first African American woman installed as a minister in the Church of the Brethren.