Venture Smith’s life and story is one of Connecticut’s most important. Enslaved here until mid-life, he became a successful Connecticut landowner and businessman.

Karl Stofko, town historian for East Haddam and expert on the Venture Smith family genealogy, will talk about how he started Venture Smith Day (coming up in September) more than 25 years ago, and how the annual event in East Haddam has grown each year to include new scholarship and newly discovered descendants. Liz Wood, executive director of the Stonington Historical Society, will talk about the new permanent exhibition about Smith at its Lighthouse Museum which incorporates new research and findings from an archaeological dig at a site nearby where he was enslaved. Elizabeth Normen will talk about making Smith’s published life story (1798) accessible to teachers and elementary and middle school students to engage more honestly in the history of the founding of Connecticut.