Last summer, Rokeby Museum director Jane Williamson received a crash course in the pitfalls of uniting past and present. After the police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and the shooting of five Dallas police officers, she placed a Black Lives Matter sign at the Route 7 entrance of the museum. It disappeared. So did the next nine identical signs she put up. What Williamson thought was a no-brainer for an institution commemorating a northern stop on the Underground Railroad turned out to be more contentious. That controversy might have come as no surprise to the Ferrisburgh homestead's 19th-century owners, who fought for the cause of ending slavery in the United States. Radical abolitionists Rowland Thomas and Rachel Gilpin Robinson were the second of four generations of Robinsons who called the Rokeby plot home. Placing — and replacing — the sign is just one way in which Williamson, 67, has illuminated Rokeby's relationship to national political narratives, both past and present. For the past 28 years, as volunteer and then director, she has worked to bring alive and share the estate's abolitionist history. Now, this summer will be Williamson's final season with Rokeby. "Being the director of a small historical organization is really, really hard," she said during a recent visit to the site. Williamson first encountered the Rokeby in 1989, when she put her degree in library science to work by volunteering to organize the institution's vast archives. In 1995, she succeeded Tom Kernan as director. Despite myriad challenges — funding paramount among them — she has made significant accomplishments during her tenure. It started small — with signage. In her early days, there were no way-finding designations for visitors. "In the beginning, it was so easy," Williamson said, referring to installing proper signage. "I thought I could bring it up a notch or two in terms of the professionalization of our presentation to the public." Two years after she became director, in 1997, Rokeby was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service — a nomination that Williamson had instigated. Then came the building project. In the early 2000s, Williamson began to put her efforts into raising more than $1 million to build an Underground Railroad Education Center. The new 2,500-square-foot structure, she believed, would be a critical addition to Rokeby's 11 historic buildings, putting its Underground Railroad history firmly and visibly at the…
Last summer, Rokeby Museum director Jane Williamson received a crash course in the pitfalls of uniting past and present. After the police killings of Philando Castile and Alton Sterling and the shooting of five Dallas police officers, she placed a Black Lives Matter sign at the Route 7 entrance of the museum. It disappeared. So did the next nine identical signs she put up. What Williamson thought was a no-brainer for an institution commemorating a northern stop on the Underground Railroad turned out to be more contentious. That controversy might have come as no surprise to the Ferrisburgh homestead's 19th-century owners, who fought for the cause of ending slavery in the United States. Radical abolitionists Rowland Thomas and Rachel Gilpin Robinson were the second of four generations of Robinsons who called the Rokeby plot home. Placing — and replacing — the sign is just one way in which Williamson, 67, has illuminated Rokeby's relationship to national political narratives, both past and present. For the past 28 years, as volunteer and then director, she has worked to bring alive and share the estate's abolitionist history. Now, this summer will be Williamson's final season with Rokeby. "Being the director of a small historical organization is really, really hard," she said during a recent visit to the site. Williamson first encountered the Rokeby in 1989, when she put her degree in library science to work by volunteering to organize the institution's vast archives. In 1995, she succeeded Tom Kernan as director. Despite myriad challenges — funding paramount among them — she has made significant accomplishments during her tenure. It started small — with signage. In her early days, there were no way-finding designations for visitors. "In the beginning, it was so easy," Williamson said, referring to installing proper signage. "I thought I could bring it up a notch or two in terms of the professionalization of our presentation to the public." Two years after she became director, in 1997, Rokeby was designated a National Historic Landmark by the National Park Service — a nomination that Williamson had instigated. Then came the building project. In the early 2000s, Williamson began to put her efforts into raising more than $1 million to build an Underground Railroad Education Center. The new 2,500-square-foot structure, she believed, would be a critical addition to Rokeby's 11 historic buildings, putting its Underground Railroad history firmly and visibly at the…