Erica Donnis, CCCA Board Member and Special Collections Director at Champlain College, will be co-presenting at this free virtual event sponsored generously by Pat Robins and Lisa Schamberg.

The current opioid epidemic has many connections to the past. Champlain College's eighth annual Local History Event will feature two historians' research on opium, morphine, and opioid addiction in nineteenth-century Burlington. Independent scholar Gary G. Shattuck will present the history and context of opioids in the Queen City and the State of Vermont in his talk titled Behind the Curtain: Examining the Causes of Addiction in Nineteenth-Century Vermont. Champlain College Special Collections Director Erica Donnis will present The Vibrant Life and Tragic Death of Lucy Benedict Henderson. A resident of Adams and South Union Streets, Mrs. Henderson (1861-1896) was in many ways an ordinary middle class wife and mother, but she suffered from chronic illness, and eventually, morphine addiction.

Historian Gary G. Shattuck is the author of Green Mountain Opium Eaters: A History of Early Addiction in Vermont (2017) and By the Wand of Some Magician: Embracing Modernity in Mid-Nineteenth Century Vermont (2020). Champlain College Special Collections Director Erica Donnis is the author of The History of Shelburne Farms: A Changing Landscape, An Evolving Vision (2010).

For more information and to register, please visit https://www.champlain.edu/academics/library/special-collections/local-history-event