Stuffy McInnis
(At the 2025 Annual Business Meeting)
John "Stuffy" McInnis was a renowned baseball player and resident of Manchester-by-the-Sea, having played for teams like the Philadelphia Athletics and Boston Red Sox. He won four World Series titles and was a teammate of Babe Ruth, contributing to the Red Sox's 1918 victory. A respected community member, he is buried in Rosedale Cemetery. Kory Curcuru from Gloucester's 1623 Studios will share Stuffy's inspiring journey to the major leagues.
This lecture is to follow a reception and business meeting as part of the 2025 Annual Meeting of Members. The event is free and open to all with membership encouraged. Only members are permitted to vote in the business meeting.
Location: First Parish Community Hall, 1 Chapel Lane, MBTS
Date: Thursday, October 9th
Time: 7 pm
Reception at 6 pm, Members' Business Meeting at 6:45 pm
Taxi to America:
A Greek Orphan’s Adoption Journey
Join us for an inspiring event with Stella Nahatis, local Manchester author of Taxi to America, A Greek Orphan’s Adoption Journey. Stella was born in northern Greece and lived there until adoption by Greek emigrants landed the eleven-year-old orphan in the United States of America. After overcoming the hurdles inherent to the immigrant experience—assimilation, language barrier, and cultural differences—a resilient and strong Stella embraced her new country with fervor. She would go on to have a successful career with Trans World Airlines In-Flight Services. Her passion and love for family, and for people in general, steered her into volunteerism starting when she was a teenager.
Come to hear her remarkable story, connect, and leave inspired
Location: First Parish Community Hall, 1 Chapel Lane, MBTS
Date: Thursday, October 23rd
Time: 6:30-8 PM
Doors open at 6 PM for socializing and refreshments
Grappling with Manchester Slavery
Manchester, sometimes regarded as an abolitionist stronghold, has a more complicated story to tell. Lise Breen draws from forgotten accounts to trace a Manchester-focused history of slavery. This talk divulges the names of some of those enslaved and their enslavers, and shares records that reveal aspects about their lives–including family separation and sale, resistance to enslavement, and the persistence of quasi-slavery.
Lise Breen is an independent scholar whose research surfaces stories often ignored in Cape Ann’s histories. She has reconstructed aspects of the lives of African-descended people who endured the forces of slavery and has uncovered hidden accounts of captains and investors in the slave trade. She has shared some of this work at various museums talks, including at the Cape Ann Museum and in publications such as Gloucester Encounters. Her work has been supported in part by the Munson Institute, the Phillips Library, and the Gilder Lehrman Center for the Study of Slavery, Resistance and Abolition, and others. See her chapter, “Hidden City: Slavery and Gloucester’s Quadricentennial in Gloucester Encounters: Essays on the Cultural History of the City 1623-2023.
Location: First Parish Community Hall, 1 Chapel Lane, MBTS
Date: Thursday, November 20th
Time: 6:30-8 PM
Doors open at 6 PM for socializing and refreshments
Past Talks
Charles S. Hopkinson (6/19/25)
At our summer Sharksmouth soirée, Martha Oaks, Henrietta Gates and Heaton Robertson Chief Curator at the Cape Ann Museum, speaks on local and internationally-known artist Charles S. Hopkinson in memory of his recently departed grandson, Charles Shurcliff.
Furniture-Making in Manchester: A Surprising Story (5/14/25)
Brock Jobe, Professor Emeritus of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, delves into Manchester's hey-day as a furniture-making center in the early-to-mid nineteenth-century.
Murder in Rockport, Massachusetts: Terror in a Small Town (4/24/25)
Delving into a cold-case murder from 1930s Rockport, Massachusetts, local authors Robert Fitzgibbon and Wayne Soini launch their book in which they reveal long-lost details about the crime, the investigation and a surprise suspect from the state police archives.
Garden Herbs: Their Cultivation, Cookery, and Caveats (3/20/25)
Judith Sumner, botanist, presents a slide illustrated lecture that traces the European herbal tradition among plants carried by early settlers to the New World — used today in ancient traditions, gourmet cookery, military history, and modern medicine.
Anna Coleman Ladd: Sculptor of War (11/21/24)
Manchester vs. the Trolley (9/26/24)
Curtis Sisters: Golfing Pioneers and Women Athletes of the Century, at Sharksmouth (6/26/24)
Summers by the Sea: Masconomo House & the Resort Era (5/30/24)
America’s First Millionaires: The China Traders of Essex County (4/25/24)
Graverobbing, Harvard's Medical School, and Chebacco Parish (3/28/24)
Mushrooms of the 1661 Cemetery:
From Death to Life (2/29/24)
Abigail Hooper Trask 1788-1885: Manchester's Business Leader (03/22/23)
Manchester 1772: A Small Fishing Town On The Eve Of Revolution (11/08/22)
Nabby Hooper: A Girl Like No Other (10/19/22)
Past Talks
Charles S. Hopkinson (6/19/25)
At our summer Sharksmouth soirée, Martha Oaks, Henrietta Gates and Heaton Robertson Chief Curator at the Cape Ann Museum, speaks on local and internationally-known artist Charles S. Hopkinson in memory of his recently departed grandson, Charles Shurcliff.
Furniture-Making in Manchester: A Surprising Story (5/14/25)
Brock Jobe, Professor Emeritus of the Winterthur Museum in Delaware, delves into Manchester's hey-day as a furniture-making center in the early-to-mid nineteenth-century.
Murder in Rockport, Massachusetts: Terror in a Small Town (4/24/25)
Delving into a cold-case murder from 1930s Rockport, Massachusetts, local authors Robert Fitzgibbon and Wayne Soini launch their book in which they reveal long-lost details about the crime, the investigation and a surprise suspect from the state police archives.
Garden Herbs: Their Cultivation, Cookery, and Caveats (3/20/25)
Judith Sumner, botanist, presents a slide illustrated lecture that traces the European herbal tradition among plants carried by early settlers to the New World — used today in ancient traditions, gourmet cookery, military history, and modern medicine.
Anna Coleman Ladd: Sculptor of War (11/21/24)