An Evening with Joan Aleshire  

Two Events | Two Locations!

Join us for a rare opportunity to gain personal insight into Peale family history. Gather at 5:00pm for a behind-the-scenes building tour, then join historian Jean Baker, PhD, for a conversation and discussion with author Joan Aleshire about her new novel Belfield. The novel is “based on an incident in the life of Charles Willson Peale, Early American painter, Revolutionary War veteran, inventor, museum founder, farmer. Although he opposed slavery publicly, Peale accepted an enslaved family into his household as payment for a debt.” He eventually freed the husband and wife, but their son, Moses Williams, remained with the Peale family until his late ’20s. Charles Willson Peale taught Moses to be a profile (silhouette) cutter, and he worked in Peale’s Philadelphia natural history museum. “In imagining the Peale family’ s life on an 18th-century farm, the book explores ethics and inclusion: the contradictions at the heart of this country.”

A book signing immediately follows.  

Image credit: Belfield Farm by Charles Willson Peale, 1816. Public Domain