History Talks:
Reminiscing with Friends at Brooklyn's Green-Wood
Cemetery and Arboretum
by Author, Historian and GNPS Member, Bill Greer
Wednesday, March 3, at 5:00pm
The History in Our Backyard
In this illustrated talk, Bill Greer reminisces with historical friends who are buried at Brooklyn’s Green-Wood Cemetery. The friends are eighteen leading, supporting, and cameo characters appearing in his book A Dirty Year: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in Gilded Age New York. The friends range from Henry Bergh, founder of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, to Brooklyn preacher Henry Ward Beecher and others caught up in the scandal that engulfed him, to theater impresario William Niblo, who introduced burlesque to New York. Meet these friends yourself and hear some interesting anecdotes about their lives. And see Green-Wood bursting into bloom in a gallery of pictures Bill took of this landmark arboretum while visiting them through the spring of 2020.
AUTHOR BIO: Bill Greer has spent decades exploring New York and its history. His recent book, A Dirty Year: Sex, Suffrage, and Scandal in Gilded Age New York, is a nonfiction narrative of 1872 New York, a city teeming with social upheaval and sexual revolution. His novel The Mevrouw Who Saved Manhattan portrays the city’s founding as New Amsterdam. He has been a trustee of the New Netherland Institute, serving as its treasurer, chairing its program to establish the New Netherland Research Center with the New York State Library, and receiving the Institute’s Howard Hageman award. He has spoken on New York history throughout the Hudson Valley, and over the past year, online. He holds a Ph.D. from the University of Pennsylvania.
This event is open to the public, but please register to receive the Zoom information, reminder emails and we can contact you in case of any scheduling changes.
Visit Bill at BillsBrownstone.com.