Please note: Optional Dinner will start at 6:00 PM. The Lecture will start at 7:00 PM. To make dinner reservations, email CvilleCWRT@gmail.com and indicate your entree choice: beef, salmon or chicken. Dinner includes salad and dessert. Cost is $24 for members and $30 for non-members.

LECTURE TOPIC: Mary Harker was a young Quaker girl from Mt. Holly, New Jersey. John Slaughter was a slaveholder living and working in Lynchburg, VA. At the beginning of the Civil War, they had been married eight years and had three sons with a fourth child on the way. So how did these two people, with obviously disparate backgrounds, end up together? How did Mary reconcile her Quaker upbringing with managing a home with five enslaved servants? And would their relationship survive the war when Mary traveled home to her parents and John stayed to defend Lynchburg against an approaching Union army?

SPEAKER BIO: Robert Hancock is the Director of Collections & Senior Curator at the American Civil War Museum. He is a graduate of Virginia Commonwealth University with degrees in Art History and Museum Studies. He oversees the continuing preservation of the Museum's diverse collection including the maintenance and interpretation of the Museum's historic house, the White House of the Confederacy. He has been with the Museum since 1991.