The Connecticut Museum is excited to invite you to experience an original work of music based on manuscripts from our collection!
While researching for another project, C. Leonard Raybon (Associate Professor of Music at Tulane University) discovered two journals and other writings by Hannah Hadassah Hickok held at the Connecticut Museum of Culture and History. Fascinated by the young woman revealed in the writings – whom he describes as “sometimes catty, sometimes capricious, always adventurous, and eternally self-deprecating” – Raybon discovered that Hannah was the matriarch of the storied Smiths of Glastonbury, CT. The Smiths were abolitionists, suffragists, and non-conformists, and Hannah’s daughters drew national attention in the 1870s for refusing to pay their taxes because they could not vote.
Raybon has composed a concert of completely original music highlighting Hannah’s sayings, her poetry, her childhood rivalries, her readings, her opinions, and her daughters and their activism. Professor Raybon, the Connecticut Museum, and the Glastonbury Historical Society are partnering to present this work to the public in a one-time performance.
The concert will be held on November 8th at 7:30 pm at First Church of Glastonbury at 2183 Main Street, Glastonbury. First Church was the Smith family’s congregation, so it’s a fitting place to host this unique musical experience! After the one-hour performance, there will be a talkback with composer Leonard Raybon and Diane Hoover of the Glastonbury Historical Society.
This program is free to attend, but you can make a donation at the door to support the host venue. Please RSVP by clicking the button below to let us know you’re coming!
About the Composer
C. Leonard Raybon is Associate Professor of Music, Director of Choirs, and Artistic Director of Summer Lyric Theatre at Tulane University. He is also the Director of Music at Rayne Memorial United Methodist Church. Raybon is the founder of Sacred Nine Project (sacrednine.com), where he engages with music, texts, and events from an earlier America in order to help shape a future one. Most recently, he collaborated with John Wood Sweet, creating a kind of musical companion to his multi-award-winning book, The Sewing Girl’s Tale, about the first woman in the United States to sue for sexual assault (1793). In November 2023, Raybon’s article, “Oh Don’t You Want to Go,” about the issue of whites singing African American Spirituals, was published in Journal of Singing. Upcoming projects in 2025 will be in Boston for the American Academy of Religion, where the topic will be the prolific Revolutionary American composer, William Billings. For 2026, Raybon will create a cantata for Swarthmore college, inspired by Murder in a Mill Town, by Bruce Dorsey, and provide another concert for the University of Pittsburgh, grappling with the troubled legacy of Stephen Collins Foster. Raybon’s “The Busy Bee” is published by Santa Barbara, and he has a piece upcoming with GIA Publications this fall. Raybon also hosts the Sacred Nine Project Podcast.
