Medicine and Folk Magic in the Port City and Beyond

Medicine and Folk Magic in the Port City and Beyond

Thursday, April 6, 2023, at 6:30pm

Join Bellamy Mansion Museum’s Board Member, Lynn Mollenauer for her upcoming presentation (via Zoom) that will explore the ways in which mainstream medicine and folk magic continued to overlap well into the 20^th century.

Among the numerous ads published in Wilmington’s Black-owned newspaper, the Daily Record, Alexander Huggins’s notices for “medicinal roots, barks, herbs, and indigenous plants, mosses, vines, venus fly traps” stand out prominently. Huggins (1850-1942), one of the many Black proprietors who flourished in the city’s central business district before the 1898 massacre, exported crude drugs such as yellowroot, sassafras, and jalap to buyers as far away as China. Huggins’s medicinal roots and herbs were used not only in home remedies, though, but also, in a variety of magic charms. Using Huggins’s wares as a starting point, this talk will explore the ways in which mainstream medicine and folk magic continued to overlap well into the 20th century.

CLICK HERE TO REGISTER!
$10 per person suggested donation

Questions? Email Jen Fenninger at jfenninger@bellamymansion.org.