A fun online quiz from the Watkins Museum of History will help you answer a question you might not have asked yourself before: Which Free Stater do you most resemble?
“From 1854 to 1861, thousands of men and women came together for an important cause: Ensuring that the Kansas Territory entered the Union as a free state,” the quiz begins. Take the quick 10-question quiz to get matched up with one of 15 historic people. You’ll be able to read a little bit about your quiz result, and the other Free Staters, too.
Naturally, abolitionist John Brown is one of the results. If your answers match you with him, you’ll see this message: “Bold, dedicated, and sure of purpose, you’ll stop at nothing to accomplish your goals. Even the law won’t dissuade you from trying to root out injustice.”
The quiz is a non-tragic prelude to the upcoming exhibition, Encountering John Brown, which “explores the history of the man who helped start the Civil War through firsthand accounts and vivid illustrations of the Americans, from widely recognized to largely unknown, whose lives were altered by their encounters with the man,” according to a news release from the museum.
Without giving away too many spoilers, here are a few of the other possible quiz results:
• First Lieutenant William Dominick Matthews, a member of the Independent Battery, U.S. Colored Light Artillery. Prior to the Civil War, he operated a boarding house that was used as part of the Underground Railroad, and he helped many enslaved people escape from Missouri.
• Julia Louisa Lovejoy, a prolific writer who documented conflicts between Free State and proslavery causes in letters to newspapers in a time when female correspondents were uncommon.
• James Redpath, a writer who went to the south to witness slavery firsthand and interviewed enslaved people to provide northern readers with a rare perspective of slavery, started a newspaper called “Crusader of Freedom,” and documented the Battle of Osawatomie.
Find the quiz at this link. Taking it will also earn you a discount on a ticket to the exhibition.
Hours for the exhibition will be noon to 8 p.m. daily this Saturday, Sept. 4, through Saturday, Nov. 6 in the museum’s first floor community room. Read more about it here. Masks are required for everyone ages 2 and up.
More local history coverage:
Molly Adams / Lawrence Times
