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Academic Speakers
A series of academic talks will be held at the Orange County Public Library throughout the day. These talks will explore aspects of the congress, its impact, and its legacy.
Speaker Schedule
10 AM - “First in Freedom: North Carolina’s Third Provincial Congress and American Independence,” with Kathleen DuVal, Professor of History at the University of North Carolina
11:30 AM - "The Experiences of Marginalized Communities: how they would have Internalized the Ideas and Issues of the Time and how they would have Interacted with the Delegates at the Congress,” a panel discussion with Arwin Smallwood, Dean of the College of Arts Social Sciences and Humanities at North Carolina Central University, Lawrence Dunmore III, Tribal Historian for the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, and Susannah Haury, Teaching Assistant at University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
1 PM - Winners of the North Carolina Sons of the American Revolution Oratory Contest
2 PM - “Winning the Backcountry: the Role of the Third Provincial Congress in Persuading People who had been Involved in the Regulator Movement,” with Carole Troxler, Professor Emerita of Elon University
3:30 PM - "The Congress and its Legacy," with Charles Plambeck Adjunct Professor of International Taxation at the UNC School of Law
5 PM - “Freemasonry and the Ideals of the American Revolution,” with Alfred Serff . This talk includes a tour of the lodge and will be held at 142 W. King Street.
About Our Speakers
Kathleen DuVal is a professor of early American history at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. Her books include Independence Lost: Lives on the Edge of the American Revolution, Native Nations: A Millennium in North America (winner of the Bancroft Prize), and the U.S. history textbook Give Me Liberty! She has published in The Atlantic, Time magazine, and the New York Times and is a regular book reviewer for the Wall Street Journal. This November, she will appear in Ken Burns’s new PBS documentary on the American Revolution.
Dr. Arwin D. Smallwood is the Dean of the College of Arts Social Sciences and Humanities at North Carolina Central University. Prior to becoming Dean he served as the Interim Vice Provost for Undergraduate Education and before that Chair of the Department of History and Political Science at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University in Greensboro. He received his BA in Political Science in 1988 and MA in History in 1990 from North Carolina Central University. He received his Ph.D. in early U.S and African American history from The Ohio State University in 1997. He was appointed the Director of African American Studies at Bradley University where he also taught history, 1994-2003. He was recruited to the University of Memphis to build its Ph.D. program in African American History and where he taught history, 2003 to 2013. He then became Chair of the Department of History at North Carolina Agricultural and Technical State University, 2013-2018 and later Chair of the newly organized Department of History and Political Science, 2018-2022 and before leaving to join the faculty North Carolina Central.
Lawrence Dunmore, III is a descendant of the Saponi, Occaneechi, Tutelo, and related Eastern Siouan-speaking Tribes that inhabited the Piedmont regions of Virginia and North Carolina in pre-Columbian times and that later combined as one community at Fort Christianna under the Treaty of 1713 with the Colony of Virginia. He is an enrolled member of the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation, a State-recognized Indian tribe in North Carolina. He served in various positions on the Occaneechi-Saponi Tribal Council including Chairperson and Vice Chairperson, and continues to work to preserve Eastern Siouan culture, history, and folklore. Currently, he serves as a folklorist and as one of the historians for the Occaneechi Band of the Saponi Nation and has published many articles about the tribe’s history. Lawrence is an attorney and currently serves as a Commissioner for the State of Maryland Commission on Indian Affairs. He works for the Bureau of Trust Funds Administration at the US Department of the Interior. In 2022, he was a recipient of the Department of the Interior, Distinguished Service Award for Outstanding Service in response to the Secretary’s Indian Boarding School Initiative.
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Susannah Haury is a doctoral candidate in History at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. She is advised by Dr. Kathleen DuVal and Dr. Wayne Lee. She holds an MA in History from the College of Charleston and The Citadel joint program. Her dissertation research examines militiamen and their communities in the Revolutionary North Carolina backcountry, focusing on issues of agency and identity among citizens and combatants alike.
Carole Watterson Troxler retired from Elon University after three decades of teaching. She has written several books and twenty-something articles and essays focused on the American Revolution in the southern backcountry and loyalist migration after the war. Her talk will draw on the period between the Regulator defeat in the 1771 Battle of Alamance and the outbreak of the American Revolution, territory usually avoided by historians. Her initial attention to the Regulators appeared in 1999 in Shuttle & Plow: A History of Alamance County, North Carolina. Her latest Regulator treatment is “Land Tenure as Regulator Grievance and Revolutionary Tool,” in the 2017 collection, New Voyages to Carolina: Toward Reinterpretation of North Carolina. Also, she produced a historical novel exploring Regulator issues: The Red Dog: A Tale of the Carolina Frontier. The fiction was an outgrowth of her 2011 book, Farming Dissenters: The Regulator Movement in Piedmont North Carolina. In 2010, The N.C. Literary and Historical Society honored her and her late husband, George W. Troxler, with the Crittenden Prize.
Charles Plambeck was a Managing Director of Deutsche Bank and Citigroup in London and New York before turning to legal scholarship and teaching. Prior to his banking career, he was an official in the U.S. Treasury Department and worked in private law practice in Washington DC. He currently is an Adjunct Professor of International Taxation at the UNC School of Law, and researches North Carolina constitutional history. His most recent publication focuses on the 750 year pedigree of the right to free elections in North Carolina. He is a graduate of UNC with both a BA in Economics and International Relations and a JD in from the School of Law."
Alfred Serff was born, raised, and educated in Pennsylvania, the son of Frederick H. and Winnifred M. Serff. His father was a Freemason and was Mr. Serff’s first example of what a Freemason can be. In 1990, Mr. Serff got the opportunity to petition for the degrees of Freemasonry. After completing the three-step initiation process and being declared a Master Mason, Mr. Serff began an eight-year term as the secretary of Eagle Lodge #19, A.F.&A.M., in Hillsborough. After completing this period, he received the first of many awards for his service, the “Secretary of Distinction,” and proceeded through the officers’ chairs to the presiding office, the “Worshipful Master,” in 2001. After his term as Worshipful Master, Mr. Serff served as lodge steward and pro-tem’ed other offices when the regular man was indisposed or absent. After retirement in 2021, he worked to memorize the entire Masonic ritual, and in 2022 was designated a “Certified Lecturer”, tasked with helping lodges becoming proficient in the correct presentation of the various rituals. In addition, Mr. Serff recently completed an update of The History of Eagle Lodge #19, A.F.&A.M, now available for purchase.
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