Brown Seminar: Women Property Holders of Boston’s Waterfront in the Late 1700s

In this program, Katy Lasdow will explore how maps and deeds documenting women property holders on Boston’s waterfront in the late 1700s illuminate women’s persistence in these neighborhoods despite mounting legal and financial exclusion by real estate corporations.

Dr. Katy Lasdow is Director of Public History and Assistant Professor of Public History at Suffolk University. Her book Wharfed Out: Improvement and Inequity on the Early American Urban Waterfront, which chronicles a story of gentrification and resistance in early American cities, is due out next year with UVA Press.

This talk is part of the Richard H. Brown Seminar on the Historical Geography of the American Revolutionary Era and was recorded November 13, 2025.

Maps from this Talk