Finding Mingo: A Man, a Myth, and a Beach

Finding Mingo: A Man, a Myth, and a Beach.

Finding Mingo: A Man, a Myth, and a Beach was a program hosted by Historic Beverly. Dr. Elizabeth Matelski of Endicott College hosted it. It is composed of her research on Robin Mingo, who is the namesake of Mingo Beach on campus. I attended this event, and I went in completely blind. I had never heard of any of the stories about Robin Mingo, and I definitely hadn’t heard of the true history behind the man. 

My biggest takeaway was the amount of people that have heard the myth of Robin Mingo. Matelski writes, “Legend has it that Mingo’s enslaver, Thomas Woodbury, promised him his freedom if the tides recessed enough for him to walk from the shore out to a rocky passage known as “Aunt Becky’s Ledge.”’ (Matelski, 2024). 

Even though it is a myth, I learned a lot about this story. I talked to the residents that attended this event. Two of them said that they had lived in the area their whole lives, and both of them said that they had been told this story as a kid. There is a children’s book that a lot of people in the area have that tells the myth of Robin Mingo.

While I talked to these people, I learned that a lot of them knew a lot about the history of Beverly. One couple researched the deed of their house and the names of those who lived there prior to them. Their property went all the way back to the 1700s, so they knew a lot about the history of the property from back then. While this was definitely a lot of passionate citizens that are interested in history, this really showed me that there is definitely a population of the city that is engulfed in its history. Events like this one that Historic Beverly puts on help to either deepen peoples’ knowledge of the city or give them baseline information, like I was given.

Elizabeth Matelski Interview

Elizabeth Matelski is a history professor at Endicott College. Finding Mingo was presented by her, as it was all of her own research on the subject. I had the pleasure of interviewing her about the program on her research she did in conjunction with Historic Beverly. 

She spoke very highly of Historic Beverly in my interview with her. She mentioned that this was the place where she did the bulk of her research. While lots of documents are scanned and digitized in the modern age, Historic Beverly has a collection of plenty of documents that are not digitized in their archives. She went in person because of this reason, and she found some of her most valuable documents in their physical archives (E. Matelski, personal communication, December 9, 2024).

She also spoke on Historic Beverly’s work outside of just helping her out. She said, “Historic Beverly has been at the forefront of revealing hidden histories and exploring people that traditionally have been left out of the historical narrative,” (E. Matelski, personal communication, December 9, 2024). Finding Mingo is a great example of this, as is the Set at Liberty exhibit. 

She also said that they are very good at accommodating the needs of those who engage in their work. Since the Cabot House is an old, historical building, there is no elevator or way to get up to the second floor, which is where they hold their events. Because of this, they have been using Zoom as a way to access their programs, even prior to the COVID-19 pandemic (E. Matelski, personal communication, December 9, 2024). They have a very high Zoom turnout, as at the Finding Mingo event, I noticed that there were about the same amount of virtual attendees as in-person ones.