Lectures, those events featuring knowledgeable experts discussing their subjects, are such yesterday’s news. How about instead a person actually becoming their subject and acting out the period in question?

On Wednesday, August 24 at 7 p.m. at the Vineyard Haven Library, Richard Boyleston takes the stage as an authentic colonial riflemen. His reenactment will include handmade period clothing, tools, rifles, and other accoutrements. But that’s just the beginning. Mr. Boyleston will take the audience on a long hunt, sleeping and making camp with the woodland native Americans (better pack the dopkit and a granola bar, maybe a change of undies too). Actually, no need to worry about whether or not the trail blazed ever leads homeward. Although Mr. Boyleston is authentic, the presentation will stay inside the library. He will close the evening with 18th century music and a question and answer period.

Mr. Boyleston comes by his knowledge by hard work and birthright. His ancestors arrived in Massachusetts in 1630 with the Mayflower/Winthrop fleet and Susanna Boyleston, his direct ancestor, was the mother of John Adams. It was the Boyleston family ring that was used by John Adams to seal the Treaty of Paris, thus formally ending the American Revolutionary War in 1783.

For more information, call 508-696-4211 or visit vhlibrary.org.