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Site of the home of Sarah Askin, a free African American from Pittsfield, which burned to the ground in the early 1970s. Her husband, Nelson Askin, purchased land in this area in 1848, but abandoned the area leaving Sarah to raise her six children by herself. Her son Luther, became a superintendent at the Nonotuck Silk Company across  Nonotuck Street from their house. In the mid-1860s he played for the locally famous Florence Eagles thereby becoming the earliest known African American to play on an integrated baseball team in the United States.  Sarah became a leader at the Free Congregational Society that met at Cosmian Hall and the Ladies Industrial Union, serving at the head of the table at its public suppers.

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