East Aurora Author and Historian Robert Lowell Goller will present “WHO WERE (AND ARE) THE ROYCROFTERS?” at The Buffalo History Museum as part of RALA50 anniversary celebration programming.
On Thursday, October 1, Goller will present a presentation bridging the past and present, to open the programming schedule at The Buffalo History Museum in honor of our 50th anniversary celebrations in 2026.
Elbert Hubbard attracted hundreds of creative types to his Arts and Crafts community on South Grove Street at the turn of the 20th Century. Some, like famed artist Alexis Fournier, were invited. Others simply showed up, in the hopes of landing a job at the Roycroft, a place where putting “head, heart and hand” into one’s work in equal measure was encouraged in a world otherwise dominated by the assembly-line mentality of the Industrial Revolution.
In 1976, a group of East Aurora residents and conservationists with a common interest in the then struggling Roycroft Campus set in motion a plan to preserve those ideals which had made the Campus a center of the Arts and Crafts Movement.
This group of idealists included several descendants of the original Roycrofters, including Elbert Hubbard’s granddaughter. Others included Charles Hamilton, Kitty Turgeon and Rixford Jennings, a local artist who grew up as a paper boy on Hubbards’ Campus. These early visionaries, along with a meeting room full of others, decided that the legacy of South Grove Street was something too important to let slip into the dust of an attic bound history book.
Goller’s “Who Were (and Are) the Roycrofters?” discusses what it was like to work at the Roycroft and shares the stories of some of the personalities—both famous and not- so-famous—who made The Roycroft Campus and Village of East Aurora their workplace and home – both then and today, as the Roycrofters at Large.
A nominal admission of $12 to support the museum’s non-profit initiatives applies. Reservations are required for the evening’s
program through The Buffalo History Museum
HERE!
This lecture is free to attend for History Museum and RALA members. If you are RALA Member, please check your email for our latest members missive, or email membership@roycroftartisans.org to confirm membership and receive the necessary code to void the ticket at checkout. To become a RALA Patron Member, visit our Membership Page.
Author, Historian Robert Lowell Goller
About our speaker:
Robert Lowell Goller is a public historian and former journalist who has served as the town and village historian in East Aurora, N.Y., since 2007. Through his books, monthly newspaper column and weekly videos on Facebook and YouTube, he uncovers previously untold stories of the past and places the history of small towns such as East Aurora in the context of national and international events.
His television appearances have included C-SPAN and “Sunday Morning” on CBS. Goller has published three books, and is a 2008 Mary and Gil Stott Award recipient. He and his husband Jason live here in East Aurora, where his most recent book, Who Put the ‘East’ in East Aurora? was published. He is also the author of Aurora Revisited (2011) and Legendary Locals of East Aurora (2014).
Goller is a member of the Roycrofters at Large RALA50 Anniversary and Archive committee, working to celebrate the founding of the Roycroft Renaissance movement in 1976, and has been an advocate for the Roycrofters at Large mission and value within the East Aurora arts community, including its founding of the Roycroft Summer Festival in 1976, an event that has gone on to inspire our town wide Arts in East Aurora each year on the final full weekend of June.
A historical retrospective of the fifty year history of the Roycrofters at Large and its cultural imprint on the WNY and American Arts & Crafts movement will open to the public on October 16, 2026. This free to attend lecture kicks off the programming schedule running in conjunction with this exhibition. More more information on The Buffalo History Museum, including how to visit, view their collections or become a supporting member, please visit https://buffalohistory.org/
