NEWs from historic northampton

While the museum is closed, the grounds are open. Come visit, have a picnic, count the rings on the sugar maple stump that was recently cut down. Draw a picture or play hopscotch on the parking lot.

The gardens and property look beautiful thanks to our amazing volunteers’ recent socially distanced work. Our stalwart volunteer crew weeded, raked, trimmed, hauled, cleaned, painted, ditched, dug, mulched, and caught up with one other—while wearing masks, of course. A big thank you to Pat Aslin, Kay Althoff, Larysa Bachinsky, Shayne Beede, Paige Bridgens, Claire Christopherson, David Cooney, Carolyn Gray, Maureen Flannery, Stephen Harding, Sue Hawes, Bill Holloway, George Kohout, Fred Morrison, Alicia Ralph, Kathy Service, Frank Sleegers, Joyce Snyder, E.J. Welch, and Barbara Wright.
If you’re interested in volunteering on the grounds crew, please email Laurie Sanders.
When is a barn not a barn? We have just learned that our Shepherd barn, dating to 1805–06, might not have been built as a barn and that it might have been located elsewhere originally. Master timber framer and architect Jack Sobon’s investigations found that the two wide openings for “barn doors” on the long sides weren’t original to the building, that a partition divided barn in half lengthwise, and that the lofts were too low for tall carriages or full hay wagons to pass beneath. For the whole story, with drawings and photographs, read Jack Sobon’s report. <<add url<< If you know of a building as described in the report, please email Elizabeth Sharpe. (link)
 
This project is funded by a generous grant from the Community Preservation Act.
About 10 or 15 years ago, Museum Manager Marie Panik got a particularly unusual phone call.
“The woman explained that her father had been born in Northampton and when he was 7 years old, his parents died during the 1918–19 flu epidemic. He went to live with his grandparents,” Panik recalls.
 
“He was now in a wheelchair and, while his eyes indicated his mind was alert, he could no longer speak in complete sentences and his mobility was limited. But he told his daughter that he wanted to ‘go home’ and see his early childhood home in Northampton. She asked if I could determine where his parents had lived in 1918, and I found their names in the 1918 city directory. She rented a van and two medical assistants to bring him to Aldrich Street, as I recall, in Northampton in the hope that he would recognize the house. They also stopped by Historic Northampton. I thought of him recently and hope that we helped him connect to the part of his life he was now longing for.”