Old Sturbridge Village offers springtime fun this vacation

Date: 4/10/2014

STURBRIDGE – Old Sturbridge Village (OSV) offers visitors plenty of springtime fun during its Patriots’ Day celebration on April 21 and School Vacation Week activities April 19 to 27.

On Patriots’ Day, OSV will celebrate with a muster of the militia, fife and drum performances, and much more. Throughout School Vacation Week, visitors can explore the Village during a time of seasonal change, including seeing the baby lambs and calves.

Patriots’ Day at the Village will resound with the peal of bells, the beat of drums, and the call of the fife, as the Sturbridge Militia musters on the OSV common on April 21. Special programs and activities throughout the day will invite visitors to experience the sights and sounds of Massachusetts’ colonial ancestors reacting with hasty alarm to action at Lexington and Concord.

Visitors can watch costumed historians hasten from their farms, homes, and families to march to the aid of those already engaged in the initial battle of the American Revolution against King George’s tyranny. Housewives cook and entertain in their kitchens and parlors, watching from a window or doorstep perhaps, as the men march off to war. Then, young visitors are invited to become minutemen and women, equipped with wooden muskets, who learn to drill and march, flags flying, in the manner of the boys of ‘76.

Visitors can also witness the making of real musket balls, make a Revolutionary War cartridge using paper, ball, and “powder,” visit with historians portraying a loyalist and a surgeon from the U.S.S. Constitution, and listen to military music.

A new fife and drum program, contrasting and comparing military tunes of the American Revolution with those of the War of 1812, America’s second war with Great Britain, will also be presented. Patriots’ Day celebrations at OSV are sponsored by Skinner Inc., Auctioneers and Appraisers.

Activities offered throughout school vacation week will consist of meeting the newborn animals, including lambs and calves, seeing OSV’s gardens being planted, exploring exhibits, visiting with the blacksmith, potter, tinsmith, and much more. Featured performances, offered on select dates throughout the week, include a special 19th-century magic show by Bob Olson and a portrayal of Laura Ingalls Wilder by Historian and Historical Interpreter Melanie Stringer.

OSV is also offering an April School Vacation Family Fun Package, which includes two days of admission for two adults and two children, one night in the Reeder Family Lodges, two vouchers for hands-on crafts, and cookies and cocoa for four (complete with four Village-made redware mugs). Package pricing starts at $139. The package is available through April 30.

OSV is one of the largest living history museums in the nation, celebrating life in early New England.

The Village is open daily from 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. through Oct. 31. Admission: is $24; seniors are $22; children 3 to 17 cost $8; children 2 and younger are free. Admission includes free parking and a free second-day visit within 10 days. OSV members receive free daytime admission all year long. For more details, visit www.osv.org or call 800-SEE-1830.