Shared past of area towns explored through History on the GoDate: 10/18/2023 The southern Pioneer Valley is home to more than a dozen small and medium towns but during the colonial era, several of those towns, including modern-day Wilbraham, Hampden, East Longmeadow, Longmeadow and even Enfield were part of Springfield.
To highlight that shared history, a tour of all five town’s historical museums will take place Aug. 19. Visitors can explore how the area was bound by geography and family ties.
“The idea of the program is to make people aware of the rich history of the towns and highlight these hidden treasures,” said East Longmeadow Historical Commission Chair Tom Behan. Those treasures include documents and artifacts dating to the days of the Mass Bay Colony and the stories behind them.
Each museum is about ten minutes away from the next and routes between them were mapped and are available at tinyurl.com/2prp684x. People can visit the museums in any order. Betsy McKee, recording secretary at the Longmeadow Historical Society, said the Richard Salter Storrs Library, next to the Storrs House Museum, has volunteered to be a “hospitality station” with accessible bathrooms and refreshments donated by The Apple Place between 12 and 4 p.m.
Behan said coordinating with the other four towns was easy. “Everybody’s been very responsive, very excited.” While Enfield has partnered with other historical organizations in Connecticut, this is the first time it has worked with those in Massachusetts.
The event is part of five separate History on the Go tours between now and October sponsored by the Pioneer Valley History Network and Massachusetts Cultural Council. The theme for the local tour is “Changing Boundaries,” a nod to the towns’ communal past.
“People will be most surprised that we share more history than [they] realize,” Behan said. For example, he said that East Longmeadow was known for its red-stone quarries, however there were quarries all around the lower Pioneer Valley and it was a prolific industry.
A major focus of the Enfield Historical Society Museum is the carpet industry, which flourished in Enfield between the 1800s and 1960s, and the Hazardville gunpowder factory, which provided powder for the Union Army during the Civil War and for blasting by the Transcontinental Railroad.
Industry was not the only thing these communities had in common. Michael Miller of the Enfield Historical Society said one lesson people may walk away from the event with is “how tightly tied together all the early settlements were,” adding that they were “tied by blood.” He shared that an Enfield resident recently donated materials related to the Phelps family in Hadley. Miller explained that a branch of the family lived in Enfield.
“The people are connected, the families. These families were huge,” said David Bourcier, president of the Atheneum Society, which runs Wilbraham’s Old Meeting House. “There’s a connection between the towns. Even though we’re different towns now, we were all one town in colonial times.”
McKee commented, “We’re all kind of sister towns.” It is fitting, then, that information about the event spread through word of mouth. Bourcier said Behan told him about the program, and in turn he contacted Hampden’s Historical Society. The Longmeadow Historical Soceity reached out to their counterpart in Enfield about the event.
Visitors are “going to be impressed by how much we know about [life] from back then,” McKee said. The Storrs House Museum is home to the Longmeadow Historical Society. Originally the home of the First Church of Christ’s second minister, Richard Salter Storrs, the museum houses artifacts from Longmeadow and surrounding towns dating from the 1600s onward. Visitors can see rooms depicting a day-in-the-life from the 1700s through the 1840s. McKee said there are exhibits featuring artwork from Longmeadow’s first art teacher, a “very rich textile collection,” 1,500 glass plate negatives, ledgers, receipts and “eyeglasses made right here in Longmeadow.”
Enfield’s museum has Native American artifacts and materials from the large Shaker community that existed in Enfield from the late 1700s to the early 1900s. Miller said the facts and materials show how the lives of residents were tied to bigger parts of history.
The Old Meeting House, built in 1793 and one of the oldest meeting houses still standing in New England, will be open for self-guided tours, although members will be on hand to answer questions. The Atheneum Society conducts monthly open houses from May through December, which usually includes a visit by a guest speaker In the Chapel at Wilbraham Monson Academy.
McKee noted that that some of the museums have regular hours, but others are open by appointment and are run primarily by volunteers.
“We have a rich history in the Pioneer Valley,” Bourcier said. McKee said, “I hope people come and enjoy themselves.”
The Hampden Historical Society Museum is at 616 Main St. East Longmeadow’s Historical Commission is at 87 Maple St. The Enfield Historical Society Museum can be found at 1294 Enfield St. The Storrs House Museum is at 697 Longmeadow St. In Wilbraham, the Old Meeting House is at 450 Main St.
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