Colrain Archives

Nine men who marched from Colrain to Boston on April 20, 1775, 250 years ago, have gravestones in Colrain.  Here we have pictures of the stones, with the epitaphs. They rushed to support fellow citizens as soon as they heard about the Lexingon-Concord battles, one day before.  Local lore has it that the night before their wives made doughnuts to fortify the militiamen on their march. See Also the Muster Roll reporting their service at this page.  Roll #          Name           Chandler Hill Cemetery 17                Robert Fulton 4                   Hugh McClellan 30                  Robert Miller 11                  John Patterson 32              ...

click here to see a short video  One of the gems in the collections of the Colrain Historical Society is the very old cast iron fireplace frame made in the Colrain foundry in Foundry Village. (This photo is of the frame when it was in a house in Shelburne Falls ca 1973)..  Where was the foundry?

d.allen  March 25 Last fall the town Library transferred a large file cabinet filled with historical papers to the Colrain Historical Society.  Nina has scanned one of the dozen or so genealogy binders and we have just prepared them for future use. Below is a clip from one of the 30 genealogies in just that one binder, a small fraction of what is in the file cabinet. I chose Chandler for this example because of the connection to Chandler's Store and old Lyons Tavern atop Chandler Hill. The genealogies appear to be very thorough. We have not yet determined the author, but it may by Hugh McClellan, cousin of Lois McClellan Patrie (author of the History of Colrain). Hugh and Lois both lived on Troy, NY, and Hugh owned the "Motor Car Service Works" , whose recycled stationery was used in several of the genealogies. Special features of the "Patrie" genealogies are brief history vignettes interspersed with some of the family pages. This Chandler mini-history tells us ...

 Wow !  CHS has the original 1874 deed from Alvah Crocker to Joseph Griswold for a small chunk of land that became the Griswold Cotton Mills in Turners Falls 5 years later.  This map is drawn on the deed. Pretty cool to have a original wax seal next to Joseph Griswold's signature.  This deed was scanned by Nina this week as she was cataloging the "Griswoldville Barn Closet" box we found last fall. Joseph Griswold's Colrain factories , 2 of them by now, were subject to flooding. The story is told that among the reasons Griswold wanted a new factory in Turners Falls is that a mill there would be less likely to flood, given the higher land. Below are the signatures of Crocker & Griswold. Alvah Crocker was President of the Turners Falls Company which was developing mostly vacant land into a thriving small city.  Here is a pic of the mill as it was being built in 1877. And a photo of the mill in the 1950s: Older residents of the area will recall the Griswold fact...

rev April 12  4 additions (see also Franklin County Blog) "A Muster Roll for a Company of Minute Men under the Command of Capt. Hugh McClellan in Col. Samuel Willliams Reg.t which marched from Colrain & Shelburne April 20 1775"  On April 20 1775, one day after the famous battles of Lexington and Concord, 43 men from Colrain and  Shelburne marched to Boston to join the resistance to British rule. With the 250th anniversary of that march fast approaching, it would be a good time to remind us of who these men were and of what they did to help forge the USA. The Massachusetts Archives has a one-page "muster roll" which records the names, length of service, and how much each man was owed for the service. We will add it to Colrain Archives. The names are familiar, McClellan (sp incorrect). Stewart, Pennel, etc.  (partial only above). For the full document, go to the bottom of this page. But which men were from which town?    30 from Colrain After some ...

 This week we photographed Document Box 26 and added the pics to the database Below are a few selections or click on Document Box 26 to see all. #3608-9-10, sandwich bags,  have colonial artifacts from 3 Colrain sites.  #3609 has a notecard "Found at the site of Fort Morris".  Unfortunately neither this notecard or the old "Louise" file card (below) say very much about the "who" and "where"  and context. It nay be that James Johnston was a metal detector enthusiast.  **** Archaelogist Aaron Miller, who managed the dig at nearby Fort Taylor in ca. 2006, was shown this image and wrote ...  "These look exactly like the kinds of materials I would expect to see at the fortified farmsteads. I suspect that you're right and these materials were found by a metal detectorist. Otherwise, I would expect to see a bunch of tobacco pipes and ceramics as well. You probably have a mix of mid 18th-century material and some later 18th- and 19th-century but...