Colrain Archives

This month we found a treasure trove of 59 snapshots of Colrain service men (and one woman) in the CHS archives.  And thanks to volunteer Priscilla Phelps, each has been scanned and added to the database. They seem to date from 1941-1945, and most were taken in Colrain. Here are a few. To see the whole set on Airtable click here . Special value of these photos is that they are labelled on the back side. When we scan pics we do both sides. Leonard Call and Ray Ainsworth. There is one woman pictured amongst the 59 Colrain soldiers.  Who was Carolyn Caswell?

Just found in the CHS, a 1889 cookbook from the First Baptist Church. Lots of recipes, and this:  "...remedy for Scarlet Fever...patient must be rubbed morning and evening over the whole body with a piece of bacon .... That was just a headline-grabber ... The old Colrain cookbook has lots of normal recipes. The item includes recipes, as you might imagine, including quite a number using old-fashioned ingredients (salt petre, powdered rhubarb), or made in extravagant amounts (100 pounds of meat??), or with names of bracing directness. But it also features a section devoted to treating ailments with a variety of concoctions. And also with just plain bacon.   Both local and far-flung businesses advertised  goods, services and ... what on earth is this?   A promise as bold as many of the recipes!     Click here to read the 1889 Colrain Cookbook 

 Since late May (the past 3 weeks) we have scanned 147 new CHS items.  (new scans of old items). Colrain Village  #586 The "we" refers to me (Dave) and two new volunteers, Jade Mortimer and Nina Reyes. This brings the total scanned items to 812 out of 2554 items in the database. ( Some items are multi-page, so the actual number of "scans" is much higher, but here the word "scan" refers to one item, whether a single page/sheet  or several. Also, many single sheets are scanned both sides.). The scanning is done in my office where I have 4 scanning machine setups. Jade and Nina are comfortable with computers so, after some training time, they are now good fits for the task. This link has all 147 items in Airtable.  To browse through all, select the tiny diagonal lines field on left side of one line.  A larger screen will pop up.  Then use the arrows in upper left. SOME HIGHLIGHTS: #586 (above) is a cut-out image of the village in 1839 from the John Warn...

 New Items as of April 29 - binders &  2 Gems  Several Colrain historical items were found in the hall chest upstairs in the Pitt House during our work bee on Friday the 26th. Mixed in with some Bill Pitt theatre scrapbooks and some old dolls, we found two gems - an pre-revolutionary account ledger, and the 1939 manuscript for the History of the Griswoldville mills. This "new items" batch has those two and several other things we have cataloged this past week. See also the airtable link to all the New items. # 3583    Richard Ellis Account Book   1765 This may be the most historically valuable item in the CHS collections, a 6" x 16" ledger of sales and payments starting in 1765.   On several dozen double pages in this book Mr. Ellis kept track of each of his regular customers buying and selling. Below we see that James Clark was paying for his purchases (on the left page) with loads of ashes (right page). This may mean that storekeeper El...

 Here is a link to 18 "new" items which we have cataloged and scanned since the last post. This April 24 batch is a pretty "dry"  collection, mostly old CHS and Pitt House papers which were found loose in the office and in the Pitt Bedroom this month. Rather than just put them into a filing cabinet, we thought it best to catalog and store them just like the "real" historical items. That way they can be easily found in the future. *** Many of the CHS documents are available as PDF files for download*** #2564-1  Bill Pitt's "Sherwood Forest" typed sheets for house guests in the 1950s.   Note:   "the bathroom is off the kitchen" -that's our office today. -- # 2567  the Old CHS Website from 2000 +- #2575 is Prentice Crosier's "Tour and Guide to the Collection" from 2018, Revised 2023. Although the house is being rearranged now,  this narrative is a nice (limited)  summary of the Pitt House Collection . The whole docum...

43  "New" items cataloged since early April at the Colrain Historical Society. Most of these are items which were not cataloged prior to now, including several things found in the Pitt bedroom.  Click here for the databas e # 200-217  many old deeds The "43" included about 400 old deeds (cataloged as "17" items) , dating from the late 1700s to about 1930.  These are original land deeds which came from the Registry of Deeds, then to Town of Colrain, then to CHS. They were removed from two oversized boxes, sorted into 17 small batches by decade, and stored in small storage boxes. Most of the deeds are mid-to late 1800s. There are a handful of very early deeds, one of them by Jesse Lyon(s), the noted Colrain furniture builder.  In 1801 Jesse sold 1/4 of an acre to a Judah Pierce and recorded the deed with his signature and a waxed seal of paper.  (Item 202-1). There is also one 1776 deed for 100 acres to Abraham Pennell, also with a waxed seal #2531  Levi...