Historical Notes 2026

The Spring 2026 edition of Historical Notes, the newsletter of the Colrain Historical Society, was mailed recently. 

 Click on the photos of the pages below to view a larger image.

Daffodils in April in Colrain

Program: East Colrain Tales

East Colrain tales will be the subject of Colrain Historical Society’s May program, Thursday, May 14, 2026, in the Stacy Barn behind the Pitt House at 8 Main Road in Colrain. 

 Harry Hollister will present selections from a diary about life on the Copeland farm in East Colrain during the 1930s and 1940s. Mark Scranton, who has lived on that farm for the last 50 years, will relate stories about life in that area when there were still many working farms. 

 The photo above, dating from the late 19th century, shows the original Edgar Copeland farmhouse, which was replaced in 1912 by the present Scranton farmhouse. The photo is from the collection of Mark Scranton.

The program at 7:30 p.m. will follow the CHS meeting at 7. Both are free and open to the public. Refreshments will be served.

Greenfield Recorder clipping from 1912 mentioning the new house built by Edgar Copeland and son for “a probable cost of $4000.”

Colrain Flower Gardens Tour

Save the dates

July 11 and 12, 2026

Colrain Flower Gardens Tour

A fundraiser for the Historical Society. Eight Colrain gardens on a self driving tour in all the corners of Colrain. Map comes with your ticket. Two mini lectures and a large perennial plant sale will be included. Stay alert for when tickets go on sale and where. Questions call 413-624-8800.

Photo: an early Spring flower bed in Colrain with bright yellow daffodils blooming beside a stone bird bath carved by Mike Purington.

Chandler House

This undated photo from around the 1880s shows members of the Miller family in front of the house built between 1791 and 1795 (accounts vary) by Robert Miller for Clark Chandler, who arrived in Colrain in 1790 at the age of 20, and promptly married 17-year-old Nancy Lyons. The couple lived with her parents in the former Pennill Tavern at the top of Colrain mountain while Chandler started a store there. Boards from the recently dismantled first meetinghouse nearby are believed to have been used to build the house, as well as the new store building between it and the tavern. Chandler became a wealthy man and a leading citizen of Colrain. 

In 1840, Miller’s grandson purchased the property from the Chandlers. Only the house remains where the Chandlers produced 21 children, not all of whom survived childhood. Today the sixth generation of Miller/Apt descendants occupy the house, the home of David Nims. 

Colrain Historical Society archive photo.

[Source of article and house photo: Colrain Clarion April 2026 issue.]

Goods available at Clark Chandler’s store in 1793.

Clipping from 

The Impartial Intelligencer,

Greenfield, Massachusetts.

2026 Calendar Still Available

It’s not too late to get your 2026 Colrain Historical Society calendars, featuring 12 stunning paintings of local scenes by local artists, all from private collections and seen in our sixth annual art exhibit last fall. The calendars are available at $15 each at the Catamount Store and Pine Hill Orchards in Colrain, Hagers’ Store in Shelburne, and at Nancy Dole Books in Shelburne Falls

King and Thompson Store, Colrain Center

This photo of Colrain center shows (from left to right) King and Thompson store, most recently known as the Blue Block or the Brick Store, built in 1812 and razed in 2018; the Tin Shop; and the “Truck Stop.” Through a succession of owners for over 100 years, the general store offered everything from penny candy to flour by the barrel to butchered meat and household staples. The building known as the Tin Shop began as just that before the Civil War, selling tin household goods, maple syrup tins, and stoves; it became Carpenter’s plumbing store and finally an apartment house before being condemned in 1993. Also condemned, the so-called “truck stop” acquired its nickname after being struck by a runaway truck. All gone.

This was written by Belden Merims for the Colrain Clarion March 2026 issue.

Doc’s House

This white Queen Anne Victorian house in Colrain Center, once the home of Dr. John Cram, was built in 1896 to replace the house he had bought in 1889 from the previous doctor, which burned when lightning struck an adjacent barn in 1895. Cram established a hospital in the house, which also held a “free public library.” His wife, Colrain historian Katherine Cram, was nurse and librarian. 

 Dr. John Olson set up a practice in the house in 1937, after Cram had died, and later enclosed the front porch in order to remove the waiting room from the front hall. An inventive tinkerer, Doc devised a “tonsil chair” adapting a kitchen chair for use instead of an examining table when removing tonsils from a patient in his office, after which he carried the patient over his shoulder up the steep back stairs to the “tonsil room.” 

 Tearing through the woods for home visits in his iconic Jeep, he was for 42 years the last of Colrain’s country doctors. 

In this undated photo above, the trolley tracks are faintly visible in the foreground, and the trolley car barn can be seen at the end of the street. The Shelburne Falls and Colrain Electric Road ceased operation in 1927.

[Source of article and house photo: Colrain Clarion February 2026 issue.]

Clipping from the Vermont Phoenix 

describing the fire in 1895

Clipping from the Greenfield Gazette and Courier

describing the fire in 1895

Advertisement in the North Adams Transcript 

announcing the opening of Dr. John H. Olson’s

office in Colrain, Mass.

Clipping from the North Adam’s Transcript 

with information about the opening

 of Dr. John H. Olson’s office

Clipping from the Greenfield Recorder

in August, 2017 regarding

Dr. John H. Olson and his Jeep