Halloween Extravaganza!

Welcome to the Colrain Historical Society’s Halloween Extravaganza! A Walk Through the Ages of Antique and Vintage Halloween. It is a partially narrated tour through a house fully decorated for the holiday with hundreds of items on display from the 1900s to the present. 

Please join us to celebrate Halloween and support our ongoing fundraising efforts to get our museum up and running! 

Cost: $25.00 

Dates: October 25th – 6:00 pm to 9:00 pm and 26th & 27th -12:00 pm to 9:00 pm 

Location: Shelburne Falls address. Exact location will be on your ticket!

Where to buy your tickets: 

 Catamount Country Store, Main Rd, Colrain 

 Pine Hill Orchards, Greenfield Rd, Colrain 

 Mo’s Fudge Factory, State St., Shelburne Falls 

Limited tickets available at the door. Call ahead if you need a ticket at the door: 413-624-8800. Please try to buy ahead of time.

Light refreshments will be served. Three vendors will be selling holiday items.

This is intended to be a review of Halloween through the 20th century, its traditions and how it was celebrated. This is not intended for children under 12. It is not a haunted or spooky house event.

If you have any questions, please contact Debby Wheeler 413-624-8800 or Deborahjeanwheeler@gmail.com. 

No photos will be allowed. No large purses or bags (Please leave them in your car.) Park at the town garage on Sears St. and walk a short distance to the house. The house is not handicapped accessible; there are stairs.

Top image: a vintage Halloween postcard.

Bottom image: a Jack-o-lantern wax candle.

Program: Colrain, Apple Capital!

How the apple got to Colrain, and what we did with it, will be the topic of the Colrain Historical Society’s October program. West County Cider’s Field Maloney will tell the story of the apple in Colrain from early settlement to the present. Colrain’s history has been rich in apples and cider and orchards for several centuries now. 

The program on Thursday, October 10, 2024 at 7:30 p.m. will follow the business meeting and election of CHS Officers at 7 in the Stacy Barn behind the Pitt House. 

Refreshments will be served, including cider. 

The program is free and open to the public.

Photo above: Terry and Judith Maloney on Catamount with fresh glasses of their West County Cider, 2007.

Article from the Brattleboro New England Farmer in November 1910 stating the opinion of one Colrain apple grower that “the best apples in the world are grown in Colrain.”

Colrain and Hilltowns on Canvas - 5th Annual Show!

September 21 and 22, 2024, 10am to 4pm 

Cost of admission is $10.00. 

 The Colrain Historical Society will sponsor the fifth annual fundraising art show at the Shelburne Buckland Community Center, 53 Main St. in Shelburne Falls. 

As well as Colrain themed art, paintings showing our neighboring hilltowns will round out the display. Regionally famous painters will include George Gardner Symons, Steve Maniatty, Robert Strong Woodward, W. Lester Stevens and A. Hale Johnson among others. 

There will be over 50 paintings by 40 different artists. Most are works on loan from private collections and homes in the hilltowns. The artists are contemporary or deceased, famous and not so famous, as well as self taught. It is intentionally a non-curated show. The mixed media, skill of the artist and their prospective is part of the magic experienced when walking through the rows of art. Many of the paintings show a period of time long gone and people find themselves reminiscing about their family's past. 

We will also have prints and reprints of items in the Historical Society’s collection and old maps of our area for sale. 

Please join us again this year for a rare opportunity to see this bit of visual history.

The photo above shows a landscape painting by George Gardner Symons.

[Source: September 2024 issue of the Colrain Clarion.]

Program: Timber! Logging, Lumbering & Millwork - Stories & Reflections

Thursday Sept. 12th, 7:30pm.

A group of local woodsmen and colleagues, including our very own Matt Slowinski, Lee Denison, David Nims, Kenny Noyes, and Harry Hollister (voicing Carroll Stowe), will share their stories and reflections on logging, lumbering and mill work in Colrain for a program of the Colrain Historical Society, Thursday, September 12, in the Stacy Barn at the Museum of Colrain History at 8 Main Road. 

The program at 7:30 p.m. will follow a business meeting at 7. 

The public is invited to this free program. Refreshments (Bill Cole’s not-yet-famous lemon bars and "ants on a log") will be served afterward. 

The undated photo above, courtesy of Lee Denison, shows a portable, steam-powered sawmill and workers: Carroll Denison, far right; Gilbert Barton, second from left.

[Source: September 2024 issue of the Colrain Clarion and email from CHS.]