Raffle: Tavern Table Replica

Taverns, simple or elaborate, dotted early America in the days before trains and motorcars. They tended to be located close enough to each other on the network of dirt roads where travelers, whether by horses, oxen, or by foot could find rest and refreshment. They also served as gathering places for a community’s locals. The men and women who managed these establishments required licenses for selling liquor and providing services.

In Colrain, one such tavern was the Fox and Goose on Call Road, run by Thomas Fox. His wife, Patience Cannon, who was previously a widow on Catamount Hill, joined him in this enterprise upon their marriage in 1791.

Furniture used in taverns needed to be suitable for the constant use of serving meals, playing cards and activities common in taverns, and a style of table evolved with a broad top referred to as a “tavern table”. When the top of a tavern table became worn and scarred from use it would be turned over and the fresh underside became the new table top.

Among the many documents and objects in the Colrain Historical Society’s collection which explain our local history is an 18th century Connecticut River Valley type tavern table with turned legs separated by box stretchers. Its plain skirt has a center drawer and the original top with “bread board” ends has never been turned --unusual to find in a table of its age. A replica of this table is being newly created by well-known furniture maker, Kenneth Noyes of Colrain. The table top of Noyes’ table is made from a single piece of old growth pine.

The original 18th century tavern table in the collection of the Colrain Historical Society.

Raffle tickets priced $10.00 each or three for $25.00. Tickets will be available next at Catamount Country Store in Colrain, Hagers’ Farm Market in Shelburne, Nancy Dole Books and Ephemera in Buckand and Sawyer’s News on Bridge Street in Shelburne Falls. They will also be available during the Crafts of Colrain Tour, November 10 and 11, at Pine Hill Orchards and at Ken Noyes’ workshop on Jacksonville Road. And they can be bought at Moonlight Magic in Shelburne Falls up until the time of the drawing there.

A letter to Friends of the CHS

June 21, 2018

Dear Friends of the Colrain Historical Society, ​

​We think you will be interested---perhaps concerned—in the sequence of decisions over the past year that have changed the status of the society related to its longtime home at the G. William Pitt House property. As of this month, the society, and the public, are barred from these buildings.

G. William Pitt House, 8 Main Road, Colrain

​As you probably know, the house and outbuildings were left to the town in 1976 under G. William Pitt’s will. The society was to maintain and have the use of the property, where it might store and maintain the growing collection of donated historic artifacts, farm equipment, textiles, photographs and documents. The town voted to accept this property.

​Nearly 30 years ago, with money from a bequest and donations, CHS had built another building on the site, the Stacy Barn, in which we stored large artifacts and in recent years held meetings and popular free programs for the public, mostly about local history. And we paid to have the old Hose House, the town’s historic fire station, moved from the old town lot next to the Brick Meeting House to behind the Pitt House.

​The house and attached barn are in need of costly repairs, including some foundation work. The select board has decided to “dispose of” the property if the state Attorney General rules that permissable under the terms of the will---either to the highest bidder or to CHS for $1. We believe a sale will need a majority vote at the annual or a special Town Meeting.

​Meanwhile, the town has decided that due to a “change of use” classification from residence to business/museum, the buildings now require a Certificate of Occupancy, which has been denied for lack of designated repairs and updates. Consequently, none of the buildings can be used. In fact, for decades the house and attached barn have been used as a museum, storage for the collection, and a meeting place. The only change is in bureaucratic classification in recent years.

​We will move our monthly meeting place across the street to Joan McQuade’s barn beginning Thursday, July 12, when we will have a wonderful program about a prize collection item, Ross Purrington’s red covered meat wagon. This is a slice of the social history of Colrain.

​ ​If we lose the use of the Pitt House property permanently, we will likely need to give up Ross’s red meat wagon, along with about 2,000 other items in the collection: antique farm and home equipment, photos of long-gone homes and residents, documents, diaries, business records, uniforms worn by Colrain natives in two world wars---the material history of Colrain. That’s what worries us now. ​

​As the visible history of the town disappears---Memorial Hall, the Tin Shop, the historic Griswold mill buildings, the Blue Block, ---we have to wonder what kind of future to expect in a town that gives up its history.

​If you are worried too, come to our meetings second Thursdays of the month, write your concerns to the Select Board and/or the Greenfield Recorder. ​


Belden Merims, for the Colrain Historical Society Board of Directors ​

Program postponed

The program on the Hollister Collection, previously scheduled by the Colrain Historical Society for Thursday, June 14, has been postponed due to lack of a Certificate of Occupancy for the Stacy Barn. However, CHS will have their regularly scheduled meeting, without a program, at the home of Joan McQuade, 7 Main Road, on Thursday at 7 p.m.