Memorial Hall

If you grew up in Colrain before, say, the 1980s, chances are you graduated proudly from eighth grade across from the Post Office in Memorial Hall. And maybe you learned to square dance there. For most of the 20th century, Memorial Hall was the social center of Colrain. The Grange met in meeting rooms upstairs and held well-attended suppers. It was home to the local posts of the American Legion and the VFW. Nationally-known entertainers, local minstrel shows and entertainments with local musicians drew audiences there from around Franklin County and southern Vermont.

The Women’s Relief Corps, founded in 1886 as auxiliary to the Grand Army of the Republic, raised funds with suppers, dances, bake sales and quilt auctions to build Veteran’s Memorial Hall to honor the 198 men of Colrain who fought in the Civil War. Completed in 1895 for $6,000, the structure included an “audience hall” on the first floor with a large stage, and dressing rooms in the basement. Upstairs, the GAR held their meetings in the “post room,” and ladies gathered by the fireplace in the “parlor” near the kitchen.

By 2011, when the town celebrated its 250th anniversary, Memorial Hall was empty and abandoned. Efforts by the town to sell the building failed, and the structure was demolished in 2013 at a cost of about $60,000.

(The site is now the home of the less attractive but useful "Hub" for our municipal broadband network.)

What’s Up With the Pitt House?

Have you wondered…

What’s up with the Pitt House? The white farmhouse to the left of the library is becoming the Museum of Colrain History. The transformation began in 2020, when the town turned the property over to the Colrain Historical Society. As a result the buildings on the property required new Certificates of Occupancy in order to be open to the public, requiring significant improvements to the Pitt House especially. Soon you’ll see our new sign!

We have already completed the invisible stuff: rebuilt part of the rear foundation and removed knob-and-tube wiring, along with some plaster and paint repair. Up next: a handicap-accessible bathroom and insulation to reduce our carbon footprint ---and our oil bill. There’s more, but when we’re done, we’ll have a museum refocused on Colrain history, its people, farms and industry. Our legal name remains Colrain Historical Society, Simultaneously, Sarah Hollister, Dave Allen and volunteers are organizing our extensive collection of Colrain artifacts, documents and photographs into a digital inventory, making these things more accessible.

Meanwhile, we’re busy planning a town-wide garden tour and plant sale in July, another new "Colrain and the Hill Towns on Canvas" art show in September and in October an invitation-only Halloween House Tour. We’re lining up programs on a “Historic Griswoldville Design;” an apple history of Colrain, beginning with Colrain’s Johnny Appleseed; “Murder on Catamount”, and more. 

 

Watch the Clarion, the Recorder, your mailbox, and your email for details. And join us on this journey.

The Colrain Resolves

 Belden Merims, in a post on this blog titled Colrain: A History, wrote this about the Colrain Resolves:

Unlike the settlers in the valley, who were almost all of English extraction, Colrain’s Scotch-Irish settlers had no love for the English. Resentments festered, and in January, 1774, at Wood’s Tavern the prominent men of the town gathered and drew up what became known as the Colrain Resolves. Predating the Declaration of Independence by 18 months, the six resolves declare the rights of the individual, objection to taxation without representation, legal authority for independence, the right of the group to self-government, the necessity for action, a listing of specific grievances, the necessity for independence rather than mere reform, and the struggle for independence transcending the individual.

When war came, Colrain was ardently patriotic. In 1775, when the alarm rang at Lexington, Colrain Minutemen marched to Boston. Later they served at Ticonderoga and at the Battle of Bennington. Second in command of a company of Colrain men who were assigned to the defense of West Point was John Bolton, who rose to command later. When the Continental Congress failed to pay his men, he mortgaged his property to maintain them. At the end of the war he found himself homeless and spent his last days with his children in New York, dying there in 1807. Ten percent of Colrain’s population, 198 men, served during the Revolution.

There is a new short film about the Colrain Resolves. The video is available to watch on YouTube:

Additional information about the history and the video is here https://www.ulsterscotsagency.com/news/article/488/the-colrain-resolves/

Charles H. McClellen’s “Early Settlers of Colrain Mass.” includes the original wording of the Resolves in the section on the Revolutionary War.

https://archive.org/details/earlysettlersofc00mccle/page/48/mode/1up?view=theater