McCray's Farmland to Be Preserved

While trawling through the Republican's archives for articles about local land conservation and related topics, I stumbled across this piece about conservation in South Hadley from June 2009.

McCray's farm has long been the last dairy farm in South Hadley (to put this in some perspective, only 50 years ago there were 10), and years ago they diversified their farming "portfolio" to include a miniature golf course, a creamery, a zoo, and seasonal hay rides.

The McCrays are trying to put 95 acres of their land into a state preservation program, to keep it as is (farmland) in perpetuity. It's about time that more land in this still somewhat rustic part of town got preserved. Much of the surrounding land has been developed in the past 15 to 20 years, mostly with hideous McMansions (who thinks these beastly things are attractive?), but it used to be stunning--picturesque fields rolling all the way to the river. (Across the river in Holyoke, there is still a sign on I-91 for a place to pull over for a "scenic view"--this is the land that McCray partly owns. Much of hasn't been scenic for years.)

Here's to hoping this plan goes through (if it hasn't already!).

16% of Hadley's Land is Preserved

I wanted to jump back a few months and highlight an article that ran in the Springfield Republican. The article covered an event commemorating the number of pastoral acres preserved in the town passing 2400. 16% is huge, and the number has increased slightly since then, as over 60 acres were added to a land trust in August.

Let's hope that as the economy picks up and momentum in the housing industry gets stronger, this drive towards preservation will continue.

The Daily Hampshire Gazette Supports Hadley's inclusion on the WMF Watch

Yesterday's leading opinion piece from the editorial board of the Daily Hampshire Gazette was a wonderfully well-written piece about Hadley's inclusion on the World Monuments Fund's 2010 Watch list of endangered heritage sites.

I don't think I can produce the piece verbatim here because of copyright laws, but here are some excerpts:

Hadley has long been known for its productive farmland and perhaps less for its history, though it can make a few claims on the latter subject. For one, the town is the birthplace of Civil War general Joseph Hooker, whose Union forces were trounced at the Battle of Chancellorsville in 1863. And two regicides from the English Civil War, William Goffe and Edward Whalley, hid in colonial Hadley in the 17th century, giving birth to the "Angel of Hadley" legend in which Goffe allegedly emerged from hiding to help save the settlement from an Indian attack in 1675.

But recently, news arrived that seemed to merge Hadley's farmland and its history. The World Monuments Fund, a private organization dedicated to saving landmarks around the world, included a section of Hadley on a list of 93 sites in 47 countries it believes need to be preserved. The New York-based group cited the "cultural landscape of Hadley, Mass." as a value that deserves protection...

...A program coordinator for the World Monuments Fund told the Gazette the organization wants to work with local land preservation groups to prevent the Great Meadow from being developed, "not to museum-ify it, but to find out how it can be preserved as farmland."

At first glance, the Great Meadow's inclusion in the group's list seems curious, seeing as many if not most of the landmarks listed date back hundreds, even thousands of years. For example, the list includes Peru's famous Incan ruins, Machu Picchu, as well as a medieval Spanish town, castle ruins in Uzbekistan over 1,300 years old and ancient petroglyphs in Pakistan...

...Though the history of European settlement in this country can't compete with the longevity of many places around the globe, that doesn't disqualify sites such as the Great Meadow from consideration as a place of historic and cultural value. If anything, the inclusion of the Hadley land on the World Monuments Fund list corroborates what many local land preservationists have said for years: It's vital to protect farmland and open space in the Valley...

...There does not appear to be any immediate threat to development in the Great Meadow, even though much of the land is zoned for it. We hope this kind of national recognition will aid local conservation groups such as the Kestrel Trust - which helped protect some of the Great Meadow - attract more resources for preserving additional acreage.

The Great Meadow and Machu Picchu on the same list? If that might help preserve a historic part of Hadley and, more importantly, some first-rate farmland, why not?

Thank you, Daily Hampshire Gazette!

Publicity from Watch-Listing!

A few updates:

Hadley's Great Meadow and the Route 47 Scenic Byway (together encompassing the part of the "cultural landscape" included on the WMF Watch) have received some good coverage recently due to their inclusion on the Watch.

Aside from the front-page story in the Daily Hampshire Gazette, a photo of Hadley made it onto a slideshow on BBC News's homepage (which, incidentally, was the #2 most read story at one point!). It was also included in National Geographic! Thousands and thousands more people around the world now know about Hadley.

Let's hope the attention continues to focus on Hadley so that more and more people in the US and abroad recognize the importance of saving the Great Meadow and the rest of the cultural landscape!

Hadley included on 2010 World Monuments Watch List

The "Cultural Landscape" of Hadley has been included on the World Monuments Fund's 2010 Watch list of endangered heritage sites. I work for WMF, so I was doubly pleased to see this place where I grew up selected by the independent panel of heritage and conservation experts for inclusion on the 2010 list. I can't speak on behalf of WMF (I am not an expert and not in the programs department), but I can add my two cents as a former local and someone interested in cultural landscapes.

It is hoped that Watch-listing will draw more attention to the cause of conservation and sustainability in this town. A focus on a national and international (the BBC included a shot of Hadley in this slideshow on its homepage!) level is what is needed to show that this landscape really is important. Preserving the Great Meadow, the land along the Route 47 "Scenic Byway" and other areas have long been local issues--that is not disputed. But giving the site such broader recognition and attention is certainly a much-needed boost for the cause. Foundations for buildings might not be being dug in the Great Meadow as we speak, but as long as a huge swathe of it is zoned residential and commercial, the land is under threat. What a great opportunity this is to secure the Great Meadow once and for all and to work towards saving land along Route 47 as well. Cultural landscapes are integral aspects of heritage.

More to come, I'm sure.

Fantastic News on Moody Bridge Road!

67 acres of land on Moody Bridge Road in Hadley that could have been used for a housing development will now be saved following their sale to the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service. The owner of the property, if my memory is correct, is the person who challenged the development-limiting law in Hadley several years back because she wanted to sell this land for a subdivision. Her efforts resulted in the State Supreme Court ruling the law unconstitutional, and thus it was repealed, paving the way for uncontrolled development.

Thankfully, the character of Moody Bridge Road will not be compromised (it's a really beautiful street if you've never driven it)! 82 acres on it were also preserved last year.

This isn't the end of the battle, though. There is plenty more land that needs to be saved from development!

Read the article in the Republican here.

Is Development Going to Increase in the Near Future?

I hope not, but that's what some people in Hadley think, based on this article in the Republican. Sustainable growth for any town or city is fine, but strip malls and large chain stores by and large destroy a community's character. Obviously for Hadley, Route 9 is already ruined, and has been increasingly developed for 40 years. Another way a community can "save" its character it by restricting development to certain locations. Let's hope they keep future development along this "economic" corridor and not create sprawl elsewhere. It seems that the Taco Bell mentioned in the article will be built along Route 9, which is a relief, but I find this sentence worrying: "We are getting a lot of calls from different developers."

Let's hope the town planners understand how to maintain Hadley's character!

Collections Information Now Up on Porter-Phelps-Huntington's Website!

I don't want to toot my own horn (too much), but I was so pleased to see these pages go up on the PPH Museum's website! I wrote these descriptions on the collections page and took the photographs when I worked there three summers ago. So glad to see it go up so that people get a better idea of what can be seen at this great historic house museum. Perhaps it will increase visitor numbers. There can only be benefits when enriching and broadening content on a website!

Two Seasonal Museums to Visit

It may be only mid-August, but the fall will be here much sooner than you think! And when mid-October comes rolling along, many of the museums in the Valley will close. The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum is one, but I've written enough about them for now! Two others I want to highlight are the Hadley Farm Museum and the Skinner Museum.

The Hadley Farm Museum is located at the intersection of Routes 9 and 47 in Hadley (behind the town hall and Congregational church). This 1780s barn, built by Charles Phelps, was moved (not taken apart, but literally lifted up and moved) in the 20th century from the site of the PPH museum to its current location. James Huntington, owner of the house and first director of the museum, needed money and sold it. It's an amazing piece of 18th-century contstruction housing all kinds of farm equipment.

The Skinner Museum in South Hadley (51 College Street), owned and run by Mount Holyoke College, is an interesting cabinet-of-curiousities-type museum housed in an old Congregational church that came from one of the four Quabbin Towns. I thought it was Dana, but I read recently online that it came from Prescott. I'll have to double-check sometime by visiting and will amend this then.

The museum houses the collection of Joseph Skinner, a wealthy industrialist, whose family was prominent in the area in the late-19th and early-20th centuries. My grandfather had some interesting stories about him! Skinner traveled the world and amassed an interesting and eclectic array of goods. Everything from early American furniture to suits of armor to paraphernalia from Nazi Germany. It's definitely worth a visit.

There are a couple of buildings on the site of the Skinner Museum. I remember being told by one of the docents that one of the buildings holds Skinner's collection of birds, including a passenger pigeon (now extinct), but I've never been in there and so can't confirm.

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum Adds Content to its Website

I was so happy to see recently that the Porter-Phelps-Huntington is working to make their website more robust by addind more content. It helps interested parties and potential visitors gain valuable insight into the significance of the house and the families that lived there for 200 years.

Most of the new content is being added to the Museum Online section of the site. Through several pages, you can read about the history of the site and family from the beginning until it became a house museum in the mid-20th century.

I can't wait to see what they add next. Well done!

100 Morgan Street, South Hadley

I'm going back a few years with this blog post (which is fine in a blog that deals a lot with history, right?) to discuss the sad fate of 100 Morgan Street in South Hadley. This house, built in 1750, was older than the town, having been constructed when South Hadley was still a part of Hadley. For 255 years this little colonial house existed, then, in the summer of 2005, it was torn down. Why? I never really understood why, to be honest. Yes, the house was in poor shape. I spoke to a member of the SH Historical Society about the house, and he seemed unhappy about the situation as well, but said that it was determined to be unliveable. Why? I didn't ask the question, so I don't really know. However, Mount Holyoke College owned the house before selling it to a developer who had no choice but to tear it down, I was told, so perhaps the college is to blame for not carrying out adequate maintenance. That would be a real shame.

Obviously, sometimes there is nothing to be done but tear down a dilapidated building, unless someone has the financial wherewithal to do a huge renovation. For this tiny house, unremarkable except for its great age (there were/are few buildings in the town older than it), demolition was apparently necessary. I think there is more to it than that, but I haven't any evidence, just what I saw when I examined the house myself. It wasn't collapsing!

I just hope some of its pieces were salvaged for use elsewhere. Especially the old doors, beams, and glass.

In the photos provided (interiors and exteriors that I shot shortly before it was torn down), you can see that the house really was just an ordinary-looking dwelling. Inside, it suffered some vandalism, it seems (see the hand prints, etc.). It was still 255 years old, though--no small feat!

Now there are two new houses on the house's lot. You'd never know it ever existed. So it goes sometimes...

Hadley Neighbors for Sensible Development

I came across Hadley Neighbors for Sensible Development while doing an internet search about preservation efforts in Hadley. Since I no longer live in the valley, this group completely slipped off of my radar! Their mission statement couldn't be clearer:

"Preserving Hadley's rural beauty, safeguarding its natural resources, and insuring the health and safety of its residents and neighbors while promoting sensible growth."

This is a great community organization that we should all support! Check in to their website whenever possible for news and updates. I know I will.

Hadley's Great Meadow

Hadley's "Great Meadow" might seem to be just that--a large meadow that has, almost inexplicably, largely escaped any development thus far. But it is, it seems, much more than that. Take a look at this shot from Google Maps:



No formal study has yet, to my knowledge, been carried out on this topic, but it seems that the Great Meadow is a very large and thus extremely rare (possibly unique) survival of open-field farming in New England. Open-field farming was the primary farming method in large swathes of medieval Europe and survived into the early modern period, when it was transplanted to the New World by the colonists.

In the UK at least, the open-field farming system is largely gone, the result of successive small- and large-scale enclosures through the 18th and into the 19th centuries. And yet, in Hadley’s Great Meadow, this field system remains as it was originally laid out by 1661 and divided by lots, and still farmed in the long, thin strips originally designed to be plowed by oxen. More investigation needs to be carried out, I believe, but I did a preliminary search on Google Maps of the Connecticut River Valley in Massachusetts and Connecticut (the location of some of most of the 17th century settlements in the western parts of these states), and found only a few apparent survivals (in Deerfield, Hatfield, near Wethersfield, CT, and—not in the CT River Valley but also settled in the 17th century—on Aquidneck Island in Rhode Island), but these on a much smaller scale and mostly destroyed.

Over 160 acres of the Great Meadow (the area within the dike) is zoned residential and commercial, so nothing is stopping it from being developed, should any of the land go up for sale—even though it’s listed (along with the old burial ground and the West Street common) on the National Register of Historic Places! With the economic downturn and slowing down of the housing market (though it hasn’t stopped—there are new constructions in Hadley on Route 47—some hideous houses have just been built there between East and Middle Streets!), there is some (but very little!) time to work towards saving it. Advocacy—getting the word out about the Great Meadow—is what is needed most. I think most people in Hadley and around simply don’t realize the meadow’s significance because, admittedly, from the ground it really just looks like any big field. I don’t even think there’s a sign in the meadow to explain its significance. There is one on Route 9 right as you get off the Coolidge Bridge in Hadley, but I don’t think it’s very readable (not from a car, anyway!). Even this small gesture would help!

There will be much more about the Great Meadow in the future!

Researching your family's history

I recently purchased a copy of the now-rare history of the Montagues, one of the original settler families of Hadley. The book, with the incredibly long title History and Genealogy of the Montague Family of America, Descended from Richard Montague of Hadley, Mass., and Peter Montague of Lancaster Co., Va..., was published in 1886 following a meeting of Montague descendants in Hadley in 1882. It is an invaluable volume, with interesting pictures, drawings, anecdotes, and, of course, excellent genealogical lists.

In the 19th and early 20th centuries, historians, writers, and genealogists--professional and amateur--produced countless volumes on various American families--far more than I would have thought before I began researching. There was an index to genealogies of American families printed in 1900 and written by Daniel Steele Durrie that runs to over 350 pages. It was the fifth edition of a work first published in 1868. At first it had 10,000 references. At the fifth printing, it had 50,000, giving some idea of how popular genealogical research was at this time.

For Hadley and surrounding towns, there are other genealogies of families that lived in the area other than that of the Montagues. In addition, Sylvester Judd included some genealogical notes in his History of Hadley, first published in 1863. First editions are, not surprisingly, rare and hard to come by, but it has been reprinted numerous times. Lucius Boltwood used some of Judd's notes for his own Genealogies of Hadley Families (published in 1862), which, in later editions of Judd's work, was tacked on as a supplement. Editions published more recently include both works in one volume.

For people interested in researching their genealogy, there are obviously the online sites, such as ancestry.com. But there is a certain satisfaction--and, dare I say it, romance?--to sitting down in a library with a musty old volume and looking up your ancestors by hand. In western Massachusetts, the Connecticut Valley Historical Museum in the Springfield Quadrangle has an excellent genealogical library--including over 20,000 genealogical books--and would be an excellent place to begin research.

If you'd like to purchase genealogy volumes, Higginson Book Company of Salem, MA specializes in reprinted volumes. For old editions, I recommend abebooks, eBay, Barnes & Noble's used and out of print section, etc.

Hadley's 350th

Beginning the "Save Hadley!" blog in 2009 certainly was auspicious, this being the 350th anniversary of the town's founding (but it wasn't incorporated until 1661). For those of you interested, Hadley is having several 350th anniversary celebrations throughout the year. The official website is here, and there's all kinds of information available. Take a look!

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum Opens Today!

The Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum, a seasonal historic house museum in Hadley, opens today for the summer. This museum contains a remarkable collection of artifacts from one huge extended family that lived in Hadley since 1659, and in this house from 1752 until the middle of the 20th century. And not only did the family amass a whole lot of interesting furniture, china, textiles, and other objects--they left behind a treasure trove of written material, too, which has been invaluable to social history studies done about the area. Elizabeth Porter-Phelps, the daughter of Moses Porter, who built the house, kept a diary for a few decades the late-18th to early-19th centuries, which has proved an invaluable contribution to women's history of the period. The museum sells a book about her diary called Earthbound and Heavenbent: Elizabeth Porter-Phelps and Life at Forty Acres by Elizabeth Pendergast Carlisle. It's worth a read if you're interested in this sort of thing. You can also read a facsimile of the diary itself in the Amherst College Archives.

This post might be a bit similar to one I posted last month about the museum, but I really do love this place and it really need your support to stay open. The 1-hour tours are a measly $5 and you can see a house that looks as if a the family just got up and left sometime around 1800. It's really a time capsule worth seeing.

I'll certainly post more about PPH in the future. It's located at 130 River Drive in Hadley, MA (River Drive is Route 47), about 2 miles north of Route 9.

Hadley Grass--Asparagus!

An article in Saveur caught my attention the other day when I noticed that it was about "Hadley Grass". That would be asparagus, for those of you in the know. I wasn't, to be honest, but I figured out why when I kept reading: Hadley, with its excellent soil, produced some of the finest asparagus in the country for much of the 20th century until a fungus all but killed the roots of the crop back in the 1970s (before I was born). Asparagus is still grown in the area, but not on the scale that it once was. David Nussbaum, the writer of this article, does a fantastic job of describing Hadley and its farmers and the asparagus legacy.

Since Hadley's asparagus crop is no longer huge, today the vegetable is mostly sold at local farm stands and stores. So, while asparagus is still in season, go out and buy it at farm stands! I bet it's delicious. I know my family's (grown in Granby) is.

P.S.--Does anyone remember road signs that read "Welcome to Hadley--Asparagus Capital of the World"? I'd love to see a photo if anyone has one!

Land Trusts

There was a comment posted on one of my blog entries a few days ago asking about land trusts. The author, Cynthia, has roots in Hadley, as I do, and wanted to know a trust to which she could contribute.

This is a great question. On a more general level, there are lots of land trusts in Massachusetts, large and small. See the list compiled by the Massachusetts Land Trust Coalition. It's pretty long and fairly comprehensive, I believe.

For the Hadley area, the Kestrel Trust is a good organization that I would recommend to receive your donation(s). They work in Amherst, Belchertown, Granby, Hadley, Leverett, Pelham, South Hadley, Shutesbury, and Sunderland--all towns that need more land preserved against development pressures. Kestrel Trust was very involved in generating awareness of the significance of Hadley's Great Meadow, which is a fascinating landscape on the Connecticut River. Its network of long, thin plots dates back to the 17th century, when the English colonists laid them out, and is "pre-enclosure" in layout, which means that its design is based on medieval farming practices of Europe. Most of the United Kingdom's fields were "enclosed" in the 18th- and 19th-centuries, while this common layout has survived here, directly linked to an older farming style that has practically died out in the "Old Country".

I know that the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum is actively involved in land conservation as well, so it would be worth donating to them. They have done a very good job preserving land around the museum and are still working hard at this.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment and I'll try to answer!

Introducing the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum

One of my favorite sites in Hadley opens to the public, as it does every year, on May 15: the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum. This museum has been around for decades and stores the objects and stories of one extended family that occupied the house and surrounding lands for six generations, beginning in the 1750s.

It's worth going to visit and seeing the interiors, which look as though they could still be occupied. It's worth wandering around the grounds, which, while not extensive, are peaceful and pleasant. In the "North Garden" is a bed of roses supposedly planted by a Scottish servant some 200 years ago.

You can visit the musuem's website here. I'll say right away that it's not very good and could use a redesign or at least some updating. Updates have been sparse, and it hasn't really changed since I worked there three summers ago.

The museum is a quintessential example of the small historic house museums you can find scattered throughout the United States. In telling the stories of one extended family, it tells the story of America.

The family left behind a huge trove of papers (and is still leaving them behind--even when I was there bequests were still coming in. I sorted through some documents going back to the 1820s.) that are now stored at the Amherst College Archives and are accessible to the public. Diaries, letters, books, poetry, etc., have all survived from this highly literate family. The collection ranges from the 1690s through the 20th century. Many scholars have used the collection as a resource, most recently, perhaps, by UMass historian Bruce Laurie in a book called Beyond Garrison about the abolitionist movement.

In addition to house tours, you can visit the museum grounds during the summer for concerts and for a "traditional" tea ceremony on the long back porch, which was once the route for the servants to access the various parts of the house. The tea services have musical accompaniment as well. You get Earl Grey tea along with a dessert provided by a local shop.

I'm sure I'll have more to say about the Porter-Phelps-Huntington Museum in future posts. If you have a question, e-mail me about it.

Hadley Farming in the Local Paper...

The Springfield Republican ran a story this past weeking about the tradition of farming in Hadley, and while it didn't specifically touch on issues of preservation, it makes clear the importance of farming as a tradition to this town. Let's hope it stays that way.

Read it here.

Great News in the Preservation Fight

The Daily Hampshire Gazette ran an article this morning giving details of a federal grant to help create a “heritage corridor” or “preservation road” along Route 47 in South Hadley and Hadley. In the face of continued development pressures, this is great news.

Route 47 already has state recognition as a scenic byway, and efforts are now underway to get it national recognition. Let’s hope that their efforts are successful!

Read the Gazette's article here.

Two Regicides Hidden in Hadley

The following is a something I wrote on facebook a few years ago when I was in graduate school studying "early modern" English history. I am reproducing it here because it concerns Hadley--perhaps one of the most interesting parts of its history...

One of my favorite mysteries of history is the question of what happened to two of Cromwell's Major-Generals of the English Civil Wars, William Goffe and Edward Whalley. Its particular interest to me lies in the fact that it connects the period of English history I study with the history of my own family and hometown, (South) Hadley, Massachusetts. Both men were regicides - that is, they cast their votes in favor of the execution of Charles I in 1649. After the Restoration of the Stuart monarchy, the only options open to these men (and the rest of the surviving regicides) was to stay in England and face the extreme likelihood that they would be executed by the (understandably) vindictive government of Charles II, or flee into exile. I'll let the Oxford Dictionary of National Biography explain what is known of their fates:

At the Restoration, Goffe and his father-in-law Whalley, who as regicides were both excluded from the Act of Indemnity, fled to New England. Goffe travelled under the name Stephenson. He and Whalley arrived at Boston in July 1660 and lived initially in Cambridge. They moved to New Haven, Connecticut, in 1661, where tradition has it they lived in a cave in the woods outside the town for three years to avoid discovery by the agents sent from England to capture them. In 1664 they moved on to Hadley, Massachusetts, where they remained until their deaths. All efforts to arrest them proved fruitless as the colonists were generally sympathetic to the fugitive regicides and refused to reveal their whereabouts. A report in the colonial state papers declares that they were held in ‘exceeding great esteem for their piety and parts’ and that they ‘held meetings where they preached and prayed, and were looked upon as men dropped down from heaven’. Another later report stated that they were feasted in every place they visited and provided with horses and guides (CSP col., 5.54, 345). Details of the attempts by the agents of Charles II to apprehend them are also recorded (ibid., letters 45, 80, 81, 96, 160–62, 1103, 1300).

According to legend, in September 1675 Hadley came under attack from Metacom's (King Philip's) warriors, and Goffe emerged from his hiding place to rally the settlers and save them from defeat. This unknown figure appearing out of nowhere passed into local history as the story of the 'Angel of Hadley' (the famous image of which is above), which, from my interest in family and local history, is how I first learned the tale. After this brief emergence from over a decade of concealment, he vanishes again from the historical record, and nothing more is known of him or Whalley. The attack may never have taken place, but the legend remains.

None of the original buildings of Hadley survives (the oldest dates to 1713), but a marker stands on the spot of Rev. John Russell's house (the minister who supposedly sheltered Goffe and Whalley). I remember reading somewhere (I wish I could find it to cite!) that the footprint of Russell's house was once examined and an apparently secret room in his cellar was found. If this is true, then it would support strongly the assertion that Goffe and Whalley hid in Hadley from Charles II's agents.

The Purpose of this Blog

Why am I writing this blog?

Let’s be clear: there may be an economic crisis of global scale and new house construction and existing house sales may be at their lowest levels in decades, but Hadley and the towns around it still are not immune from development pressures.

In fact, now may be the perfect time to advocate for conservation since the pressure to sell land and build houses has (temporarily) declined.

Hadley has been losing its rural character steadily since the 1970s, when the “economic corridor” along Route 9 was developed. A 1988 bylaw limiting the development of residential subdivisions in Hadley was ruled unconstitutional by the state Supreme Judicial Court in 2004. The great housing boom of the 1990s and 2000s has scarred Hadley's character deeply. New construction may be down, but it is most likely temporary. Hadley’s historic rural character must be preserved for future generations.

There are many ways to get involved, such as donating (money or land) to a land trust, writing letters to politicians, and volunteering. All efforts have some impact. Future posts on this blog will highlight interesting parts of local history, problems this town and others nearby face today, and what has been, can, or should be accomplished on the preservation/conservation side.