Category Archives: Local history

Historical posts about the Connecticut Valley, most likely the Pioneer Valley.

Dec
28
2023

George Washington Mark Treasure Surfaces

by Gary Sanderson

Greenfield tradesman and folk artist George Washington Mark was well-known about town and in surrounding communities as an eccentric house, sign, furniture, carriage, and sleigh painter, not to mention a flamboyant downtown character, between 1817 and 1879, when he died in his 84th year. Born in 1795 in Charlestown, New Hampshire, Mark was said to […]

posted in Antiques, Columns, Genealogy, Local history, Tavern Tidbits | No Comments

Dec
09
2023

Not Devil’s Throne, Please

by Gary Sanderson

Ten a.m., Sunday before Thanksgiving, rays of blinding sunlight penetrating naked hardwoods from the source low in a partly cloudy southeastern sky. I’m parked beside a strong metal gate barring the south end of a long-ago discontinued county road born as in Indian trail. There I had reluctantly agreed to meet three members of a […]

posted in Columns, Indians, Local history | No Comments

Nov
16
2023

Colonial Diary Offers Clues About Scandinavian Cupboard

by Gary Sanderson

On my plate today is a recent weekend trip to a friend’s Lake George summer home, her interesting carved, painted 1789 Scandinavian cupboard that stirred my inquisitive juices, and the fascinating, unrelated mid-18th-century journal of a scholarly foreign traveler whose North American observations and commentary unexpectedly helped pull everything into focus. First, the astute foreign […]

posted in Antiques, Columns, Indians, Local history, Salmon, Shad | No Comments

Nov
03
2023

Lake George Oozes WMass Links

by Gary Sanderson

Midweek, early evening, front-yard burning bushes displaying a light, peaceful autumn crimson that’s brightening by the day. My wife Joey is watching local news in the west parlor when she hears the familiar audible alert for an incoming text. It’s longtime friend Debbie, from Cohasset. Debbie wonders if we’d like to join her for the […]

posted in Columns, Genealogy, Indians, Local history, South Deerfield | No Comments

Sep
21
2023

Labor Day Memory

by Gary Sanderson

Wednesday, September 6 wakes to damp, gray light, with lacy ground fog blanketing spongy meadows. Evocative indeed. Almost spooky. Striding at my normal brisk pace up the first half-mile of my daily morning walk around the neighborhood, I find Green River Road still streetlamp-lit as the gap between dawn and dusk continues to narrow, daybreak […]

posted in Columns, Local history, South Deerfield | No Comments

Aug
11
2023

Timber Rattler on Deerfield Mountain

by Gary Sanderson

Measuring a property’s perimeter for a new fence can be hazardous to your health. Potential dangers include but are not limited to stepping in an unseen hole and spraining an ankle, disturbing an underground yellowjacket nest resulting in a pantlegful of angry hornets, and perhaps tripping over an old, rusty, hidden strand of barbed wire […]

posted in Columns, Local history | No Comments

Jul
24
2023

Fourth-Grade Photo Stirs Childhood Memories

by Gary Sanderson

A 60-year-old photo posted recently on Facebook by a former classmate really got my wheels spinning. Shot on the final day of school in June 1963, the black-and-white image appeared on Deerfield Now. It showed my fourth-grade class standing on the front granite stairs leading into the two-story, brick South Deerfield Elementary School that then […]

posted in Columns, Genealogy, Indians, Local history | No Comments

Jun
24
2023

Shad Run Ain’t What It Used To Be

by Gary Sanderson

Early June – front yard sweetened in pink weigelia, peony and mock-orange fragrance – 2023’s Connecticut River American shad run down to a trickle. Although the announced June 8 tally of 269,720 could grow slightly by the time all fish passageways are closed, it’ll be irrelevant. The run’s over. Chalk it up as another so-so […]

posted in Columns, Local history, Salmon, Shad | No Comments

May
20
2023

Kids’ Stuff: South Deerfield Memories

by Gary Sanderson

Looking for a hook to hang my hat on, so to speak, spun me into reminiscence leading up to my May 7 “Deerfield 350th Founders’ Day” talk. The topic was the earliest settlement of Bloody Brook, or Muddy Brook – names that were interchangeable between the 1750s and 1840s for a village now called South […]

posted in Columns, Genealogy, Local history, South Deerfield | No Comments

May
20
2023

Hawks Tavern at North Mill River

by Gary Sanderson

I have in recent years often wondered: Why is so little known about the old Hawks Tavern in South Deerfield’s North Mill River District? Now, after finding two previously unidentified shots of the building among a collection of digitized Howes Brothers photos in friend Peter Thomas’ Deerfield’s 350th archive, the question looms even larger. The […]

posted in Columns, Genealogy, Local history, South Deerfield | No Comments

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