The cemetery tour at the West
Yard Cemetery will take place on Oct. 18th at 1:00 PM. Loisanne, as
Hepzibah (Mack) Tubbs will highlight the graves of Hepzibah’s uncle,
Nathan Huntley; store owner, Nicodemus Miller and his son Bethuel;
The Reverend Eleazer Beckwith, Marlow’s first hired preacher; Mary
Gustin, wife of Samuel Gustin, Marlow’s early hero; Solomon Gee,
Marlow’s first mill owner, and Hepzibah’s husband, Abisha Tubbs who
conspired with Hepzibah’s brother, Solomon Mack, to spread the
knowledge of making salt peter (an ingredient in gun powder) just
before the Revolution.
Board members verified their
sign up times for setting up and manning the MHS booth and parking
the vintage cars as well as overseeing the art show and the display
of model Marlow homes for the Harvest Festival.
Gen Ells, with the help of
volunteers Johanna Kent and Mary Blank, has seen to gathering all of
the known examples of the Ronnie Lake miniature Marlow home models.
They will be assembled at the Chapel for viewing during the Harvest
Fest and set up to approximate their positions in the village. The
owners have graciously agreed to loan them for the occasion.
Our application with extensive
documentation on the Burnap House has been sent to The New Hampshire
Preservation Alliance “Seven to Save” Program. With an anticipated
several hundred applications and only seven to be chosen, it’s a
long shot, but we feel we need to explore every avenue to save this
historic building for Marlow. Pam Little has graciously assumed the
lion’s share of this large project. We received a letter from New
Hampshire Preservation Alliance acknowledging our submission.
Al Blank, Tom Fuschetto, and
Sharon Davis joined Mary in meeting with a representative of the
Painted Theater Curtain Company that seeks to locate these historic
stage curtains in Vermont and over Vermont borders and help their
communities restore and preserve them. The representative spent
three hours evaluating the curtains and informing, and advising.
Marlow has six painted curtains. Only one, the European street scene
at Jones Hall, is restored. There are three others there, a woodland
scene, a water scene, and a “grand curtain.” These, we are told, are
produced by a company. However, the two at Murray Hall (the Grange)
which had been found wadded up under the stage when it was removed,
are by the artist Charles Washington Henry (1880-1940). He, with
members of his family, traveled from town to town to paint such
curtains. Because of this, these two are more valuable. One shows
horses and a wagon. The other shows a Model-T Ford. They are painted
on muslin and the word is that “Mice don’t like muslin.” It is to
this that we owe their preservation! There are also three rollers
for the curtains at Murray Hall. To display the curtains, however,
we will need pulleys and ropes. We tabled any decision on the
curtains.
The remaining three Liberty Elms
should be planted this fall. Two Highway Department members will
help. Maria and Pam volunteered to help, and Candy will put in
fertilizer spikes.
We discussed the benches that
Richard Frank wishes to place on the Common in honor of Lydia
Stevens. He wants to remove the two benches which are there and
replace them with grander benches facing each other. We discussed
the technical difficulties of this. Candy suggested that we propose
to him two benches beside the Grange. Since, with the coming freeze,
little can be done until spring, we tabled the discussion.
We discussed the Town Pound Sign
and the Murray Hall sign which we propose to put in place soon,
perhaps in the spring. Gen Ells indicted that they should match in
design. The man who has done our signs in the past has gone out of
business, so we need to find a new sign-maker. This too was tabled
until spring.
We decided not to have a booth
at Christmas on the Pond this year as it is too labor-intensive for
the benefits to the organization.
Of course, we will be doing our
holiday program at Jones Hall on Dec. 6, and Loisanne will write the
third in a series of Marlow “Radio Skits”.
Once again, Rudolph will appear,
and, this time, so will Alice Britton, our popular Marlow stage
coach/school bus driver. We are lining up the music. Jason Little
will perform in that department, and we are hoping Kate and Clay
will help us again as they did two years ago, to the delight of all.
Pam Little discussed possible
NHHC programs with the principal of Perkins School and she will get
back to Pam about which one they would like us to sponsor. Our past
choice for such a program was not available, so we are trying again.
We wish to reach out to Marlow’s children to help them develop an
understanding and appreciation of history. In that light, we will be
thinking about museum tours for them when our museum reopens in the
spring.