It is hard for me to visit a museum now without thinking somewhat of our own museum. Do they do something well that we could learn from? Do they do something poorly that we could learn from? Today I visited the Higgins Armory Museum in Worcester with my husband, my two kids and a friend of my son’s. My 13-year-old son is not really “into” museums at this age, but he admitted that this was probably “the most interesting museum” he’d ever been to.

Whoa. Now that deserves a little investigation! We have been to some pretty impressive museums, so I asked him – and the rest of the group – what made it so interesting?

As it turns out, we all had similar answers. We most enjoyed the hands-on space they call “Castle Quest.” From the website, it had sounded more oriented toward young kids, and it does have a lot of activities for that age group, but it also had real metal helmets and a coat of chain mail and chest plate to try on that was large enough for an adult, but hung low enough (from chains) that a kid could slip into it. Really a very clever arrangement, hung in front of a mirror so you could see what you looked like. The helmets were attached with plastic-coated security cables, so you could easily try them on – and photograph each other – but not walk away with the artifacts.

They also had a cool machine that simulated the weight of pulling back a bowstring for different types of bows, with a digital readout of how far your arrow could go.

Of course what made this all the more interesting was that we had not only already walked through the 3rd and 4th floors full or armor, but we had watched a presentation on “Dressing a Stormtrooper and a Gothic Knight,” so we had some idea of all the pieces involved.

Oh, did I forget to mention that it was “Star Wars Day” at the Armory? Yes, that was some of the draw for our visit, though it was a mixed blessing because the museum was chock full of short caped visitors slashing their light sabers at their siblings, but it did allow us to see some interesting demonstrations – for instance a Jedi Master and a Sith in a light saber duel, and a Star Wars armor building demonstration, including some give-aways of a replica of the character Han Solo frozen in carbonite.*

Of course we have no room currently in our museum for a separate hands-on space, but our visit to the Armory brought home the point that pretty much everyone likes to have something to hold and examine, or to try on, especially when it’s from an earlier time or a different way of life. The trick is in making those experiences easy, safe for the artifacts (or replicas) and pertinent to the museum’s mission. Having managed all three, the Higgins Armory Museum got high votes from all of us.

*It was my lucky day, as I won one of those Han Solo replicas!

Well, my opportunity to make a pitch for the new home of the Hatfield Historical Museum – a climate-controlled, centrally located, above-ground home – within the context of the Town Hall Renovation Project (Article 22) – came and went at Tuesday night’s briskly-paced Town Meeting. I was so focused on what I was going to say that I didn’t hear the moderator call for discussion, and when no one raised their hands, he immediately moved to take a vote. I jumped up to the mic, aghast, but it was too late! No explanations or supporting statements from the BOS (Board of Selectmen) who proposed the Article (other than the Select Board Chairman’s introductory remarks – which was unusual in itself). No questions from the Town. And no discussion.

Surprisingly, even without any discussion, a simple majority voted IN FAVOR of the $5.4 million article (69-55), but it was not enough to meet the two-thirds vote required.

Had I not missed my opportunity, this is what I wanted to say to Hatfield residents, Historical Society members and those interested in protecting history (with a few revisions given that the Town Meeting has passed):
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Time to fund our visions

 I support the renovation to the Town Hall for many reasons, but the one that I know the most about has to do with the Hatfield Historical Museum. The Town Hall Renovation would provide four climate-controlled rooms to safely store and display the town’s historical collection, all on the second floor. Since the Historical Society was founded in 1970 (41 years ago) – at which time the all-volunteer Society organized the town’s historical artifacts – the museum was overcrowded, and every curator since then has petitioned and/or begged the town to provide a larger, more climate-controlled space in which to house artifacts that have been collected and saved by townspeople for the last 300 years.

We recently hired a consultant (Museum & Collector Resource) to measure our collections and determine the amount and type of space needed to appropriately house our artifacts. The results of that report, including reviews of plans for both the Town Hall Renovation and the Library Renovation, can be found on the Links & Resources page by clicking HERE, but their review of the rooms earmarked for the storage and display of the Historical Museum Collection in the renovated Town Hall was very favorable.

The town’s collection – and it IS the town’s collection, owned by the Town of Hatfield, administered by the town’s Historical Commission, and cared for and managed by the nonprofit Historical Society – is an irreplaceable group of historic artifacts that Historic Deerfield or Historic Northampton or any other popular local history museum would jump at the chance to own. BUT, what we don’t have, is a climate-controlled, properly-sized location in which to store and display our treasures. Each year that passes, our collection grows more at risk. And we miss additional opportunities – because of lack of space – to be educating and inspiring young and old about history, our history. 

Some might say we can’t fund a project as big as this when the local economy is weak and when there are so many other capital expenditures on the docket – that it is not a “good time” to spend this kind of money. But when is this not the case?

Many of us who are homeowners have had to make difficult decisions over the years about spending money we didn’t have at the time to maintain or improve our homes – both to be proactive and prevent emergency repairs and to protect our investment. Why shouldn’t we also take responsibility for our town and its buildings in like fashion? Just because we have done it this way in the past doesn’t mean we can’t choose to do it better in the future.

If not now – then when?

The Town has held meetings and funded multiple studies to help us “envision” what we’d like our downtown to look like, but if we are never ready, as individual voters and taxpayers to fund those visions, then the vision of our Town Center as a thriving, bustling place where people come to do business, socialize, exercise or study may soon be replaced by a center littered with empty “historic” buildings awaiting demolition.

I support the Town Hall Renovation for this year, 2011, while we can still protect the investment in our Town Hall and Town Center.

Our town employees deserve better, our Town Hall deserves better, our seniors getting services from the Senior Center deserve better, and our town’s Historical Museum deserves better.

***

I urge you to take responsibility for our town, your town, as you do for your home, by voting to FUND Question 1 (Renovating Memorial Town Hall) on Tuesday at the ballot box.

And if enough of us do, then we will have another chance to vote FOR this renovation at a Special Town Meeting, presumably next fall.

Thank you for listening!

--Kathie Gow, Curator, Hatfield Historical Museum 

It is often an interesting exercise to examine a piece closely, as we do when filling out museum intake sheets, and see what one finds. We note the manufacturer (if there is one), or whether an items seems to be handmade. We take measurements and describe the materials used, as well as the purpose of the item. If we know, we describe where the item came from or where it was found, and assign it a category, a condition and an era or year of manufacture. In the process of looking closely at all the details we can see, and especially when looked at with a group of similar items, we sometimes sees things that we didn’t notice before. Saturday at the museum was one such instance.

Local builder Jonathan Bardwell and two of his sons took a break from the Boy Scouts annual flower sale and brought up a handful of items for the Historical Museum, found or replaced during his renovation last summer of the clock tower in the First Congregational Church of Hatfield. The items ranged from a metal crank used to wind the tower clock once a week before it was electrified, to a metal wrench, probably hand forged, made to fit the oversized bolt that holds the bell framework (or “head stock”) in place.

Jonathan also brought in four pulleys from the church tower (used either for the tolling rope or the main bell rope), but upon closer inspection realized that only three of them seemed to be from the same era. The three wooden pulleys presumed to be from the time of the Congregational Church bell installation (forged in 1879), all used steel pins with wooden pulley wheels, and all looked like they had originally been painted a grayish color and probably made in a shop.

The fourth pulley (both housing and pulley made of pine), was a somewhat different shape (not as regular), showed hatchet marks and did not appear to have been painted. It also used hand-wrought nails and wooden (hardwood) pins instead of steel. As he noticed all this, Jonathan made an educated guess that the pulley he held in his hand was not from the installation of the Congregational Church bell in the late 1800s, but from the installation of the bell in the Third Meetinghouse, as it was that bell that was recast after it cracked “at a Fourth of July celebration in 1876”* and was thereafter installed in the Congregational Church tower.

As you may know, Hatfield’s Third Meetinghouse (built around 1750) was being considered to be listed on the state's Register of Historic Places – as one of the meetings of Shay’s Rebellion took place therein – before it was catastrophically blown into the foundation over which it sat, after being successfully moved from one side of Main St. to the other. But that is a story for another day. According to the Wells history cited below, under the reminiscences of Samuel D. Partridge, “I think the bell bore the date of 1806,” and so this fourth pulley perhaps predates the others by some 70+ years!

*From A History of Hatfield, Massachusetts, in Three Parts, by Daniel White Wells and Reuben Field Wells, 1910.