Suffield Historical Society Keeps Fresh

The annual appeal is now underway. 

According to president Edward Chase III, funds are needed for a new weathervane with a tobacco leaf design to be placed atop the Barn at the society’s flagship museum, the King House at the corner of Main Street and Kent Avenue. It will cost approximately $1,700.

The tobacco motif exemplifies what’s inside the barn museum, filled with items from the glory days of tobacco farming in Suffield.

Built in 1764, the museum's period rooms house a collection of local period furnishings. The gallery rooms exhibit local tobacco growing and cigar manufacturing history, as well as significant special collections of early flasks and bottles, embroidery samplers, Bennington pottery, Suffield postcards, and other local memorabilia.

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According to Curator Lester Smith, the society was recently gifted with a collection of over 50 glass-plate negatives of scenes around Herman Ude’s farm on Mountain Road at Sheldon Street. Smith plans to have the plates scanned and printed and welcomes such items, which add to the growing archival collection focused on Suffield history.

The King House Museum is located at 232 South Main Street and is open to the public Wednesdays and Saturdays from 1-4 p.m., May through September. The home welcomes Suffield fourth graders during the historical Suffield part of the school year, and also holds an old fashioned ice cream social each July on the lawn.

The Suffield Historical Society has 262 members, made up of 126 families and 136 individuals. Membership categories range from $2 to $25.

Meetings are held at the on the third Wednesday of the month, September to November and March to June, for lectures, historical entertainments, and other programs. The public is invited.

For more information, call (860) 668-5256 or visit the group’s webpage at:

http://www.suffieldhistoricalsociety.org/index.htm