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Historic Deerfield Annual Report

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Historic Deerfield Annual Report Historic Deerfield 2017 Annual Report Mission Statement Historic Deerfield, Inc., is dedicated to the heritage and preservation of Deerfield, Massachusetts and the Connecticut River Valley. Its museums and programs provide today’s audiences with experiences that create an understanding and appreciation of New England’s historic villages and countryside. Message from the Chair, Board of Trustees Greetings! On behalf of the entire Board of financially strong and well-poised for the fall of 2017, our members’ trip takes us to Trustees, I thank you, deeply and sincerely, future. San Francisco, where we will visit many for your continued support of Historic important private and public collections and Deerfield. Your support is vital to our mission Expansion of Programming see great architecture and design. Attracts New Audiences of providing our audiences with experiences Every year, the museum presents more than The Deerfield Inn Continues as that create an understanding and appreciation 75 programs for visitors from across the One of the “Best” of this extraordinary place. country and abroad, including members, In May 2017, Trip Advisor named The Let’s take a look at some of the developments scholars, collectors, and students. In Deerfield Inn as one of the Top 25 Best at the museum during the past year. addition to our historic trade demonstrations, Small Hotels in the United States, garnering educational, and family programs, this year the inn a Trip Advisor “Travelers Choice” Increased Revenue from we were able to expand our programming to award. This is a wonderful accolade in a Donors and Strong Markets include a theatrical style evening tour program year that brought many changes to the inn, I am pleased to report that Historic Deerfield’s on The Street. The new tour was so popular as our longtime innkeepers, Jane and Karl net assets increased by more than $2 million that it sold out in ten days. The popularity of Sabo, retired in October 2016. We are during fiscal year 2017. That increase was due this program demonstrates the importance of pleased that an old friend of the Deerfield in large part to increased gifts from generous developing innovative programming to help Inn, Steve Pardoe, has come on board as the donors and strong financial markets. Total expand our audiences. new innkeeper. Come visit the inn and meet Steve! invested net assets increased five percent The museum continued to provide the over 2016. So, while we suffered a modest opportunity for great travel experiences operating deficit due to certain budget focused on decorative arts with the members’ shortfalls and unforeseen personnel and trip to New Orleans last September. In the other challenges, Historic Deerfield remains 1 Back on The Street, we look forward to the Key Additions to the Commitment to Historic completion of Barnard Tavern in 2018 and Museum Collections Preservation in Deerfield new projects on the horizon, including the Home to one of the best public collections and Beyond of art and antiques in America, Historic At the core of our mission is historic restoration of Historic Deerfield’s most visited Deerfield continues to make key additions preservation – preserving the buildings, building, the Stebbins House. to the museum’s primary areas of period monuments, and landscapes of our past to American furniture, paintings, silver, help us learn about who we are and how that The Strategic Plan: On the ceramics, textiles and metal wares, as well has shaped our heritage, values, and culture. Path to 2020 as our extraordinary collection of colonial The museum’s commitment to historic We continue to make excellent progress powder horns. This year, the museum preservation drove the recent acquisition on our strategic plan, The 2020 Vision for acquired a powder horn that is arguably the of the remarkable interior of the 1739 Abel Historic Deerfield, which focuses on (1) finest example to survive from the American Chapin House in Chicopee, Massachusetts, preserving Old Deerfield, (2) educating the Revolution. The “Gatchel powder horn” prior to its demolition. Three full rooms of museum’s audience, (3) increasing attendance made by Andrew Clark for John and Sarah fancy paneling, moldings, and baseboards, and caring for our audience, and (4) raising Gatchel of Vassalboro, Maine, features plus an extremely rare signature left by the the funds necessary to accomplish many complex engraving on a spiraled and tapering house’s joiner on the back of a panel to the goals. ‘canvas’ depicting in detail two seminal second floor fireplace, are now on display at I wish to thank each of you, as well as the political cartoons of the time: Paul Revere’s the Flynt Center as a part of the exhibition staff, volunteers, and my fellow trustees Boston Massacre and The able Doctor, or that opened in May, “Why We Collect: Recent of Historic Deerfield, for your important America Swallowing the Bitter Draught (from Acquisitions at Historic Deerfield, 2010- contributions to our success over the past the June 1774 issue of the Royal American 2017.” The rooms serve as a remarkable year. Thank you! Magazine). Be sure to turn to the report’s architectural teaching tool for the museum Recent Acquisitions section to view the and as a statement to the importance of Respectfully yours, powder horn and the other highlights of this historic preservation. Joseph P. Gromacki year’s additions to the collection. Chair, Board of Trustees 2 Report of the President “Did You Know That?...” Little details about Deerfield are already • Where did one of the earliest African You will read in the following pages about known like the facts that the failed effort to American poets live? our new holiday event—a play set along save the 1699 John Sheldon House—“the Old Answer: Lucy Terry Prince (ca. 1725- the candlelit street in the year 1803, the Indian House”—in 1848 is the first public 1821) lived as an enslaved person in the conservation of the rare collection of plant attempt to preserve an historic building in Deerfield home of her owner Ebenezer specimens—the herbarium—created by situ in America, or that the first figural Civil Wells (1691-1758) now Historic Doctor Stephen West Williams (1790-1855) War monument in America was installed on Deerfield’s ‘blue house’ at the corner of of Deerfield in 1817, the museum’s saving of the Deerfield Town Common in 1867. But we Memorial Street. cannot stop here! room interiors from the Colonel Abel Chapin • Where is quite possibly the earliest House in Chicopee, Massachusetts, signed To warm up, I have five easy commemorative, European-style by the joiner Martin Smith in 1759, and the ones for you. battlefield marker in North America? production of a 30-second TV advertisement Answer: The Bloody Brook Monument • Where are the earliest, continually for Champney’s Restaurant at the Deerfield at South Deerfield has been a landmark exhibited ‘period rooms’ in Inn. The full list of accomplishments in fiscal since it was dedicated in 1838 to the America? year 2017 is significant and diverse. memory of the battle there in 1675 during Answer: In Memorial Hall, the Deerfield King Philip’s War. The marker that While we are proud of what we do to promote home of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial preceded the current obelisk was and to preserve Old Deerfield, the truth is that Association (PVMA), which opened its described as a ruin in 1728 by Harvard the significance of the place is awash with just doors in 1880. student Dudley Woodbridge. about anything interesting that can cross your • Where was the first pattern book by an mind about the history and beauty of small- • Colonial history aside, did you know that American architect printed? town America. Maybe we should develop Deerfield was one of the centers of the Answer: The Country Builder’s Assistant our own version of Trivial Pursuit. Created Arts and Crafts Movement in America was published by Asher Benjamin (1773- in Montreal by Chris Haney and Scott Abbott during the generation flanking World 1845) in Greenfield, just three miles north in 1979, 20 million games were purchased War One? of Deerfield, in 1797. in 1984 alone: Historical minutia is not so trivial! 3 Answer: He directed the summer session Let’s increase the degree at Deerfield Academy in 1856. I bet you of difficulty. didn’t win the new refrigerator on that one! • Did you know that Deerfield boys witnessed the 1876 Battle of the If you think that was a reach… Little Big Horn (James Earl Smith • Did you know that Mary Jane Tweed, th (1853-1918) 7 Cavalry, Co. D) and the widow of legendary New York City • Top that? Did you know that in our drowned in the Irrawaddy River in Burma politician, William “Boss” Tweed (1823- great museum collection is a fragment of (Charles Hawks Munn (1844-1863)? 1878) bought the house on The Street the wedding dress (F.393) worn by • Not exotic enough? Did you know that later owned by Margaret Whiting, one Dorothy Quincy when she married John if you had 25 cents in your pocket during of the founders of the Deerfield Society of Hancock in September 1775? Blue and White Needlework? An elaborate the spring of 1818—approaching the By the way, we are still not 100 percent young boy’s suit said to have been worn by value of a day’s common labor, you could certain that, four months before the Hancocks’ Boss Tweed’s son is in the collection of the see up the road in Greenfield “Columbus, wedding, Colonel Benedict Arnold actually Memorial Hall Museum. A Male Elephant.” In all likelihood, stopped in Deerfield to buy beef for the army Columbus would be the largest, living Imagine this! a few days before he and Colonel Ethan Allen thing that you ever saw and certainly captured Fort Ticonderoga from the British • Historic Deerfield just purchased at from the farthest away! Franklin Herald on May 10, 1775, “in the name of the Great auction the first Koran published in the (Greenfield, MA), May 12, 1818.
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