Vol. 2, No. 3                                                                                         May 2007

June Meeting

The spring meeting of the Monadnock Historical Societies Forum will be held at the Jaffrey Civic Center on Thursday 21 June beginning at 9:30 a.m. This meeting will be hosted by the Jaffrey Historical Society.

The morning session will be our traditional roundtable gathering to collect and share ideas and contacts to help grow and promote our local history. In addition to the roundtable, we need to discuss where the fall meeting will be held, continue our discussion and perhaps choose our next collaborative project, and finalize whether or not to hold a fall meetinghouse open house event.

We may also wish to follow up on conversations from the winter meeting that included:

-  Film and tape conversion to DVD for an upcoming Roundtable meeting;
-  Establish and offer a contact and email list of attendees of Roundtable meetings for networking;
-   Develop a summer Roundtable brochure that lists programs and events of Roundtable members;
-  A Roundtable antique auction.

After our morning session, we will break for a brown bag lunch. There are also places in the downtown area to purchase a lunch.

After lunch, the folks at the Jaffrey Historical Society will give us a tour of the Civic Center. This facility is the home of the Jaffrey Historical Society with its archive, exhibit, and meeting space. Once the Civic Center tour is completed, we will have an opportunity to tour the Park Theater, which was built in the 1940s and closed about 1975. The interior remains in the character of the 1940s, which includes four large murals of the Monadnock region painted by a WPA project. There are plans to restore this wonderful old theater. After touring the Park Theater, if there is interest, we will be given a walking tour of downtown Jaffrey.

Please let me know if you will be attending this spring meeting by 15 June so we can help the folks at the Jaffrey Historical Society in their planning.

The Jaffrey Civic Center is located at 40 Main Street in downtown Jaffrey. (Main Street is also Route 124.) Driving east into Jaffrey, the Civic Center will be on your left a couple blocks before you reach the lights at the intersection of Routes 124 and 202. If you are coming into Jaffrey from Route 202, turn west onto Main Street, with the Civic Center on your right a couple block from the downtown lights. The Civic Center is set back from the road and there is a sign on the front yard. Parking is in the back of the building.

Future Collaborative Project

At the winter meeting we discussed and listed possible future collaborative projects that almost all of the region's historical organizations would be able to participate in. Please review this list below and be ready to discuss which of these possibilities might be best for our next collaborative exhibit.

-  Schools
-  Taverns
-  Libraries, books, and printers
-  Mills and mill life
-  Summer Camps

Roundtable Forum to have Booth at Newport Reliving New Hampshire's Past Celebration

The Newport Historical Society is hosting an historical event for the whole family. Reliving New Hampshire's Past is a one day celebration on Saturday June 2, 2007 from 9:00 a.m. to 5:00 p.m. that will have reenactors, children's games, traditional craft vendors, demonstrators, food booths, a fireman's muster, and booths in the Opera House for historical organizations to promote local history.

The Monadnock Historical Societies Forum will have a booth at the festival. This event will be a good way to gain exposure to what the Roundtable does as a model for others to see and explore. With the help of Neil Jenness and Jan Carpenter, we are putting together a poster board and brochure/flyer that will describe the Monadnock Historical Societies Forum and list all the organizations that are part of the Roundtable with their contact information.

If you would like to volunteer at the booth or have your organization represented at the festival, this is what I need from you.

-  Contact Tom Haynes at 352-1895 dired@hsccnh.org if you can help out at the booth.
-  Bring or mail to HSCC any information or handouts, such as brochures, flyers, membership information, or items you sell, you would like the folks at the booth to share with the general public. Please have this information to HSCC by 31 May.
-  We also have room to sell items at the fair. If you would like for us to sell three or four items for you, please bring no more then five each to HSCC by Thursday 31 May. Make sure you provide contact information in case we sellout a particular book or item so people will know how to find you.

Please attend this important event to help support the Roundtable Forum's effort to promote our region's history and to celebrate New Hampshire's past.

Contact & Web Site Information

For all questions or concerns regarding any aspect of the Monadnock Historical Societies Forum, please contact HSCC's Tom Haynes at 603-352-1895 or dired@hsccnh.org. Please remember to post and share this newsletter with your members. Also, please remember to submit your summer events for posting on the Roundtable Events page of the Roundtable Forum web site.