Vol. 5, No. 3                                                                                        May 2010

Spring Roundtable Meeting Announcement

The spring meeting of the Monadnock Historical Societies Forum will be held at the Amos Blake House Museum on the Town Common in Fitzwilliam on Thursday, 17 June 2010 and hosted by the Fitzwilliam Historical Society. The agenda for our spring meeting will include our morning Roundtable, continued discussion on a Roundtable brochure, update on the "The Way We Were" project with The Keene Sentinel, initial discussion on the next collaborative project, and a tour of the Amos Blake House Museum, which will include the Historical Society's current feature exhibit on "Dolls, Dollhouses, and Miniatures."

We will take our brown bag lunch after our morning Roundtable discussion and prior to the tour of the Blake House. I have learned there are no lunch-like meals available on the common, with only convenience store food at the junction of Route 12 and 119.

Directions: The Amos Blake House is on the Fitzwilliam Common, on the opposite side from the Town Library and Town Hall on Route 119. Coming east or west, Route 119 will take you to the Fitzwilliam Common. Driving north to south, the main road to Fitzwilliam is Route 12, and turn west on Route 119 to the Common.

Fall Meeting

The fall Roundtable meeting will be in Alstead on Thursday, 21 October 2010 at the Maybelle H. Still Memorial Building (formerly the Universalist Church) at 9:30 a.m. and hosted by the Alstead Historical Society. Details on the fall meeting will be in the September newsletter.

Schools and Education Exhibit Program

Open House of One Room Schoolhouses and Academies
On Sunday - 13 June 2010 from 1:00 to 5:00 p.m.

The last of our collaborative exhibit programs will be an open house of several of the region's one room schoolhouses and academies. Participants for this event are the Hoffman Family of Sullivan, Jaffrey Historical Society, Jaffrey Center Village Improvement Society, Nelson Town Archives, Sullivan Town Archives, Walpole Historical Society, Westmoreland Historical Society, and the Historical Society of Cheshire County.

The public is invited to visit each site to learn what it was like to attend school during the 19th and 20th centuries. Each site will be staffed with volunteer interpreters with free admission.

A brochure/flyer is available for the open house, which includes a brief description on each site, a map, and contact information, can be obtained through each of the participating organizations and on the Roundtable pages of the HSCC website as a printable pdf file.

Enjoy the open house!

"The Way We Were" - Articles for The Keene Sentinel

After an enthusiastic response to produce articles for The Keene Sentinel's "The Way We Were" column of the paper at our February meeting, we have had few articles with photographs submitted. In fact, we have had only one article published to date. The Sentinel has indicated that we need to be able to produce a steady flow of articles in order to have this project work effectively or they will conclude this working relationship.

One of the issues that we have faced to date are the quality of the photographs. Not any digitized photo will work. Because of the papers printing process, photos need to have a 300 dpi resolution or higher. Not all cameras provide such a high resolution. Please follow the existing criteria guidelines when submitting articles and photos, which are available on the Roundtable section of the HSCC website, at www.hsccnh.org/roundtable/default.cfm. If you have any questions, please contact me by phone or email. This is a great opportunity for the Roundtable community to show Sentinel readers our wonderful historic homes and places.

Roundtable Brochure

At the February meeting we discussed the possibility of having a Roundtable brochure and/or booklet to help publicize our organizations. The basic idea is to provide space for each Roundtable member to highlight their organization, with a map of the region. At the spring meeting in Fitzwilliam, I will provide further details on possible layout models for both methods and costs.

The Roundtable's Next Collaborative Project

I would like for us to begin thinking about our next collaborative project. We have generated several ideas for exhibits and a companion publication prior to the commitment to the schools and education exhibit that we can discuss again, add new ideas, or think about some other collaborative project. I am not in a rush to get a new project started. Yet we learn with each project completed to date, the more lead time we have the easier the project becomes for everyone involved.

So, please think about projects you would like to see the Roundtable consider at the spring meeting in Fitzwilliam.

Contact 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.