Squires Tavern Quarterly
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March 2024 - Update link
John Brown's Tree: Exploration of the abolitionist's childhood connection to Barkhamsted's "Indian Council Tree."
1806 Sawmill Ledger: Traditional British currency formatting used in early local commerce.
BHS Archives: A look at the 1920–1924 meeting minutes of the short-lived Barkhamsted Chamber of Commerce.
Peoples State Forest Centennial: Reminiscing on the grand October 1924 dedication pageant.
Colonial Chemistry: The process of making lye, soap, and potash on early homesteads.
1949 Telephone Directory: Vintage three-digit local phone numbers and "party line" etiquette.
Christmas Panel Resurrection: The restoration of the historic mid-1950s nativity public scenes.
1955 Flood Imagery: Newly uncovered photo collections detailing the August 1955 flood rescue efforts.
Collection Corner: An 1850s invoice from the Eagle Scythe Shop in Riverton found on eBay
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Doug Roberts Memorial: Installation of a carved stone memorial bench at Squire's Tavern.
Escaping the Reservoir: Rare photos of the John Merrill Tavern being physically moved on timber cribbing in 1933.
Susie-Q Unmasked: School scrapbooks solve the mystery of a 1950s classroom mascot chicken.
Linne Landgraf Tribute: Honoring a two-decade newsletter editor and tavern stencil reproduction artist.
Barn Model Exhibit: Displaying a massive scale post-and-beam model built around 1980.
Hitchcock Savings Bank: An 1853 fractional stock certificate booklet overview.
West Hill Poet: Discovery of 160 typed poems by former opera singer Claire Covelli.
Arba Alford’s Notebook: Personal journals from the 1790s noting early regional milestones and trials.
1976 Cassette Recovery: Digitizing audio interviews detailing turn-of-the-century dairy farming on Park Road.
The Merrill Family Lineage: History of the 1790s tavern keepers, blacksmiths, and poor-house operators.
Vito Covelli Landscape: Donation of a 1940s local WPA artwork depicting traditional draft work.
Colonial Exhibition Program: Cross-referencing an undated program booklet to an 1850 children's performance.
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Col. John Reitemeyer: A deep look into the life of the colorful Hartford Courant publisher and local leader.
Center Schoolhouse 1929: Audio logs and letters from the final teacher before its closure.
Deming Coverlets: 19th-century woven bedding patterns preserved from historic Hitchcocksville.
Town Historian Eulogy: Remembering Doug Roberts and his 50 years of physical contributions to local history.
14,000-Year-Old Paleo Point: A prehistoric chert artifact found along the Farmington River.
William Taylor Blanket Chest: Revolutionary War veteran's storage chest enters the collection.
Rev. Ozias Eells: Was Barkhamsted’s first minister an underground asset for the Culper Spy Ring?
Saving Squire's Tavern: A retrospective on Dave Leff’s intervention to prevent the state from tearing down the tavern.
Colonial Lawn Games: Summer campers recreate "Frog Trouncing" and "Clothespin Drops."
The Schoolhouse Hen: A history of Mrs. Marge Miller's classroom pet chicken and her famous sugar cookie recipe.
Lambert Hitchcock Timeline: Planning a permanent educational display tracking the furniture pioneer.
Vintage Carriage Ads: 1870 commercial prints from Pleasant Valley carriage builders.
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Pleasant Valley Bridge History: Uncovering the structural layouts that predated the 1939 steel span.
Squire's Tavern Dec. 2000: Remembering the zero-hour emergency restoration of a collapsing kitchen foundation.
COVID-19 Local Diaries: Reflections from the Town Hall leadership and local caregivers.
Greenwoods Pond Photo: Rare 1920 view of the valley before the New Hartford dam failed in 1936.
COVID-19 Series Part II: Balancing insurance adjustments, fire pits, and remote schooling in quarantine.
Merrill Tavern Tag Sale: Pulling preservation funds from community yard markets.
20-Year Lease Milestone: Remembering the 2001 grand signing ceremony arrived at via an oxcart.
COVID-19 ICU Chronicle: A harrowing perspective on early 2020 emergency hospitalization.
Fifth-Grade Correspondence: Pandemic letters from Barkhamsted Elementary school children.
Netflix in Barkhamsted: Behind the scenes of a Stephen King movie shoot closing down West River Road.
C. Albert Honold Farm: History and photo records of a prominent local jeweler’s lost 1892 homestead.
Roofing Emergency: Finding a $60,000 structural failure right after painting the tavern exterior.
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Genealogical Coincidence: A modern docent discovers her direct ancestor was married right inside her tour room.
The Colonial Tythingmen: The lost 1721 policing office that corrected sleeping churchgoers with striking sticks.
Barkhamsted Hollow Farm Photos: Preserving memories of the tobacco flatlands before reservoir submersion.
English Roots Travelogue: Locating the architectural inspirations for the Saville Dam gatehouse in Essex, UK.
Hitchcock Factory Homecoming: Tracking commercial retail negotiations for the historic brick building.
The Town Stocks: Exploring the 1786 public humiliation structures built onto the village green.
Merrill Tavern Secrets: Stencil patterns found in the 1814 tavern match Squire's Tavern exactly.
Faux Hearth Food Art: Recreating hyper-realistic, everlasting 19th-century stews using art erasers and nail polish.
Riverton Asparagus Fields: How a wild roadside plant stems from a 20th-century cash crop company.
Clearing out the Brush: Brush-hogging decades of thick invasive overgrowth from the 1814 Merrill Tavern facade.
Dr. Timothy Miller Scandal: The 1789 criminal flight of a prominent selectman who left his family in bankruptcy.
1798 Livestock Ledger: A tax census counting exactly 203 oxen, 456 cows, 13 silver watches, and 38 dogs.
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Pelatiah Allyn Reconsideration: Debunking old 1883 myths regarding the "Father of Barkhamsted" using probate checks.
Barkhamsted Census of 1800: Demographic analysis showing a young frontier society (51% under age 16).
Class Photo Project: Call for local graduation prints from the class years of 1946, 1952, and 1956.
Raley Rubber Company: The 1918–1936 transition of the chair factory into a developer of pacifiers, nipples, and condoms.
Votes for Women Part I: Celebrating the 100th anniversary of the 19th Amendment with a look at local suffragette leagues.
WWII Grocer Ceiling Prices: Original OPA home front posters listing maximum prices for coffee (30¢) and Jell-O (7¢).
Votes for Women Part II: How hard-ball financial withholding forced Connecticut to ratify the vote in 1920.
Jury of Inquest Practice: Lost legal frameworks requiring 12 neighbors to analyze freezing cases and ax murders.
1880s Schoolhouse Portrait: Discovery of one of the oldest known student photographs in Pleasant Valley.
Saville Dam Marker: Organizing a permanent structural billboard layout detailing submerged regional centers.
Deacon Joseph Wilder: Profile of the early jurist who voted "Nay" at the 1788 constitutional convention.
Figgy Pudding Evolution: Tracing a dish from a savory, meat-stuffed animal casing into a sweet holiday icon.
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Radar in Weed Cemetery: Ground-penetrating radar grids mapping lost 1792 graves without ground disruption.
American Chestnut Blight Part I: The ecology behind the devastating loss of 4 billion paramount timber trees.
Camp White Remodeling: Evening educational spaces built by CCC workers out of rotted 1938 barracks.
Tavern Buggy Gift: A 1962 forest ranger tracks down a custom Albany-made two-person horse carriage.
1820 Hartford Newspaper Display: Finding cotton-rag paper prints of early packet shipping notices.
Cheese of Cider: Unraveling early agricultural diary references to apple pressing frameworks.
Lambert Hitchcock Bicentennial: Celebrating 200 years since the master craftsman arrived at the Riverton banks.
American Chestnut Blight Part II: Cross-breeding programs and trial orchard layouts planted at the tavern.
Flax in Bloom: The complex processing steps required to twist garden stalks into linen fibers.
Stanclift Cove Origins: Transforming a 1793 tavern property and tobacco farm into a 1966 sanctuary.
Caleb Mills Saville Biography: Exploring the career path of the engineer who laid out the 36-billion-gallon valley flood.
Lost Tavern Ledger Certificates: Utilizing Hartford Library records from 1782 to extract missing selectmen timelines.
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Barter Economies: Navigating life when teachers "boarded round" and labor on town roads paid property taxes.
Riverton Lamp Committee 1894: Discovery of a ledger detailing the neighborhood switch to modern oil street lighting.
Dr. Amos Beecher Medicine Exhibit: Tracing the regional usage of local plant samples in early country healing arts.
Evolution of the Dollar Sign ($): Tracing the fractional origins of "pieces of eight" and Nathan Daboll's math textbook influence on American school finance.
The Story of Crabgrass: How a common lawn pest was initially an essential central-European millet food crop brought over by survival-conscious settlers.
19th-Century Medicine Program: A feature on Dr. Amos Beecher and early regional battles against spotted fever, typhus, and primitive herbal remedies.
The Small-Pox Outbreak of 1894: The terrifying health crisis that caused regional quarantines and roadblocks around Winsted, establishing a local "pest house."
Vito Covelli Mail Truck Canvas: Family donation of a 1930s winter landscape painting featuring a unique, modified Model-T mail truck.
Colonial Astronomy Classbooks: Highlighting historical 1820s planetary science beliefs, including astronomer Herschel's theory that the sun was a habitable globe.
A Chestnut Tree For Bob: Planting a hybrid, blight-resistant Dunstan Chestnut close to the tavern to honor the memory of beloved docent Bob Judd.
Heated Barkhamsted Politics: A history of an 1860 political arson case that burned down the Doolittle wagon shop in Pleasant Valley.
The Monster Buck of 1905: Boston newspaper accounts of a rogue, 300-pound "ugly deer" that terrified local Riverton woodsmen and farmers into high roosts.
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Old Glass Negatives Discovered: Glastonbury Historical Society passes over 61 pristine 1900-era glass plate negatives shot by the local Ward family showing unseen views of early Riverton mills.
Merino Sheep Mania: The geopolitical impact of Queen Isabella’s funding, colonial smuggling, and the 1699 English Wool Act leading to patriotic homefront spinning.
Pleasant Valley Drive-In: Recounting the history of the 1947 outdoor theater, spotlighting a repurposed WWII Navy projector and the low-ceiling snack shack signed by generations of staff.
Beach Rock action: Exploring the steep 200-foot granite outlook above the reservoir and mapping out its theories of origin.
Old Glass Negatives Discovered: Glastonbury Historical Society passes over 61 pristine 1900-era glass plate negatives shot by the local Ward family showing unseen views of early Riverton mills.
Merino Sheep Mania: The geopolitical impact of Queen Isabella’s funding, colonial smuggling, and the 1699 English Wool Act leading to patriotic homefront spinning.
Pleasant Valley Drive-In: Recounting the history of the 1947 outdoor theater, spotlighting a repurposed WWII Navy projector and the low-ceiling snack shack signed by generations of staff.
Beach Rock action: Exploring the steep 200-foot granite outlook above the reservoir and mapping out its theories of origin.
The William Taylor Diaries: Celebrating the discovery of three 1799–1830 journal volumes at UConn Health, dating town schoolhouses decades earlier than previously suspected.
The Spotted Fever Epidemic of 1807: A grim history tracing a sub-Saharan African viral strain striking Medford down to Barkhamsted, killing victims in hours and triggering emergency fasting days.
In Memoriam: Honoring Charlie Lynes (Pleasant Valley store keeper and flea market organizer) and Fred Warner (the industrial archaeologist who famously discovered the tavern's hidden wall stenciling).
Vito Covelli's Mailman: Showing a rare photo of Winsted mail carrier Robert Fancher using a modified winter Model-T truck to run favors and exchange gifts with the artist.
Winter Ice Harvesting: Looking back at the brutal labor required to cut, haul, and sawdust-pack blocks of ice from Highland Lake and Greenwoods Pond.
The Hitchcock Chair Factory Restoration: Detailed accounts of ongoing structural updates and legacy preservation inside the historic brick walls.
Early Valley Photography: A spotlight on late 19th-century tintypes and cabinet cards capturing prominent local farming families.
Spring Cleaning 1879: Humorous household instructions from an old Virginia manual advising housewives to roll up carpets with layers of raw tobacco leaves packed inside.
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1846 Signature Quilt Steps Up: The New England Quilt Museum displays BHS's local quilt to showcase early "Prussian Blue" calico dyes printed at the Riverton Ward Calico Mill.
BHS Endowment Launch: Launching a five-figure structural investment fund under Vanguard to protect operating costs against long-term inflation.
Grammar School Beginnings (1821): Mapping out the early two-story building where Yale students taught Latin upstairs before it was structurally halved and relocated by teams in 1877.
Lunaria (Money Plant): How early Pilgrims carefully transported non-food seeds across the Atlantic just to bring visual elements of beauty to harsh log mantels.
New Archaeological Preserves: State protections granted to the 4,500-year-old Walt Landgraf Soapstone Quarry and a mysterious, untouched early 1900s charcoal hearth mound.
Witchcraft & Murder at Goss Tavern (1785): The chilling story of Thomas Goss murdering his wife because he believed she was a witch, confidently declaring his "Heavenly Father" would break his neck out of the Litchfield gallows.
Lighthouse Descendants Gathering: Tracking the organizational efforts of Coni DuBois to recall multi-ethnic descendants of James Chaugham and Molly Barber back to the valley campground.
Spring Cleaning 1879: Humorous household instructions from an old Virginia manual advising housewives to roll up carpets with layers of raw tobacco leaves packed inside.
Lighthouse Reunion Recap: Photos and summaries of hundreds of descendants marching with banners down the July 4th Pleasant Valley parade.
Early Tavern Nominations Found: State Library searches reveal pristine 1782–1805 town Selectmen sheets, proving Squire's Tavern operated a dozen years earlier than 1805 under Eli Holcomb.
Old Schoolbook Discoveries: Finding an 1851 algebra textbook containing a lock of human hair pinned down as a Civil War-era love token for "Dearest Kay," plus an encrypted code inside an 1880 reader.
Murder in Barkhamsted Hollow: Promoting Mike Fox's new investigative book mapping out the brutal 1914 robbery and murder of local store operator Hubert Case.
Tobacco Returns to the Tavern: Re-creating regional agricultural history by bringing an authentic Suffield crop to full leaf maturity right behind Squire's Tavern for the first time in a century.
Merrill Tavern Acquisition Steps: Initial communications between the MDC and BHS regarding an open easement to rescue the vacant 1814 brick structure at the Center.
The Election of 1815: Reviewing open town elections where citizens paid road work to offset their tax balances and "Tithing Men" carried long sticks to wake up dozing church parishioners.