Old Tools and Industries of Dummerston Open this Sunday, February 18, 1:00 – 3:00 PM
Dummerston's past is generously displayed in three exhibits now running at the Historical Society's Schoolhouse in Dummerston Center and may be viewed the first and third Sundays of February and March from 1:00 to 3:00 pm.
The first, Old Tools and Industries, features some sixty tools from augers to powder horns, ice tongs to ice saw, keg tap to hand drills. Among the industries and occupations represented are farming, logging, sugaring, carpentry, construction, quarrying, ferrying, railroading and hydropower.
Fifty-plus photos show details of all of these historic local industries. Men mowing hay with scythes are joined by a happy farmer with an early horse-drawn cutter bar. Here is a prize cow weighing 1,650 pounds and another cow being contentedly milked by a pig. A ferry on the Connecticut River carries two cars, a license plate legible. From the big granite quarry in West Dummerston the eye travels across a bridge of the West River Railroad to the village as it was a hundred years ago.
Accompanying this exhibit is a selection of the Society's extensive collection of Dr. Burnett material. Dr. Grace W. Burnett (1886-1963) was born on a farm in in Dummerston, taught school and worked in a factory to earn money for medical school, and became Brattleboro's first female physician, the third in the state. A beloved doctor, accomplished equestrian, and civic leader, she early on made house calls on horseback, and delivered over 3,000 babies. On display are a number of photos from her albums, documentary information, and the more than forty volumes of her medical library.
And always available to be seen are some of the Society's photo and document albums in which evidence of Dummerston's past and present is recorded and preserved.
The Society's building in Dummerston Center (adjacent to the Town Office) is handicapped-accessible and open to the public at no charge. Exhibits rotate and the current ones are only viewable through March.
For information, call Chuck Fish at 802-254-2554 or Muriel Taylor at 802- 380-7525
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