NEW SALEM — A donation from the Jones Library in Amherst has brought yet another piece of the lost towns of the Quabbin Reservoir to the Swift River Valley Historical Society Museum.
The communion table from the Enfield Congregational Church was brought to the museum in February. The donation was made because “the library was downsizing its collection and felt that the communion table would best be suited to our museum,” according to Dot Frye, curator of the Swift River Valley Historical Society Museum. The table is 3 feet deep, 5 feet long and 3 feet high.
The Enfield Congregational Church was constructed in 1787, with the steeple and belfry added in 1814, Frye said. It originally had “square pews” in which families sat in a square with a foot stove. Foot stoves were wooden boxes with a door on one side in which a bowl with burning charcoal was inserted. People then could place their feet on top of the box, which had holes in it, to warm their feet in the winter. A pipe organ was added in 1855 and in 1873 the plain glass windows were replaced with stained glass.
Approximately one week before Enfield’s 150th anniversary, the church burned to the ground under suspicious circumstances, Frye said.
“We were thrilled to get the communion table back to where it belongs,” said Cyndi Harbeson, head of special collections at the Jones Library. The table, which had been on display in the special collections room, had been with the library since the 1930s.
Harbeson said the donation was part of a larger deaccessioning of items from the library’s collection that had no close connection to Amherst. Among other items deaccessioned, she continued, was a doll that had belonged to Lucy Larcom, an 18th-century poet. The library donated the doll to the Beverly Historical Society where Larcom had grown up.
The Swift River Valley Historical Society Museum will display the table in the Prescott Church building, which is on museum grounds, along with the original communion service set from the Enfield Congregational Church. The table is only one piece of furniture that the museum has from the four towns that were flooded to create the Quabbin Reservoir.
“The Whitaker-Clary House, Peirce Memorial Carriage Shed and the Prescott Church are all filled with furniture and other artifacts from the four towns of Enfield, Prescott, Greenwich and Dana and parts of New Salem,” Frye said.
The Swift River Valley Historical Museum will open for the season on June 22 and close Sept. 14, with hours being Wednesday and Sunday afternoons from 1 to 4 p.m. Open house events will be held the first Sunday of July, August and September. All other visitation days will be by appointment only by contacting the museum at 978-544-6882 or swiftrivermuseum@gmail.com
Carla Charter is a freelance writer from Phillipston. Her writing focuses on history with a particular interest in the history of the North Quabbin area. Contact her at cjfreelancewriter@earthlink.net.