SHELBURNE — Local residents can travel back in time and learn about the Shelburne of the past and its agricultural pursuits during a joint presentation of the Shelburne Agricultural Commission and Historical Society on Saturday.
The program will be held at 1 p.m. at the Shelburne Falls Theater at Memorial Hall on Bridge Street, and is expected to last approximately two hours. It will expand on previous collaborative presentations from the commission and society — with even more photos of the towns’ farms in the 1800s and 1900s — held a few years ago to celebrate the town’s 250th anniversary.
“We did a short presentation then and we have even more pictures and information now,” said organizer Carolyn Wheeler. “We had reached out to a lot of the old farm families in town and asked for their photos.”
Wheeler said residents are interested in learning more about the town’s agricultural past, as previous presentations saw more than 140 attendees. She expects that with more photos, this upcoming presentation will see even more.
She said researching for the presentation was difficult at times, as some of the historical photos were unlabeled and difficult to identify. For example, she noted one of the photos in the presentation is of a Jersey cow named Abigail, who, for a time, held the world record for milk production. On the back of the photo was information about Abigail, but nothing about the people in the photo with her.
The presentation will show scenes of Shelburne in the past, with buildings and practices long forgotten, such as the Pool Kellogg Tavern or blowing ditches, Wheeler said. Seeing photos of ditches being blown up with dynamite was a common practice in the 1800s and early 1900s, but not today.
“When you wanted to make a ditch, you would dig as deep as you can, but then you would hit rocks, so people would get dynamite and just blow it up,” Wheeler explained.
Attendees will have a chance to learn new things about places they drive by every day. Wheeler said while researching for the presentation, she saw a photo from the farm she grew up on in Shelburne center and learned there had once been a silo on the property.
“I grew up on that farm and never knew there was a silo there,” Wheeler said. “It was astonishing.”
For more information, visit the Shelburne Agricultural Commission Facebook page.