Programs

Tour hours: 10-4

Ticket: $20.00 all ages

There will be 4 House interiors fully decorated for the Holidays!
-An early colonial home in the Williamsburg natural style
-A Victorian home in the 1900’s with Christmas trees and elegance
-A country home, warm and cozy
-And Christmas wonderland, a collector’s Christmas

There will be a raffle of a handmade Christmas quilt.
Gingerbread houses and boxwood Christmas trees will be for sale.
The map for the self-guided tour in Colrain will be on your ticket.

Tickets can be purchased at:
Pine Hill Orchard 248 Greenfield Road Colrain or
Catamount Country Store 113 Main Rd Colrain after Nov. 15

This event is sponsored by the Colrain Historical Society
For more information call 624-8800.

Join Michelle Hillman, Elaine Stanley, Betty Johnson, Debby Wheeler, Maria Kingsley, and Joan McQuade as they recount their times around the holidays during elementary and high school.

The Colrain Historical Society sponsored the fourth annual fundraising art show on Sept. 23 and 24 at the Shelburne Buckland Community Center Main St., Shelburne Falls. 

This year, art showing our neighboring hilltowns rounded out the Colrain paintings. Regionally famous painters will include George Gardner Symons, Steve Maniatty, Robert Strong Woodward, W. Lester Stevens, and Edwin Lorenzo Elmer among others. 

A special feature will be paintings by Judith Russell, a longtime Shelburne Falls folk artist. Some of her original work will be for sale as a special offering. We will also have prints and reprints of some items in the Historical Society’s collection and old maps for sale. The Historical Society will have a new booklet for sale, based on the Industries and Occupations of Colrain done by Katherine Cram in the late 1930s. 

There will be over 75 paintings by 48 different artists. Most are works on loan from private collections and homes in the hilltowns. The artists are contemporary or deceased, famous and not-so-famous, as well as self-taught. it is intentionally a non-curated show. The mixed media, the skill of the artists, and their perspectives are part of the magic. 

Please join us again this year for this rare opportunity to see this bit of visual history. Admission is $10.00

John H. Olson, M.D., “Dr. Olie,” practiced medicine from his Colrain home at 7 Main Road from 1937 to 1976. His office was on the first floor and some of the bedrooms upstairs functioned as hospital rooms. He was famous for removing tonsils and delivering babies at home…and his Willys Jeep. The historical society plans to make part of its collection his tonsillectomy chair, house-call bag, and medical implements. In this video, Dr. Olie’s daughter, Joan McQuade, talks about her memories of her father. The program was standing-room only, and several of his former patients also tell their tales.

Over its nearly 200 years, the G. William Pitt House has been home to many, including, among others, three generations of Pitts and our own Ken Noyes.  That history was presented by Prentice Crosier, who also once made the Pitt House his home.

You bet. From 1947 until 1970, the Pioneer Valley Dude Ranch at the end of Cal Coombs Road hosted dudes from New York City to Boston. Off-season, it provided bunks to deer hunters and skiers. And it offered locals a congenial Saturday night watering hole and restaurant with live music for dancing. 

A program after the 7 p.m. meeting of the Colrain Historical Society Thursday, July 14, 2022 at the former dude ranch explored this colorful chapter of Colrain history. 

Almira Edson (1803-1886) was a stepdaughter of Edward Adams of the busy village of Adamsville in Colrain. She developed a style of family registers combining calligraphy and watercolor, much sought after by collectors of folk art today. After years of teaching at the Halifax Academy, she joined a utopian community in Putney, Vermont which combined spiritual purity and “complex marriage” only to find herself in conflict with the movement’s leaders. 

Edson was the subject of a presentation by Prentice Crosier in the Stacy Barn behind the Colrain Historical Society’s Pitt House on Thursday, June 9, 2022 following the Society’s business meeting at 7:00 p.m. 

Sarah and Harry Hollister presented a lively reading of a New England short story from the “local colorist” period (1860-1900). The story by Alice Brown provides a window into the lives of our ancestors, using local dialects, phrases and a fair amount of humor. The speakers gave a little background on the “local colorist” writers, most of whom were women.

* During the late 1800’s “local color”, as defined as the characteristics and traits that make a location unique, was popular in literature.