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John Hyde ~ Hyde Family Ancestral Home
Saturday, February 21st, 11:00 am, Heritage Room, Williams Inn

As the poet wrote “A house is not a home until someone lives in it.” This is the story of a HOME in which 5 generations of one family lived with illustrations to show the house in various stages of its growth over a period of more than 200 years. The structure – both exterior and interior as well as the grounds around it – will serve as the “evidence” from which we can learn how and why the people who lived in it kept changing it to reflect changes in taste, technology, social life and in society as a whole. The history of a Berkshire home covers almost the entire history of this nation.

Professor Emeritus John M. Hyde has been a member of the faculty and administration of Williams College for the past fifty years.  He is also a member of the fifth generation of a family which has lived in Berkshire County for more than 200 years.

David Simonds ~ Cherry Cottage: the Story of an American House
Sunday, January 18, 4:00 pm, @ First Congregational Church
Sponsored by the Williamstown Historical Museum

Built in 1782 by Judith Williams Thayer, the sister of Col. Ephraim Williams, Cherry Cottage, has housed a remarkable array of people of historical interest, most notably Mark Hopkins, president of Williams College from 1836 to 1872, and who defined our ideas about small liberal arts education in America.  Other notable residents or owners include a chief of the Stockbridge Indians, Speaker of the House, Theodore Sedgwick, the attorney David Dudley Field, Jr., the surgeon Charles McBurney, the writers Alan Wheelis and Louis Begley, and the astronaut Story Musgrave, who led the effort to repair the Hubble Space Telescope. Please stay for the reception after the end of the film.  Donations to benefit the Williamstown Historical Museum of any amount accepted at the door.

Filmmaker Dave Simonds (director) lives in his hometown of Williamstown, Massachusetts after a 28 year hiatus in NYC, where he worked in film, TV and stage.  He is a graduate of Bard College.

Hans Morris (executive producer/writer) is chairman of the board of overseers at the Hopkins Center for the Arts at Dartmouth, chairman of the board of trustees of MASS MoCA, and he is a trustee of Jacob’s Pillow.  He served as President of Visa, Inc. Cherry Cottage is his first feature.

For more here’s the trailer:

 

The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts

by Dusty Griffin

Saturday, November 8^th, 11:00 am

Many local residents have heard about the colonial fort, once located in the current parking lot of Price Chopper on Rt. 2 in North Adams. They may even have heard about the attack by French and Indian soldiers in August 1746. But the episode has received little sustained attention from historians, and a number of questions remain without clear answers: Why was the fort built there? Why was it attacked? Why was it quickly overwhelmed? Who was responsible?

Dusty Griffin taught English literature at Berkeley and NYU for 40 years before retiring in 2009. A 1965 graduate of Williams College, he has published a number of scholarly books on 17th- & 18th-century English poetry. Williams College history, the local history of Williamstown are topics he has treated in writing and in lectures. He is a frequent contributor to the Williamstown Historical Museum lecture series.

To view a video of Dusty’s lecture click here:  “The 1746 Attack on Fort Massachusetts”