Sandy Oliver on the history of chocolate
Check out food historian Sandy Oliver’s recent appearance on 207. Sandy will be hosting our upcoming lecture and tasting event on the history of chocolate.
Apple tree pruning workshop
Learn how to properly prune apple trees at historic Pettengill Farm on Sunday, March 4th from 1:30-3:00 pm.
Join us for a timely, hands-on workshop where participants will learn how to correctly prune apple and other fruit trees. Teaching this session is University of Maine Cooperative Extension Educator, Dr. Richard J. Brzozowski.
We will provide tools and goggles for the workshop. Work gloves and appropriate footwear are advised as we will be outside learning and working during the entire session.
Dick will share why, when and where to prune fruit trees with an eye to maintaining healthy and productive trees.
Dr. Richard Brzozowski obtained his Doctoral Degree at the University of Missouri in Columbia in Agricultural Education. In his work as Extension Educator, he travels throughout the County educating all agricultural topics. In addition, he oversees the popular Master Gardener program for Cumberland County.
Pettengill Farm is owned and maintained by the Freeport Historical Society(FHS). This 140-acre saltwater farm features an early 1800s saltbox, open fields, and wooded trails. Its small apple orchard, the focus of the workshop, likely dates back seventy or more years. Freeport Historical Society wants to rehabilitate the trees and bring the orchard back to full productivity.
The fee for this workshop is $10.00. FHS Members may participate at no charge. Registration and payment is required in advance. To do so and to get directions to Pettengill Farm, please call FHS at (207) 865-3170 or email us via our website www.freeporthistoricalsociety.org. In case of inclement weather, please call our office for cancellation information.
Discover (and taste!) the history of chocolate
Greetings from the Heart program
Sunday, February 5th 2:00pm
45 Main Street
Food historian Sandra Oliver will present a lively and fascinating romp through America’s cooking past as she shares how chocolate was gradually incorporated into American cookery. From its start primarily as a beverage to the recent era of chocolate decadence and death by chocolate, she will describe early chocolate cakes, made chocolate by use of chocolate filling or frosting in plain cake, to the addition of chocolate to the batter later around the late 1800s and early 1900s including the creation of the rich, dark devil’s food cake (and Devil Dogs, etc.) as the opposite of the very popular white, fluffy angel cake. (Watch for Sandy on WCSH’s news magazine, 207!)
Andy Wilbur, from Wilbur’s of Maine, will demonstrate how the yummy classic Maine confection, the Maine Potato Needham, is made.
The audience will have the opportunity to taste a 19th-century chocolate drink and then sample two cakes, made from historic recipes, as well as sampling contemporary chocolates from Wilbur’s.
Tickets: $10.00 per person, $8.00 FHS members (click here for membership information!)
FMI: 865-3170 or www.freeporthistoricalsociety.org
Upcoming group walk in Freeport
Participate in a Freeport group walk organized by Southern Maine Volkssport Association and co-hosted with the Freeport Historical Society.
When: Saturday, December 31st, New Year’s Eve DAY
Start Location: Freeport Hampton Inn, 194 Lower Main St., Freeport, ME 04032. Sign up starts at 9:45am. Group walk will depart at 10:00am.
Shop local at FHS!
Bring a little history into your shopping!
Two-for-one! Shop greener with our recycled tote and help match a grant focused on historic Pettengill Farm.
Pictured on the bag is the 115 ft brig, The Lawrence (War of 1812), one of the remarkable sgraffiti images found at Pettengill Farm.
Bag measures 12 x 13 x 9 inches
Price: $5.25 includes tax
Our reusable shopping tote
A new book just in time for holiday gift-giving from author John D. Davis! From the time when the cry “it’s a plane” caused everyone to run outside and gaze up, this book serves as a great introduction to early aviation in Maine and is filled with spectacular historic photographs.
Price: $26.25 includes tax
And, don’t forget the other fine books and DVDs we have in our bookshop. Come and visit soon!
A great Christmas gift for history lovers
Read the latest edition of “The Dash”
Find our latest newsletter here, chock full of recent news and happenings. Please note, however, that the planned “1961 Coastal Christmas” has been cancelled (see this post for more details).
Update from “The Battle for Christmas”
Thank you to everyone who attended Prof. Stephen Nissenbaum’s lecture “The Battle for Christmas” last Sunday. It was a thought-provoking, informative, and engaging presentation.
Pictured (l to r): Carla Rigby, Prof. Stephen Nissenbaum, and Tori Baron, FHS Board President
We would also like to thank the James Place Inn, The Fresh Batch, Sherman’s Books and Stationery, and the Freeport Community Library for supporting this event.
Prof. Stephen Nissenbaum presenting "The Battle for Christmas"
“A 1961 Coastal Christmas” cancelled
With regret, we have had to cancel our plans to host a 1961 Coastal Christmas exhibit. Though volunteers and staff worked for months on this unique presentation, we found we were unable to take loan of key items to truly bring it to life. In the end, we felt anything short of our original plan would not have met our standards for public programs.
Please plan to join us for Greetings from the Heart in February, 2012. Check our website in January or find us on Facebook for updates.
Upcoming Lecture: The Battle for Christmas
Join us for a very special presentation at the Freeport Community Library on Sunday, November 20th at 2:00pm by Professor Stephen Nissenbaum, author of The Battle for Christmas, a 1997 Pulitzer-prize nominated book. Tix: $5.00
Professor Nissenbaum states “Santa Claus everywhere! It may be almost inevitable to complain about the way Christmas is celebrated in our own time–hyper-commercial, materialistic, just plain exhausting! – and, to contrast it with the far simpler, purer holiday celebration of yesteryear. Inevitable, perhaps. But, as it happens, Americans have been lamenting the decline of Christmas for many generations. As long ago as the 1800s, it was common to decry the glut of second-rate goods cramming the shops at the holiday season, and to anguish over the difficulty of choosing appropriate Christmas presents for friends and family. In this talk, Stephen Nissenbaum will trace the beginnings of the modern consumer Christmas back to the early nineteenth century, back to the time that middle-class Americans were starting to focus great attention and affection on their children, and when family life was coming to be based on the consumption — rather than the production — of material goods. And it was Santa Claus himself who presided over this transformation.”
Stephen Nissenbaum received his A.B. from Harvard College in 1961, his M.A. from Columbia University in 1963, and his Ph.D. from the University of Wisconsin in 1968. He is Professor Emeritus in history from the University of Massachusetts, Amherst. Active in the public humanities, he has served as member and president of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, and as historical advisor for several film productions.
Quotes about The Battle for Christmas:
“Fascinating.” –The New York Times Book Review. Anyone who laments the excesses of Christmas might consider the Puritans of colonial Massachusetts: they simply outlawed the holiday. The Puritans had their reasons, since Christmas was once an occasion for drunkenness and riot, when poor “wassailers extorted food and drink from the well-to-do. In this intriguing and innovative work of social history, Stephen Nissenbaum rediscovers Christmas’s carnival origins and shows how it was transformed, during the nineteenth century, into a festival of domesticity and consumerism. Drawing on a wealth of period documents and illustrations, Nissenbaum charts the invention of our current Yuletide traditions, from St. Nicholas to the Christmas tree and, perhaps most radically, the practice of giving gifts to children. Bursting with detail, filled with subversive readings of such seasonal classics as A Visit from St. Nicholas and A Christmas Carol, The Battle for Christmas captures the glorious strangeness of the past even as it helps us better understand our present.
“Christmas . . . too often fails to wholly satisfy the spirit or the senses. How and why the yuletide came to this is the subject of historian Stephen Nissenbaum’s fascinating new study. “ –Newsweek
Experience Freeport at its spookiest!
For the most unique tour in Maine, meet us at haunted Harrington House at 45 Main Street in Freeport where our resident specter and psychic medium, Eddita Felt will escort you on a lantern-lit, hour-long walking tour of the Freeport Village. Experience tantalizing true tales and eerie stories of the unknown and unexplained. This is the final year of this particular tour.
Tours are available on Friday October 21st, Saturday, October 22nd, Thursday, October 27th, Friday October 28th and on Saturday, October 29th. All tours start at Harrington House and leave at 6:00p and 7:15p each evening.
Reservations are required. Tickets are $10.00pp. We sell out every year so don’t be disappointed! Call today and reserve at 865-3170.
Sponsored by Freeport Historical Society and underwriters, Norway Savings and the Jameson Tavern.
FMI: www.freeporthistoricalsociety.org or 207-865-3170
