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Welcome to the Ashfield Historical Society's website.
Ashfield is one of Massachusetts' Hill Towns, a number of small communities nestled in the rolling hills between the Connecticut River and the Berkshire Mountains. Despite its rural location, Ashfield has been at the center of many of the currents of American history since its incorporation in 1765, including the pietist movement of the late eighteenth century (the first Shaker meeting house was built here in 1789) to the abolition movement (the Free Soil party triumphed here in the 1850's), to the prohibition movement (the town eliminated the open bar at town meeting in 1848).
Since 1961, this history has been chronicled and preserved by the Ashfield Historical Society. The Society's museum, housed in a former store built in 1835, maintains a document archive -- church and town meeting minutes, farmer's journals, personal letters etc. -- that records the unique history of Ashfield. It also displays artifacts that give a glimpse of everyday life here over the last two and a half centuries: music books from the Congregationalist Church Singing School of 1799, peddler's trunks used by young men selling essential oils in the mid nineteenth-century,and the "thunderbolt log splitter," a black-powder-powered splitting wedge invented by two adventurous (if not reckless) residents in the 1930's. The front room of the museum replicates a nineteenth-century store, with period groceries and dry goods stocking the shelves. Above the store is a recreated storekeeper's apartment, with furniture and appointments appropriate to about 1850. And the barn is full of unusual, often unique, artifacts of nineteenth-century farm life, such as the town's horse-drawn road roller, which was used to pack snow and make the roads passible before the advent of snowplows.
The museum also maintains a number of significant collections, Take a look at their neww website at:
... and as reported on Peter Wiitanen's Ashfield Home Page:
"The Ashfield Historical Society collects, preserves, and presents material related to the history of Ashfield, a town in the hills of Western Massachusetts. Although the town is small, it has a rich history because it was at the crossroads of unique developments and because its citizens have always made a special effort to preserve its history. Our museum is open to the public at certain times, and the public is invited to various events sponsored by the historical society.