NEWFANE-There was a time when the 1825 jail house in Newfane would house up to a few dozen prisoners, according to conjecture - from hardened criminals to petty thieves, mostly men, with some women.
The jail, situated on the green across from Newfane's picturesque Common where the 1825 Windham County Courthouse stands, was shut down in 1971.
In 1986, the Windham County Sheriff's Department repurposed the clapboard structure to serve as its headquarters until 2022, when it moved to Old Ferry Road in Brattleboro.
The old place has become the County History Museum, the third building of the 99-year-old Historical Society of Windham County (HSWC). It joins the original museum building on Route 30, which is becoming the HSWC's Research Center, and the West River Railroad Museum, on Cemetery Hill Road - all in Newfane.
The old jail's new stewards have torn down nonbearing walls, created exhibit spaces, painted it to complement its contents, and lit it aesthetically. On Saturday, May 31, at 2 p.m., the public is invited to a grand opening to celebrate that renovation.
Hot dogs, popcorn, and lemonade will be sold, and tours of the new museum and its 10 exhibit rooms, as well as the old jail cells, will be offered for free from 2 to 5 p.m.
"People can picnic on the [Newfane] Common, too. There'll be an outdoor concert featuring the Grafton Cornet Band - which has its own history, having been founded in 1867. But it's mostly to get people in and let them see what the Historical Society has done," says HSWC President Richard "Dick" Marek of Newfane.
A former state representative, Marek has been a history buff his whole life. And since he and his wife, Linda, moved to a 1790 Newfane village home 30 years ago, he's been a keen advocate of preserving and showcasing the history of the town and its county.
Working together
The jail building's 1825 deed stipulates specific uses for the three-story structure, should it cease to be a jail - and that the county must continue to own the building.
So when the sheriff's office moved, Marek explains, the HSWC hatched an idea for such a use - a more capacious space to replace its existing museum.
The society had been wrestling with an overflow of museum-worthy materials for 25 years "trying to figure out how to do an addition." The perennial issue was funding.
"So we talked to the side judges, did a lot of negotiating," says Marek, a lawyer by profession, of the conversations with the two elected assistant judges in charge of administering the budget for county government.
The HSWC and county representatives got creative with a plan whereby the nonprofit would be responsible for the building renovation, utilities, and certain aspects of maintenance in exchange for rent-free use on a long-term-lease basis.
With a deal signed, the HSWC board first enlisted Deconstruction Works of Dummerston.
"They came in and did all the gutting out as we figured out what we wanted to do," said Marek.
Had HSWC not stepped in, Marek said, "this would've just become an empty building, because I don't think there was any other [eligible] entity that really had a use for it, or the desire to tackle the renovation."
As he walks through the first floor of the new space, Marek recalls that it was "an absolute rabbit warren of offices. It had asbestos flooring. And wet heating. Bad lighting."
Credit for the building's transformation also goes to other professionals who rolled up their sleeves to make it happen: the Drukes of WW Building Supply, Streeter Electric, Cotton Design Associates, Clark Todd, Sabin Flooring, and Tom Bodett and HatchSpace.
Marek adds thanks to individual and foundation donors, to HSWC Curator Laura Paris, and to his HSWC board colleagues (Vice President David Gagnon, Treasurer Lee Petty, Secretary Lynn Leighton, and directors Roger Allbee, Barb Barber, Dan Brooks, Roberta Dunham, Linda Marek, E.C. Schroeder, and Laura Wallingford-Bacon.)
Eclectic collection
Among the hundreds of treasures on display in the 4,000-square-foot, two-story museum, one finds:
• A quilt crafted by Mrs. G.C. Worden of Guilford in 1890, in which every Windham County town and village is found.
• A 1757 musket, the weather vane from the meeting house on Fane Hill (the earlier village center of Newfane), and an early dump cart wheel found in the basement of the Williamsville Hall.
• Logs bored out into pipe, a one-man sleigh, the prisoners' washtub, a horse feeder, a traverse sled for hauling logs or massive stone, and curious tools and equipment.
• Many books - a few several hundred years old, printed in Norman French.
• A feather cockade (a badge usually worn on a hat), and the saddle of a drummer boy turned dispatch rider.
"This is one of our best items, actually," says Marek, pointing to a sign for the Park blacksmith shop. Its proprietor, Marshall Newton, "was grandson of the founder of Newfane. And that is apparently one of the best early American signs that exists. So I've been told."
One will also see various items from early Windham County forts, including from Fort Dummer, the first permanent European settlement in the state of Vermont. Also displayed are artifacts, some several thousand years old, that surfaced from a 1940s excavation around the embankment of a long-since-demolished covered bridge near where today's Route 30 crosses the Rock River.
The museum houses a range of artifacts from "the Native American experience, which, I found out, goes back in this region 13,000 years to the period when there was a glacial lake here," explains Marek.
"The earliest thing we have in here is this little point," he says, pointing to an arrowhead in one of two dozen cherry cases crafted by Rowan Norlander-McCarty, director of operations at HatchSpace. "And that goes back 11,000 years."
There's a collection of local cornet band memorabilia, too - "every town had a cornet band," Marek says - and an exhibit on the evolution of photography from the mid-19th century onward.
Artifacts and ephemera from America's wars - Civil, Spanish-American, World War I, World War II, and Vietnam - are on display, as are a host of military uniforms.
One exhibit tells the story of Grace Cottage Hospital in Townshend and honors, among others, well-loved area physicians Carlos Otis and Bob Backus.
A domestic room displays clothing, hats, shoes, and a children's corner; a schoolhouse room evokes a one-room-school setting.
Among the exhibits, too, is a recreation of Newfane's Batchelder-Higgins Store and Post Office, where the Fayetteville Corner store now operates, furnished with antique contents donated by its former proprietors, Bob and Marilyn Distelberg. "So here's the original post office, the original cash register, counters, cases - everything," Marek indicates.
Paintings in a large gallery space upstairs include the collection of Richard Michelman of Westminster. Primarily featuring works by Arthur Gibbes Burton (1883–1969), a fine artist with Vermont connections, one also sees paintings by Arlo Monroe, former headmaster of the Leland and Gray Seminary, among others.
The original building had a hotel wing - removed in the 1950s after a fire - for judges, jurors, and visitors to town. Local lore has it (as recorded on the HSWC website) that "the hotel's cuisine rivaled many other establishments in the area and was served to hotel guests as well as to the 'jailbirds.'" Marek points to a slot in the wall through which such meals were served to prisoners.
Alistair Cooke, a British journalist, reported in 1951 that, "after visiting the area, President Theodore Roosevelt said he 'would like to retire here, commit some "mild crime," and eat his way through a cheerful old age.'"
Promoting and learning through history
The project was a massive undertaking for the HSWC, but Marek says wryly that the HSWC is "a society that's too dumb to know that we can't do what we do."
Running a three-building campus with a small board of volunteers offering exhibits, archives, genealogy, and other resources for research, as well as special programs and public events, is a lot.
But the mission is clearly to promote and learn through history, as Marek quotes the adage most likely coined by writer-philosopher George Santayana.
"Those who will not learn the lessons of history are condemned to repeat them," he says.
The grand opening at 11 Jail St., Newfane, on Saturday, May 31, will happen rain or shine. Admission is free, though donations are welcome. For more information, visit historicalsocietyofwindhamcounty.org.
This News item by Annie Landenberger was written for The Commons.