Making a difference

February 14, 2009 at 10:28 am (Don't read. Watch TV instead., Updates)

On the New Hampshire state website there’s a lovely list. How to do historic preservation as part of your everyday life: 101 ways to make a difference. As a younger person, it sometimes feels a little frustrating to have limited means to support the cause financially, but it’s heartening to learn there’s still a lot I can do. Today I’ll take a page from their book (or site, I suppose) by posting a few of my favorites:

2. Talk to neighbors and “old timers” about their memories and stories of the area – where they have lived, where you live, what they learned from “old-timers” when they were young.

3. Go to the library and find out what information it has about local history; read the town history and study local history publications.

The Spruance Library is an amazing place; I can’t encourage a visit enough.

4. Learn how to research the deeds for your house or a nearby historic property.

I suggest Terry McNealy’s ‘How to Find the Story of an Old House’, which you can read and / or purchase at the Spruance.

5. Write the history of your own house.

8. Look at old photographs and views of your house, your neighborhood, your community, and try to imagine yourself in the pictures. What can you see, hear, feel, touch, taste? How would it be different now?

9. Arrange to borrow, copy, and catalog old photographs of your town for your local library or historical society.

14. Join your local historical society.

It’s cheap, and it’s worth it.

15. Volunteer to help the historical society with a task or project (it can be mundane, not monumental — just do it!).

19. Share the enjoyment of what you’ve learned with others, especially children (an impromptu “history walk,” a “preservation picnic,” a historic “mystery tour,” an outing to a museum or to nearby historic sites, telling historical or historic preservation bedtime stories … ).

29. Learn how to disagree without being disagreeable, and how to build consensus … then practice!

40. Volunteer to help with local history projects in the schools.

53. Learn about the interrelationships between historic preservation and other aspects of land-use planning.

54. Familiarize yourself with strategies and techniques that communities and Regional Planning Commissions can use to advance and enhance historic preservation action and achievements.

58. Enlist others to help establish a local Heritage Commission, if the community lacks one.

69. Write a “letter to the editor” on a history or historic preservation topic (be courteous!).

So there you go: Just a few things you or anyone else can do. I’d love to hear more suggestions from you, or stories of somebody you know who’s done something to make a difference to preserve local history.

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Swain

February 14, 2009 at 10:23 am (Recollection)

09_02_13_swain_72.jpg

It wasn’t so long ago, in the long run of things, that to get a look inside Fonthill, all you had to do was knock.

You’d be taking your chances, of course. My mother, as a teenager, repeatedly made the pilgrimage up from the city, fingers crossed, hoping that this time Laura Long Swain would let her in.

From the early 1900s until 1974, Henry Mercer employed Mrs. Swain as a combination housekeeper, secretary and associate at the fairytale castle he had built for himself. Like a maiden from a story, Laura was just a “raven-haired teenager” when she began her employ.

Mercer arranged her marriage to Frank King Swain, the manager of Mercer’s Moravian Pottery and Tile Works, out of convenience. When Mercer died in 1930, he willed the couple lifetime residency, and Laura and Frank stayed on at Fonthill.

Laura continued to live there alone after Frank’s death in 1954, giving (or denying) tours as she wished. In October of 1974, at age 86 and after a lifetime spent on Mercer’s property, Laura entered Doylestown Manor Convalescent Home.

In a January, 1975 interview, just months before her death, Mrs. Swain unapologetically defended her seemingly random method for permitting tourists to traipse through her home. “They don’t allow anyone to go through unless I say.” she said, “And how many people know what to see? You have to be someone who can tell them what it’s about, and I have to prepare you before you go through … you’re so young … you have lots of time.”

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