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05/30/2017 04:00 PMThe Chester Historical Society’s Museum at the Mill opens with a reception on Friday, June 2, showcasing new installations throughout its three floors. The reception is open to guests who are interested in the museum and its displays, whether or not they are members of the society.
The museum opens to general public on Saturday, June 3 and on Saturday, June 10 will participate in Connecticut’s Open Museum Day, which includes refreshments and discounts of publications. There is never an admission charge at the museum.
On the ground floor, the new exhibit features three notable Chester personalities as well as an extensive display of postcards with views of Chester, most from the early decades of the 20th century.
The entrance lobby will now have a three-foot model of a Colonial mill that once stood in Chester built by longtime resident, Nate Jacobson. He has done extensive research on the location and structure of the original mill.
The top floor of the museum has been rearranged to give more space to an exhibit on Silliman Company inkwells and inkstands, once made in Chester, as well as a model of a mid-19th century soda fountain that uses artifacts from what was once a local landmark, the Chester Pharmacy run by Shirley Miceli.
According to Sandy Senior-Dauer and Keith Dauer, co-chairs of the historical society’s exhibition and program committee, a number of Chester personalities were discussed before settling on three; Judge Constance Baker Motley, who had a weekend home in Chester for some 40 years; the Leatherman, the itinerant l9th-century traveler who made Chester a regular stop on his 365-mile trek through New England the Hudson Valley; and photographer, artist, and sculptor Hugh Spencer.
Motley was the first African-American woman to become a federal judge. Her life, in fact, was an accumulation of firsts. She was the first African-American woman to argue a case before the United States Supreme Court; the first African-American woman to hold a seat in the New York State Senate; and the first woman to be elected borough president of Manhattan. Equal opportunity for women was the basis of her best-known judicial decision when in 1978 she ruled that female reporters had to be allowed in major league baseball locker rooms. According to historical society president Skip Hubbard, the Chester museum’s exhibit will feature pictures of Motley throughout the years. She herself was among the founding members of the Chester Historical Society. Hubbard believes Motley originally chose Chester for a weekend house because a mentor, New Haven philanthropist Clarence Blakeslee, who had help finance her education, had a long association with Camp Hazen.
The Leatherman display features a life-size statue of the itinerant man of mystery by local sculptor Weymouth Eustis. Keith Dauer said the Leatherman, who often spend the night in caves or out in the open, had a roof over his head in Chester: He stayed at the home of Dr. Ambrose Pratt. The exhibit has a reproduction of a letter to the New Era Newspaper of Dec. 22, 1889, recoding the last time Doctor Pratt saw the Leatherman, then suffering in the final stages of cancer in his jaw. The exhibit also contains a far more recent Leatherman reference: the lyrics of a 1997 Pearl Jam song by Eddie Vedder in which he fantasizes that he is related to the Leatherman.
Artist and photographer Spencer, the third of the museum’s notables, lived in Chester most of his adult life. He was the grandson of Ambrose Pratt, the doctor who befriended the Leatherman. The exhibit includes his paintings, carvings and photographs that left a pictorial record of the town in early to mid-20th century.
“They’re iconic images of the town—Cedar Lake, downtown,” Hubbard said.
Many of the photographs appeared on post cards.
Spencer’s cards, in fact, form part of the new postcard exhibit the museum has mounted. According to Senior-Dauer, the early decades of the 20th century were the heyday of sending postcards; in 1908 alone, she says, some 677 million were sent. Postage was not a problem: in those days it was just one cent.
At one time regulations did not allow any writing on the back of postcards, just the address. According to Keith Dauer, the picture took up only half the space on the front, leaving room for a message. In other cases, correspondents wrote around the edges of the photo.
“People don’t send as many postcards today,” said Hubbard, “but I think they still have universal appeal. I always spin the postcard wheel when I see one.”
The expanded Silliman display in the long-term exhibit area shows what a large impact the company’s small portable inkwell made. The pocket-size inkwell, with a top designed to prevent ink from spilling, enabled soldiers during the Civil War to write letters home in the days before fountain or ball point pens. Writers had to dip the metal tip of the pen into the inkwell. The result was a vast trove of correspondence that has shed continuing light on the life of ordinary soldiers in the Civil War. The museum display brings together a number of other Civil War artifacts, including soldiers’ letters and the local voter list from Chester in l860, the year that Abraham Lincoln was elected president.
For longtime residents who remember the Chester Pharmacy, usually known as Shirley’s after pharmacist Shirley Miceli, the recreation of its soda fountain should bring back nostalgic memories. Shirley’s children Rob Miceli and Nancy Watkins donated some of the equipment to the exhibit; there are spouts for chocolate, vanilla, strawberry, and cherry syrup; seltzer dispensers; and ice cream scoops. Actually, Hubbard points out, there were two soda fountains, Shirley’s and Robbie’s.
“Each had its loyalists,” Hubbard says. “Except for my wife; she’d go into Shirley’s and have a sundae and then go to Robbie’s and have one.”
Upcoming Historical Society Events at the Museum at the Mill
9 West Main Street, Chester
Opening reception on Friday, June 2 at 5:30 p.m., welcoming both members and others who are interested.
The museum opens Saturday, June 3, for the season on weekends through October on Saturdays from 1 to 4 p.m. and Sundays from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m.
Saturday, June 10, is Museum Open House Day in Connecticut. The Museum at the Mill will open from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. with refreshments and a 10 percent discount on publications.