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Guides Wanted for EHS

An opportunity to tell stories and preserve history is being offered by the Essex Historical Society (EHS), which is seeking tour guides for this summer at the Pratt House Museum.

The museum stands in Essex Village, west of the Connecticut River, and was home to the descendants of Lt. William Pratt, one of the three first settlers of Essex. The white home offers its visitor a quaint pastoral portrait of an 18th-century New England farmhouse that once housed a family whose legacy runs deep in the town’s history.

“The Pratt had a blacksmithing legacy in the area from 1690 to 1940. Through that lens, we can explore the role of labor history in the area, especially with maritime trades in the Connecticut River Valley,” said Andy King, the membership and programs coordinator at EHS.

Although the home can provide its visitors with an idea of how Pratt and other people lived in 18th-century Essex, that is not the main emphasis the tour guides would be providing.

“The main emphasis is those bigger themes of how the culture changed in this area throughout time,” said King. “Pratt has the potential to tell a bigger story and try to help people connect to history,” King said. “I think that I think a really important thing to take away from it is that the more that you understand about your community and its past, the more you understand it today, and you value your role in your community, and you value the progress that your community has made since.”

The “Ideal Pratt Guides” are enthusiastic about local history; communicative with visitors, volunteers, and staff; of any age or experience, and responsible for arriving on time for shifts, opening and closing facilities. Guides are expected to walk small groups of visitors through tours of the colonial Pratt House on Saturday and Sunday afternoons from June 3 through September. In doing so, they will be helping to preserve an important part of Essex’s history.

“The Pratt House is the only historic house museum in Essex. What that means is that we’re not just interpreting Pratt history; we’re not just interpreting Essex’s history, either. We’re looking to like the three villages in Essex,” said King. “We want to make sure that Centerbrook and Ivoryton are represented as well, and so we use Pratt as an example of what it was like in this area, not just through the Pratt family.”

New guides will attend three training sessions to become ideal stewards of Essex’s history. King said guides will be introduced to the history of the home and Essex and on how to have engaging conversations with visitors. That way, they can “understand the rhythm, and they know how to navigate questions and conversations” with visitors, and be the best “interpreters “of history, said King.

“They’re not just spouting out facts, they are telling stories with facts so that it is engaging but also informative, and I’d like people to leave with more questions.

The training sessions for new and returning guides will take place on Saturdays, May 6 and May 20, from 1 to 3 p.m. The final “kick-off” session will be on Wednesday, May 24.

“That’s when we’re just going to look at every weekend for the summer. And we’re going to look at some of the programs we have, some of the events around town,” said King.

For more information, email King at membership@essexhistory.org or visit essexhistory.org.