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Payne Named Museum's First Director

She may have relocated to the Midwest for quite some time, and ventured even further afield as a recent Peace Corps volunteer, but Beth Payne was born here, and she was born a Scranton.

"I like to say I was bred and buttered here," says Beth, with her typical good-natured humor.

That means the North Guilford native with the well-known local family name grew up steeped in this area's history. Recently, she returned to her native roots as both a resident and as the very first museum director of the Dudley Farm Museum.

Appointed to the role in early March by the Dudley Foundation, Beth first began volunteering for the museum between stints as Peace Corps volunteer (serving in The Gambia, West Africa), but her family has been involved with the non-profit museum for many years as well.

"I always knew I wanted to come back to Guilford," says Beth, who graduated from Guilford High School in 1965, lived in Ohio for more than 20 years, and most recently served two, 27-month rotations with the Peace Corps.

"I just came home two years ago. I was in the Peace Corps almost three years. I was there for 27 months, came home six months, and then I went back for another 27 months," says Beth. "But even when I was in the Peace Corps with an Internet connection at my housing in West Africa, I was looking for a home in North Guilford."

Beth found her home right up the road from the Dudley Farm and came over to volunteer as a docent and with the museum's Voices from North Guilford project.

"People who come to the farm have probably seen me a lot, because I am here a lot, so many people are familiar with me. I love being the docent, to tell the stories of the house," says Beth, adding, "My brother is very involved in the Dudley Farm as well, and my whole family was involved in the Munger Barn [project] while I was out of town."

The big yellow barn was raised some years after the farm museum was first established, with plenty of fundraising and elbow grease. Today, it's used as a facility on the property for programming including the Winter Farmers' Market, which has two more dates this year (the first Saturdays of April and May). The Dudley Farm's outdoor summer farmers' market starts up Saturdays in June and runs through October.

Part of Beth's role is getting the word out about museum programs and events, and she's taken to the Dudley Farm Museum's new Facebook page to help spread the news.

"We're posting events that are coming up such as our tag sale in April and the brunch that's coming up to help us save our historic barn. We're having a brunch in the Munger Barn hopefully to start generating some interest in saving the [gray] historic barn and help restore it. It would be great to be able to use it in the future for some more permanent agricultural displays. We have tons of equipment from the 19th century."

Beth's only been on the job as museum director for about two weeks, but she's already busy interviewing college students and hopes to have one or two summer interns. They may assist Beth in her work to help the museum meet organizational and service standards as outlined by Connecticut Humanities' StEPs-CT programs for local museums and historical societies, or help her in other tasks, such as cataloging the huge inventory of items at the museum.

Since Beth's arrival as a volunteer and now museum director, the museum has cataloged and inventoried most of its many household items, including a large collection of 19th-century books. They've also uncovered some amazing finds.

"We found a heavyweight traveling costume for a young woman last year, probably made around 1872. It's in beautiful condition. The fabric is gray worsted wool, and it has a pleated hemline-it really is beautiful," says Beth, who put it on display.

Beth says finding such treasures is one of her favorite parts of the job.

"When the Dudley Farm was first established, people basically emptied their attic and put it in the Dudley Farm's attic," she says. "Stuff came in so fast and furious, and being an all-volunteer organization, there wasn't time to catalog it. So a lot of it was stored in the museum in nooks and crannies."

Many of the treasures are rotated into displays in the farm house.

"So we'll show things as basic as a little girl's play dress right up to a wedding gown," says Beth. "We have five wedding gowns ranging from the Civil War up to 1915. One is cherry pink with blue buttons, from Carl Balestracci's family."

Reportedly, the young woman who wore that wedding dress was widowed very young and forced to marry an older man she didn't particularly care for. The dress was crafted to make a statement on their wedding day.

Beth says the area is lucky to have access to the many stories that can be told by this very unique-and very North Guilford-historic house museum and property. The 1844 homestead was in the Dudley family until David Dudley passed away in 1991. The property was obtained by the North Guilford Volunteer Fire Company (NGVFC), in cooperation with the North Guilford Congregational Church and the Town of Guilford Probate Court. NGVFC established the Dudley Foundation, a non-profit, member-supported organization, to maintain the Dudley Farm as a late-19th-century farm museum.

"I think it showed a lot of foresight on the part of the North Guilford [Volunteer] Fire Company to establish the Dudley Foundation and set up the entity and make it a museum," says Beth. "We are definitely different from the 18th-century houses in town. This was a well-to-do farm for North Guilford, but it certainly isn't the glamour and elegance we see in the sea captains' houses in Salem. We have tried very hard to keep this house as close as we can to 1900 or 1910."

Beth's own little part in Guilford history includes her founding a Guilford High School Peace Corps Club back in the 1960s.

"I always wanted to be in the Peace Corps," says Beth. "That was something I wanted to do since Kennedy first mentioned it, when I was in 8th grade. In high school, I started a Peace Corps Club. I was also very active in 4-H and I went around New England presenting a Peace Corps Challenge to 4-H'ers."

After raising her two daughters (one remains in Ohio, the other lives in Massachusetts) and becoming a grandmother (she has two grandsons) Beth realized her lifelong dream and joined the Peace Corps.

"When I was in the Peace Corps, the project I was responsible for the second time was to help review, revise, and implement a new curriculum for the School of Public Health in Gambia. So that forced me to learn some computer and organizational skills, which I had before, but not very well!"

Beth's now using those organizational skills to assist Dudley Farm Museum. But when she's not at her custodial, website, or museum management role, you may find her exploring the grounds and literally cooking up new ideas, like her Dudley Farm grape pies.

"We have a small grape arbor-it's been here since before David Dudley. Last year, I picked a grape up off the ground and thought it was a shame the grapes were going to birds," says Beth.

She canned the Concord grapes and started experimenting with fruit pie recipes.

"I make two different pies," she says. "One is a grape pie that's very similar to a cherry pie. The other is a grape purée chiffon pie; it's fluffy and almost pink."

As may be apparent, Beth likes to stay busy.

"I don't like being bored," she says, laughing. "As I've told other people, I've retired three times!"

The Dudley Farm Museum is located at 2351 Durham Road, North Guilford, and opens

May 9. Visit www.dudleyfarm.com or find Dudley Farm Museum on Facebook for more information.