Tour of Bannerman – Sold Out!
We’ve filled all our available spots for the tour on the 20th! If you couldn’t make it this time, we are discussing the possibility of doing another trip in the fall – we’ll let everyone know later on in the summer.
Category: Events
Exhibit Opening on Saturday
Our exhibit for 2017 is opening this Saturday, May 6th, at 10:00AM. Crossroads: The Cornerstones of Putnam Valley will offer residents both lifelong and new a glimpse into the general history of those well known corners in town. The original goal was to set everything up as a map that you could walk through but given the space constraints it had to be scaled back quite a bit. Equally challenging was narrowing down the photo selection. So many pictures, so little space! The photo on the flyer was one I knew I wanted to use, and I can’t remember if it’s been posted on here or Facebook yet. Do you recognize the corners?
May 13th is the next Our American History program, about slavery in New York.
May 20th is our highly anticipated tour of Bannerman Castle. Spots are going quickly so if you are interested in going, make sure you register today!
The day following the tour (May 21st) is a special program presented by The Reform Temple of Putnam Valley, the Friends of the Putnam Valley Library, and the Putnam Valley Historical Society at the library at 3:00PM featuring author Annette Libeskind Berkovits as she discusses In the Unlikeliest of Places – How Nachman Libeskind Survived the Nazis, Gulags, and Soviet Communism.
As you can see, we have a pretty busy month ahead of us. Hope to see you soon!
P.S. – We finally got our fire proof file cabinets, and boy are they heavy! They are in their new home in our back room, which is a mess right now with the exhibit prep. Starting May 7th, I’ll be diving right back into organization and scanning.
Coming soon…
So…what’s been going on.
Next month brings the return of our continuing Our American History series with Eleanor Roosevelt: The Development of a Woman Activist on Saturday March 11th, 10:00AM at the library.
There’s also a genealogy workshop on Saturday March 25th at 10:00 at the library. There is a $10.00 registration fee, but both members of the Putnam Valley Historical Society and/or Friends of the Library have a reduced fee of $5.00. Speaking from personal experience – genealogy is fascinating and you NEVER know what you will find piecing together your family tree.
The schoolhouse will hopefully be reopening sometime in March, there will be a post here when we get a date. That post will also include information about the exhibit for 2017, and possibly the schedule of topics for Our American History.
Regarding the Where Are We houses – Some have been potentially ID’d by looking up tax notices in the newspapers from the 30s and 40s. This will be an ongoing project, as will the Who Are We pictures. Nobody has been identified yet, but some people in the photo collection that were labeled as “so and so’s grandfather” are now properly labeled with their own name. Again, another ongoing project.
We’ve been getting messages from people about helping out and volunteer opportunities. We’d love to have you! Once we reopen for the season, the house/people project will be ongoing, we are always scanning and transcribing documents…it may sound boring but I promise, it’s not. We are also interested in anything photo/document/story you may have that’s related to Women’s Suffrage or World War I AND is connected to either Putnam Valley or Putnam County. 2017 is the centennial anniversary of both Women’s Suffrage and the US entry into World War I. If you have anything, contact either us or the Putnam County Historian’s Office. We’d love to see what you have!
The response to the last picture post on Facebook was, in a word, awesome. Was not expecting that! We’ve gained 84 page likes since Wednesday morning – hello new people! Thanks for liking us!
Closing out the year
ETA: Check out this article by Tom Renner of the Putnam Daily Voice about this weekend’s guest speaker Craig Nelson!
Our final two events of the year are coming up this weekend. On Saturday the 10th we’ll have our last Our American History program of 2016 on Pearl Harbor: From Infamy to Greatness with Craig Nelson at 10:00AM at the Putnam Valley Free Library.
Also this weekend is the second half of our Holiday Boutique. Open Saturday and Sunday from 10:00AM – 4:00PM we’ll have a few new items this weekend, and Santa will be at the museum on Saturday the 10th at 11:00AM. See you there!
Bannerman Island, Oregon Corners, a Presidential connection, and…Santa?
Everybody’s heard of it, but what do you know about it? Join us at the Putnam Valley Free Library on Saturday November 12th at 10:00am, when guest speaker Thom Johnson tells all there is to know about this history of this local site.
Thanks to all that braved the torrential downpour and joined us for our Annual Meeting and Awards Reception this past Sunday. If you weren’t able to join us, there was a sneak peek at some more pictures that have been scanned in. Hopefully you’ll recognize the building! They were at the bottom of the fall update “newsletter” that was printed out for each table, these are probably much easier to see. (They were scanned in from large negatives and didn’t *quite* fit the negative portion of the scanner, so the very tops and bottoms were cut off.)
We’re very close to ordering our new fireproof file cabinets. In going through the existing file cabinets to figure out how to best empty them, I came across the genealogy folder for the Adams family. Aside from the cemetery plot listings and obituaries in the folder, there were also several handwritten notes from the 1980s from people trying to figure out if our Adams family of Putnam Valley were descendants of one Mr. John Adams, second president of these United States. Of course all this work was done well before the internet was readily available for such research quests, and there wasn’t a definitive yes or no. It shouldn’t be too difficult to figure out now with so many genealogical resources available, and during our winter lull it will definitely be researched. Unless somebody already has the answer…please let us know!
Now that November is here, we’re also shifting gears and starting our annual Holiday Boutique set up. There are whispers of a certain jolly someone stopping by the museum – we’ll let you know when he’ll be making an appearance, so get your lists ready!
Annual Meeting Invitation
Apologies for the confusion with our Annual Meeting and Awards Reception invitation. If you did not receive an invitation by mail and would like to attend – anybody is welcome to attend – you can send us an email to putnamvalleyhistory@gmail.com or leave a message on the answering machine at the museum (845) 528-1024, and pay at the door on the 30th.
Our busy season is starting up!
We have a few events coming up in the next several weeks!
Wednesday, October 26th at 7:00pm is our annual Halloween Event. This year, join us as we hear from Paranormal Investigator Penny Ann Osborn who will share her tales of local investigations and haunted houses. This is a free event for all, and will be at the Putnam Valley Grange as it can accommodate a larger group of people than the museum.
Our Annual Meeting and Cocktail Reception is October 30th at 3:00pm at Char Steakhouse on Bryant Pond Road. It’s not too late to RSVP – send us an email and you can pay at the door.
The Story of Bannerman Island with Thom Johnson is on Saturday November 12th at 10:00am at the Putnam Valley Free Library.
And after all that…our Holiday Boutique will be the first weekend in December, the 3rd and 4th. If you sell handcrafted or locally sourced items and are interested in being a vendor, send us an email or message us on Facebook!
