Just downstream, clinging to the Connecticut’s East Deerfield shoreline, lies exposed, red-sandstone bedrock known historically as Sheldon’s Rocks. This year our resident Oracle has forecasted mostly fair weather and the event promises to be even bigger than the 14,000-strong crowd that came last year! The clear, mucky-bedded spring brook runs south approximately 1.3 miles, crossing under Christian Lane and River Road before joining the Connecticut River about 1,000 feet northeast of today’s Straits Road-River Road intersection. We were encouraged to dance on tables and had our own waitress for the night. “Hobmock, a benevolent spirit giant,” was called upon to “relieve the stressed people, and that he did by chasing the troublesome beast “into the immense lake… and flinging great handfuls of dirt and rock” at it. Once I learned to navigating around the program, I was able to glean much new information about South Deerfield ancestors and relatives long ago entered into my Family Tree Maker program. On the open Dwyer Lot stood a roofed pavilion that hosted many a public cookout. Plus, Canterbury likely hadn’t even been named by that early date, three years before Deerfield came into existence as Pocumtuck. In fact, not only is it a dangerous whirlpool, it may well be the most dangerous whirlpool in the 400-mile-long Connecticut Valley. Tucked away in drawers, folders, envelopes, and metal boxes, and stacked on closet shelves, were documents, correspondence, and photographs that she stewarded as precious records to be protected for posterity. Maybe you’d have some ideas about it. The prominent landscape feature looming over Canterbury is distinctive Mount Sugarloaf, poking abruptly from the northern perimeter of the river meadows like a cathedral off the Connecticut’s west bank. Purely in-town vernacular usage would explain why another respected 19th-century valley historian, Sylvester Judd (1789-1860), follows suit. Falstaff has just been exposed as a coward, and Poins presses I’ve been playing this game since 1989, starting in the weeks after my spinster great-aunt Gladys Sanderson died overnight during the summer of 1989. He said I could call him Gil. There he would spend the night alone in a tent, his wheels of curiosity humming. An expert deer hunter and woodsman who moved through the forest like a cat, he had toured his woodlands and marshes since boyhood. With little specie available during the Revolutionary War era, debts were paid with labor – such as hoeing corn, cutting firewood, roofing and construction of buildings – and commodities, such as “cyder,” maple syrup, furniture, lumber, chestnut shingles, and animal pelts. I gave him a lesson in berry-picking; he schooled me in 21st-century political-correctness. As trade gr… Tavern keeping has paralleled the growth of trade, travel, and industry throughout history and virtually worldwide. Bruchac and Brooks have done just that, using the tale as the centerpiece around which to build their very own Western Abenaki narrative about our middle Connecticut Valley. I sure do wish Scott was still in the neighborhood. “I wish there were paths to the ripe berries I can’t reach,” he said. But what did I know? That name, Ktsi Amiskw, means “The Great Beaver,” territory encompassing not only the Pocumtuck Range but also the fertile shelf it sits on. In the 2010 notes, I had fortunately recorded an alphabetical list of the family tannery/shoe-shop patrons, as well as notes of interest here and there regarding specific transactions. many alehouses offered rooms for travellers and new arrivals The accident occurred on the evening of Wednesday, December 4, 1867, and is titled “Fatal Accident” in the December 9 Greenfield Gazette. After I had obtained all the facts I could gather from the man named Bill something-or-other, I phoned the Hatfield hunter to get his story. That’s when he came upon his exciting discovery, not far upstream from an island and across from an agricultural shelf known in Deerfield annals as Sheldon’s Field. I immediately Googled “underwater panther,” and struck gold. tick-tack*, skittles, and card-games The entertainment consisted of medieval reenactment, fire eaters, belly dancers and it was fantastic. “Had the western sun not been at a perfect angle to illuminate it through a gap in the foliage, I would have never noticed it,” recalled Peirce, who, curious about what looked like a manmade squiggle on an obscured standing stone, turned his kayak around and paddled upstream to investigate. In Bacchus' band All this under a dark, ominous COVID-19 cloud, which complicates social interaction. Wow! What recently re-ignited my interest in the site was a project I helped friend Peter Thomas complete. We can now only ponder the historic events this grand old tree witnessed. I finally reached out by Facebook Messenger, and he agreed to visit the site and age the big elm on one of his trips through Greenfield. So I'd like any information that anyone could give me about games that were played in taverns between the 12-14 centuary. It was a way of life. Hopewell Swamp hugs the base of the plain’s undulating western lip for approximately 3½ miles south, to within view of Hatfield Pond’s northern reach. My guess is maybe some sort of a small lumber operation.”. The tavern pictured here is catering for the wealthy, The pad contained notes I had taken 10 years ago during a spin through my fifth great-grandfather, Deacon Thomas Sanderson’s, 18th-century tannery and shoemaking account book (1769-1797) housed at Old Deerfield’s Memorial Libraries. Judd – author of the History of Hadley (1863) and compiler of the 56-volume Judd Manuscripts housed at Northampton’s Forbes Library – never mentions Canterbury, even though it would have been within Hadley’s earliest borders. I think his first name was Rich. Our pre-shotgun-deer-season scouting plan was to four-wheel my Jeep Cherokee up Henhawk to a spot between High Ridge and Dry Hill. Join us! That is, there’s now a price attached for access to interactive cybernetworks that annually generates hundreds of millions of dollars. So, fearful that I’ll meld many into one, why bother trying to piece together my Hatfield memories? So now the story has finally been told in black and white. She recorded birth, death and marriage dates for the family members under her Pleasant Street roof, beginning with her father Asa Franklin Woodruff (1817-1891) and his wife Eliza Arms (1824-1898). July 2019: close up At this point, we can only try to accurately re-create an extinct oral tale and the lessons its landscape carcass display. Heavy overnight winds and rains have passed, leaving in their wake an ebullient-green yard, the rich, verdant base only enhancing ornamental trees and bushes to their happiest springtime splendor. Or foil, recoil or quarrel Jonathan Leavitt, whose palatial, Georgian-colonial home – The Manse – still stands along a discontinued dirt road 1.5 miles north of Field’s grave. His name is Lyndon “Sonny” Scott, a humble Whately dairy farmer and proud descendant of the town’s founding families. May 27, 2015 - Explore Jeremy Bartlett's board "Medieval Tavern Interior" on Pinterest. It was then that he shared valuable advice his Abenaki grandfather had once imparted while observing him as a 5-year-old whipping a tree with a long stick for no particular reason. Actually, for weeks I have been thinking ahead to a couple of looming birthday celebrations local towns will celebrate. . Quite an assemblage of family data, the material opened a window into my Woodruff and Sanderson ancestors, plus many peripherals relating to South Deerfield and Whately. and spices; beer was made with the addition of the relatively Actually, the younger Brooks, 49, completed each step of her degree path a little earlier than Bruchac, earning her BA from Goddard College in 1993, her MA from Boston College in 1998, and her PhD at Cornell in 2004. A tavern meal. With a great stake in hand, he waded the river until he found the beaver, and so hotly chased him that he sought to escape by digging into the ground. But at least with role-playing games like Dungeon & Dragons or Pathfinder, you can save the lady in peril using miniature figurines instead of getting your metal armor all dinged up in hand to hand combat! I’m sitting in a leather recliner, legs outstretched, head and back upright. It is what it is – just another uncanny example of Native intuition. None. Quite the contrary, he likely thought the whole concept was ridiculous, an silly tale from primitive, Stone Age people. I also attended the same high school as his three children, and often stopped to chat as an adult when passing through his neighborhood, especially during pheasant hunting. pamphlets tell many stories where the innocent traveller is “Yes,” he wrote. Whately separated from Hatfield in 1771. To this day, I still can’t believe I found that device by total accident in such a timely fashion. Why? Despite being left with more questions than answers at this early juncture, I’m making good progress and am confident many more answers will surface before this probe is finished. According to Pressey, the Great Beaver preyed upon fish and, when food became scarce, took to eating men of the river villages. Many indigenous tales recounted classic battles between this culture hero and Pleistocene megafauna like the giant beaver, comparable in size to today’s black bear. Instead, he called it a day. It lays on the finest medieval banquet in the city, an all-inclusive night of hearty food, free flowing drinks and first-class entertainment. It just happened. Interpreting deer sign along that circuitous journey, we’d be able to assess their feeding and bedding habits. I’d publish a weekly 200-pound club report. Although I know of no way to confirm that, I do know this hazardous site has claimed many lives in my lifetime. Comments (2). Beavers eat inner bark and twigs, leaves and roots. Long ago, yes, but still relevant. But, no, they were not one people before Europeans arrived in our valley – though the Sokoki had, by the turn of the 17th century, established their southernmost physical presence in new villages on the northern periphery of Pocumtuck territory. The sensational story got big play in a newspaper full of short local-news blurbs. Now you get your chance to save the damsel or dude in distress. But again, that’s superfluous information by now, not by any stretch critical after all these years. Main Timetable The main timetable is the same for both Saturday and Sunday. It was the Woodruff Bible, which displayed on one of its first pages a family register filled out in ink, most likely by my great-grandmother, Fannie Woodruff Sanderson (1865-1947), who died six years before I was born. Value. There is a storage room under the bar. The buggy body was cleared from the running part, and all the wheels, springs and shafts were broken. Upon closer inspection, I found the owner’s name written on the inner panel. The Code of Hammurabi of ancient Babylonia (c. 1750 bce) provided that the death penalty According to indigenous creation lore, many Central Algonquian people were ancient migrants from the Great Salt Water of Dawnland. Fact is surveyors have never defined Canterbury, per se, by metes and bounds. Before pavilion construction, the field served as an agricultural plot where silage corn was grown in my youth, even occasional potatoes if I’m not mistaken. Typical restaurant in Rome. "catches," or rounds, often with a bawdy meaning hidden in Medieval Fayre 2020: There & Back Again * * * * * * Counting finished! I have in my many searches discovered many similar extended 19th-century families existing under one roof. Back then, as sports editor of the Greenfield Recorder, I was in the early years of cranking out a weekly Thursday outdoors column titled “On the Trail.” Come archery deer season each November, I’d dig out my detailed, annotated list of western Massachusetts deer-checking-station phone numbers and call every last one of them weekly looking for good copy about remarkable hunts. Oh my! Now, fast-forward six days, to the morning of Tuesday, May 26, noontime approaching. My answer was no. He was sincerely moved by its passing, like losing an old teammate. That was sad. It doesn’t matter. Count me among those using the unanticipated isolation for genealogical research. Not only was Chloe Maxwell Leavitt Field’s grandfather a minister. Of course, I couldn’t resist skimming the pages for interesting tidbits and names of ancestors. medieval … It’s a fitting final resting place for the man who, in 1831, married Chloe Maxwell Leavitt, granddaughter of Charlemont’s conservative minister Rev. That said, you gotta hand it to good old South Deerfield: back then a hard-drinking, hard-working, hell-raising prankster town. Library. Why? Dwyer Lot, the site of the beef barbecue and Rotary Club Beer Fest, was right across Pleasant Street from the home my parents shared with my grandfather for my first 12 years of boyhood. Two of the cow-catcher bars were broken by the collision. Erin is used to it. And stout doth stand Old Medieval Tavern Escape Game Walkthrough. He died at 88 a couple of months ago, removing yet another valuable historical source who knew the land surrounding his expansive farm like no other. The code of Hammurabi included laws regulating beer and beer parlours and it dates back to about 1754 BC, indicating that beer parlours and the commerce of beer were already common at that point.Taverns were also common in the Roman Empire.. Members of the Field family were still involved in the fight right up through February 1763, when the long string of French and Indian Wars finally ended with the Treaty of Paris signing. That, I decided, would have to wait until I had them available on my hard drive. Before midnight, he and a friend or two proceeded to toss eight sticks of dynamite out the plane window while flying over Sugarloaf and its northern brother, shaking houses on Mountain Road, Eastern Avenue, and Graves Street, and even breaking a few windows. I pulled a used, six- by nine-inch steno pad from a tidy pile stacked at eye level on an upper shelf in the narrow supplies closet alongside my study’s fireplace. The reporters say it’s long overdue, about time, for local schoolchildren to learn of their valley’s ancient, indigenous past. Likewise, it’s mentioned by 19th-century town historians Josiah Howard Temple (1815-1893) and James Monroe Crafts (1817-1903), whose published town histories appeared in 1872 and 1899. an alehouse of my lady's house, that ye squeak out your Back then I even happened upon a small Sixties artist commune hidden there, the members of which summered in twine-bound lean-tos off Henhawk Road. Who knows? A tavern meal. Well, bear with me. Nothing wrong with that. Selfishness was not tolerated by Native Americans, who valued community sharing and charity. A Whately Historical Commissioner and professional genealogist, she’s working on a book about old Whately homes and families and, out of the clear, blue sky a few weeks ago, decided to pick my brain about the Elijah Sanderson farmstead on the southern foot of Mt. We traveled a short distance, took a quick right before a barn and followed the lane along a barb-wired pasture holding cattle, parking 50 yards north of the tree. His expression said it all. But how old was it? No white man carved that panther.”. Nonetheless, his blindness never diminished his spirit or stopped him from touring the roads and trails, still with a hop in his step. thanks =] Plus, Long Arm carved a discrete, tell-tale Marine anchor on the back to mark it as a modern creation. {{filterDisplayName(filter)}} Duration. The cordage of various widths was used for fishing nets and fishing line as well as baskets, sacks and strong, braided rope?”, Eye to eye, I could sense something wasn’t hunky-dory. Most everything had a spirit – even inanimate objects like the Pocumtuck Range, which local indigenous people believed had once been a troublesome giant beaver bludgeoned to death by the giant culture-hero Hobomock for flaunting rude, uncooperative behavior, in its case, hoarding and greed. It’s not out of the question that the tree had even sprouted in time to witness the infamous Feb. 29, 1704 Indian attack of Deerfield. Sixty years younger, Gilead had reminded me that you’re never too old to learn, too young to teach. No fear falls to my lot. However, if there’s one question no hunter likes to answer, it’s stand location. The flyover bombing occurred not during the July 7, 1973 Tercentenary, but during the town’s national bicentennial celebration three years later, on the night of July 3, 1976. For the majority, this meant a tavern and for a lucky few, early coaching style inns. Common people had simpler fare. Maybe it’ll soon be a stump whose rings will reveal its exact age, whose cordwood will provide warmth for many winters. He was proud, more than willing to recreate the total experience of taking a buck for the ages. Indian is no longer acceptable in some circles, where Native American or my friend’s term are preferred. No, he surely would have begged to differ with any such claim. That was 14 years before the end of the final French and Indian War, and the neighborhood was perilous through the 1750s. A pow-wow was held and Hobomock raised, who came to their relief. Few folks today have likely ever heard of CompuServe, an early search engine that appeared in the 1980s and was gone by the mid-1990s, never mind its Genealogy Forum. posted in Columns, Local history, South Deerfield | Even if you don't post your own creations, we appreciate feedback on ours. The first to respond was Gramly. He may by now be dead. About 60 years old, Mr. Sanderson was a much-respected farmer. These days, a pair of scholars with Abenaki roots have come forward to put their own spin on what they call The Great Beaver. With evening approaching, they were exercising their dog by tossing a ball into the river for retrieval. He’d found an online column of mine expressing confidence about the existence of ancient petroglyphs and pictographs still to be discovered in our slice of the Connecticut Valley. Something I found most interesting, and prominently noted from my first notes about the Sanderson account book, was the prevalence of barter economy between the merchant and community. Still, there are other Native American myths that involve the killing of vicious or unruly beavers, so the man-eating twist was probably a colonial misinterpretation. If not, move on. Some alehouses certainly offered more than cakes and ale. The year 1970 also produced Kent State, which unfolded on May 4 and likely means nothing to most high-school students today. Sign for krcma tavern, at Medieval Fair 2015, Medvedgrad, Zagreb, Croatia, Europe. Much more. medieval-tavern-3982824. My best guess would be Big Stosh, an old baseball teammate and friend since grammar school. In my next column, we’ll take a look at how the Sugarloaf Beaver Myth has evolved since Marge Bruchac and Lisa Brooks have taken control of it. Undoubtedly an outspoken Lincolnian Republican, Field’s tall, mushroom-capped gravestone stands in East Charlemont’s Leavitt Cemetery, situated along the Mohawk Trail on the western skirt of Charlemont Academy. I was in the lead as Dassatti joined us in-route down Broughams Pond Road and into the North Meadows. I watched Kassabaum’s video with interest, and it led me to my study to see what I could find in my bookshelves. What choice did I have? Launching from Montague, across from the Deerfield’s dangerous Connecticut River confluence located between the General Pierce and bicycle-path bridges, Peirce had maneuvered more than a mile upriver when obstructed by shallow water requiring walking. By the late 17th century, the diaspora of southern New England Natives brought them west to the Berkshires and upper Hudson Valley, north to the upper reaches of Lake Champlain, and as far west as the Upper Great Plains, where they assimilated into the dominant societies. Click for a Hailing from a Greenfield, New York storytelling family that includes older brother Joseph Bruchac and his sons, James and Jesse, Marge Bruchac was the perfect Beaver Tale-rebirth vehicle. Could the ruins brought to my attention by the late Lyndon Scott have been associated with a Great Swamp lumber mill that once supplied the Sanderson tannery with bark and lumber in payment for leather goods? How embarrassing for an adolescent lad of my persuasion. No Comments. What a stroke of good fortune. Lattrell remembers thinking, “Huh? Soup – Traditional Czech potato soup. Sorry, Kid. “The horse, released from the buggy, was uninjured. Algonquian legend credited Hobomock with reducing the giant beaver and squirrel to today’s more-manageable, less dangerous and destructive size. Elm trees have no gender. Still, I could find no New England examples of an underwater panther, just serpents. Come dressed as a Knight, King, Jester, Lady, Viking or Dragon and participate in many authentic displays. She was a gracious hostess to me and Thomas during a two-hour, June 12 visit to her home. in town, possibly as crude as the house where the owner was For many visitors who want a glimpse of what it is like to visit a medieval tavern… Homicide by horse? Scott was curious if I had ever explored that ridge. The In fact, he wore it on his sleeve. Reappearing at the mouth of the Deerfield, hugging the East Deerfield shore, after riding the downstream flow – Bingville to the left, East Deerfield right – Peirce looked across and noticed a couple of men standing on the Montague side near where he had put in. New and helpful in this recent hunt for information was my inevitable acceptance of a frequently offered, free, two-week trial of Ancestry.com. A police spokesman told the Greenfield Recorder he was confident he knew who was responsible, which was likely true, because it was no secret around town. Yet he still believed it could be an important discovery dating back to the Colonial Contact Period, maybe even a smidge earlier. My initial reaction was that the image looked too good, maybe a bit too crisp and clean to be hundreds of years old. The first the engineer saw of Mr. Sanderson or his buggy, was Mr. Sanderson’s body thrown up several feet in the air. Medieval Fare is a fun day where you will step back in time. Perhaps the locative Canterbury had gone out of use by 1890s, or had always been an in-town location used only by folks in Hatfield and Whately. Saturday’s was such a walk. Thomas, catching up on yard work at his northern Vermont home, didn’t respond immediately. So, now we are even. When we exited our pickups and before introductions, Lattrell, looking directly at the tree, gave us a knee-jerk estimate, given what he could see from where we stood. The recreation of a medieval banquet while appeasing modern taste required a lot of recipe research. We’re talking about dumb luck, the improbability of which was greater than getting struck by lightning. After Field’s original story left the carcass totally open to the imagination, Sheldon exercised poetic license to provide an anatomically incorrect description. I enjoy kids’ curiosity and enthusiasm. That is, hunters who had taken bucks weighing a minimum of 200 pounds. Never do such unfettered thoughts flow freer than on brisk, solitary walks, one foot in front of the other, heart thumping, blood circulating, sweat dripping, thoughts swirling into a dust storm of stimuli, the topics darting from here to there and back again. Buffalo robe? RIP, fellas. There it has for decades served as the Greenfield Public Library. Because, yes, I was there 50 years ago for the same towns’ last birthday galas, celebrated in villages where as a kid I played baseball, fished, farmed and foraged … and unapologetically raised hell. (Shakespeare, parodying Malvolio as a During medieval times there was a lot of ways that people kept themselves entertained. No need fo do anything except enjoy ourselves. I care not: Field, Sheldon, and Pressey were from another time and mindset, and their published work stood as the accepted Sugarloaf Beaver Myth until the turn of the 21st century. The Peirce images in the hands of Gramly, Thomas and myself spurred independent research by all of us, with communication flying back and forth. More Maps by RobotChrisMinecraft. The kid wanted to penetrate the patch of prickly canes to pick the ripe interior berries, but was discouraged not only by thorns but also pesky nettles, which in childhood I knew as seven-minute itch. Embedded audio playback is not supported by your browser. The result in this instance is that the pun Such dangerous whirlpools were viewed as portals to the underworld in worldwide hunter-gatherer cultures, including those of North America’s Eastern Woodlands. Since the average person in Medieval Europe was a farmer, most people would not have gone to the Tavern to eat unless they were on Pilgrimage. I was dumbstruck. Preparations already underway for both, with local historians of many stripes swapping insights to be worked into a public narrative and unveiled down the road. Plus, there’s Hatfield’s 350th this year, which has already been reduced to a disappointing virtual celebration due to COVID-19 demons, likely to be present virtually anywhere, but especially in dense gatherings. accusations that criminals planned their nefarious activities The longer versions would have been great theater, the full Monty, so to speak, introducing song and dance, the heartbeat of drums and chants, flashy costume and hushed drama – suspense that could strike fear or rapture into an entranced gathering. Daily offer Medieval meals are combined with traditional Latvian cuisine in the tavern’s daily menu. We were still chatting when Dassatti returned from his photo-shoot. Eleven years later, in her 2016 PVMA online essay “The Geology and Cultural History of the Beaver Hill Story,” she still used the documented Pocumtuck names for landscape features and locations. Perfect for pondering, allowing your mind to run free. Whew! The Banquet. Born 1799 and raised in Northfield, he died at 85 in Charlemont in 1884. What did it mean? As for the 1973 Deerfield Tercentenary, yes, my memories are clearer. Phinehas Field had much to be proud of. A tavern meal. Another creative contribution was made by North-Country Western Abenaki poet Cheryl Savageau, who dedicated her poem about the beaver, At Sugarloaf, 1996, to Marge Bruchac, suggesting to me the likelihood that Bruchac had introduced her to the tale. I don’t recall what I said. The first is Whately’s 250th next year, then my hometown of Deerfield’s 350th in 2023. Well, little did I know that more reliable data would soon appear in the form of an incredible stroke of good fortune. Deacon D.W. Childs of Deerfield insured his life a short time since for $1,000.”. It’s a worldview Western Civilization has trouble getting its heads around, yet one that’s gained much traction in alternative chambers of Western thought. However, with that project ongoing and far from finished, why bother piecemealing it out so early in the process, and chancing errors? Tavern, an establishment where alcoholic beverages are sold for consumption on the premises. The upturned head covered with dirt is the sandstone cliff of Wequamps (Mt. "Come try my courage man to man Philip Smith was another Canterbury pioneer. There’s a glaring void in Whately’s North Street/Whately Glen neighborhood. I fiddled with the plastic box and was able to slide it off a frame secured to the tree. His humble manner, dignity, and humility bespoke his rural Yankee pedigree. Though much of what Crafts wrote about the town’s earliest history dating back to its Hatfield days parroted Temple, he did make an important contribution with comprehensive genealogies of the town’s first families. You know, something like “under the old apple tree” or “in the white oaks” or “through the heart and lungs,” or even a simple “no comment.” Instead, I got the polite runaround, and printed it. tapster. The tavern pictured here is catering for the wealthy, providing food and drink --a jug of beer or ale, served by a tapster.For the less affluent there were alehouses, where "cakes and ale*" were served.The alehouse became a centre of social interaction as churches* became more puritanical. The statute of limitations long ago passed. Patrons enjoyed songs “Fair enough?”. The twelfth annual Gumeracha Medieval Fair will be held on the 4 th & 5 th May in the Federation Park from 10am-5pm on Saturday & 10am-4pm Sunday 2019.Once again, there will be another two days of medieval fun and excitement.