Winter Presentation: "Treasure from the VHS Attic"
Presentation by Steve Perkins of Vermont Historical Society

Steve Perkins, Director of the Vermont Historical Society, brought a cache of unique and priceless artifacts from the VHS collection to the annual winter meeting of the Greensboro Historical Society in Fellowship Hall on Sunday afternoon March 10.

Among them were an Ottoman era sword owned by Lord Byron, epaulettes once worn by Vermonter Admiral Dewey (the most decorated Naval admiral in history), and the actual document accepting Vermont into the Union of United States as the 14th state, signed by Thomas Jefferson and preserved between sheets of gossamer silk. Mr. Perkins told colorful tales of the history of each piece -- its source, acquisition, and how it was part of the history of Vermont, the U.S. and the world.

After the talk, many in the audience of 30 people examined the objects he had told about so colorfully: a sturdy, woven Swiss/Abenaki style brown ash basket made somewhere in the Mt. Mansfield area by a male in the Washburn family, an 1886 medal commemorating the first international hockey tournament in Burlington, the only extant complete set of Stamp Act metal stamps (used with sealing wax) in the U.S., and a billy club owned by a watchman at the Vermont Marble Company in Proctor who had decorated it with wood-burned cartoons of the 1936 strike there.

Perkins invited everyone to visit the museum of the Vermont Historical Society on State Street in Montpelier next to the Capital which is filled with similar objects, and to explore the VHS headquarters on Washington Street in Barre which includes exhibit halls and the Leahy Library, much used by researchers.

When: March 10th (Monday) at 2:00pm
Where: Fellowship Hall of the Greensboro United Church of Christ