Curating the Sherwood Equal Rights Historic District

The Howland Stone Store Museum (HSSM) in Sherwood, NY is quartered in a small cobblestone building that dates to 1837. Among and in addition to the Howland Family Collections therein housed are posters from the late 1800s and early 1900s championing the women's suffrage movement. The posters are symbolic of the passion of the Sherwood community and the Howland family in the service of abolition, women's rights and women's education. Progenitor Slocum Howland was active with the Underground Railroad; daughter Emily, daughter-in-law Hannah and granddaughter Isabel were suffragists. These were scrappers. Miss Emily and her niece Isabel in the 1920s: 

A part of the HSSM mission is the restoration of a piece of the nearby Isabel Howland home, also erected in 1837. After acquiring it from her family, Isabel expanded the house in 1910 and christened it "Opendore." From this elegant base of operations, and from Sherwood, Isabel's mother Hannah and aunt Emily Howland organized the Sherwood Equal Rights Association. These ladies and others were prominent leaders in the local, state and national women's movement. 

The women were ultimately victorious but Opendore lost its battle with time and the elements. The dignity of the stately home has vanished, but not before HSSM saved the northern portion. The larger project for Howland Stone Store Museum will be the construction of new, handicapped-accessible museum space--literally out of the rubble. This will become the new and more appropriate repository of the suffrage poster collection.

And, meanwhile, way back on the south-eastern part of the property stands a derelict springhouse. It, too, is slated for recovery. The HSSM views the successful restoration of the springhouse as a demonstration of our ability to recapture the sense and feel of history, our effort to conduct today's explorer into a physical encounter with the past. This mini-project is an evocative symbol for the overall goal and it keeps another part of the property intact. We invite you to help.

Wikipedia: A spring house, or springhouse, is a small building, usually of a single room, constructed over a spring. While the original purpose of a springhouse was to keep the spring water clean by excluding fallen leaves, animals, etc., the enclosing structure was also used for refrigeration before the advent of ice delivery and, later, electric refrigeration. The water of the spring maintains a constant cool temperature inside the spring house throughout the year. Food that would otherwise spoil, such as meat, fruit, or dairy products, could be kept there, safe from animal depredations as well.

In settings where no natural spring is available, another source of natural running water, such as a small creek or diverted portion of a larger creek, might be used.