News and Events

 

Presentations

The Conway Historical Society holds bimonthly meetings which feature presentations by local artists, historians, collectors, and people with expertise in topics of local or timely interest. Recent presentations include:

 

• Local metal detectorist Jack Harrison on artifacts he has uncovered in the fields and forests of Conway.
• Bill Burnett, Debbie Burnett Craven and Howard Boyden discussed maple sugaring in Conway.
• A dramatic reading of Hassell family letters 1850-1903.
• Bob Drinkwater on local stonecutters who carved gravestones for Conway cemeteries.
• Thad Danielson on building wooden boats and the boatbuilders who helped and taught him.
• Professor Richard D. Little discussed the origin and meaning of the rare Jurassic-age sedimentary rock features known as Armored Mud Balls.
• Robert McMaster on the life of influential geologist and preacher Edward Hitchcock and his artist wife Orra White Hitchcock.
• Bob Baker on his 40-year career as Conway's Fire Department chief and how the department might operate in the future. 
• John Moore of Roaring Glen Farms discussed craft marijuana cooperatives and how cannabis farming might revitalize small family farms in places like Conway.
• Judith Wermuth-Atkinson and Alan Greenfield shared first-hand experiences of the fall of the Berlin Wall 30 years ago.
• Mark Fortier told "Stories of Conway's Past," about his childhood in Conway and his grandfather Ernest Staelens.
• Dr. Robert J. Gegear, Director of the New England Beecology Project, on "Economics, Ecology, and the Plight of our Native Pollination Systems."
• Anthropologist John Wilson on "An Archaeologist's View of the 1676 Falls Fight: Weapons, Tactics & Terrain."
• Phil Kantor, former Society president, on "Conway During Shays' Rebellion," 230 years ago.
• Doug Harris, Deputy Tribal Historic Preservation Officer for the Narragansett Indian Tribal Historic Preservation Office, presented “Let the Landscape Speak: Indigenous Ceremonial Structures in the Northeast.”
• Sarah Doyle, of the Impressions from a Lost World website (PVMA), on Edward & Orra Hitchcock: Religion, Science, and Art in Conway & Amherst.
• Robert Nowak, resident amateur geologist, on "Hidden in the Rocks: After the Continents Collided," a presentation on Conway's geology and the components and formations of Bob's rocky Whately Road hillside.
• Bill Burnett, a 7th generation Burnett family member who traces his Conway lineage to 1781, on "Mapping Conway's Early Roads and Foundations," an ongoing project.
• David Brule, president of the Nolumbeka Project and author of Looking for Judah: Adventures in Genealogy and Remembrance, on the tribal presence in the area from the time of Lake Hitchcock to the present.
• Local educator and author Jeremy V. P. Rogers on "Conway in Context: 18,000 Years of History."