Members and friends of the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown will gather Saturday, Nov. 7 at 2 p.m. for the organization’s annual meeting. Historian and author Bill Birns will be the featured speaker at the event, to be held at the Middletown History Center, 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.
The center and its archives will be open earlier in the day, from 10 to 1. Those who can’t make the meeting might want to stop in and leave a message to the future in a notebook which will be buried with other items in a time capsule to be opened in 50 years.
Contents of the capsule – actually a sturdy rigid “Pelican” box - will be on view along with a plaque which will be mounted on a boulder to mark the burial spot in the history center garden. The capsule will be buried later in November, and unearthed in 2076, the nation’s Tricentennial year.
The annual meeting will include reports on the society’s finances and activities, the election of trustees and the drawing of winners of two hand-crafted clocks made by Ellis Tobin of Redkill. Trustees seeking reelection are Patricia Moore, Josef Schoell and Suzanne Sluiter.
The business meeting will be followed by a talk by Bill Birns of Fleischmanns who will share his views on the importance of preserving local history.
Bill is the editor of the recently released book “Peter Pan in the Catskills and other Historical Essays,” published by Purple Mountain Press. The book is a collection of articles from the magazine “Catskills Tri-County Historical Views.”
A retired teacher (he taught at both Margaretville and Onteora Central Schools), Bill is also the author of “A Catskill Catalogue,” a collection of essays he wrote for the Catskill Mountain News; and “I Was Corning a Beaver Like You Do: John Burroughs, Joe Hewitt, Mountain Culture.”
Light refreshments will be served at the meeting, when attendees may join HSM or renew their membership. Ideas for future programming are also requested.
