Fullfilling my Dreams: Old Sturbridge Village, an old 1700's village in MA

Old Sturbridge Village is a living museum located in Sturbridge, Massachusetts, in the United States, which re-creates life in rural New England during the 1790s through 1830s. It is the largest living museum in New England, covering more than 200 acres.

As you walk into the visitors center they have set up a Photo shoot place to get your pic made using your own camera. I took a couples pic and they took ours. A holiday treat.

First you go into a museum type place. In this area they have a collection of Grandfather clocks.


WOW! I wish I had just one of these treasures.

This is called the carding house. Do you know what carding is and how it is done? It was at one time done by hand with 2 hand held carding tools that you rub together and pull to remove seeds from the cotton an to clean and refine the sheep's wool into yarn and thread. A machine was invented to do it so it would not need to be done by hand.

This lady was inside the house telling us all about it and washing dishes in the old way, in a pan.

Old Sturbridge Village is a living, breathing, vibrant village depicting life in New England from 1790-1840. Visitors can meet historians in costume and tour 40 antique buildings, including a country store, school, and water-powered mills.

One of the first things we saw, that interested me was the oxen pulling a cart. The guy was driving it by commands and the little switch he carried. The funniest thing, when I posted this pic, I noticed that the oxen were in step together. Look at their front feet. Not sure that could happen again. LOL

The church of the village.

The old country store was an interesting place especially this area, since I am a quilter. Just look at those fabric bolts in the shelves.

This is the men's section of the store and was the first part of the store that was built, the other sections were added later.

Inside one of the houses. This house was owned by one of the more prosperous person in the village.

Another merchant that would have lived there is the Tin Maker. This was his cabin for his wares.

This is a true Tin Man, very talented. He hammers a design into this lantern he is making.

Hey girls, remember these? I used to make and play with these all the time. My brothers and I made cars and things for them. So much fun, ours were cut from a catalog. Brings back pleasant memories, hope it does for you too.

Hey quilters, we know what this is to our right don't we. This is the way they quilted back then and we still do it on the frames today, if we want it hand quilted.

I like the pattern on this quilt.

A beautiful covered bridge, you may see it in a number of these pictures. I love covered bridges.

A scene in the village. So pretty, note the reflections in the water.


More reflections!

An old grist mill operated by a water wheel.

Yep, I told you you might see more pics of the covered bridge. Just had to get that reflection.


yep, another. Just wanted you to see the beauty that I was seeing and this is truly beauty, don't you agree? Again, note the reflections!

The farm house.

A little friend came by to say hello and I snapped his pic.

He was so stinking cute, sitting on top of the post eating his nut.

Sorry about that, just had to show this one too. A different angle.

A Smithy hard at work. A blacksmith is intriguing to my sweet husband.

He stayed with him for quite a while talking to him about the blacksmithing process.

I thought the setting for this cabin was one of the best pictures, other than the covered bridge. The Cooper did his work in this cabin. If you do not know what a Cooper is, he works with wood making barrels, water bucket, watering troughs. etc. but mostly barrels. There were big demand for barrels in those days and he made them to be watertight.

This is a fruit that is somewhat like a pear and an apple mixture. It is peeled, cored and made into pies. It is a bitter type fruit, when asked how do you make a pie from it, the reply was it must have a lots and lots of sugar. The outside of it is lumpy. It must be a fruit of the north, because I have never heard of it being in the south. They told us the name of it, but of course I forgot it.

They had made an apple pie and a cake and something else, all on an open hearth.

This is a very old recipe book with very old recipes in it. They were in the process of making Gourd Soup.

"Welcome to the Root Cellar" she says.

She began to tell us how many varieties of fresh vegetables and fruit they could keep in the root cellar. They would put sand taken from a lake or stream and put a layer of it in a big box, place the carrots in, not touching each other, another layer of sand and another of carrots, etc. I thought it amazing. They stored apples in a barrel using the sand in the same way.