Hatfield Historical Society to honor longtime curator

HATFIELD — A final open day for the Farm Museum on Saturday will also serve as a way to honor longtime curator George Ashley, who has overseen the Hatfield Historical Society’s agricultural collection for more than 30 years.

From noon to 2 p.m., Ashley will be recognized for his contributions, with a celebratory cake, at what is formally known as the Mary Lou and Robert J. Cutter Farm Museum, 7 Billings Way.

Since the founding of the Farm Museum in 2001, a town-owned tobacco barn converted into the display space using a Massachusetts Historical Commission grant in 2000, Ashley has been a presence, alongside a 1927 tractor, onion sorters and farming tools, sleighs and sleds and a papier-mache horse.

Ashley is a past president of the Hatfield Historical Society and champion of local and regional history, especially farming history, showing numerous classes of schoolchildren and their parents the collection of artifacts.

The contents of the museum are in the process of being cataloged and preserved using a three-year, $185,000 Community Preservation Act grant approved by voters. This will build on work Ashley previously did, including a partial inventory and placing tags and labels on many items.

In the end, the agricultural repository will be added to the database of holdings that are also in the Historical Society Museum, upstairs in the library, where paper and textile and more sensitive items are held and displayed, as well items in storage elsewhere in town, such as a collection of items from Smith College founder Sophia Smith.