MEETING NOTES FOR MARCH 24, 2022
Reminders
Our next meeting will be an evening meeting hosted by Berwick Academy's Jim Hamilton at the Hayes House on campus. The last time we were there he and his wife were the most gracious hosts and treated us like royalty! We have already mailed out an email with the directions and time frame. The start time is 5 p.m. and you are welcome to bring your significant other(s) and any prospective members you wish to invite. It should be lovely.
On April 9th is our Easter egg hunt at Sandy Hill Farm scholarship fundraiser (the rain date is April 10th). We will have the Rotary food truck and will man (and woman) it with club members who will be selling lemonade, water and hot chocolate if the weather calls for it. This is an all-day event and we have 2 sets of volunteers who will cover the morning and afternoon shifts on April 9th. There is a Zoom meeting at 8 a.m. Thursday (yes, the same day as our evening meeting) to which you have been invited to continue with the planning details. The Zoom link was sent in an earlier email from President Brenda.
We have 3 students registered to attend RYLA this summer from Marshwood High School. We can approve more if we hear of more interest.
There will be a District Assembly Training on April 16th at University of New England, if you wish to attend. Just let President Brenda know.
Jeremy Fogg will get a head count of students at the elementary schools who will be receiving our dictionaries as we have done in years past.
On April 7th we are planning on hearing from Linda Downey (sp?) about Out of the Shadows, a program in Eliot we have supported in the past with one of our fundraisers. She is one of their team leaders. She is also a possible member candidate for our club. We are also hoping to have the South Berwick town manager and Kennebunk Bank's Erica Place submit their applications to join our club.
April 7th is also Food Pantry, if you would like to volunteer.
On April 14th our meeting will be Club Assembly where we will be hearing how well we have achieved our 2021-22 goals and provide incoming President Tom Harmon some ideas for what 2022-23 will look like.
The next board meeting will be April 18th at Robin Wheeler's house - we so enjoy those!
April 28th will be another evening meeting somewhere to be announced.
April 30th is the annual fundraising dance for Life and Hope School in Haiti. See Amy Miller for details, but it's a fun night that will happen at the 3S Artspace in Portsmouth.
In case you're wondering, all of our club belongings now reside on the 3rd floor of the South Berwick town hall. Thanks, Tom Harmon, for facilitating that!
We may soon be the proud owners of a soft ice cream machine to use for fundraisers.
We have shirts and hats for those members who need/want one/some. President Brenda is the keeper of the clothes...
Speaker of the Day
We had an enjoyable talk by John Demos of the Old Berwick Historical Society (thank you, Amy Miller, for inviting him). He is an archivist for OBHS and definitely passionate about our local history. He is the chairman of the Counting House Museum's Collections Committee. John retired in 2018 and has been doing this ever since. Currently there, you can see the new exhibit about 17th and 18th century textiles. What fascinates him most seems to be the Scottish who came to our area not long after the Mayflower arrived in America. John explained that as a result of the Battle of Dunbar in the British Isles there were 150 Scottish prisoners who came to America via Boston and many worked their way up to this region in the 1650's. There was a second group after the Battle of Worcester that arrived after them. Following 7 years of indentured servitude they were free and received land grants. The house where John lives belonged to one of those pioneers, someone by the name of Gray. John has researched this and is able to place their residences on the land grant map of that time. He passed around many maps and South Berwick photos for us to see.
The next exhibit at the Counting House Museum will be Berwick and the Wars with the Natives. He also touched upon future displays and research on the local black population during the earliest times, from Revolutionary War days to the Civil War. Next year, Marcia Oakes Woodbury, an artist from here, will be the subject of the exhibition following the native American wars.
We are fortunate to have avid historians enriching our towns. Stop in at the Counting House Museum when open and say hello to Ruth, the new curator there!