Events and Community
Santa Returns to Franconia!
Join us at the Franconia Heritage Museum on Saturday, December 9th from 1:00-3:00 PM, as Santa makes his annual appearance! Bring the kids, take family photos, and enjoy refreshments and homemade Holiday cookies!
See you there!
FAHC Cemetery Tour and Annual Meeting
The Annual Meeting of the Franconia Area Heritage Council took place on Wednesday, November 15th, 2023 at the Franconia Inn. Thank you to all who attended.
Jayne O’Connor, Franconia Cemetery Trustee, in character as the wife of Zebedee Applebee, led a tour of the Willow Cemetery, prior to the meeting. Zebedee Applebee was the original settler of the Franconia Inn property. Jayne’s tour notes and the Year in Review presentation can be found by clicking the links below.
Photo credit: Lorna Colquhoun
Willow Cemetery Tour Notes
FAHC Year in Review
Join us for Halloween at the Franconia Heritage Museum
Tuesday, October 31
4:00 - 6:00 PM
Treats for the kids and Cider and Donuts too. Bring the whole family!
Donuts donated by the Franconia Coffee House
“Ring of Fire” wins Most Creative!
Franconia Area Heritage Council’s 2023 entry into the Old Home Day Parade, “Ring of Fire” is a 1/6th scale model of Franconia’s Iron Furnace, complete with a smoking stack! The original octagonal stone stack that is visible on the far bank of the Gale River is all that remains of a 200-year-old iron smelter shown on an 1805 map of Franconia.
Settling Down: Celebrating Franconia’s 250th Anniversary
Commemorating the Twentieth Anniversary of The Old Man of the Mountain - May 3, 2023
An Enduring Presence: The Old Man of the Mountain
The exhibit runs from June 3, 2023 – September 16, 2023. The opening reception will be held on June 2, 2023, 4:00-6:00pm at the Museum of the White Mountains, Main Gallery.
Current Exhibit: Museum of the White Mountains, Plymouth State University
The Franconia Heritage Museum is offering a limited number of its hardcover publication, Saving the Great Stone Face: The Chronicle of the Old Man of the Mountain, by Frances Ann Johnson Hancock. Published January 1, 1983.
Saving the Great Stone Face
Get Your Swing On!
‘In The Mood’? Come on down to the Lafayette Regional School in Franconia on Friday, July 7th, 2023 and swing to the sounds of the Tall Granite Big Band.
The 18-piece big band takes the stage at 4:30 pm. Come at 3:30 for free swing dance lessons…generously donated!
Presented by The Franconia Area Heritage Council, this Swing Dance is in celebration of Franconia’s 250th Anniversary of the town’s first settlement.
Celebrating 250 Years!
NH Art and Artists Through the Years
Franconia Heritage Museum Speaker Series Presents
With Jane Oneail
April 6, 2023
New Hampshire has attracted and inspired artists since the colonial era. What is distinctive about the art made here? This program will consider works by itinerant and folk painters, landscape artists drawn to the state's scenic vistas, and modern artists that adopted bold styles to depict everyday life in the Granite State. Augustus Saint-Gaudens, Childe Hassam, and Maxfield Parrish are some of the artists discussed in this program.
7:00 PM
About the presenter: Jane Oneail curates and delivers art appreciation programs to audiences throughout New England. Jane holds a master's in Art History from Boston University and a master's in Education from Harvard University. A New Hampshire native, she has worked at some of the state's most esteemed cultural institutions, including the League of New Hampshire Craftsmen, where she served as Executive Director, and the Currier Museum of Art, where she held the role of Senior Educator.
Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn
January 24, 2023
With Thomas C. Hubka
“Big house, little house, back house, barn”―this rhythmic cadence was sung by nineteenth-century children as they played. It also portrays the four essential components of the farms where many of them lived. The stately and beautiful connected farm buildings made by nineteenth-century New Englanders stand today as a living expression of a rural culture, offering insights into the people who made them and their agricultural way of life. A visual delight as well as an engaging tribute to our nineteenth-century forebears, this book has become one of the standard works on regional farmsteads in America.
Franconia Heritage Museum Speaker Series
Thomas C. Hubka is a Professor Emeritus in the Department of Architecture at the School of Architecture, University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. Hubka has taught architecture at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee for over twenty years where he has published widely on topics of vernacular or popular architecture including theoretical works and detailed studies of common buildings such as New England farms, bungalows, ranch houses, and workers’ cottages. His initial research on New England farm architecture resulted in the book, Big House, Little House, Back House, Barn: The Connected Farm Buildings of New England (University Press of New England, 1984), for which he received the Abbot Lowell Cummings Award from the Vernacular Architecture Forum.
7:00 PM
Santa Returns to Franconia
Join us at the Franconia Heritage Museum to meet up with Mr. and Mrs. Santa Claus. Cookies, punch, and good cheer will also be provided. We hope to see you, your children, and your grandchildren here. Bring your cameras!
Franconia Area Heritage Council
Annual Meeting and Dinner
Wednesday, November 9, 2022
5:00 PM
Lovett’s Inn, Franconia, NH
Good people, an interesting historical speaker in conjunction with NH Humanities, a cash bar, and dinner to follow.
Place your order by Halloween (October 31): choice of pork tenderloin, chicken Parmesan, or baked haddock (vegetarian option by request). Contact Phil Krill at 603-616-7341. $48pp for dinner. Mail payment to Franconia Area Heritage Council/Box 169/Franconia NH/03580
Prior to the 7 pm dinner, we’ll have our annual meeting and a special presentation by Alan R. Hoffman, in conjunction with NH Humanities, on The Marquis de Lafayette and Human Rights, a subject that continues to be relevant 250 years later.
About the speaker... https://www.lafayetteinamerica.com/author/