Fair Time!

The end of summer and early autumn means fair time in communities throughout New England, and in pretty much all other places where farming is--or was--a major part of the local culture and economy. When I was a kid growing up in Western Massachusetts, the annual Cummington Fair was second only to Christmas as something we looked forward to with bounce-off-the-walls anticipation. Rides! Midway games! Livestock exhibits! Fireworks! Horse and ox draws! Cheesy variety shows! Aimless ramming around the fairgrounds with your buddies! Square dancing! Junk food! Visits from cousins! It was something for which you saved all the money you earned helping your father with the haying throughout the summer--and perhaps cadged a wee bit extra because, hey, it's The Fair!--so you could blow it on the aforementioned rides, games, and junk food.

The demands of life and career made it impossible for me to attend the fair for many years, but since I retired and moved to Maine we've made trips to Cummington at fair time a more-or-less regular part of our August schedule. Sally had had little or no experience with rural agricultural fairs until she and I got together, but she now looks forward to fair time at least as much as I do. She had certainly never seen horse and ox pulling competitions before, and now she's hooked on them! When we go to the fair we spend much of our time with our butts plunked down in the exquisitely uncomfortable seats of the grandstand at the pulling ring. 

So, at the end of August we duly made the 4-hour trek from southern Maine to western Massachusetts to take in this year's fair. Or some of it. In years past things began on Friday night, went all day Saturday, and wrapped up with a somewhat shorter day on Sunday. Now the fair begins on Thursday night and runs through the weekend. When I was a kid there was always a fireworks display on Friday night, which was a big favorite. That has now been displaced in favor of truck pulling on Thursday and demolition derbies on Friday and Saturday, neither of which holds the slightest bit of interest for me. Friday night also used to be the time when there would be a show by a semi-big name entertainer, usually a third- or fourth-tier country performer. I have very fond memories of some of those shows, but those are stories for another time. At any rate, we attended this year's fair only on Saturday and Sunday, August 27 & 28.

Today I want to write about the fair in times past. Not my own past, mind you, but the past of earlier generations of my family. A year or more ago I scored a copy (via eBay) of the 1912 Annual Report and Transactions of the Hillside Agricultural Society. (The Hillside Agricultural Society being the organization that runs the Cummington Fair.) Both of my parents came from farm families that have long tenure in Cummington, and that have been active in the fair for generations. My paternal great-grandfather, Alexius Wells (1828-1909), the ancestor who, in 1864, bought the farm where I grew up, was one of the founding members of the Hillside Agricultural Society.

With this in mind, I thought it worth the few bucks I had to spend on this report to see if perhaps it contained any trace of my family's fair-related doings. I was not disappointed! There is not a huge amount of information, but there are enough tidbits to give some insight into the agricultural activities of family members who were long gone before ever I arrived on this earth.

Alexius passed away a few years before this report was published but he appears in it in the list of deceased Life Members of the Society. (His name is spelled there "Alexis," as happened frequently, no doubt reflecting colloquial pronunciation practice.) Not surprisingly, the ancestor about whom I learned the most was my grandfather, Darwin R. Wells (1869-1948). At the time of the 1912 fair Darwin was 42 years old (his birthday was in December); a farmer in the prime of life. My own father, who was the third of the five children who would eventually be born to Darwin and his wife, Zola Morgan, was about 10 months old at fair time that year. In that era the fair was held at the end of September, and was only a two-day event. In 1912 it ran on September 24th and 25th -- a Tuesday and Wednesday, rather than a weekend. A situation about which I will have a bit more to say anon.

L to R: Mr & Mrs. Barnard; Zola & Darwin Wells

Darwin followed in Alexius' footsteps in maintaining involvement in the workings of the Cummington Fair. Like his father before him, he was a Life Member of the Hillside Agricultural Society. He also was an active exhibitor. The 1912 report includes lists of the prize-winners at the year's fair, at which Darwin (invariably identified as "D.R. Wells") took home prizes in fifteen different categories of produce: corn, apple collection, pears, Concord grapes (!), quinces (!!), peaches, vegetable collection, onions, and six different types of grain--plus maple syrup. All these prizes earned him a grand total of $9.10. While it may seem that he came out better in terms of bragging rights than in acquiring extra cash, his winnings that year equate to approximately $222.00 in 2016 dollars. Hardly a fortune, but perhaps enough to buy some seed for the following year, or a few sap buckets for his sugaring operation.

This list of the crops that D.R. grew that he was sufficiently proud of to enter in the fair gives a fascinating window into the world of the family farm of a century ago. That he entered corn, maple syrup, and a collection of vegetables is not surprising. Making maple syrup was part of the yearly flow of farm work in my own lifetime; my father reluctantly gave it up in the 1990s when he was in his ninth decade. Likewise, a stand of sweet corn, and a large vegetable garden, were staples of summers on the farm. Younger members of the family might puzzle over the apples but there was once a sizable orchard on the property. Somewhere among the family papers that I have, but have yet to fully sort and process, is a chart showing all the different varieties of apple trees that once stood on the farm. My father had the orchard cleared in the early 1960s, but there are still numerous venerable old trees standing along the stone walls that define the borders of fields and pastures. In a good year most still produce fruit.*

As for the various other entries...I remember one large old pear tree that stood in the field below the farm house, and I suppose that it could have yielded enough exhibit-worthy fruit for D.R. to select some samples to enter. If there was ever anything resembling a pear orchard on the farm, though, I have no knowledge of it.* But quinces?? Well, again, I guess that one need have had only a single bush to produce enough fruit to exhibit one or a few. I've searched my memory in vain for any hint of where a quince bush, or bushes, might have been located.

The prize-winning Concord grapes are another matter altogether! I have fond memories of eating my fill of luscious, juicy Concords on many a crisp, autumn day, and of a cheesecloth bag full of cooked grapes hanging in the kitchen, the juice seeping through into a large kettle, as my mother made a year's supply of grape jelly. The annual yield from the vines that grow along the wall below the farmhouse has varied greatly over the years. My father carried out a somewhat cyclical, if desultory, pattern of tending them or neglecting them, of shoring up the arbor that supported them, or letting it succumb to the weight of winter snows. I have long wondered just how old these vines were. I always suspected that they pre-dated my father's time but had no information to support that hunch. The fact that Darwin exhibited grapes at the 1912 Cummington Fair strongly suggests (though does not prove) that the vines are, indeed, over a century old. I take some comfort in thinking that the same venerable vines have provided fruit that has been enjoyed by multiple generations of the family. 

I am pleased to report that not only are the vines at the farm presently in fine shape, and flourishing on a wonderful new arbor constructed by my cousins who now own the place, but that a scion of them has taken root in my own yard in Maine. Our fingers are crossed that it will prosper in its new home and one day provide us with our own supply of delicious fruit--and help keep alive my memories of the grapes that I enjoyed when I was a kid.*


I learned other tidbits of family history from the 1912 fair report beyond the nature of my grandfather's produce exhibits. My uncle Bob, my father's oldest sibling, won $1.50 for his rabbits--breed not specified. Apart from exhibiting vegetables, D.R. was paid $6.60 for "vegetables for the hall"--presumably veggies that would have been on the menu for the dinner that was--and still is--always served in the main hall. My father carried on this tradition, often supplying many bushels of sweet corn to help feed the multitudes who gather for the fair dinner.

View of fairgrounds, prob. early 20th century

It was not just my father's side of the family that was involved in the fair. I was pleasantly surprised to learn that my maternal great-grandfather, Milton S. Howes, was president of the Hillside Agricultural Society at this time--a fact that if I had ever known, I had long since forgotten. He also exhibited. He won prizes for his corn, as did D.R. Wells, and for his Angora Goats. The goats are listed as having been exhibited by "M.S. Howes & Son," though which of his three sons this might have been is not indicated; perhaps it was my grandfather, Almon.

Apart from family history, the acquisition of this old annual report piqued my interest in the broader history of the Cummington Fair. This year when we were there I spent a good bit of time studying, and photographing, the several antique posters from fairs held in the late 19th century that hang both in the main exhibit hall (the large building with the flagpole on top, in the photo above), and in the small museum dedicated to fair history that stands on the grounds. None of the photos are suitable for inclusion here due to the large size of the posters, and the fact that they are all framed under glass, resulting in considerable glare. But I was able to glean a good bit of information from them.

Postcard, prob. stock photo, not actually of Cummington fairgrounds.

As I noted earlier, the fair in those days was held in late September, rather than late August as it currently is, and ran for only two days. While this was not a surprise to me, the fact that the two days were in the middle of the week--generally Tuesday and Wednesday--rather than the weekend--was. I have yet to undertake any research to try to determine why this was the case. Perhaps at the time weekends were not as important to the working public, particularly in what was largely an agricultural community. Still, kids would have needed to get out of school on weekdays in order to attend the fair. Or did the school year perhaps start later in those days, so the young people would be free to help with late-summer farm work? Questions for another time. Nineteen forty-six was the last year that the Cummington Fair was held in September, and by this time it had been moved to Friday and Saturday--September 20 and 21, to be precise--though the shift to the weekend may have occurred in an earlier year. When, in the next year it was moved to August, it also expanded to become a three-day event; the 1947 fair ran from Friday, August 22, through Sunday, August 24.

Postcard mailed Oct. 6, 1910

Postcard dated Sept., 1908

Regardless of when it is held, the Cummington Fair has been a vital part of life in the Hilltowns of western Massachusetts for nearly 150 years; it was first held in 1868. I well remember the celebration of the centennial in 1968, and look forward to whatever events are planned to mark the sesquicentennial in 2018.

Much has changed in the world during those 150 years. Cummington is by no means any longer a community defined by agriculture. When I grew up in the 1950s and '60s there were, by my reckoning, at least twelve active dairy farms in town, a large apple & peach orchard, and many acres given over to growing potatoes. Today there are, at best, three full-time dairy farms, and the orchard and potato operation are long gone. These changes are reflected in the fair. There are fewer sheep and cattle being shown, and the produce exhibits in the main hall are much smaller than they were when I was growing up. One barn formerly used for housing show cattle is now devoted to craft sales. The number of teams in the horse and ox drawing contests is down from what it used to be. Some weight classes this year had only three entrants. The fair continues to draw large crowds, and it remains an event to which we look forward every year. But one can only wonder if it will survive to mark its 200th year.

I'm pleased to acknowledge the assistance of Stephen Howes, my 2nd cousin and another great-grandson of M.S. Howes, for help establishing the dates of some of the changes to the fair calendar. Stephen was serving as docent in the small fair museum this summer, and I enjoyed some very pleasant, informative conversation with him.

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*Update: In later posts I write more about the grapevine on the farm, and about a couple of pear trees in what was principally an apple orchard.