Historical Commission
Princeton Historical Commission - April 15, 2021
Attendees: Matthew Lindberg - chair, Carl Soderberg - vice-chair, Larry Todd - clerk, Jane Morrisson, Joyce Anderson
Also present, Tom and Felicia Kokernak
The meeting was opened at 7:05 pm.
A Motion was made and approved unanimously to accept the meeting minutes from 2/9/21 and 3/18/21.
Matt invited Tom and Felicia Kokernak to talk with the commission about their house and property. Their research included the Princeton historical society website and the Worcester county registry of deeds. They have done some renovations and want to preserve the historic character of their house. They discovered a beehive fireplace behind paneling and eventually would like to get a historic house plaque. There was a suggestion they research old Princeton tax records to determine who built the house and when. The records are in the historic collection at the library.
We noted that historically women did not own property and their names did not appear on property deeds. In the future we will support the listing of the names of both husband and wife on house plaques; the women of the time worked hard to maintain their families and should be equally recognized.
Demolition permit for 40 Calamint Hill Rd: Matt signed off on this as the property had no historic significance. He will continue to let the commission know when there are requests for demolition permits in the future.
Town common beautification: Jane and Joyce attended the selectboard meeting which discussed this. There was a recommendation that an ad hoc committee be formed but there is no action on this yet.
Public safety building: Matt sent our letter to the selectboard. There was some discussion and Jane said she did write a letter of support to state representative Jim McGovern. We agreed to do this as individuals.
Civil war plaques: our preference is to have the plaques hand chisled as well as sandblasted; the cost quoted for this, including installation, is $14000 ($11,500 for lettering and $2500 for installation). Matt’s request on the warrant is for $8500 and we discussed how to make up the difference of $5500. Matt noted our current fund balances are:
Meetinghouse cemetery account: $5785
Donations account: $4434
Operating account from town ($1500): $974
Matt questioned Jenny Lin on what we spent from the operating account and it was money to pay for lumber and supplies to crate the damaged plaques. The commission did not authorize this expense and Matt will request the money be restored to our account.
Joyce felt we should not spend the money in our donations account. Jane “volunteered” to work on getting word out to the community about the need to replace the plaques, will try to get an article in a local paper and perhaps we will have some donations to help the effort.
Temple Stuart Mill street: the select board has approved improvements to access to the discontinued street - this is an ongoing project.
Meetinghouse cemetery: Joyce contacted Tamara about the remaining restoration work to be done on the damaged stones. We will inform the cemetery commission on what we are doing and Joyce will speak with Tamara about our available funds and the stones most in need of work.
The cemetery commission meeting minutes mentioned the storage boxes located behind the cemetery wall where the fragments of broken stones are stored. They have not said anything to us and we will wait to hear from them.
There are unmarked pauper graves in South cemetery that the cemetery commission recently located. Larry will look into what other communities have done to mark pauper graves and report at our next meeting.
Town Pound sign: when should we put it up ? Maybe in early summer.
Joyce suggested we ask the Kokernaks if one of them would like to join the historical commission. We will do this.
The next meeting will be on May 20 at 7pm.
The meeting was adjourned at 8:55 pm.