Bennington Museum

09/05/2026

Last week we invited you to write a 6-Word memoir for this portrait, and now let's see who they are.

This is Caroline Pamela Hitchcock (1805-1822) when she was around 10 years old. She was born in Vergennes May 20, 1805. Her mother Lucy Caroline Allen was the daughter of the famous leader of the Green Mountain Boys, Ethan Allen. Her father Smauel Hitchcock was active in Vermont politics and became the first Attorney General of Vermont in 1789. After Samuel’s death in 1813, Caroline and her mother moved to Alabama to live with another family member. Caroline died there in 1822 when she was only 17.

This miniature portrait is one of a group of family pieces given to the Museum by a descendant, Miss Anna de Camp Camacho, in the 1930s.

The next 6-Word Memoir will be posted Tuesday afternoon. Stay tuned!

https://bennington.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/9E932422-8C8D-4697-8034-332431519295

09/04/2026

Jane Stickle alert! The Stickle Quilt has just been installed in our Folk & Craft Gallery. It will be on view through Indigenous People’s Day, October 12.

More information on why this quilt is so famous here: https://bennington.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/A3407F2D-4FD1-45EB-A490-388391985390

and Summer 2013 issue of the Bennington Museum's Walloomsack Review, available here: https://benningtonmuseum.org/visit/regional-history-room/walloomsack-review-articles/volumes-11-20-2013-2017/

09/03/2026

John D. Hubbard (1949-2010) was an incredibly talented photographer who worked at the Bennington Banner between 1973-1978. On Saturday, September 29, 1973 the Banner published a two page spread of his portraits of local people. His photo spreads became a semi-regular feature.

Hubbard's widow gave a collection of his Bennington photographs to the Museum in 2013, including some of the images published in the Banner.

How many of these people do you recognize? Their names will be in the photo captions if you need a hint.

Gift of Mary Jo Hubbard-Axinn

09/02/2026

Museum ABCs: My Family Tree
September 12 @ 10:30 am - 11:30 am

Your family tree starts with you and branches out from there. Add your siblings if you have them and the grown-ups who take care of you at home. Do you know who they grew up with? More leaves for your tree! Each family will go home with a copy of today’s story, Alma and How She Got Her Name, by Juana Martinez-Neal.

Museum ABCs is a collaboration between Bennington Museum and the Bennington Free Library, designed for children ages 3 to 5 and their adult companions. Siblings are welcome! Museum ABCs is FREE thanks to funding from The Bank of Bennington. Join us on the second Saturday of each month, April through November, for artwork, stories, and more!

09/01/2026

Take an Art Break and write a Six-Word Memoir. Spend at least one full minute looking deeply at this portrait. Then, in SIX WORDS (no more, no less) write the subject's memoir in the comments.

08/31/2026

Victorian women were encouraged to show off their artistic taste and abilities through arts and crafts projects for the home. Minnie Hale Burt (1869-1936) of Bennington created these pieces around the time of her marriage in 1890. Both crazy quilts and memory ware used scraps to create beautiful new things. Crazy quilts reject regular geometric blocks in favor of eclectic and lavish combinations of fabric connected with fancy stitches. The umbrella stand is made from a sewer pipe and broken ceramics. It stood for many years in the front hall of the Burt family home on Gage Street, Bennington, Vermont.

Gifts of Ruth Burt Ekstrom

08/30/2026

This threshing machine was photographed on Union Street in Bennington in the 1890s by Madison Watson. The mustached man sitting in center appears to be William Hawks, Jr. The tower in the background is part of the courthouse on South Street.

Glass plate negative, 1892-1899
Madison E. Watson
Weichert-Isselhardt Collection, Gift of Tordis llg Isselhardt and Museum Purchase
https://bennington.pastperfectonline.com/photo/ED064475-9100-4624-88CC-825163465069

08/29/2026

Last week we invited you to write a 6-Word memoir for this portrait, and now let's see who they are.

This drawing was sent to folk artist Grandma Moses by Jean Gambotti, a fan of her work, all the way from Paris. Moses was among the most famous artists in America from the mid-1940s until her death in 1961. Her reverent visions of a rural, agrarian past represented the promised land to millions of Americans and Europeans coping with the horrors of World War II and reeling from an onslaught of technological progress. After three of her paintings were included in a group exhibition at the Museum of Modern Art in 1939, Grandma Moses' first solo exhibition, "What a Farm Wife Painted," was organized by Otto Kallir at his Galerie St. Etienne in 1940. Within a few years Moses had become a household name and her art was instantly recognizable to millions of Americans and to people all over the world. She was known for her unorthodox technique, and although she never did paint a bed (that we know of) she did appear on Edward R. Murrow’s show “See it Now” using a tilt top table that she had painted scenes on. The table and this drawing are on display in our Grandma Moses Gallery.

If you can’t visit the museum in person, you can see our online collection here: http://bennington.pastperfectonline.com/byperson?keyword=Moses%2C%20Anna%20Mary%20Robertson%20%28Grandma%29

The next 6-Word Memoir will be posted Tuesday afternoon. Stay tuned!

08/28/2026

The weather looks good for a FREE concert in the courtyard this evening!

CONCERTS IN THE COURTYARD We are pleased to announce that Bennington Museum has received an anonymous grant once more for 2026. Performances are free of charge. All events take place from 5-7pm. The Museum will remain open until 7pm on these days, regular admission applies. Please bring your own bla...

08/27/2026

Like many manufacturers in Bennington, the Enos Adams Company changed their wares many times over the years. The elder Enos Adams sold boots and shoes in Bennington and purchased a tannery on North Street in 1854. His son, Enos Jr., later turned the building into a pottery and added grinding wheels for manufacturing crystallized quartz for polishing materials. In 1865 his nephew Orin Adams joined the business under the name Enos Adams & Co. and they enlarged the factory on County Street and turned it primarily into a machine shop where they manufactured Snow's steam and water wheel governors.

Governors were attached to water wheels in order to keep the speed of the wheel at a steady pace. As the shaft holding the two metal balls spun faster, centrifugal force brought them outward and up, pushing down the plunger inside, which throttled water going to the wheel. Hervey Dwight Snow (1830-1881) moved his young family to Bennington in 1865 and worked with Enos Adams to manufacture his steam engine governors. He patented a new and improved water wheel governor in 1868. In 1873 Snow moved to a larger factory in Cohoes, NY.

Enos Adams Co. then concentrated on manufacturing patented mop sticks and mineral soap.

https://bennington.pastperfectonline.com/webobject/5A10B84B-D35F-4240-922B-202727093881