What Is It? Collect Stories, Tools, Machines

Around the world, and especially in New England, people preserve objects from the past. Many are useful and served a purpose that will be lost to time once a generation passes into memory. The stories that belong to those objects shed light on human history. If they are not captured or written down, the invisible threads of history disappear.

So how does a collection begin? One object, a story at a time.

Remember. Dates carved in stone. Collections. Collectors. Museums. Archives. Memorial Day. Connecticut is rich in history; places, sites and collections include Sloane-Stanley Museum, Blue Slope Museum, antique marine engines at Mystic Seaport, and the heritage of Griswoldville. Each started with the decision that this tool or that machine was deemed important enough to keep.

Don Domina, general manager at Central Connecticut Cooperative Farmers Association (CCCFA) in Manchester, is one such collector. Over the years, he has amassed tools, tractors, even the oil cans and related memorabilia for adding to the depth of information about an item he preserves.

Members of the Society of Industrial Archaeology, Southern New England Chapter, concentrate on exploring the ingenuity of Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island residents, past and in the present. “Although the region is no longer a major industrial power, it is still rich with both the curious artifacts of its manufacturing past and to living enterprises, from brick works to paper mills to iron foundries and more — that continue to compete, struggle and sometimes thrive.” – Southern New England Chapter (SNEC) of the Society for Industrial Archeology (SIA).

Because, you see, every day sites that can tell stories disappear over time. From the hand-built stone foundations of springhouses and other outbuildings to strange objects found in the soil near barns and sheds. Machinery is scrapped. Old brochures, cards, manuals and booklets are thrown out.

Yet the heart of why people collect and preserve things is that the gathered objects are mute sentinels of life lived – if people remember.

Editor’s note: Have an opinion on the objects depicted above? Know more about what they did and how? Fill in the details, call (860) 573-6181 (you can leave a voice mail) or e-mail editorccb@gmail.com to contribute information. Have in mind a person with interesting memories who ought to be interviewed or a vintage photograph with a tale that should be remembered? We love people’s stories (especially local history and lore) and will share what we learn.

“I am collecting the history of our people as written into things their hands made and used,” said Henry Ford (who collected entire buildings, even the soil around them for what is now the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, a National Historic Landmark.)