Old Sturbridge Village, Part 2
In late September 2025, I enabled my mild obsession with Old Sturbridge Village (OSV), a living history museum in Sturbridge, MA. In this five-part series, I will cover the forty antique buildings depicting rural New England life during the 1830s, exhibits showcasing artifacts from the period, and an art installation featuring cows decorated by local artists. In Part 1, I visited two meetinghouses, a country store, a tavern, a tin shop, and a pair of homes, along with watching costumed interpreters. In Part 2, I explore a school, workshops, mills, a covered bridge, heritage breed animals, costumed interpreters, and houses.
The little Shoe Shop was originally built around 1860 during the American Civil War and moved to OSV in 1939. Before shoemaking factories, footwear was made by hand in small shops by independent shoemakers. I then walked to the section of OSV known as The Countryside. My first stop was the District School, constructed around 1810 and moved to OSV in 1961. An interpreter in modern clothes explained how New England children went to school sporadically. A children attended between December and March, while younger children also attended between May and August as a form of babysitting. I paused at the millpond to take a picture of the Vermont Covered Bridge reflecting in the water on the sunny, nearly cloudless day. The bridge was constructed around 1870 as one of over a thousand previously standing in New England. Many were destroyed during new highway construction, the fate of this bridge before its rescue by OSV in 1951. Today, only twelve covered bridges are left in Massachusetts, and this is the first covered bridge to appear on the blog.
While traveling to the Mill Neighborhood, I saw a team of oxen and costumed interpreters going to work. These heritage breed animals are shorthorn or Durham cattle raised in OSV and taught the same jobs as their ancestors. The Sawmill was not operating on the day of my visit, but I did see samples of milled planks and read an informational sign describing the milling process. This mill is a reproduction built in 1984 based on the Nichols-Colby Sawmill in Bow, NH, which was destroyed by regular blog guest, the Hurricane of 1938. Next door, a costumed interpreter ground corn into meal at the Gristmill. These water-powered early factories are another common feature of the blog, with my favorite being Dexter Grist Mill in Sandwich, MA. The replica at OSV was constructed in 1939, one of the earliest replicas on the property.
The third neighbor was the much rarer Carding Mill, where wool was prepared before spinning. This mill is much older than its neighbors, as it was built in 1840 and moved to OSV in 1963. Costumed interpreters demonstrated how to use the water-powered machines, which could be dangerous if one did not pay close attention!
The Blacksmith Shop was in line with the many other museum blacksmith shops I have seen. This building was constructed in 1810 using about four hundred granite blocks from a local quarry, and painstakingly moved to OSV in 1957. The relatively young blacksmith was similar in communication style and appearance to the blacksmith who I met at Mystic Seaport Museum in 2024, a sign that historical crafts are alive and well despite fears of their demise.
My final stops in this section were Freeman Farm and Bixby House. Costumed interpreters inside the house demonstrated how women multitasked during their day. They wove straw into a variety of fun hats while cooking a stew of local vegetables for dinner. Colorful herbs and onions hung on the wall to dry, as these could be used throughout the fall and winter. The house itself was built in 1808 and moved to OSV in 1986 with many of its original furnishings. The bright red farmhouse with the gambrel roof dates from 1815 but moved several years earlier in 1951. Several heritage breed animals call the adjoining barn home, which I will discuss in Part 3.