Abby Epplett, Historian

Back in September 2025, I took the comprehensive, 2.5-hour “Grand Stairs to Back Stairs” tour of Castle Hill on the Crane Estate in Ipswich, MA, which is managed by The Trustees of Reservations. Due to the length and breadth of the tour, this is a three-part series, with one post released per day over the next three days. During Part 1 , I focused on the building of the estate, the early history of the Crane family, and the first few stops on the tour. During Part 2 , I described the life of the family and the middle section of the tour. In Part 3, I describe the view from the roof, a snack, behind the scenes, and movies filmed on the property.

Back in September 2025, I took the comprehensive, 2.5-hour “Grand Stairs to Back Stairs” tour of Castle Hill on the Crane Estate in Ipswich, MA, which is managed by The Trustees of Reservations. Due to the length and breadth of the tour, this is a three-part series, with one post released per day over the next three days. During Part 1 , I focused on the building of the estate, the early history of the Crane family, and the first few stops on the tour. Today, I describe the life of the family and the middle section of the tour.

Back in September 2025, I took the comprehensive, 2.5-hour “Grand Stairs to Back Stairs” tour of Castle Hill on the Crane Estate in Ipswich, MA, which is managed by The Trustees of Reservations. Due to the length and breadth of the tour, this will be a three-part series, with one post released per day over the next three days. The property comprises of 165 acres and has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1977 and elevated to a National Historic Landmark in 1998. This section will focus on the building of the estate, the early history of the Crane family, and the first few stops on the tour.

Celebrimbor is best known in The Lord of the Rings as the creator of the “three rings for the elven-kings under the sky” while he lived in Hollin, also known as Eregion. In Tolkien’s posthumous work, the character was greatly expanded. Readers learn that he was a powerful and talented Elf who loved crafts and his family, befriended Dwarves and a dangerous stranger, and sometimes let his pride get the best of him. Celebrimbor began life as the only grandchild of Fëanor, the greatest of the elven smiths, and spent his immortality attempting to become even more skilled than his famous ancestor.

In September 2025, after a morning at the Wenham Museum , I went on a grand adventure in the nearby public parks. With a little bit of planning, I was able to visit five parks, walking about eleven miles across three hours and taking plenty of pictures along the way. The trip included Vineyard Hill Reservation of Greenbelt, Bradley Palmer State Park, Willowdale Meadow of Greenbelt, Willowdale State Forest, and Willowdale Mill Reservation of Greenbelt. While in these parks, I walked along parts of the Bay State Circuit Trail, Essex County Trail Association, and Discover Hamilton Trail. If you want to spent quiet time alone in nature, this is a safe and fun way to do it.

While I am far from a dummy when it comes to the history of the United States, I did inherit the third edition of U.S. History for Dummies written by Steve Wiegand. My book was up-to-date in 2014, while the latest version, the fifth edition, was published in March 2025 . The large softcover book has uncoated paper, allowing readers to take notes easily if desired, along with using intuitive design and plain language to make the topic approachable to a broad audience.

If someone designed a museum with me in mind, it would look a lot like the Wenham Museum , which I visited back in September 2025. A beautifully restored historic house connected nearly seamlessly to an area for rotating exhibits, while the basement contains model trains and interactives. Truly this is a museum for those with intense niche interests.

In a short scene of artistic license, I turn the Frodo & Sam Theme into an original song called, “The Sun Is Up”. This is the third time viewers will hear the song: first as a melody on the serinette , next as the tune whistled by Sam while returning home from the Green Dragon , and now as Sam opens up the curtains at Bag End in the morning. The scene also shows a bit more of what Sam does for work and what Frodo wears to bed.

In early September 2025, I visited Brimfield, MA for the annual Brimfield Flea Market, a tradition that began back in 1959. Before a day of walking among vendors to find vintage bargains, I made a few quick history stops around the center of town, called Brimfield Center Historic District and on the National Register of Historic Places since 2006 . Like many other small New England towns, its center included a picturesque white church, town hall, war memorials, and a historic school.

I recently read the book The Tower and the Ruin: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Creation written by Michael D.C. Drout and published by W.W. Norton & Company in November 2025. This ambitious book is partially a memoir of Drout’s own experience as a lifelong lover of Tolkien’s work, having read the book over 40 times (123), including with his father and his own children. It also covers seven themes describing how Tolkien constructed his fantasy world and how it affects other people: origins, frames, texts, patterns, emotions, threads, and tapestry.

On the same day that I visited the Clara Barton Birthplace , I took a walk on a highway turned forest trail, and then visited grave of legendary outdoorsman Grizzly Adams in nearby Charlton, MA. I will have to returning this area in warmer weather to see more quick history stops.

The dialogue from the animated musical scene “The Conversation at the Green Dragon” will be taken verbatim from the original text, but the instrumentals come from my own head. In this five-minute piece, I incorporate musical themes or leitmotifs from past scenes, along with themes that will become significant to the plot. The six themes represent taverns, adventure, the White Towers, the Grey Havens, the Road, and the relationship between Frodo and Sam. By creating variations on these themes and weaving them together, I design a cohesive soundscape for the scene while connecting it to past and future scenes throughout the series.

Back in August 2025, I visited the Clara Barton Birthplace Museum in North Oxford, MA. I had previously visited the museum about twenty years early, and I wanted to see how the tour had changed. This small house tour focuses on the life of Clarissa “Clara” Harlowe Barton , founder of the American Red Cross, along with describing her family. Also on the property is The Barton Center for Diabetes Education, Inc. , a camp for children with Type 1 Diabetes. The property has been on the National Register of Historic Places as the Clara Barton Homestead since 1977. It is also one of the northern-most towns in The Last Green Valley , formerly known as Quinebaug-Shetucket Rivers Valley National Heritage Corridor.

Due to my longstanding love of maps , I recently read the eBook version of Radical Cartography: How Changing Our Maps Can Change Our World written by William Rankin and published by Penguin Random House in November 2025. Rankin is a professor at Yale and maintains a website of his mapping projects , which inspired the book. Rankin covers seven aspects to maps — boundaries, layers, people, projections, color, scale, and time — while explaining the meaning of radical cartography, its history, and how cartographers can create maps that make people think.

During my trip to the Windsor area of Connecticut back in August 2025, I visited several historical places including: Connecticut Trolley Museum , East Windsor Historical Society , Northwest Park , Vintage Radio & Communications Museum , Windsor Historical Society , quick history stops in Windsor, CT , and New England Air Museum ( Part 1 , Part 2 ). Throughout the trip, I stopped at parks in the region, including Scantic River State Park, Windsor Center River Trail, and Windsor Locks State Park.

While gardening is not a skill typically associated with high fantasy literature, it was one of Sam Gamgee’s many talents. At the end of the scene in the Green Dragon in Book I, Chapter 1 “The Shadow of the Past” , the reader glances into Sam’s mind to learn that “there was a lot to do up in the Bag End garden… The grass was growing fast.” This short line references a continental divide in linguistics, European culture from the medieval period to the present, the politics of decolonization lawns, and environmental science, all of which I will unpack in this essay.

During my trip to the Windsor area of Connecticut back in August 2025, I visited several historical places including: Connecticut Trolley Museum , East Windsor Historical Society , Northwest Park , Vintage Radio & Communications Museum , Windsor Historical Society , and quick history stops in Windsor, CT . Another stop on that trip was New England Air Museum (NEAM) in Windsor Locks, CT. This museum was extensive enough to warrant a pair of posts. Yesterday in Part 1 , I covered the Military Hangar, New England Women in Aviation Exhibit, Kosciuszko Squadron Battle of Britain Exhibit, and some artifacts in the Civil Aviation Hangar. Today in Part 2, I will cover the rest of the airplanes in the Civil Aviation Hangar, the Space & Observation Mezzanine, the B-29 Hangar with the Tuskegee Airmen Exhibit, the Outside Aircraft Display, and tips for your visit.

During my trip to the Windsor area of Connecticut back in August 2025, I visited several historical places including: Connecticut Trolley Museum , East Windsor Historical Society , Northwest Park , Vintage Radio & Communications Museum , Windsor Historical Society , and quick history stops in Windsor, CT . Another stop on that trip was New England Air Museum (NEAM) in Windsor Locks, CT. This museum was extensive enough to warrant a pair of posts. Part 1 will cover the Military Hangar, New England Women in Aviation Exhibit, Kosciuszko Squadron Battle of Britain Exhibit, and some artifacts in the Civil Aviation Hangar. Part 2 debuting tomorrow will cover the rest of the airplanes in the Civil Aviation Hangar, the Space & Observation Mezzanine, the B-29 Hangar with the Tuskegee Airmen Exhibit, the Outside Aircraft Display, and tips for your visit.

I recently read The Birth of the West: Rome, Germany, France, and the Creation of Europe in the Tenth Century by Paul Collins, published in 2013 by PublicAffairs . I read from the eBook version on the Libby app, which allowed me to make 1378 highlights in the book. I will only share a handful with you today. At nearly 500 pages in its print addition, and nearly 1500 in digital, this book is not for the faint of heart but rewarding for those interested in learning more about this century of the European Medieval Period, a time of violence and disorder after the fall of the Roman Empire and before the Roman Catholic Church dominated the government.

I had a history-packed, three-day trip to the Windsor, CT area back in August 2025, when I visited the Connecticut Trolley Museum , East Windsor Historical Society , Northwest Park , Vintage Radio & Communications Museum , and Windsor Historical Society . Between stops at amazing venues that exceeded expectation, I took a few quick history stops around Windsor, CT to see the usual small town New England sites, including historic buildings, memorials, a cemetery, and a classic New England church. This area, called Palisado Avenue Historic District , has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1987 .