Abby Epplett, Historian

Believe it or not, I had one more weekend left in August 2024 to go on a history adventure. I took a trip to Middleboro, MA to visit Middleborough Historical Museum . This was not your average small town history museum, as the complex combines an indoor exhibit about a celebrity couple plus mechanical musical instruments with a small collection of restored buildings and related artifacts. Once again, the weather was perfect for a summertime adventure.

Having a master’s degree in Museum Education means one is gifted many books related the topic. Footnotes from the Most Fascinating Museums by Bob Eckstein was published just last year in 2024, and I received it for my birthday. The small hardcover with glittery gold title text and a watercolor painting of the MET on the front cover made for a lovely coffee table book. Inside, the contents was light and humorous, making an easy read for museum enthusiasts. While overall a delightful experience, my issue with this book was the disconnect between the title, the author’s original intention, and his apparent methodology of choosing the “most fascinating museums”.

Finishing up my trip to Newport in late August 2024, I took the Fort Adams Bay Walk around Fort Adams State Park in Newport, RI after completing the excellent tour of the fort itself . A tall ship, unique signage, a cemetery, a bunker, and a historic mansion were all highlights of this relaxing two-mile loop. For those of you keeping track of how far I walked that day, when combined with my morning hike on the Cliff Walk , the fort tour, and other Newport exploration, this brought my total up to eleven-and-a-half miles.

In past essays, I have given a lot of thought to Elanor Gardner Fairbairn, a minor character of great importance who would become a major character in the hypothetical musical. She first appeared during “Overview of Appendix A” with the mention of her birthdate, 25 March Third Age (T.A.) 3021 / Fourth Age (F.A.) 1 / Shire Reckoning (S.R.) 1421, which served not only as a symbol of rebirth after the worldwide War of the Ring but also as a demonstration on how tricky the calendars of Middle-earth can be . Her husband, Fastred of Greenholm, received a mention in “Appendix A, II The Kings of the Mark” , and a full explanation of her work as an editor of The Red Book of Westmarch was given in “Framing Device” just two weeks ago. Rather than reviewing her life and occupation as I have done previously, I now turn to physical appearance, especially personal clothing style.

During my winter holiday break, I began working through my pile of history books. I had found The Poison Eaters: Fighting Danger and Fraud in Our Food and Drugs by Gail Jarrow in a giveaway pile at my local library and decided to give the book a new home. I was familiar with the story of the poison eaters, young men who volunteered in a study to assess how food preservatives altered the human body, after listening to the episode “A Pure Food Father and His Poison Squad” for the podcast Stuff You Missed in History Class , which was released in 2011. The two questions I needed to answer were 1) What else was there to this story? and 2) Why was this book “weeded” from the library collection?

In late August 2024, after a morning of hiking the Cliff Walk and viewing the Great Elephant Migration, I spent the afternoon at Fort Adams State Park . After a relaxing picnic lunch, I took  a tour of Fort Adams itself, originally named after second U.S. President John Adams, which has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1970 . As an added bonus, the fort was celebrating its 200 Year Anniversary, with construction started in 1824 and completed in 1857.

In this week’s essay, my loves of historic house tours and The Lord of the Rings combine for the first time as I present my map of Bag End, also spelled Bag-End by the older generations of Hobbits. Since Tolkien was a philologist, it is fitting to take a brief break to explain the naming scheme around the property, along with the clan name of the family who built it. Tolkien studies expert Tom Shippey noted in The Road to Middle-earth that “bag-end” is a literal translation of “cul-de-sac”, which was further elaborated upon by Wayne G. Hammond and Christina Scull in Reader’s Companion . The current meaning of a road terminating at a house or collection of houses dates from 1819.

My August adventures were not limited to my five-day trip on Cape Cod. Towards the end of the month, I visited Newport, RI to hike the famous Cliff Walk and view The Great Elephant Migration art exhibit, which roamed through Newport from July 4 to September 2, 2024. Both walk and elephants were within the Newport Historic District, which was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1968 . The day was bright and sunny but not to hot, a perfect time to get exercise and enjoy environmentally-focused sculpture.

Just before leaving the Cape after my five-day adventure back in August 2024, I made a few quick history stops in Bourne before crossing its infamous bridge. Historic buildings included a restored home, a church, a blacksmith shop, a reproduction carriage house, and a public library, while the most unique discovery of the day was an amphibious vehicle used during World War II.

During my relaxing winter break, I began reading through my stack of history-themed books that I accrued throughout the year. The first book I completed was A Pictorial History of Costume by Wolfgang Bruhn and Max Tilke, which I found for a mere $7.00 at the Book Barn in Niantic, CT . The book combined a pair of earlier books: Deutsche Kultur-Bilder: Deutsches Leben [ German Culture Pictures: German Life ] published by Bruhn in German in 1934, and Kostümschnitte und Gewandformern [ Costume Patterns and Garment Designs ] published by Tilke in German in 1948. I read the 1988 English language edition with a publisher’s note on the “archaism” found within the book, a polite way of warning readers that some depictions would not be politically correct. The book was divided into two sections. In the front half were written descriptions of the costumes, which include information on the culture represented through clothing, famous people who might have worn the clothing, and o...