Phil Holland is a writer from Pownal, Vermont. He’s the author of books on Vermont history, including "A Guide to the Battle of Bennington and the Bennington Monument." He is a contributor to the Berkshire Edge Magazine.
The show goes beyond pretty scenery. There are paintings of Vermonters making a living farming, logging, and sugaring, bidding for lots at country auctions, and getting together at county fairs and family restaurants.
All these exhibits are contained in a gallery of only 300 square feet, providing a focused experience that is likely to lead you to think of Bennington, and perhaps history itself, in new terms.
Edge contributor Phil Holland will be presenting “The Black Presence at the Battle of Bennington” at the Louis Miller Museum in Hoosick Falls, N.Y., August 4 at 6 p.m.
Visitors should expect a close encounter with the poet, beginning with a 9-foot-high image of the 47-year-old Frost, looking more like a farmer than a man of letters.
General John Stark, who led the patriot troops at the Battle, requested a supply of rum from the New Hampshire legislature, noting that “There is no such article in them parts where we are a-goin.” It turned out that there was rum in them parts.
Commissions rolled in and Thomas Cole was able to afford a summer studio in Catskill on the west bank of the Hudson (his home, a National Historic Site, is an hour’s drive due west of Great Barrington on Route 23).
“The fear that black families have when their children leave the house is the same as it was in 1909 [when the NAACP was founded].”
-- Dennis Powell, president of Berkshire County NAACP
