One Year by Mary McDonough Page B

Spencer Homestead. And here was an article that described how she had generously acted as an unpaid advisor to the struggling historical society of a small town in Massachusetts. For two months she had spent countless hours on the phone with the members of the society, sharing her experience and offering advice on everything from preservation methods to garnering public support. Mary Bernadette chose another page from the binder. Here was a piece from the Gazette about the revival of the OWHA’s educational programs for children. It was by far the achievement of which she was the most proud. Currently, the OWHA offered a variety of workshops focused on the realities of childhood in the seventeenth, eighteenth, and nineteenth centuries. Participants learned in a hands-on way about the games children played, the lessons they were taught at school, the essential skills they learned at home, the songs they sang in church. Mary Bernadette also believed strongly in laying bare the harsher aspects of life long ago. Those who led the workshops, all volunteers from the community, were schooled in the sobering statistics of child mortality, the plaguelike diseases that could decimate a settlement almost overnight, the dangers of childbirth in a culture without advanced medical knowledge, and of course the terrible realities of war.
    Grammar, middle, and high school classes from as far away as Lawrenceville and the even larger town of Nicholsborough came to Oliver’s Well for these workshops, which included visits to the town’s more important historical properties. In addition, for the past twelve summers, the OWHA had held a three-day camp during which children between the ages of twelve and fifteen had the opportunity to spend two nights in one of the homes on the historical register and live much as their ancestors had—eating the sort of meals they would have eaten, reading by candlelight, learning how to execute stitch work, tending to the family’s farm or gardens. All in all, the educational program was enormously popular as well as being fairly, if not hugely, lucrative.
    Mary Bernadette turned another page and ran a finger over a photographic image of the Wilson House, taken in the early twentieth century. She remembered as if it were yesterday the first time she had walked through the doors of the OWHA’s headquarters with the intention of putting herself forward as a candidate for membership on the board. Pat was fifteen at the time, busy with after-school sports and his studies. Grace was only seven, but she had always been terribly independent and was perfectly capable of walking to a friend’s house after classes to do her homework and wait for a parent to fetch her. Paddy, of course, had given his wife his full support.
    Her motives for joining had been twofold. She had seen membership in the OWHA as a way to further the family’s standing in Oliver’s Well, and she had a genuine interest in the preservation of the town that had been her home since shortly after coming to the United States. She had been interviewed by the current chairman and then elected to the board unanimously.
    Mary Bernadette flipped forward to a recent article and noted that she would soon need a fourth binder to allow the continued documentation of her career. Of course, the OWHA kept an official file at the Wilson House (currently, Anne was in charge of keeping it up to date), but Mary Bernadette’s file was private. She made it a point never to take it out unless she was alone in the house. She didn’t want her family to think that she was being vain, poring over articles in which her name appeared and her words were quoted. And then there were the photographs. She had always felt comfortable in front of a camera and was justifiably proud of several of the portraits that had appeared in newspapers and magazines over the years. Reviewing the file gave her a sense of accomplishment, and reminded her of