(gentle music) - [Narrator] Coming up, explore the many buildings at the Freetown Historical Society, including a carriage shed, general store, and one room schoolhouse.

Examine a rare 18 star American flag to see the clues about how it was made.

And later, a glass chandelier and the origins of the universe are all on display in the city of New Bedford.

This is "Treasures Inside the Museum."

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (calm music) Most towns have an historical society, a group of like-minded residents who are committed to preserving the history of their community.

Perhaps they keep a small office at the local library or in the basement of a town hall.

But here in Freetown, they do things a little differently.

These are the grounds of the Freetown Historical Society.

They include a general store, a small chapel, a sawmill, and a blacksmith shop.

There's a schoolhouse here too, along with a town garage and a few other buildings rounding out the 11 acre site.

The main museum building includes an eclectic mix of artifacts, like this 1910 steam engine, an assortment of musical instruments from a local brass band, and a collection of examples of early home entertainment.

Exhibits also include military artifacts that have been assembled, representing many of the conflicts that soldiers from the area were involved in, including one particular collection that stands out.

- This case represents the artifacts that were brought back by Major John Deane.

That was his rank when he left the service.

He grew up in Assonet, he served in the Civil War, and to this day, we have his descendants still living in Assonet, and they have been very generous with the artifacts that he brought back.

- [Narrator] Prior to the Civil War, Deane had been a school teacher, and with that background, he understood the importance of preserving the history and artifacts of war.

- The two revolvers that are on the lower shelf are actually two revolvers that, as he was an officer, this particular one over here, he was in charge of a night patrol and they captured a rebel.

I believe he was a lieutenant.

This one over here, the larger one, actually came after the Battle of Fort Stedman, and that was turned into him by a Georgia Regiment officer, a Major King from the Fourth Georgia Regiment.

These books in our collection are his diaries that he kept throughout the war, and it's his personal writings.

There's references to it on his, where he was, where he was stationed, what his duties were, what happened during the course of the day there.

This is the one from 1865, and if I open it up, you can see that the writing is still legible to a degree, but it is slightly faded.

And this is of the day of the battle for Fort Stedman.

And right down here, you'll see the date March 25th.

It's towards the end of the war.

(solemn music) - [Speaker] "Saturday, March 25th, 1865.

The rebels surprised and hit our camp in Fort Stedman this morning at 5:00 AM.

We had a bloody fight and fell back to Fort Haskell.

Afterwards, we retook our works to siding with us."

- The fact that he brought this back, it's a real life adventure.

This is what happened during the battle, and I think that gets to me a little bit, that I can feel what he's going through.

- [Narrator] Deane's reflections on that day may have been summed up in just a few words, but his actions in that battle, it turns out, were much more heroic.

- The Medal of Honor, which is on the top shelf here, this is his actual medal that was sent to him, and we were very fortunate to have the actual medal.

On March 25th, 1865, the rebels made a charge at Fort Stedman.

The idea of that charge was to get to the railroad that was supplying the Union Army.

John Deane then organized the team of soldiers to turn the guns from Fort Haskell onto the rebels that were approaching, and that slowed them down long enough for the reinforcements from the Union Army to get, and that turned the tide of the battle.

- [Narrator] The Major John Deane collection reminds us that the Civil War, like most other conflicts, was fought by individual soldiers serving on the front lines.

The museum collections fill nearly three floors of exhibit space, each representing a different period in history.

In some cases, entire rooms were rescued from local homes.

- This is the Captain Job Terry Parlor.

He was a sea captain.

He owned whaling ships.

Sometimes he would be out on the water for months at a time, sometimes years at a time.

- [Narrator] But when the original home of the wealthy sea captain was slated for demolition, a rescue of sorts took place.

- We were given the option of taking elements from the original house, so we were able to come in and take many of the elements, the fireplace, the black marble fireplace, the staircase, and the door, many of the window, many of those elements, and we brought them here and recreated the room.

- [Narrator] While most of the items in this space are original, a piece in the center of the room is actually another rescue story.

(gentle music) - One of the pieces that is in this room was not original to the Terry Parlor.

It is original to the time period.

It's this musical instrument.

It's called a pianoforte.

It's a square pianoforte, and it's actually made by a company called the John Broadwood Company.

And it was made in London, England.

It was a transition piece between a harpsichord and a regular piano.

So, this one dates to 1809.

It was found in a wood shed in hundreds of pieces, and one of the descendants of the original owner was with the Box Society at Barrington College.

They took this on and they refurbished it to this.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Today, the rare instrument is playable, however severely out of tune.

Just a few feet away, another room has been restored from a much earlier time.

- The Hathaway Room is made with elements of the Hathaway homestead, which was on South Main Street in Assonet.

The hearth was dismantled and reconstructed, so it is the original hearth from that homestead.

Also, the floors, all of the woodwork, the door, and the windows were all taken from the original homestead.

Just the fact that it's from the 1750s, it's a way of us showing what life was like during the 1750s.

That would've been most of their living quarters.

At times, they might've slept in that room.

The hearth would've been, you know, they would've used it for their warmth, they would've used it for their cooking, for making medicine, for making candles.

Their children would've sat there and done their lessons.

It's just such an incredibly important place in their household.

Even if they have other rooms, it's just the heart of their home.

- [Narrator] Among the different items associated with the house, a bed covering was discovered that fortunately had a small note attached, explaining its history.

(paper rustles) - So the coverlet that we have, it was made by a woman named Martha Hathaway.

She was born in 1776, and she was the daughter of Captain Phillip Hathaway Jr.

And he was a captain who served on George Washington's staff.

(calm music) - [Narrator] Over the years, the campus here has expanded, often driven by the growing collection of artifacts.

There is a recreation of a general store that originally existed a few miles away.

It speaks to an earlier time, when locals would come here to purchase groceries and other necessities.

It was an unofficial meeting place for villagers to talk about the latest news and even served as the local post office for a period.

There is a small chapel that was relocated to the site.

Inside, a restored pump organ will occasionally fill the room with authentic sounds from the past.

(organ music) A house at the center of the grounds is original to the property and serves as part of the educational experience for visitors.

- We're in what we call the Jenkins House on our properties, and this is a cast iron cook stove that would've been typical of the period.

The house was built in the mid-1800s.

One of the goals that we had when we took over the house, and took over this portion of the property, was to turn this house into a learning center where we could have demonstrations, or classes, or discussions, or things of that nature in small groupings.

This is a standard cast iron stove that was in many of the homes in this area at the time.

It was either wood or coal burning.

The firebox is basically under the first two burners that are right here in front of me.

And then, to heat the rest of the stove, you adjust the flue so that the air is circulated around it and then up the chimney so that that would warm up the oven and the other burners.

- [Narrator] One of the most recent additions to the property is a barn that is home to a variety of tools and agricultural equipment used in the region.

- Farming was such an important part of everyday life in Freetown from the 1600s up until the early 1900s.

One of our major staple crops over the last, you know, century or two, has been cranberries.

This is a Hayden cranberry separator.

This was made in Wareham, Massachusetts about 1905.

Before that, you would've just had a basic trough like this and you would've separated 'em by hand.

And you could have separated, maybe if on a good day, if you had a good crew, maybe about 10 cranberry boxes full in a day.

A machine like this enabled you to do around 100 boxes a day.

You would dump the berries in the hopper up on top.

There was a wheel here with a blower that would separate the vines from the berries, and the rest of the berries would come down and bounce off these boards.

And they'd keep bouncing, the good ones would keep bouncing until you got down here.

The ones that didn't bounce would drop into a box on the back.

(cranberries thump) (calm music) - [Narrator] There's a replica of a blacksmith shop that once served the community and occasionally offers classes.

This sawmill was originally powered by a nearby dam and operated in town until 1939.

There's also a one room schoolhouse here.

The Mason's Corner School once educated local children in first through eighth grade.

- [Speaker] When we started to build it, they found two desks that would've been used in that school.

And we acquired those.

And then what we did was we actually took them apart and we, 'cause the legs are cast iron, and we found a foundry and we actually had a mold made and had additional legs made so that we can create the classroom that's in the schoolhouse.

So we have the original two desks, and then the ones behind it were actually made by some of our members.

(bell rings) We were also fortunate enough that the bell in the bell tower on the school is the original bell from that schoolhouse.

(calm music) (calm music continues) - [Narrator] Inside this carriage shed is an exquisitely restored mode of public transportation.

- This is our omnibus.

We acquired it from the Fall River Historical Society, and it was used in Fall River as a mode of public transportation.

It would've been an early bus, it would've been horse drawn, and it would've been four horses that would've been used on this to draw it up and down the hills in the Fall River.

- [Narrator] As comfortable and beautiful as they were, they only lasted a few years, replaced by a new trolley service.

- It's important to our collection because there's very few of them around, and the ones that are around aren't as in good shape.

(paper rustles) - [Narrator] Another item in good shape is this rare American flag.

- So I really like this piece.

It's one of my favorites.

It's incredibly rare and it's in extremely good condition.

It's an 18 star flag, which one of the reasons it's rare is because it was a very short time that we had 18 states.

It was made by a teenager.

Her name was Patience Parker.

She was born in 1800, and this flag dates to between 1816 and 1818, and at least part of it was made out of leftover materials.

These red stripes are actually, if you look closely at them, they're printed material.

If you look at them, this particular spot right here, you can see four little dots that are indicative of it having a button sewn on to that particular spot.

And if you look at the stars, the white stars on the front, it's all the same fabric.

But then if you look on the back, you can see that you have that pulled fabric on most of the stars but then you have a very fine fabric that doesn't have that woven, pulled fabric on it.

And this edge right along here has not been finished.

There were 18 star flags that were made later on, and they were commemorative, but they would've been more professionally made than this particular flag.

- [Narrator] The Freetown Historical Society's hope is that through the displays curated here and discussions they spawn, visitors will leave with a better appreciation of the area's history.

(upbeat music) (gentle music) It's always a special moment when a single action becomes transformative.

For the New Bedford Art Museum, that moment occurred when a local couple gifted this Dale Chihuly chandelier that now hangs in the main gallery.

- It weighs over 600 pounds and it's composed of more than 300 individual pieces.

When you see a chandelier by Dale Chihuly, typically they're very exuberant in terms of bold primary colors.

This one's unusual in that it's the soft blues and gold and silver.

And when Chihuly started making these in the early '90s, it was about creating sort of this, almost like an architectural element.

It's this movement of light and color and transparency in a space.

When you look at it, it's as though it's a living organism.

It has a sense of movement and it's writhing and there's this vitality and beauty to it that's so exciting.

And it's so much more than a chandelier.

Technically, it's not a chandelier at all.

It's lit from outside, rather, so there's no internal illumination.

Not only is it the crown jewel of the Art Museum, but it's something that has inspired local collectors to consider the Art Museum as a place to make a gift.

- [Narrator] One of those gifts came right after the Chihuly chandelier was first put on exhibit.

- This is a mosaic titled "Belissimo" by KeKe Cribbs.

KeKe was one of the pioneering artists in the Studio Glass Movement in the 1970s.

And what I love about it is that she incorporates mixed media.

So she's using traditions from antiquity, but also incorporating textiles and metal.

And she's just very innovative in terms of the way she uses mosaic to tell stories, to create sometimes a sense of surrealism, to generate narratives.

In the center, you'll see what looks like acanthus leaves.

KeKe did that with a linoleum block that she hand cut, so she hand-printed that design.

The last layer is often gold, which then shines through the transparent colors, but is blocked by the opaque colors.

This effect gives luminosity and depth.

KeKe's intention is to have the piece feel old and found, like a piece of history rediscovered.

For me, it feels like a segment of architecture that has been reclaimed and salvaged.

It's this treasure that's perfectly intact and brilliant, and it has all these associations of Byzantium.

To me, it has a very luxurious feeling and the colors are just jewel like and spectacular.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] Spectacular colors might just be the best way to describe another exhibit at the museum.

These images are literally out of this world.

(dramatic music) - This exhibit grew out of an appreciation for the beauty of some of the images that have been collected by our space telescopes.

And there was a desire to bring that to people so that everyone could see and experience that beauty.

(gentle music) The human eye responds to a certain range of color.

A lot of the most interesting things in the universe are happening at other colors that the human eye just sees as the color black.

That's particularly relevant with the image of the galaxies toward the Big Bang moment, where almost everything in that image is just pure black to the human eye.

And so by bringing that data, those numbers in, and giving them colors that are relevant to people, that we can see with our eyes, we're taking invisible things in the universe and we're making them visible so that we can look at them, appreciate the patterns that are there, understand the structures of the early universe in a way that the human eye just is not capable of doing.

- [Narrator] The exhibit was curated with a goal of engaging an audience to exchange ideas with others and take a moment for inner reflection.

- These are all wonderful pieces of art, but they're also really cool kernels of discussion about what's going on in the world around us.

How do we fit into that world?

Where are we, as we stand here, both in a physical sense, but also in the sense of time?

Where do we fit into the story of the universe, from its beginning up till now?

And where's the universe gonna go to?

(dramatic music) This is part of our birth to death kind of story, where this image here is showing stars being born.

Right there in the image, there's brand new stars in the process of being born.

On the other side, we have a picture of what's left after a star has reached the end of its life and has exploded.

Humans have always been searching to understand, who am I?

How do I fit into the bigger picture?

Where am I?

And by looking at these and understanding it, you begin to get some sense of humans' place in the universe, both where we are physically as well as where we are in time.

- [Narrator] This image from just beyond the rings of Saturn adds perspective when you realize that the small dot in the distance is Earth.

In addition to the photographs, a 3D table encourages visitors to explore the universe and learn more about how these images came about.

- [Speaker] Alive and combined into a seamless lake.

- [Narrator] It's a gallery that lives at the intersection of art and science.

In recent years, the walls throughout the museum have filled up, displaying a mix of works in different media.

(gentle music) (gentle music continues) (gentle music continues) A sculpture near the museum entrance sets the tone for visitors.

"Moontide #1" by Nancy Train Smith draws on a lifetime shaped by communion with the natural world.

Layers of stoneware fish harmoniously move in one direction to form the silhouette of the moon.

Another recent addition to the collection is this original Audubon painting.

- What we're looking at is an oil painting that's attributed to Audubon, who sold it to my three times great-grandfather, so great-great-great grandfather, George, in 1830, when Audubon was visiting New Bedford in order to sign people up for subscriptions to his elephant portfolio engravings.

New Bedford, at that point in time, was an incredibly wealthy town, and so there were patrons here.

It's been in the family for 195 years, and we just felt that it had salience to New Bedford and that it should really be repatriated.

And this museum seemed like a great spot for it.

- [Narrator] The Audubon painting is in remarkably pristine condition, despite one mishap that caused physical damage.

- As a young child, my father apparently had a bow and arrow and decided to shoot one of the birds, which he did successfully.

And I think it was the top one, but I'm not sure.

It was successfully patched up.

- [Narrator] This beautiful painting and many other pieces are all part of the ripple effect inspired by the original gift of the Chihuly chandelier, now gracing the gallery space at the New Bedford Art Museum.

(upbeat music) (upbeat music continues) (upbeat music continues) (calm music) (upbeat music)