Historical Society Announces Plans For Historic Homes Tour

Newtown Historical Society will welcome the public for its Ninth Annual Historic Homes and Gardens Tour next month, while members are preparing to say goodbye to a longtime member and friend.

The annual tour of vintage properties on Saturday, July 12, will run from 11 am to 5 pm. This year’s tour will feature eight historic properties including the house that is purportedly the oldest in Newtown –– a 1705 cider mill converted into a residence –– and several privately owned “secret gardens” along Main Street in Newtown that will be open for the tour.

The tour is a self-guided event. Tickets are $20 each and will be available after June 16 at C.H. Booth Library, 25 Main Street. Tickets can also be ordered by mail, no later than July 4, by sending a check payable to Newtown Historical Society to PO Box 189, Newtown CT 06470. Mail orders should include a note with purchaser’s name, address, and phone contact number.

Tickets, as always, will be available on a first-come, first-served availability. Many past tours have sold out. If tickets are available the day of the tour, they will be available for purchase at Matthew Curtiss House between 10 am and noon.

Details on the homes and gardens featured on this year’s tour will be presented in upcoming issues of The Newtown Bee.

All proceeds from the house and gardens tour are used toward preservation and ongoing maintenance of the Curtiss House, which serves as headquarters for Newtown Historical Society, a nonprofit organization. Proceeds are also used for the society’s educational programs.

Sallie Meffert created Newtown’s historic homes and garden tour for the historical society a decade ago.

“It wasn’t an original idea,” she pointed out this week, but it was an idea that she was able to bring into Newtown. This year Sallie and her husband Michael will be moving to Virginia, so the responsibility of coordinating the homes and gardens tour will be shared with historical society secretary Jo-Ann Scebold.

Mrs Meffert has been a devoted member of Newtown Historical Society for at least a dozen years. She ass been on the society’s board for a number of years, and has served as its president and secretary.

In addition to chairing the historic homes and gardens tour, Mrs Meffert serves as a docent for Matthew Curtiss House. Countless visitors have seen her at the building’s fireplace cooking a meal over its open hearth. Mrs Meffert took the time a few years ago to travel to Sturbridge Village in Massachusetts to learn to tricks of open hearth cooking and baking.

Children have also delighted in meeting Mrs Meffert, although many of them have encountered her while in character. Mrs Meffert has mesmerized second grade students from the town’s schools when they visit the Curtiss House on their annual walking tour of Main Street.