Historic Northampton - A Wealth of Information, Fun to Visit!

In researching our famed “Tin Man of Goshen“, I had the opportunity to do some research at Historic Northampton. Seeking articles, photos and documentation about his early origins! I found the articles I was looking for and discovered a tremendous resource for research and history that was right under my nose.

I found the volunteers and staff to be helpful and friendly! The archives were organized it is clear that much time and energy has been dedicated to their preservation and organization. Materials were well documented and easily accessible. The computer software PastPerfect has been intergrated to Historic Northampton to help manage the archives. This software has also allowed Historic Northampton make collections available online for research and enjoyment. Click here for Online Research.

Over the last century, Historic Northampton has gathered a collection of approximately 50,000 objects. These objects include photographs and daguerreotypes, documents and manuscripts from the 17th to the 20th centuries, fine art, furniture, ceramics, glass, metals, toys, tools and implements, and an important collection of textiles and costumes. Together the collections represent the history of Northampton, and to some extent, the Connecticut River Valley, from the time of its earliest inhabitants, the Native Americans, to the present day.

At the time of my visit, the museum included a terrific Calvin Collidge exhibit and s collection of antique silk dresses from the turn-of-the-century. Current exhibits include A Place Called Paradise: The Making of Northampton, Massachusetts and A Well Regulated Militia: Northampton’s Citizen-Soldiers, 1676-1898.

A walking tour of the campus is wonderful. Historic Northampton constitutes a campus of three contiguous historic houses, all on their original sites. The grounds themselves are part of an original Northampton homelot, laid out in 1654

The Damon House (1813), built by architect, Isaac Damon, contains Historic Northampton’s administrative offices. A modern structure, added in 1987, houses the museum, gift shop and exhibition area. It features changing exhibits and a permanent installation, A Place Called Paradise: The Making of Northampton, Massachusetts, chronicling Northampton history.

Next Door, the Parsons House (1730) affords an overview of Colonial domestic architecture with its interior walls exposed to reveal evolving structural and decorative changes over more than two and a half centuries.

The Shepherd House (1796) is the headquarters of the Massachusetts Foundation for the Humanities, the state-based affiliate of the National Endowment for the Humanities.

If you cannot make a trip to visit the lovely city of Northampton, Massachusetts and its awesome Historic Northampton, their web site includes Virtual Exhibits, Virtual Tours, reference shelf and tons of other online resources that you will enjoy!

The Great American Bars and Saloons of the Old West - Cylinder stoves & Potbelly Stoves

Thumbing through the shelves at Barnes & Noble, we were rewarded with a great book find, a book entitled The Great American Bars and Saloons by Kathy Weiser (Chartwell Books Inc., 2006.). This is a coffee-table book with kick. Hardcover, 2006, 224 Pages.

Kathy Weiser presents the story of the old West, bars and saloons; a fascinating story told in fabulous contemporary photos from the 1850 to the 1930s. This book is rich with photographs coupled with captions and narratives that provide historical background and tell textured stories about the people, the life style, architecture, politics and so much more. Weiser preserves through word and picture a beloved piece of America’s history.

We at the Good Time Stove Company especially enjoyed this book because it included more than a dozen pictures including the Antique Stove. These photos document the use of cylinder stoves and potbelly stoves in the bars, saloons and the Old West from 1850-1930.

On page 23, you will find a classic potbelly stove in McSorley’s Old Ale House in East 7^th Street NYC, established in 1854 and laying claim to being the oldest tavern in the city.

On page 138 is a Stewart cylinder stove heating the Cosmopolitan Saloon in Telluride, Colorado. The picture looks like it came right out of an Old West film. It is complete with roulette/faro table, vested bartender and even Marshall Kenneth Maclean at the end of the long polished bar.

These wonderful wood and coal Potbelly and Cylinder stoves were the workhorses providing for the heating needs of the Old West from 1850-1930. Most thoughts of the West are associated with cowboys and outlaws and the bars and saloons in which they drank, gambled, danced and fought.

Kathy Weiser’s first venture into the publishing world takes you into the many watering holes of America’s past, particularly the numerous saloons that sprouted up during our nation’s Wild West days. This great photographic review displays hundreds of vintage photographs from California to Arizona, the mining camps of Colorado, all the way to New York and its turbulent days of Prohibition.

Online information and ordering available at http://www.legendsofamerica.com/book-descriptions/greatamericanbarssaloons.html
Kathy Weiser owns and edits http://www.legendsofamerica.com/. This is a travel site for the nostalgic and historic minded. When you travel, do you often wonder what happened at “this place” in the past? Who lived here? What were they like? How did they live their daily lives? If that’s the case for you, at Legends of America, you will find content-rich travel destinations of the American West, including Route 66, ghost towns, outlaws, treasure tales, and even a few ghosts that we bump into along the way.Filled with both vintage and current photographs, Legends of America focuses on small out of the way places and hidden attractions that appeal to the nostalgic and historic minded, giving you more than just a paragraph, we will take you there!ORDER THIS BOOK FROM KATHY WEISER ONLINE.

The Pot belly stove is the emblem of Americana. More than any other cast iron stove, the potbelly stove was used in public spaces and businesses. Pot Belly Stoves were essential to the development of this country. With the help of the potbellied stove, stores were opened, railroads built and elections won or lost. These wood stoves were designed to heat large public spaces so that crowds could gather and cluster around the warmth of a wood fire. These cast iron wood stoves were of a superior construction and the Potbelly Stove endured the most rigorous and extreme conditions heating our country’s homes and rail roads across the country during the great Western Expansion…[continued]

Get to Know the Tin Man of Goshen!

For more than fifty years, the Tin Man has stood as a beloved landmark in locations between Leeds and Goshen, Massachusetts. Today this icon is known as the “Tin Man of Goshen” and has stood at its current location, overlooking the Good Time Stove Company and Route 112 in Goshen, MA for more than fifteen years. He has become a fixture in New England travel and has even received notariety as a national treasure among America’s great legacy of roadside attractions and landmarks.

Blogs & Online Articles

Feature in Yankee Magazine
New England Life & Travel
Boston Globe Magazine
Appearance in Zippy the Pin Head Comic

The Tin Man was the brain child of local resident and business ower, Don Affhauser.

Don Ahhfauser conceived of the Tin Man in the mid-1950s. His basement housed a small, but growing, business specializing in duct work. It was here that Don first decided to construct the tall roadside attraction to draw attention to a his new business and demonstrate the technical prowess of the Hamshire Engineering Service (HES) staff.

In the coming two years Don grew HES and constructed a small building in Leeds, MA. to accommodate the demands of his budding business.

In moments of spare time, Don Affahuser and his staff members designed, drafted, constructed and erected the roadside Tin Man, 1958. Hampshire Engineering Service served the heating needs of Leeds, FLorence, Northampton, and Williamsburg, Massachusetts for about ten years. The Tin Man stood as a proud symbol of friendship, warmth and excellence in a small town community.

Click Here for a Historical Photo Tour

Read the Articles
Introduction to Hampshire Engineering Service Staff, 1958.
Hampshire Egineering to Move from Basement to Building, 1958.
Personalities You Should Know Better, 1960.
Shell Oil Company is Happy, Joins with Lennox, 1962.
Shell Oil Appoints Lennox Authorized Dealer, 1962.

The Tin Man was welcomed into the warm and spirited community. Prominently positioned roadside at 574 Haydenville Road in Leeds, Massachusetts, the Tin Man extended his hand in friendship to the young and the old alike. Immediately upon erection, the Tin Man attracted business and began building a wide network of family and friends who would pilgrimage annually to visit.

Read Hazel Magner’s Family Story

Meet Some of Our 2007 Visitors

Many times the Tin Man was the subject of jokes and fun including halloween pranksters dressing him in giant shorts ad a family of birds who nested in his mouth. More serious offenses included the the theft of arms. According to Don Affhauser, his arms including hands and insturmets were stolen and replcements fabricated “no less than ten times.” In 1960, the Tin Man was relocated to the roof of the the Lenox building to escape future vandalism.

The Tin Man Sports Shorts, 1965.
Tin Man Solves Housing Shortage
He Wuz Robbed, 1958.
Tin Man Offers His Hand, 1958.
Roof Top Tin Man Avoids Vandals, 1960.

Following the closure of Hampshire Engineering in 1977, the Tin Man transferred ownership to Elbert Ulshoeffer, a resident of Dennis, Massachusetts. Ulshoeffer was one of those many admiring children who never outgrew his love for the Tin Man. “The Tin Man is a monumental thing for a kid. How’d you like to run into him some dark night,” said Ulshoeffer.

To Ulshoeffer, the Tin Man was “a piece of American folk art” with some very special features, for example, the counterweights that had been put in his jaw so his mouth would open when the wind blew.

A few years after Ulshoeffer took the Tin Man home with him came a fateful, hot August day, a time of year when the tin man would heat up in the sun and wasps would nest inside his head. But neither hot metal nor wasps could keep away the teen-agers who took a hacksaw and cut off the tin man’s head. Ulshoeffer remembers hearing a noise in his back yard, then seeing a car speed off down a dirt road. He and his three boys found their tin man had been beheaded. “We all had a good cry that day,” he said.

It was more than Ulshoeffer could stand to see. “For me, it was destroyed without the head,” he said. He decided to negotiate a trade with Goshen antique stove restorer Richard Richardson. Ulshoeffer needed some stove grates from Richardson who could take the tin man in trade.

To Richardson, a collector of old pieces in his own right, the charm of the Tin Man, even if it was headless, was immediately apparent.

Ulshoeffer had no way of knowing that seven years later his father-in-law would find the long lost head - sitting atop another oil company, this one in Chicopee. Ulshoeffer reclaimed the head from the owner of the company, a landlord who had happened to. rent an apartment to the vandals, who left the tin head behind when they moved out.

Ulshoeffer decided that in the interest of keeping the tinman whole, he would turn over the head to Richardson With the tin man’s real head returned, he was moved back to Goshen to guard another craftsman’s shop.

Read the Entire Story of His Resair and Restoration: A Strange Story of the Collision Coincidence and Destiny

Stove Black Richardson, who owns Good Time Stove where the Tin Man now resides, says the steel figure has brought “a lot of joy and happiness to anyone who’s ever been involved with him…Everybody should have a heart.”

With this in mind, a friend of Richardson’s, Tammy Lee Sweet-Grave of Greenfield, suggested that it was time for the Tin Man to have a heart. She worked with tin knocker Thomas Fern of Chesterfield to create the steel frame, and had the glass cut to fit. Fern has mended the Tin Man in the past.

Tin Man Gets His Heart

As the current caretakers of this icon, Sara the Stove Princess and Richard M. Richardson take their obligation to the Tin Man of Goshen very seriously. We welcome and encourage your stories and photos, history and input as we seek to document his life and times.

Please contact Sara the Stove Princess via email or telephone at 413-268-2677.