Bicentennial celebration later this month

When Caroline History Association (CHA) member Sarah Michelle was combing through documents for research during the beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic, a small detail caught her attention.

On March 23, 1823 the town of Caroline left Tioga County to join Tompkins County. In 2020, after doing some quick math, Michelle saw that an anniversary was coming up.

“I thought, ‘200 years is coming up, let’s have a party,’” she said. “It was very cool because all of us in our little group got excited about it, and we started planning this party to celebrate the town of Caroline.”

On March 25, at Brooktondale Fire Hall, “Rehoming Caroline: A Celebration of 200 Years in Tompkins County” will feature a pop-up museum, a potluck lunch and displays from local authors. Brooktondale Fire Hall is located at 786 Valley Rd., and the event will happen from noon to 4 p.m.

People with historical artifacts pertaining to Caroline are encouraged to bring those items to contribute to the pop-up museum.

“The pop-up museum is creating itself, which has been very cool,” Michelle said. “We’ve put a request in for people to register in advance, although it’s not required. It’s given us a sense of what’s coming in. There’s expected things like the photos, but the unexpected things, we don’t even know yet.”

A registration form can be found at the CHA website, www.carolinenyhistory.org, or the CHA Facebook page. 

Michelle said that she is expecting a large crowd, and through the registration process, the CHA has already seen interesting items that will be on display as part of the pop-up museum. From old family photos and scrapbooks of holiday cards from the 1800s to wagon wheels, furniture and crates from Mulk’s Store, now known as Brookton’s Market, there will be a large variety of artifacts at the celebration for people to enjoy.

“It’s not just for people to share, it’s for people to look,” Michelle said. “I have friends coming from downtown Ithaca whose friends are their only connection to the town of Caroline, but people are interested.”

Three local authors, Ted Sobel, Mary Jordan and Charles Yapple, will have copies of books about the history of Caroline available at the event. Author and photographer Susan Larkin will also have her books available, including “Intersections,” which focuses on the Buffalo Hill Road area of Caroline.

Michelle said the CHA is not accepting permanent donations of artifacts; people will bring the items to the pop-up museum and take them home when the event is over. CHA will accept monetary donations, but the event is free to attend.

Michelle explained that the pop-up museum is dedicated to representing all parts of Caroline, which comprises the hamlets of Besemer, Brooktondale, Caroline, Caroline Center, Slaterville Springs and Speedsville.

“Some people don’t know what town they live in, and places like [the smaller hamlets] sometimes get forgotten. We’re going to have [those hamlets] represented; it’s really important. There’s so many areas; Caroline is quite large.”

CHA is not a large organization, Michelle admitted, with anywhere from five to eight members attending the association’s monthly meetings. 

What has helped it grow in the community is the organization’s Facebook page, where people have shared photos and stories from Caroline’s past.

The photos have brought a sense of nostalgia to the 1,762 people who have liked the Facebook page. Photos of the fire tower on Fire Tower Road or the mill in Brooktondale have sparked long comment threads, with people sharing memories and family history, even though neither landmark is still there.

“The Facebook group has been good for us, because we’re just winging it,” Michelle said. “We’re not historians. Some people are retired, some still work. It’s a hobby that has drawn each of us, so we put up things that are interesting to us on the Facebook page. Some things go right by, but other things generate a lot of attention.”

Michelle said family photos are often heavily viewed on the page and can lead to one of her favorite interactions, when people realize in the comments that they might be related.

 “One of the most exciting things for me is when people start commenting on a post and realize they’re cousins. I’ve seen it happen maybe five times,” she said. “It’s not just this old history; it brings living people together.”

Bringing people together has proved difficult in Caroline since the pandemic started. Proposed zoning laws have driven intense political debate in the town, but Michelle is hopeful a celebration of the town’s history will bring people together during a time when the town has felt divided.

“It does feel like a community-building topic like none other,” she said. “There are so many active people in Caroline doing a lot of different things, but I think history just has so many things people are into.”

Michelle admitted that as a student, she did not have the view that history was a field of study where different, interesting subjects were introduced.

When she and her family moved into a house built in 1865 in Brooktondale, she looked up the deed to the house and found that it was built by George and Julia Wolcott.

After some research, she learned that George had fought for the Union in the Civil War and had come back to build the home in Brooktondale, which was then called Mott’s Corners.

“In school I always said, ‘I hate history, it’s so boring.’ I just never liked history. It was something to get through and memorize,” she said. “But this – I thought about how George and Julia Wolcott’s hands were on these walls. They breathed this air. It became very meaningful to me. I look around our beautiful town of Caroline, and you can just imagine what it would look like, and what those people would think about what we do now.”

Tompkins Weekly’s Small Towns column appears once a month. Send story ideas to editorial@vizellamedia.com or geoffpreston8@gmail.com.