I have not been to Old Sturbridge Village in Sturbridge MA since I was six or seven, which is going on fifteen or sixteen years ago. Today, it was open for free as part of the state's "free fridays" program, so my mom and I went there to meet Ruth, an old friend of her's. The drive from Gloucester was about an hour and forty minutes.
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Old Sturbridge Village is a collection of buildings from all over New England that are preserved how they might have looked in the early nineteenth century, specifically the 1830s. The first building we looked at was a lower class house which smelt sweetly of dried apples and herbs. Out in front of it was a large enclosed pasture where sheep grazed. I was able to feed one of the sheep a handful of grass; it tickled when the sheep nibbled away the grass.
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The next two buildings we visited were religious meeting houses, one quaker, the other congregationalist. The congregationalists are now known as the United Church of Christ, the church to which Ruth belongs and is an ordained minister. Near the congregationalist meeting house is the parsonage, where a minister like Ruth would have lived in the 1830s.
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