Category: Uncategorized

Secret Garden Tour 2023

Posted on by Kent Delord House Museum

Last weekend was the Secret Garden Tour put on by the Kent Delord House Museum Garden Club. We wanted to share the experience with all of you. Special thanks to all the gardeners for opening up these amazing spaces to the public!

Interested in joining our Garden Club? Check out more info here!

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Happy Indie Ukulele by WinnieTheMoog
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/6666-happy-indie-ukulele
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://linktr.ee/taigasoundprod

2023 Farm and Garden Festival

Posted on by Kent Delord House Museum

For those who weren’t able to join us this past weekend, we wanted to share some photos from our Farm and Garden Festival at the Kent-Delord House Museum. Enjoy!

The following music was used for this media project:
Music: Fiddles McGinty by Kevin MacLeod
Free download: https://filmmusic.io/song/3747-fiddles-mcginty
License (CC BY 4.0): https://filmmusic.io/standard-license
Artist website: https://incompetech.com

Christmas Bells Poem

Posted on by Kent Delord House Museum


Hi Everyone, in honor of the Holiday Season, we are taking a break from our usual Artifact Corner video. Today we will be looking at a poem published in the Plattsburgh Sentinel on December 25th, 1868. The poem is titled The Christmas Bells. If this sounds familiar, then you might be thinking of the poem by Henry Wadsworth Longfellow, also titled The Christmas Bells. But, this is a different poem, and sadly the author for this particular poem is not listed in the newspaper. Here is an excerpt from the poem from Christmas Day 1868:

The Bells – The bells – The Christmas Bells
How merrily they ring
As if they felt the joy they tell
To every human thing
The silvery tones – o’er vale and hill
Are swelling soft and clear
As wave on wave, the tide of sound
Fills the bright atmosphere.

The bells, the merry Christmas bells
Are ringing in the morn
They ring when in the eastern sky
The golden light is born.
They rang as sunshine tips the hills
And guilds the Village spire,
When through the sky, the sovereign sun
Rolls his full orb of fire.

The Christmas bells, the Christmas bells,
How merrily they ring!
To wary hearts, a pulse of joy,
A kindlier life they bring
The poor man on his couch of straw,
The rich on Downey bed
Hail the glad sounds, as voices sweet
Of angels overhead.

The bells, the silvery Christmas bells,
O’er many a mile they sound,
And household tones are answering them
In a thousand homes around
Voices of childhood blithe and shrill
With youths strong accents blend
and manhoods deep and earnest tones
with women’s praise ascend.

From all of us here at the Kent Delord House Museum, we wish you nothing but happiness this holiday season! Thank you for all of your support this year, and we look forward to seeing all of you again in the Spring. Thanks so much for stopping by!


Music: Holiday Atmospheric Symphonic
Available under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial license

Treasures from the Attic Intro

Posted on by Kent Delord House Museum

Hi Everyone! Today we are taking a break from our regularly scheduled artifact corner videos to tell you about our special event happening this weekend. May 6th – May 8th, from 10 to 4, we will be opening up our most rare and unique artifacts for the public to see. This may be the only time you can see them out on exhibit due to how fragile many of them are. Admission for the event is $25 or $20 if you are already a museum member, and we can take cash or check at the door. We recommend that if you are attending, you bring your cell phone and some headphones, as we have many video and audio accompaniments to the artifacts. This is a can’t miss event for all of the history lovers in our community! We hope to see you this weekend!

Artifact Corner: 1830’s Women’s Shoes

Posted on by Kent Delord House Museum

Hi Everyone, and welcome back to another artifact corner. Today is a very special video for us. We will be looking at two artifacts that are almost never seen by the general public. These two pairs of shoes belonged to our Frances Henrietta, and are from the early 1830’s. Both pairs of shoes are made from a silk satin with leather soles, and delicate silk ribbons that would have been laced up around the ankle. These shoes are so delicate and lightweight, they would have felt like wearing almost nothing on your feet. These shoes are so special because they seem to have been worn very little. Both pairs of shoes still has the original makers tag in the soles, and the tags are in incredible condition. Let’s learn a bit more about women’s shoes in the 1830’s.

Shoe styles for women throughout the years have gone in and out of fashion just as frequently as did women’s clothing styles. Shoes for women in the late 18th Century looked very different from the shoes Frances Henrietta wore in the 1830’s. Women’s shoes in the later part of the 18th Century had more pointed toes, and stacked leather heels. They could be made entirely of leather, or be made of sumptuous fabrics and richly embroidered. But, following the French Revolution, fashions across Europe and the United States shifted dramatically, and that included shoe style. Gone were the heeled shoes, and in came very delicate flat soled shoes. They look similar to what we would call a ballet flat today. They have a soft leather sole, with either a leather of fabric upper.

These shoes were made on a straight last. A last is a wooden form shaped like a foot that is used by shoe makers to create or repair shoes. Having a distinct right and left shoe is a relatively modern concept. These shoes were made to be identical, and after some time being worn, would mold to wearers foot. The amazing thing about our shoes is that you can see both pairs are labeled with the words droit and gauche. In 1830 in France it was common to write on the sole of the shoe droit meaning right and gauche meaning left, and since French fashion was all the rage, shoemakers around the world copied that practice. You can clearly see that the shoemaker did that in Frances’ shoes as well. Frances’ father, Henry Delord, was born and raised in France and spoke and wrote fluent French, so it’s not hard to imagine that Frances would have delighted in this little nod to French fashion. 

The makers of the shoes were J.L. Williams from Troy, NY and J.B. Miller from New York, NY. Even though Frances was a young woman, she had traveled to both of those areas in the early 1830’s. Sadly, Frances died from childbed fever when she was only 20 years old in 1834, and so her shoes, and many of her other possessions were packed up, and not worn again. It is likely because of this that these pieces are in such great condition! There is light staining on the silk, but the leather is in great condition, and the soles of the shoes are also in fantastic condition. These shoes are stunning and we are so lucky to have them in our collections. If you would like to see these shoes in person, you are in luck! We are kicking off our open season with a special event running May 6th through May 8th. It’s called Treasures from the Attic, and these shoes, and many of our never before seen or rarely seen artifacts will be on display for this special event. It’s a can’t miss event! For more information, check out the description box of the video for the museum’s contact info. We hope to see you there! And as always, thanks so much for stopping by!

Questions about the event where you can see these shoes? Email [email protected].
Music: Acoustic Breeze by Benjamin Tissot, www.bensound.com