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"To All Who Feel An Interest In The Antiquities Of New-England"

(c) Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association, Deerfield MA. All rights reserved.
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20th century Americans venerate old houses and historic sites in ways their 18th and 19th-century counterparts would hardly have understood. The attempt in 1847 by a small group to purchase and save the Ensign John Sheldon house in Deerfield, Massachusetts, was among the nation's earliest preservation efforts. The house had achieved local fame for its role in the Deerfield Raid carried out by French and Indians in 1704. The group failed to save the house known for generations as the "Old Indian House" from demolition in 1848. Their efforts, however, led to the founding of the Pocumtuck Valley Memorial Association and the subsequent preservation of other local buildings, artifacts and documents.

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