Avon Historical Society Presents Lecture Series on Derrin Family

From the Avon Historical Society:

The Special Projects Committee of the Avon Historical Society is pleased to present the fifth installment of a year-long lecture series focusing on the former Derrin family of Avon when it was a farming community. Janet M. Conner, Head of Special Projects for the Avon Historical Society, will present the history of the Derrin Family who settled in Avon 250 years ago on Saturday, April 2nd at 1:00 p.m., at the Avon Senior Center, 635 West Avon Road, Avon. It is open to the public free of charge with refreshments served immediately after the presentation.

Mrs. Conner has spent the past several years researching the Derrin family who actually had three farmsteads along West Avon Road (two houses extant). She will speak about the early migration of Avon’s first settlers and trace the emigration of the first Derrin ancestor in Connecticut and the beginnings of the family in West Avon. Mrs. Conner has pieced together the direct line genealogy of the family from the immigrant ancestor to the occupants of the Derrin Farmhouse, located at 249 West Avon Road, which the Society is restoring.

Thanks to grant funding from Connecticut Humanities, attendees will be given a booklet to take home titled ‘The Derrins-A West Avon Farm Family in 1850’ that focuses on a generation that lived in the Derrin farmhouse during the peak of Avon’s agricultural period. Additional handouts, also funded by the grant, will include a Derrin family tree of the direct line ancestors and a program for our upcoming final lecture on June 4th, 2016.

The intent of the lecture series is to use the Derrins as an example of the early Avon farming families; to tell where they came from, how they lived, worked and played, their contributions to the town and state, and their final resting places. It is hoped that attendees with gain new insight into how life was back in the town’s agricultural days and how far we have come today with our technology and modernization.

There will be a companion exhibit from June to August 2016 at the Avon Free Public Library titled ‘The Derrins of West Avon-A Heritage Quilt’ that will be broken into two, six week segments. The first will center on the family and include a family tree, census records, agricultural census records, family letters, photographs and items from the Society collection as props. The second segment will focus on the Derrin’s homes and farmsteads.

Please join us for Mrs. Conner’s presentation about the Derrins as she will not only tell you their story, but attempt to get you to know them as well as she has come to know them. As historian David McCullough said regarding the people who came before us “…you get to know them if you spend, as a biographer or a historian does, years of your time with one or several of those people from other eras. You get to know them extremely well.” It is hoped the public will come away feeling the same about the Derrins.

UPCOMING LECTURES AND EVENTS

• ‘Here Lie the Derrins’ presented by Diana Ross McCain on Saturday, June 4th at 1:00 p.m. at the Alsop Community Room of the Avon Free Public Library, 280 Country Club Road, Avon.
• A companion exhibit entitled “A Heritage Quilt - The Derrins of West Avon” will be on exhibit outside the Local History Room of the Avon Free Public Library in the glass display cases from June through August.

Saturday, June 12th-A Celebration of the 250th Anniversary of the signing of the 1766 deed on the Derrin Farmhouse. Additional details will be published in a timely manner.

This second half of the lecture series is generously sponsored by CT Humanities and co-sponsored by the Avon Senior Center/Community Center.

Avon Historical Society mission is to identify, collect, utilize, publish,

display, promote and preserve the history and heritage of Avon.

www.avonhistoricalsociety.org