Our cover painting (watercolor by Peggy Godfrey) is the Storrs House at 697 Longmeadow Street, home of the Longmeadow Historical Society.  Built in 1786 by Richard Salter Storrs, second pastor of the First Church of Christ in Longmeadow. It was built on ministerial property and stood on the land in front of our present library.  Richard Salter Storrs' second wife was Sarah Williams, granddaughter of Rev. Stephen Williams.

In the 1860's Lucy Storrs Barber, granddaughter of Richard Salter Storrs, conducted a private girls' school in the southeast room which we call the Music Room.

The house looks very much now as when first built. but the generous ell rooms have been removed and it has been moved back several feet to be on a line with the library. There was originally a white picket fence with two large buttonball trees in front. The original latches are gone from the doors and the fireplaces are smaller. however in recent years some have been restored to original size. In 1874 a porch was built across the front and fence work placed across the front of the roof, but that was all removed in 1933 when the library was dedicated.

Three generations of the Storrs family lived in the house and the last members, Richard Salter Storrs, III, and his sister Sarah Storrs willed the property in 1907 for a library. It was these two who made it possible to have our beautiful library and the use of the Storrs House with its lovely heirlooms for our Historical Society.

After Richard Salter Storrs' death in 1884, Sarah Storrs lived on in the house until she died in 1907 and the home and its contents were left in care of a few chosen citizens to be used as her brother wished.

In 1846 all the furniture and papers which were saved from the Williams home were brought into the Storrs House, as the people living there were direct descendants of Stephen Williams and Richard Salter Storrs. There is a high chest in the upper hall with chalk marks and lines across on its side. The chest is as found in the old Storrs corncrib, and the marks were made when measuring bushels of corn.

The Longmeadow Historical Society was organized in 1899. There are two photographs in the hall showing two views of the original house- front and rear. When the house was redecorated there were found under many layers of paint, the original colors which coincided with the colors used at that time in Connecticut Valley homes. The parlor on the right as you come in the front door was usually blue. the parlor on the left yellow, and the dining room green. Any paint left over was mixed together for the hall.

The Longmeadow Gardeners have restored the garden and attended to its upkeep. The round stone in the garden originally used for forming the metal ring on the wagon wheels was brought from the site of the old blacksmith's shop at the foot of Chandler Avenue.