Michael’s Antiques, Franklin, Conn.

Review and Photos by Greg Smith

LEBANON, CONN. – The historic green that stretches a mile through the center of historic Lebanon was bountiful the morning of September 25 as the Lebanon Historical Society opened up its annual outdoor antiques show. The green is still in agricultural use by the community, though its abundance was harvested for a different cash crop that day: antiques. Forty-two dealers set up their wares outside the First Congregational Church and just across the street from – practically in the shadow of – the Governor Jonathan Trumbull House.

The show is a fundraiser for the Lebanon Historical Society, which manages ten buildings along the green. This was the society’s first fundraiser in two years apart from their annual appeal, the gap on account of the pandemic.

“The money goes towards programs, staff salaries, utilities and physical upkeep,” museum director Donna Baron said. Membership with the historical society numbers to 315 at the moment, with about 20 very active volunteers keeping the museum and buildings alive.

John Gintoff of Gintoff Displays, East Hampton, blows a painted wood trumpet he believes was a store display.

Inside the Lebanon Historical Society Museum’s galleries, visitors find five individual exhibits, including the timely “Lebanon In Sickness And In Health, 1700-1980,” which tells the stories of those men and women of Lebanon who have served the town and its denizens’ medical needs throughout time.

Looking out over the field that morning, Baron noted the green’s great fortitude and place in that community: “This is the way the green has looked since the Civil War.”

And since the 1960s, with only one year in absentia (hint: it was last year), the show has lifted this historic town’s spirit with a show of all things old.

Dealers from the area came with many alluring displays of primitives, stoneware, folk art, sculpture and paintings, jewelry, historic glass, curiosities, American furniture and more.

For additional information, https://historyoflebanon.org/ or 860-642-6579.

Cobblestone Farm Antiques, Storrs, Conn.