COVER STORY
All buttoned up
Keep Homestead, Monson
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MORE INFORMATION
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The Keep Homestead Museum, 35 Ely Road, Monson, is open April through December, the second and fourth Sunday of the month, 1-3 p.m., or by appointment. Admission is free. Take Exit 8 off the Massachusetts Turnpike, then follow Rte. 32. south. for five miles into Monson. Right after the Congregational Church take a right, then the next right, and an immediate left onto Ely Road. 413-267-4137. (Get directions).
A Civil War encampment will be set up on the grounds the weekend of Sept. 18-19. A candlelight house tour takes place 7 to 9 p.m. that Saturday.
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"The largest button collection in the East," claims the Keep Homestead Museum located in rural Monson, near Springfield.
Like many an old New England family, the aptly named Keeps kept practically everything, even the bills. The farmhouse where nine generations lived for nearly 150 years is now a museum of family items, including thousands of buttons owned by the last of the line, Myra Keep Lovell Moulton.
A former schoolteacher, Moulton died in 1988 and left the property, including 58 acres of marked nature trails, to the town on the condition that it would open as an educational museum. Several rooms have been restored to the year 1909 when Moulton was 10. Not only is her parents' 1893 eight-piece oak bedroom set on display, but so is the bill for it: $40. One small room replicates a 1940s grammar school classroom, with textbooks and even homework assignments of Moulton's pupils.
Buttons of all kinds are displayed in glass cases: political (Myra liked Ike), military, decorative glass, and porcelain. Amazingly tiny, intricately detailed antique mosaic buttons can only be appreciated with the aid of a magnifying glass.
"Buttons do a lot more than keeping your shirt closed," says Grace Makepeace, president of the Monson Historical Society, who gave a history of the homestead before the self-guided tour.
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