Strafford and Vermont will be celebrating the 250^th anniversary (i.e., the semiquincentennial) of the Declaration of Independence, as will the other 13 original colonies, in 2026. However, because Vermont’s history diverged from the other 13 colonies when it chose to become an independent republic in 1777, it did not formally adopt the Constitution of the United States of America until 14 years later, in March 1791. So, while the original 13 states will officially celebrate their 250^th anniversary as members of the United States in 2027, Vermont, the 14^th state, will not actually celebrate its 250^th anniversary, its semiquincentennial, as a state of the United States, until 2040.

At the corner of the Morrill Highway and Old City Falls Road is a small detached building on what was for many years the property of Arthur and Selena Robinson. It now sits empty and a little forlorn adjacent to the recently renovated farmhouse nearby awaiting a new owner. Like most older buildings, this little building has stories to tell. Some 175 years ago, a small residential tinsmith shop here made maple syrup equipment and cans, sap buckets and skimmers and many other necessary household items.

Once upon a time in one of the farthest reaches of Strafford, a meetinghouse to rival the Strafford Town House once stood. It had seating for 200 and a gilded dome on its steeple. Anyone traveling a little more than a century ago along Brook Road in Strafford (Faye Brook Road in Sharon), could not have missed it. It was the Robinson Meetinghouse in what is now known as the Robinson District adjacent to the four corners of Strafford, Sharon, Tunbridge, and Royalton.

In 1998 Strafford Historian Gwenda Smith wrote a letter to Eilzabeth Markin of The Wadsworth Atheneum in Hartford Connecticut. Markin had published an article in the November 1976 issue of The Magazine Antiques on the early 19th century portrait painter Zedekiah Belknap.Smith was writing in regards to the portraits of Jedediah Harris and his wife Judith Harris which hang in the Morrill Memorial Library. Smith felt they might well be among the over 200 hundred portraits done by Belknap. Harris was the mentor and business partner of Senator Justin Morrill, and Morrill gave the first library to his hometown and named it the Harris Library.