Blackgrove Historical Society
The Blackgrove Historical Society keeps the town's records: Township papers before 1900, family papers, photographs, bound volumes of the Ledger and the collections of its own members. The Society is a private organization and is listed here as a service to residents.
| Curator | Edith Crane |
|---|---|
| Reading room | Tuesdays and Saturdays, 10:00 a.m. to 3:00 p.m. |
| Dues | $10 a year, payable in the reading room or at the General Store |
Collections
- Township records before 1900, transferred from the Clerk's vault
- Bound volumes of the Blackgrove Ledger, 1939 to the present
- Trading Post account books, 1881 to 1903 (gift, 2026)
- Meeting House building committee papers
- Photographs of Main Street, the farms and Regional High, 1890s to 1970s
- Farm lot maps drawn by the Township Clerk, 1858 (by appointment)
- County survey, 1961. Available to view in the reading room.
- Grange programs and Regional High football programs
Materials are used in the reading room only. Pencils, please.
The Legend of the Grove
Every old town has its stories, and Blackgrove's oldest concerns the Grove. The legend, as the Society has written it down from the recollections of the older families, is that the first families came in the hard winter after 1639 and made their camp at the edge of a stand of trees that was already old then and stood a little apart from the rest of the woods. They did not cut it. The legend does not say why, only that the first meeting of the settlement agreed it should be let alone, and that every meeting since has agreed the same.
The rhyme most people know: “Keep the path and leave the bough, / Let the Grove be as it is now; / Ask it nothing, take it none, / And you'll be home by set of sun.”
The Grove stands on land held in common by the old families and is not open to visitors. The Society asks that it be let alone, as it always has been.