Dear Tom:  Your e-mail was attached to one sent to the Three Village
Historical Society by Kelly Taft Krause yesterday.  I responded to her and
thought that perhaps you might be interested in the information I sent
her.

Before I attach that message, tho, let me say that we are very interested
in knowing about the Mount lithograph that was in your family for a
hundred years.  Was it a litho of DANCE OF THE HAYMAKERS, RIGHT AND LEFT,
or THE BANJO PLAYER?  Or another title?  You can reach me at
[log in to unmask] (my home) or at [log in to unmask] (Three Village
Historical Society)

Here's the message sent earlier to Kelly:

Hi, Kelly Taft Krause - I'm a Trustee of the Three Village Historical
Society in Setauket, New York and your E-mail was just forwarded to me.

The TVHS formed a William Sidney Mount Committee more than two years ago
to research the people in the 19th century genre paintings of William
Sidney Mount.  Its chairman is Dr. Robert Kenny, who is a native of Texas!

As you probably know, Mount was born in Setauket and lived
in our neighboring town of Stony Brook all his life, with short stays in
New York City.  He is buried in Setauket.

The way our Mount project began is this:  The Three Village Historical
Society (the 3 villages are Stony Brook, Setauket, and Old Field) has an
annual cemetery tour, in which our members dress as some of the persons
buried in our local, historic graveyards -- settlers from the 1640's,
Revolutionary War patriots and Tories, sea captains and their wives, etc.
-- and, of course, William Sidney Mount -- and on the last Saturday
evening in October, people are led through the graveyard(s) by torchlight
to be greeted by the "spirits", talking about their lives in the first
person.  Anyway, I digress --
I was researching people to put on that year's tour, walking through
the graveyard of the Caroline Church in Setauket (1729), and I saw the
headstone for Shepard Smith Jones.  I asked the church sexton who was with
me if that could be the same person that Shep Jones Lane (a local road) is
named for.  He said Yes, and that he was the fiddler in Mount's painting,
Dance of the Haymakers.  I was taken with the idea that we could actually
place the characters in Mount's paintings as being from our Three Villages
-- real live persons that we could identify -- and our committee was born.

From October 1999 through January 2000, The Museums at Stony Brook, which,
as you probably know, owns the vast majority of Mount works plus his
diaries, letters, etc., will set aside one of its galleries to display
about a dozen works in which the TVHS has identified the characters.  The
exhibition will be called WILLIAM SIDNEY MOUNT:  FRIENDS AND FAMILY, and
is linked to The Museums' traveling exhibit (which you may have seen
in Fort Worth) called WILLIAM SIDNEY MOUNT:  PAINTER OF AMERICAN LIFE.

We will have docents providing background about these 19th century Three
Village people, in addition to the usual information about the artist and
the paintings.

During the weekend of October 23, 1999, the Society and The Museums are
sponsoring special tours.  In addition to visiting The Museums at Stony
Brook and the gallery, with its docent talks, there will be a bus taking
participants to the locations shown in the paintings, and stopping at the
homes, worksites, and/or final resting places of the people in the
paintings.  The community is preparing tableaux vivant, a nineteenth
century amusement, in which the painted backgrounds shelter live
performers dressed as the people in the paintings.  That evening we will
hold our annual SPIRITS OF THE THREE VILLAGES CEMETERY TOUR, with the
focus entirely upon Mount, his family, and friends.  (Mount and many of
his relatives are buried here, of course.)

Additional aspects to the weekend include a video tape of the day's
events, copies of which will be available to schools, libraries, museums,
and individuals, and, finally, the presentation to The Museums at Stony
Brook, for permanent display, of the portable "waggon" or studio described
in detail by Mount in his diaries and which a group of Three Village
Historical Society members is re-creating as we speak (11' long x 8'
wide).  The original portable studio was built to Mount's specifications
in 1852, and was used by him until his death in 1868.   The studio or
"waggon" is actually almost twelve feet by eight feet, and when finished
by the Three Village Historical Society, a group of our member "interior
decorators" will get to work, furnishing it with an easel and paints, of
course, but also a stove, curtains, and whatever else Mount said in his
diaries that it contained.  He does refer to concerts that he enjoyed in
it, playing his violin with two other people doing the same, so it
really was quite large -- and it will be a life-size replica.

There will be a catalogue to this exhibit, in the process of being printed
now, with ten or twelve articles about Mount, his portable studio, Shepard
Smith Jones, and other individuals that appear in his paintings.

The exhibit that you may have seen in Fort Worth will return to The
Museums at Stony Brook in May, and will be retired by the end of the
summer.  A small part of those paintings will re-appear in October for our
exhibit.

Let me know if you would like information about the exhibit and/or special
tours on October 23rd, and, if you would like to receive information as
the exhibit is about to open, send your address for our mailing list.
Membership in the society is open to all and is $20.00 per year, if you
would like to receive our monthly newsletters to keep abreast of the Mount
project.

Nice to hear from you!

Elizabeth Kahn Kaplan, Trustee, Three Village Historical Society, PO Box
76, East Setauket, NY 11733-0076 (aka Liz Kaplan)

The Web site of the Three Village Historical Society is:
http://members.aol.com/TVHS1