Correspondent
HARVARD — Jack Larkin, a noted museum scholar, historian and author, will be the guest speaker at Fruitlands Museums’ annual meeting and present the program, “Where We Lived: The American Home 1775-1840.”
The event will be held on Sunday, Jan. 21 at the Unitarian Church on Harvard Common. The program, featuring Larkin, starts at 3:45 p.m. The museum meeting precedes the program, starting at 3 p.m. Both are open to the public.
Dr. Larkin, whose books include “Children Everywhere,” “The New England Country Tavern” and “The Reshaping of Everyday Life,” is chief historian and curator of Old Sturbridge Village, a colonial-era living history museum in Sturbridge, Mass.
Museum executive director Maud Ayson enthusiastically praised the guest speaker.
“I worked with Dr. Larkin several years ago at Old Sturbridge Village,” she said, adding that he has worked there for many years. He is also a member of Fruitlands’ board of trustees, she said.
According to his publisher’s (Random House Inc.) Web site, Larkin held several previous positions in the library and research departments at Old Sturbridge Village over the last three decades before becoming curator.
He is also an affiliate professor of history at Clark University in Worcester, where he teaches a course in 19th century New England history. In 2005, Larkin taught the American studies seminar at the American Antiquarian Society. His topic was “Childhoods Real and Imagined: New England, 1790-1860.”
This will be the third consecutive year that Fruitlands has linked its annual meeting with an enticing program, and Ayson said the timing has changed, too, from a mid-year date to one that highlights the start of the new year.
Ayson is enthusiastic about this year’s setting: Harvard’s picture-perfect town common, surrounded by gracious, historic homes, like those Larkin will talk about. “Anyone can relate to the setting as a microcosm of New England architecture,” she said.
Larkin’s latest book is “Where We Lived: Discovering the Places We Once Called Home.” He will sign copies of the book at a reception after the program. Hot cider and cookies will be served.
