The second in a series of Sunday Cemetery Strolls will be offered by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown Sunday, May 28 at 2 p.m. at Margaretville Cemetery, Cemetery Road just off upper Main Street (NYS Route 30)

The one-hour tour on this Memorial Day Weekend will be a tribute to veterans. Tickets are $5 per person; children 12 and under may take the tour for free.

Reservations are not necessary. Participants are advised to wear sturdy shoes and expect some uphill walking.

Guides from HSM will introduce tour-goers to 20 cemetery residents, including veterans from the Civil War, the Spanish American War, World Wars 1 and 2 and the Korean and Vietnam conflicts. Some, like Everett “Bus” Payne, a paratrooper who was killed in France the day after the D-Day invasion in 1944, never made it home to the Catskills. Others, like World War 1 veteran J. Stanley Bussy and his young business partners, Ken Miller and Fred McCumber who saw service in World War 2, returned to build lives and our community.

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown is preparing an exciting new season of local history programming.

Pick up a copy of the HSM 2017 calendar February 18 at the former Miller’s Drug Store, Main St., Margaretville during Sweet on Main. The Society will hold a bake sale and will exhibit items from its growing collection between 10 and 2. There will be a ‘selfie’ station too!

Upcoming programs include “Before Belleayre: A history of Highmount” (June 17), and “History as it Happened,” a tribute to the Catskill Mountain News (August 12).

A month of programs in observance of the 100^th anniversary of women’s gaining the right to vote in New York State will happen in July, including a presentation on women’s domestic lives at the turn of the century, a concert by the Delaware Dulcimores, and a Main Street Suffrage March to the Open Eye Theater which will be staging a new musical, “Seneca Falls,” about the first women’s rights conference in 1848.

A series of walking tours of four area cemeteries will be held the last Sunday of April, May, June and August. They will replace the Living History Cemetery Tour, which will take a year’s hiatus after five successful annual events.

Area metal detectorists will descend on Halcottsville June 10-11 to see what treasures may be buried on several properties there in a special fundraiser to benefit HSM and the Halcottsville Fire Department which is trying to restore the 1916 Wawaka Hose house.