Sacred traditions and music will merge on Sunday, June 8 when the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM) presents “The Good Old Way: Music and Memories of the Old School Baptist Church,” at the HSM hall, 778 Cemetery Road, Margaretville.

The free presentation begins at 2 p.m. Grounds will be open at 11 for those who would like to picnic by the pond.

Presenter Ben Bath encourages anyone who would like to share memories, songbooks, photos or memorabilia from Old School Baptist (OSB) churches to come early and chat with him. Locally, OSB congregations met in Halcottsville, Vega and Stratton Falls. All three simple, unadorned churches and their adjoining burial grounds are listed on the State and National Registers of Historic Places.

The Vega church is now a performance venue of the Roxbury Arts Group. OSB meetings are still held annually at the “Yellow Church” at Stratton Falls.

Presenter Ben Bath, a graduate of Bard College, is an ethnomusicologist who has extensively studied the musical traditions of the Old School, or Primitive, Baptists, as well as other early American sacred and secular music.

His 2 p.m. presentation will focus on the OSB doctrine and how that translated into their music. In 1832, hard line Gospel followers, led by Elder Gilbert Beebe, split from New School, or Missionary elements of the Baptist Church who wanted to form Sunday Schools and missions. The “Beebe Baptists” used a hymnal published by Gilbert Beebe that matched religious poetry and scriptural passages to familiar tunes. The elder would intone a line, and the congregation would sing it together slowly, a technique called “lining out a hymn.”

While New School Baptist churches allowed instrumental music, Old School adherents did not, so hymns were sung without accompaniment.

The Third Annual Living History Cemetery Tour sponsored by the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown will be held on the first day of summer, June 21.

This year’s tour will be at the Sanford Cemetery on County Route 6 (New Kingston Road), Dunraven, one-half mile off NYS Route 28. Costumed players will portray eight individuals buried there, and an Esopus Indian, burial place unknown, who will talk about life before the coming of European settlers to the East Branch Valley.

Guides will lead visitors through this picturesque burial ground to meet each character, whose stories have been meticulously researched. A section of the cemetery was used for reinterment of remains taken from the Arena, Millbrook and Dunraven areas flooded by the Pepacton Reservoir in the 1950s. The earliest headstone, dated 1803, is for a teenage girl originally buried in the Old Arena Cemetery.

Tour reservations – by phone only — will be taken beginning June 1 at 845-586-4736. Tours will run periodically from 4 to 7 p.m.

The Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM) will host a Mother’s Day Weekend Penny Social and Pie Sale Saturday, May 10 at the HSM hall, 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.

Doors open at 1, drawings start at 2:30.

Items to be raffled include toys, housewares, tools and jewelry. There will be baskets for cat lovers, for jam lovers, for tea lovers. Take a chance on a gift certificate for a craft class, a meal at a fine local restaurant, a haircut, or maybe a psychic reading!

The second of two spring programs on the theme “Reading the Land” will be held Saturday, April 26 at 1 p.m., when Lynda Carroll will present an illustrated talk, “Arkville Underground” at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM), 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.

Admission is $2 for HSM members, $4 for non-members.

Lynda Carroll was part of a team of archaeologists and technicians from the Public Archaeology Facility (PAF) at Binghamton University who conducted a 2005 survey of a section of what would become the MARK Project’s Mountain Laurel Gardens housing development along Delaware County Route 36 (the Arkville Cut-Off Road).

The researchers uncovered numerous points, tools and cherts, along with evidence of fire pits where carbonized wood and nut fragments were dated to more than 3,000 BC. Carroll will interpret the discoveries as documented in a formal report on the project. An exhibit on PAF’s programs and projects will also be available for viewing before and after the presentation.

The first of two spring programs on the theme “Reading the Land” will be held Saturday, March 29 at 1 p.m., when Bob and Johanna Titus will present an illustrated talk, “Middletown: An Ice Age Origin” at the Historical Society of the Town of Middletown (HSM), 778 Cemetery Rd., Margaretville.

Admission is $2 for HSM members, $4 for non-members.

The Tituses’ deep knowledge of geology, and their accessible, engaging style have made them popular speakers. Robert Titus, PhD, is a paleontologist by training who has done considerable professional research on the fossils of upstate New York. He teaches in the Geology Department at Hartwick College. His previous books The Catskills: A Geological Guide, The Catskills in the Ice Age, and The Other Side of Time: Essays by The Catskill Geologist, were published by Purple Mountain Press.