BETHEL — The latest issue of the Bethel Historical Society’s history journal, The Courier, is at the printers and should be mailed out soon. The edition is devoted to accounts of the “Antiquarian Suppers,” which were held by members of the Bethel Farmer’s Club (the first such organization in Maine) in 1855, 1856 and 1857.

As stated in the introduction, American life in the mid-19th century was the scene of constant change. Factories, crowded cities, the expanding West and the invention of many labor-saving devices resulted in an increasing sense of rootlessness for many of the country’s citizens.

For New Englanders, this feeling of displacement was offset somewhat by a desire to return to a simpler time — what one historian of the period has called “a longing for earlier days and customs.”

Inspired by the efforts of such pioneering organizations as the Massachusetts Historical Society (1791), American Antiquarian Society (1812), Maine Historical Society (1822), New Hampshire Historical Society (1823) and New England Historic Genealogical Society (1845), individuals in rural communities began to take notice of “old-time” objects (notably furnishings and items associated with the kitchen hearth), which were viewed as morally and aesthetically superior to household goods then being produced for the mass market.

Items ranging from porcelain teapots and spinning wheels to pewter platters and fireplace tongs evoked the comforts of a vanishing world of simple pleasures and “heroic patriotism,” the latter stemming from the Revolutionary War era.

In the decade before the Civil War (when antiques were frequently displayed at “sanitary fairs”), various groups in New England towns began holding so-called “antiquarian suppers.”

During these occasions, citizens dressed in old-fashioned clothes, brought relics (anything odd or old) to exhibit, shared stories of days gone by and had a meal. Typically, the driving force behind these informal gatherings was a local historian interested in recording the town’s “colonial” traditions, legends and events.

In western Maine, the earliest examples of such antiquarian suppers were held in Bethel under the eye of one of Maine’s most prominent historians of that time, Dr. Nathaniel Tuckerman True.

After the print edition of The Courier is distributed, the issue will be posted on the Bethel Historical Society’s website at www.bethelhistorical.org. For more information on the society, call 824-2908 or 800-824-2910 or visit www.bethelhistorical.org.