On a Saturday afternoon in late summer, the First Company Governor's Foot Guard Band set up on a stage donated by Times Fool, on the lawn between the Keeney Memorial Cultural Center and the Hurlbut-Dunham House. A five-piece cover band called Top Cheddar followed them. Scaffolding sat against the Hurlbut-Dunham House's porch the entire time, thirty feet from the amps.
That pairing puts live music next to the scaffolding, with events from two organizations sharing the same stretch of Main Street.
Two Boards, No Shared Calendar
Old Wethersfield runs on two separate institutions, and neither one answers to the other. The Old Wethersfield Shopkeepers Association, founded in 1975, exists to grow foot traffic into local storefronts. Its own language is direct about the goal: to maximize the success of businesses in the district through shared promotion of history, commerce, and entertainment. The Wethersfield Historical Society is the older of the two, describing itself as having driven preservation work in the village for more than nine decades. Its job is the opposite instinct: protect the buildings and the record, not fill the cash registers.
Both organizations plan their own fall programming independently. Neither publishes a joint calendar. The overlap places both groups' fall programs on Main Street in October.
What the Shopkeepers Run
The Shopkeepers Association organizes three signature events each year: Bicycles on Main in the spring, PorchFest in the summer, and Scarecrows on Main in the fall. The group says these three dates alone bring thousands of visitors into member shops.
The 2026 board reads like a cross-section of the businesses those events are built to support. Bryce Hardy, owner of The Charles at 161 Main Street, serves as president. Julia Koulouris of Heirloom Market is vice president. Brianna Bruno of Soulshine Yoga, at 163 Main Street, is treasurer. Kathy Clarke of Main Street Creamery is secretary. Hardy opened The Charles in June 2020 inside the 1790 E.G. Robbins House, a building that once operated as an inn called the Pyquag Inn, and the restaurant picked up Best Restaurant Newcomer honors that year and Northern Region Restaurant of the Year the following one.
Scarecrows on Main is the association's fall entry, timed to the same weeks the Historical Society runs its own programming a few doors down.
What the Historical Society Runs
The Historical Society's fall calendar doesn't touch the Shopkeepers Association's at any point except geography. On Saturday, October 3, the Society holds its 44th Annual Old Wethersfield Arts & Crafts Fair at Cove Park, drawing more than 90 juried artisans and vendors for a single day, 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. The following weekend, October 9 through 11, brings the 17th Annual Old Wethersfield Lantern Light Tours, where characters drawn from real people who lived or worked in Wethersfield during the Revolutionary War lead groups through the Hurlbut-Dunham House, First Church, and the Ancient Burying Ground. Tours depart from the Keeney Memorial Cultural Center every fifteen minutes between 6:30 and 8 p.m., tickets are $30, and each tour is capped at 21 people.
Here's what the two organizations actually look like side by side:
| Old Wethersfield Shopkeepers Association | Wethersfield Historical Society | |
|---|---|---|
| Founded | 1975 | More than 90 years ago |
| Mission | Grow business through shared promotion | Preserve buildings and local history |
| Signature fall event | Scarecrows on Main | Arts & Crafts Fair (Oct 3), Lantern Light Tours (Oct 9-11) |
| Shared venue | Keeney Memorial Cultural Center grounds | Keeney Memorial Cultural Center, Hurlbut-Dunham House |
The two calendars bring events to the same two buildings.
The Unfinished Porch Both Calendars Share
The Hurlbut-Dunham House sits at 212 Main Street, next door to the Keeney Memorial Cultural Center, and it is the literal point where the Shopkeepers Association's stage and the Historical Society's walking tours converge. It's also the building currently under restoration.
The Society's most recent public construction update, from January 2025, described the porch replacement and a new accessibility ramp as underway, with a contractor team from Kronenberger & Sons working alongside architect Kent McCoy of QA+M Architecture. As of a June 2026 posting on the Society's own events page, the house's public hours were still limited to occasional announced open dates because of that ongoing work, rather than the regular Tuesday-through-Sunday schedule the museum kept before the project began.
That means the stage for PorchFest goes up on the same lawn where a scaffolded 1790s house is mid-repair, and the Lantern Light Tours route walks paying guests directly through a building the Society is still actively rebuilding.
The Small Dates in Between
Away from the two big weekends, the district's calendar fills in through individual businesses acting on their own. Cottonwood & Church, the home decor shop at 133 Main Street that Chelsea and Greg opened in January 2022, holds its second annual Fall Market on October 18, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m., built around local makers and small vendors rather than the shop's own inventory. Main Street Creamery & Cafe, the family-owned ice cream shop at 271 Main Street, extends its scooping hours to 10 p.m. on Friday and Saturday nights through the season. The Anderson Farms stand sets up on the historic Broad Street Green, a few blocks off Main Street proper, running its own schedule separate from anything the Shopkeepers Association or the Historical Society coordinates.
These three businesses add their own schedules to the district's fall calendar.
Old Wethersfield's fall brings a commerce association founded in 1975 and a preservation society founded decades earlier to the same handful of buildings on the same six blocks.
If you're weighing what it actually means to live inside a district where the shopkeepers and the historical society run their own separate playbooks on the same streets, Jennie Kesselman knows this stretch of Hartford County well enough to walk you through it block by block. Let's Connect.
