Barre's Old Labor Hall

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Barre Historian Paul Heller has compiled a series of true stories which he descibes as "love letter" to Barre.

The real-life characters featured run the gamut from famous Folk Medicine author Dr. D.C. Jarvis to anarchist Luigi Galleani, from Barre's Chief of Police Patrick Brown and civil war soldier Lemuel Abbot to labor organizer Mother Jones and Socialist mayor Fred Suitor to renown movie director Alfred Hitchock and President Theodore Roosevelt. From bank robbery to big league baseball, all human life is there.

Mr. Heller, who is also a trustee of the Barre Historical Society is donating the entire purchase price of this fascinating book to the restoration of the Old Labor Hall. Buy this book and help the Hall--a great twofer.

The book will be signed by the author.

Award winning children's author, Kathrine Paterson's novel about a girl in an Italian immigrant family caught up in the Lawrence textile strike of 1912 and sent to live in Barre.

  Katherine Paterson's many awards include two Newbery Medals, two National Book Awards and the Hans Christian Andersen Medal. Her inspiration for this book came after coming across the photograph of  the strikers children taken on the steps of the Old Socialist Labor Hall. The caption read: "Children of Lawrence, Massachusetts, Bread and Roses Strike Come to Barre." She had heard of the strike but wondered what children from that city were doing in her Vermont town, so she determined to find out and this novel is the result. The Lawrence Public Library is sponsoring a citywide read of this book as part of the centenial commemorations.

Both the hardback and paperback books available from this site are signed by the author.

Please send me  Bread and Roses, Too in the hardback version, signed by Katherine Paterson

Thousands of stonecutters emigrated from northern Italy to Barre, Vermont, "Granite Capital of the World."  This documentary follows the artisans and families from quarries, workshops, and schools in Italy to granite carving sheds in New England.  The show portrays the immigrants' distinctive community in America and their continued ties with their native regions.  It chronicles the magnificent monuments of these master carvers, as well as their life and death struggle with silicosis.  The story advances to the present, as stonecutter families continue to move between the two countries and seek tgheir own identities, choosing what to keep and what to cut away from their Italian and American legacies.

Please send me the DVD of If Stone Could Speak