ERVING – The Erving Historical Commission is looking to decrease its membership size and establish a new oversight committee for the Pearl B. Care Building located at 2 West Main St. in Erving Center, based on member interest in the building’s contents.

The proposed changes were brought forward by members of the commission to the Erving Selectboard during a Monday, Feb. 24, meeting. Commission members Theresa Dodge, Kerry Loynd and Bettylou Mallet brought this forward to discuss the plans, and get feedback from both the Selectboard and Town Administrator Bryan Smith. Dodge said in a followup email that so far, herself, Loynd and Mallet are interested in this new committee. 

In the meeting, Dodge explained that the desire to decrease the number of seats on the board and look into a new committee comes at an intersection of struggling to find a seventh member to complete the commission. At the same time, there are members of the board interested in the Pearl B. Care building in ways that fall outside of the jurisdiction of what a historical commission can do, creating the desire for a museum committee of its own.

“There’s three of us that were so interested in the Pearl B. Care building, and we were when we got on the committee,” Dodge explained, adding that they did not realize the commission did not have responsibility for the building, and other responsibilities of the commission take time over their specific interests in the building.

“We would really like to form another committee and just take care of the Pearl [B.] Care building,” Dodge said.

Smith explained that for the Historical Commission, a Town Meeting could be called regarding the bylaw for the commission and changing the membership structure from seven members to five. For the creation of a new museum committee, he said either the Selectboard can create it, or a Town Meeting article could be used for the creation of the committee. 

Historical Commission Chair Sara Campbell said in a phone interview Tuesday that the commission is one of the only committees in Erving to have seven members, whereas boards are normally five. Jurisdiction of the commission focuses on the administrative and legal necessities, whereas the goals of some members for the Peal B. Care building comes from interest in preserving specific material, such as historical items relevant to Erving.

In an email from Dodge, she listed some of the goals of the proposed committee, including responsibilities to “sort and catalog the historical documents, photos, books, and artifacts contained in the Pearl B. Care building.”

Research on the items currently in the building on how they fit into Erving’s history, cleaning and organizing the building to open it to the public again, and working in collaboration with community organizations like the schools, Erving Public Library and the Erving Senior and Community Center to share historical information are some of the goals of this proposed committee, according to Dodge.

The building at 2 West Main St. used to be a fire engine house from 1866 to 1974 when it became the Peal B. Care building, Dodge said in an email. According to the Greenfield Recorder archives, the obituary of Pearl B. Care says she was the president of the Erving Historical Society, and she was a lifelong resident of Erving from her birth in 1909 till her death in 1997.

“It will take several years to complete, but we would like to find people who share our passion about the town history and interested in getting the building and contents ready for townspeople and others who would like to come in and do independent research or just learn about the Town of Erving,” Dodge said.

Erin-Leigh Hoffman can be reached at ehoffman@recorder.com or 413-930-4231.