New Castleton Museum Receives Important Local Artifact Collection
Castleton, VT (04/27/2023) — The Granger-Moulton Museum at Castleton University gratefully announces receipt of the Ryland Benford Collection - a well-known assemblage of Native American artifacts gathered by Ryland Benford, a local steeplejack, from areas around Lake Bomoseen between the 1920s and 1940s.
The Benford Collection will be displayed in the new Granger-Moulton Museum and Learning Laboratory on the Castleton University campus as part of an exhibit celebrating the rich history of Native Americans in the Castleton area. Established last year in partnership with the National Endowment for the Humanities, the museum is focused on highlighting lesser-known aspects of local history, including that of Native Americans, African Americans, and women. The Benford Collection will become part of the museum's permanent collection for long-term curation and educational purposes, with exhibits developed in partnership with local Native American communities and other stakeholder groups.
The Benford Collection contains a wide range of stone projectile points and other tools made by Native Americans living at more than a dozen sites around Lake Bomoseen and other nearby areas. The collection contains no human remains and is not thought to have come from funerary contexts. According to Dr. Matthew Moriarty, Castleton University's Director of Archaeology, "The Benford Collection is remarkably significant for local history and was created well before modern archaeology came to Vermont. Its earliest artifact dates to more than 11,000 years ago, and the collection itself documents an unbroken record of Native American life in the Lake Bomoseen area covering thousands of years." Moriarty notes that the collection is particularly important because Benford recorded the locations where artifacts were recovered. Many of these sites are now covered by modern constructions, making the collection a unique source of information.
The collection was donated by Kevin Tredwell of Hubbardton, VT. Mr. Tredwell is Ryland Benford's grandson and inherited the collection from Florence Benford Tredwell, Benford's youngest daughter. In the early 1980s, Mr. Tredwell worked with Shelley Hight of the Vermont Division for Historic Preservation to help interpret the codes Benford utilized to identify specific sites around the lake. He has also previously loaned the collection to Castleton University for analysis, photography, and 3D imaging. According to Dr. Moriarty, "Mr. Tredwell has been remarkably generous in allowing the archaeology program to borrow and document the collection on multiple occasions."
Mr. Tredwell feels that displaying the collection in a local museum is very much in line with his grandfather's wishes. He notes that "Ryland hoped that someone would eventually display his collection under glass and give him credit for finding and collecting it," and that "it would mean a lot to know that this finally happened in Castleton as he was born in Hydeville."
The Granger-Moulton Museum is expected to open its doors to visitors for the first time in September of this year.
Castleton University
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