July 19: Enjoy a performance by Allen Hopkins, who plays historical music on historic instruments. According to the Frontenac Museum, “Hopkins came to us through a connection with the DAR with whom he has often performed. He has been performing traditional and contemporary folk music including blues, bluegrass, Celtic, klezmer, old-timey, pop and many other elements for 50 years in NYS and the Northeast including folk festivals, colleges and schools, libraries, fairs, coffee houses and concerts. guitar, banjo, mandolins of all sizes, harmonica, Appalachian dulcimer, autoharp, dobro, ukelele, English concertina and miscellaneous instruments from Jew’s harp to kalimba to tiple. Allen presents accessible, listenable, and singable music, often directed toward specific themes and genres, primarily ‘American Roots Music’ from a variety of backgrounds. Hopkins puts traditional American Roots music together based on historical themes. In this case, he will focus on music with roots in the American Revolutionary period, from its roots in old English to the military and war related songs of the 19th and early 20th centuries. He has a real feel for history and for the way folk songs echo events in the country’s past from immigration, pioneer experiences, sectional conflict, civil rights, industrial development, the labor movement, to patriotism and protest. He combines music with history and engages his audiences in the exploration of the stories, traditions, experiences and feelings behind the songs. In his own words, Allen says “ one of the things I’ve always loved about folk music is its intimacy— the lack of distance between the performer and the audience.” Having grown up and living now in Wayne County, he is well versed in NYS colonial History in ways that were not explored in our 7th grade American History classes. 

He has been affiliated with the Monroe County and Pioneer Library Systems and numerous county historical societies. He has taught music at the Hochstein School and has been a program auditor for the NYS Council for the Arts. He has worked with the Strong Museum in Rochester and the Salt Museum in Syracuse, the Genesee County Museum, and many other organizations. We expect that Hopkins will bring a program especially relevant to the local history that the Frontenac represents in the context of New York and United States History in an art form that speaks to all of us in a personal and intimate manner. Please join us on Sunday, July 19, 2026 at 7 pm for a program we expect to be memorable and even comforting in our own period of history that may seem stressful and discordant. By looking at the past through song and stories, we are reminded that we have come through difficult times in the past to find a better and more hopeful country, and that we may do the same in the future.”

October TBD: Join us in welcoming Dr. Kurt Jordan, Cornell Anthropologist, who will discuss the local history of the Gayogoho’:no people.