Contest Announcement: How Many Candles?

By: Erin Crissman, Curator

We’re preparing for Candlelight Evening – a major undertaking. On December 20th, the historic village will be aglow with many, many candles. How many candles do you think Patrick MacGregor places throughout the museum for the three hour event? We invite you to submit your guess! The person with the closest guess, without going over the actual number, will receive a family membership to the New York State Historical Association which includes free admission all year to The Farmers’ Museum and Fenimore Art Museum. If you’re already a member, it makes a great Christmas gift! To submit the results of your mental mathematics, send an email to stayconnected@nysha.org with “candles” in the subject line. The email should contain your guess, as well as your email address and physical address so we can notify the winner. Entries will be collected through midnight on December 14th. Winner announced on December 15th. Good luck! In case you’re wondering where this contest idea came from, it is derived from one of my important museum experiences as a child. We visited George Washington’s Mt. Vernon where there was a “guess the number” contest. Participants were asked to guess the number of timothy seeds in a large jar. My dad won! The prize was a US flag (a new flag, not a collection object!) that was flown on the flagpole at the historic site. My dad is an engineer, and great at math. We were still surprised he won out of the thousands of entries they must have had. I do not envy the person who had to actually count the seeds, though.