Collector and puppeteer Herbert Hosmer was born in South Lancaster, Massachusetts in 1913, to a family with deep New England roots. Hosmer first lived at the Sears-Chandler-Hosmer house on Main Street, then moved to the 1700’s Captain Samuel Ward homestead at the corners of Main Street and George Hill Road. It was there that Hosmer dreamt up the Toy Cupboard Theater and Museum that would delight South Lancaster families for generations to come.

Hosmer received his early education from Miss Chickering’s and Narrow Lane schools in Lancaster. He then attended the New Hampton School for Boys and the Massachusetts College of Art in Boston.

After graduation, Hosmer began a career in education. He taught at the Rogers Junior High School in Stamford, Connecticut and the Fessenden School for Boys in West Newton, Massachusetts before returning to Lancaster where he joined the staff of the Center School.

Meanwhile, Hosmer had developed a keen interest in puppetry, dollhouses, antique toys, and children’s books. He was inspired by a puppet show he’d seen as a child at the Clinton Women’s Club, as well as the Toy Furniture Shop in Providence, Rhode Island he’d admired as a student. In the summer of 1933, he worked at a gas station to save enough for his first major collector’s purchase: a Tynietoy Colonial Mansion. In 1935, Hosmer inherited the publishing archives of his relative John Greene Chandler, who published the first American edition of the classic folk tale “Chicken Little.”

Hosmer collected those artifacts and others in the old carriage shed of the Ward house property. The toy shop and museum housed everything from paper dolls to miniature furniture. He displayed the toys in a brightly painted antique tool cupboard that had belonged to his grandfather and the shop soon became known as The Toy Cupboard.

In an attempt to build interest in his shop, Hosmer performed his first public puppet show on the property on July 4th, 1940. He sold tickets in the driveway for 25 cents a piece and invited friends and family from miles around. From there on out, the marionette, hand, and shadow puppet shows continued every summer with scripts based on the fairytales and folktales of Perrault, Andersen, Aesop, Milne, Potter, and others.

In the early 1950s, Atlantic Union College purchased the Ward house property and Hosmer moved his productions down the street, where he established the John Greene Chandler Antique Toy and Book Museum and the Racketty Packetty Doll House Museum. He published several new versions of Chandler’s “Chicken Little” and continued to collect children’s books, befriending a range of authors and illustrators in the process.

Author and illustrator Maurice Sendak paid homage to Hosmer in his 1970’s book In the Night Kitchen. One illustration shows a box of sugar labeled “Hosmer’s Free Running Sugar. It Pours. Product of South Lancaster.” The words “Chicken Little” are scrawled on its base.

Hosmer retired from teaching in the mid-70s but remained active in the arts. In addition to the new versions of “Chicken Little,” Hosmer published articles about memorabilia in The Magazine Antiques and Yankee. In 1976, he cofounded the Tynietoy Preservation Society. He also joined the board of Lancaster’s Thayer Memorial Library and initiated the Chandler Book Talk. In 1991, Atlantic Union College awarded Hosmer with an honorary doctorate.

Sadly, after Hosmer died in 1995, most of his collections were dispersed. Some objects, including the Toy Cupboard, remain on temporary exhibit at the Thayer Memorial Library. A few reside with the Lancaster Historical Commission, but others were auctioned off or donated. Still, Hosmer’s legacy continues to inspire the young at heart. In 1975, Hosmer’s mentee Paul L’Ecuyer founded Lunenburg’s Drawbridge Puppet Theater — a place where childlike wonder lives on through the joy of storytelling and puppetry.

Sources: americanantiquarian.org, youtube.com, drawbridgepuppets.com