Collections – Westminster Historical Society

The Westminster Historical Society has several thousand items in collections ranging from documents, maps, letters, diaries, deeds, postcards, books and photos to furniture, clothing, textiles, household items, and farm tools. We save these artifacts and archives so that we can tell the story of the people who have lived in our town long after they are gone.

Whether they were farmers, business owners, housewives, factory workers, or persons in the military, we want to be able to tell their story. We’re interested in the experiences of children through the years, the schools they attended, the factories their fathers worked in, the homes where families lived, and the organizations where they played.

We collect reminiscences of many ordinary people in Westminster, and also of the extraordinary – those Westminster persons who made unique marks on history, such as General Nelson Miles, Admiral Frank Fenno, and even Elizabeth Carr, the first “test tube baby” born in America.

Our collections span the time from the earliest settlement of Westminster in 1737 to the present, and we are vigilant in looking for items that tell the story of Westminster people today. For example, we believe that in the future, the story of the very popular Wachusett Brewery will be as significant and interesting as the story of the many furniture factories in Westminster which years ago employed hundreds of people in town.

Volunteers are busy cataloging our collections and placing information about them into a computerized database. Our goal is for people to have access to as much information as possible abaout Westminster’s history wherever it might be located in the Town of Westminster. Therefore, our objective is to catalog everything that is available to the public and enter the information on a comprehensive database, including Westminster-related objects and archives that are located in public places in town such as the Town Hall and Library. As the information is entered on the database, it can also be researched online.

It is a time-consuming project, and although it started in 1999, it is not yet completed. Meanwhile, please be sure to contact the Society to find out about other archives and artifacts that are in our collections but not yet entered into the computerized database.