Springfield Art & Historical Society
EST. 1956
Collections at the Museum
The support from the community is wonderful!!
We were pleased that the Springfield Town Library has donated their duplicate copies of the “Manning City Directory” and Springfield High School Yearbooks. These items will add so much to our expanding town history library.
If you have a yearbook you might consider donating, email us to see if we have your year. email at sahs@vermontel.net. Or come in and check out the collection.
Donations of historical significance come in almost weekly. If you think you've seen it all, think twice (LOL). Come visit again.
The collection: Bill Lashua delivered seven boxes of negatives to us (about 14,000). They are primarily photographs his father, Bernie Lashua, took of machines, etc. at J &L. John Hunter, who is a J&L retiree, has agreed to review the archive to see what it actually contains. We really appreciate John’s willingness to take on this project.
In 2019, we received an additional donation from Bill and John Lashua - thousands of their father's negatives. The sorting, cleaning, and proper storage of these is a huge project and will take months and lots of money. We are grateful to Mascoma Bank and the Windham Foundation, in addition to the Bryant Foundation, for their donations to support the purchase of needed archival materials. We also received several donations from citizens to support this effort. Thanks!
We are appreciative of our newest volunteer and Board Member, Carol Hansen. She has spent many hours organizing the Lashua negatives and storing them in archival boxes. She is now working hard to digitize them.
In 2018,to help facilitate viewing negatives, with the funds from a grant from Vermont Telephone, we purchased a new 14 x 18 inch “light table.” This is a vast improvement over holding the negatives up to the ceiling light.
Also, as the result of a grant from the Bryant Foundation in 2018, we purchased a professional grade photo and negative scanner. In addition to the recent Lashua donation, we have 1000s of other negatives, both film and glass slides, some as large as 8” x10”, which we will now be able to view and document; some are over 100 years old! Due to their age some of them are dirty, so we plan to contact the glass slide archivist at the Vermont Historical Society to see if we can or should clean them.
Our collections includes many gems from the history of our town. Among them are:
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Bennington Pottery
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Rev. Richard Lee Pewter
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Vermont Novelty Works Carriages & Springfield Jointed Dolls
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Early 19th Century paintings by Horace Bundy, Aaron Dean Fletcher & Ashael Lynde Powers
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Springfield Reporter Newspapers 1870’s to 1960’s
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Genealogy on Springfield Residents
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Machine Tool Company records, photographs, documents and artifacts from Jones and Lamson, Bryant Grinder Corporation, Parks & Woolson, and Fellows Gear Shaper
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John Parker Railroad scrapbooks of articles and photographs as well as Springfield
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Terminal Railroad photos and documents
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Early Springfield town and school records
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Textile collections including men’s, women’s and children’s clothing, accessories, and quilts
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Art Collection of noted Springfield area artists Stuart Eldredge, Joe Henry, Horace Brown, and Hazel Kitts Wires - we have received 2 additional Joe Henry paintings. They are on display now.
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Historic Springfield Photographs & Postcards 1850’s to Present
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Collection of Dolls from around the world
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WWII Collection of military uniforms, oral histories, photos, & letters
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Russell Porter drawings, paintings, photos & artifacts from Arctic explorations
Our vast collections of artifacts, art work, library materials, and textiles are being digitized using PastPerfect Museum curatorial software. This program will allow us to update our record keeping system and to create an online searchable database of our collections.
New Display Cabinets: The wall cabinet, above (which contains our wonderful collection of Springfield Souvenir Pottery) and the display cabinet on the right (with the dresses) are the two new cabinets we were able to purchase with the funds from a generous grant from the Windham Foundation.