Our museum work has been steady, despite the pandemic. Lots of donations and many inquires. Sharon and I have been able to accomplish much, even though the society has not meeting. Most of the museum work on her end has been sorting and identifying objects, although she did all the work involved with the history in the case downtown. A tremendous undertaking. My work has been a mix of identification, sorting, online museum work, communication, and research.

We had a marvelous find while sorting through some of the Thayer donation. That donation is enormous and many of the boxes are filled with letters, notes, and calling cars, in envelopes, boxes and boxes of them. So you have to go through each one to determine if it is something relevant that needs to be preserved. It is tedious work. 

Sharon was sorting through them one morning and pulled out a beautiful tintype photograph of Lucy Dodge! She’s the most well known person of color in the Farmington NH historical record. She is the only black woman mentioned in the original record ,that I know of, and unfortunately we did not have any photos of her in he museum collection. I was resigned to never know what she looked like. It's in extremely good condition considering the age.

 It’s a remarkable find on so many fronts! I'm so happy this is now part of the museum collection. 

See this item in the Museum of Farmington NH History.

 Kyle Leach, Curator
Farmington NH Historical Society
Museum of Farmington History