New Hampshire's Local Historical Societies Are Struggling

By Shannon Mullen on Friday, January 25, 2008.

listen:

Some experts in the field of historic preservation say all history, like politics, is local.

And local historical societies across the country are working hard to preserve America's past for future generations.

In New Hampshire, however, many of these small groups worry that growing challenges threaten their missions.

NHPR correspondent Shannon Mullen has the story.

MULLEN: The curator of the Franklin Historical Society, Paul Gagnon, was only 64 when he died last July.

He didn’t have a will, so his relatives held an estate auction, and they sold the contents of his house, including most of the artifacts he spent years collecting for the town’s historical society.

WEBB: I ran into Paul at auctions all the time.
MULLEN: Society President, Leigh Webb,

WEBB: He would look for things from Franklin, postcards, ephemera, signs, anything that was part of Franklin’s history. And he’d buy them, in his mind thinking they would all eventually go to the Historical Society. Well he never put that in writing of course, so consequently all the things he intended to go to the society ended up being sold.

MULLEN: A judge let the society keep a few things that Webb could prove were part of its collection.

Now he’s storing them in a closet at his house, along with a hand-written note tacked to a shelf. WEBB: Now if I die, I put this up here so it’s very clear that everything in this closet belongs to the historical society… MULLEN: these are all just newspapers from the town? WEBB: Yeah those are newspapers from around 1870 to 1900...
MULLEN: Franklin’s historical society is almost 30 years old, and it’s never had a headquarters.

That's why Gagnon kept the collection in his living room... Webb says it was tragic to lose most of it, before the society learned its lesson. WEBB: If you care about history, and you want to preserve certain artifacts and you want to pass them on – do the work, get the legal documents, because if you don’t do that they’re in limbo, and they can end up spread to the four corners of the compass. MULLEN: Just about every town in New Hampshire has a local historical society.
VEILLETTE: There are 206 or 7 right now, you know depending on who’s just created one lately or which one’s gone under... MULLEN: Bill Veillette runs the non-profit New Hampshire State Historical Society -- last fall his group surveyed its local counterparts.

The results showed that while the majority are optimistic about their future, fewer than half of them are financially stable.
Veillette says most societies report their memberships have plateaued or shrunk in recent years.

And they’re aging, while too few young people are getting involved. VEILLETTE: I run into a lot of people who say they’d love to volunteer at the historical Society, but they just don’t have time because they’re shuttling kids around, they have 2 people working in the household, that kind of stuff. MULLEN: Veillette says there are exceptions to the membership downturn, and he points to Moultonborough.

The historical society there sent a letter to every property owner 2 years ago, asking for donations in exchange for membership.

MLB: We got over 800 members, almost 900.

MULLEN: Society President Mary Lamprey-Bare says a lot of those people are second-home owners, not active members.

But she believes their support says a lot about how people feel about preserving their town.

MLB: Why are they giving money to a little bitty historical society? They don’t want strip malls, highways, fast cars and all that, they still want to see the quaint, quiet historical town Moultonborough is. The towns really take pride in the fact that they keep the historical part of New England alive, and really the historical societies are the ones that spearhead that.

MULLEN: They’re also helping to preserve the histories of people who have never set foot in town--the growing number of people trying to trace their ancestry.

Many local societies say they’re getting more calls and emails about geneology.

But only a third of the societies have websites.

Embracing the internet would take staff, money and expertise they simply don’t have.
Professionals in the preservation field say most of the country's local historical societies face the same problems. But except for the members of Franklin’s Historical Society, few people know the consequences of losing their history.

DAVIS: Think about it this way, you remember in George Orwell’s 1984, that history was erased. People didn’t know anything about their past…
MULLEN: Terry Davis heads the American Association of State and Local History.
DAVIS: … and what did that do to those people? Well it made them weak and vulnerable. And if you don’t know your history you’re weak and vulnerable.

MULLEN: But, Davis says, preserving the past doesn’t mean we should keep everything.

DAVIS: I think one of the things we have to think about is, is everything worth saving? …How many spinning wheels really need to be preserved within America?!

MULLEN: …and Davis suggests the country doesn’t need as many local historical societies either.
In New Hampshire, the state society says local groups just need more help getting organized, and getting modern.

So it plans to start helping them fundraise, build websites and preserve their collections.
In Franklin, the historical society is focusing on rebuilding its collection, and finding a better place to put it than Leigh Webb’s closet.

For NHPR News, I’m SM.