Windham County Museum Exhibits

The Society’s extensive collection of artworks by Windham County artists are rotated regularly. (Oil Painting by Arthur Gibbs Burton: The West River in Winter) 

Many of the items in the Bachelder/Higgins General Store exhibit came directly out of the Higgins General Store which operated in Newfane Village through the late 1900s. (Photo: Bachelder/Higgins General Store circa 1900.) 

This exhibit examines “How we made a living” and includes tools of the trades, as well as the medical profession and other livelihoods in Windham County. (Photo: Early Sign Board for the Village Blacksmith.) 

The history of photography and portraiture is displayed through the Society’s collection of daguerrotypes, stereographs, ambrotypes, tintypes as well as the antecedents of photography such as silhouettes and folk art portraits. (Photo: Sledding, Timson Hill, photo by Porter Thayer.) 

The military exhibit displays Windham County’s role in the conflicts of the Colonial period and the Revolutionary War through the wars of the 19th and 20th centuries. Diaries, photographs, weapons, uniforms and other artifacts tell the story of the Windham County residents who served both overseas and at home. (Photo: Civil War Drum.) 

These two galleries tell the story best described by the old adage “A woman’s day is never done.” Early furniture, quilts, samplers, children’s toys, flax, spinning wheels, “kitchen aids” and other artifacts illustrate ‘domestic life’ in early Windham County. 

Many current residents of Windham County attended one room schoolhouses and can recall grades one through 12 in a single room, no indoor plumbing, filling the wood stove in the morning and other fond memories…! This exhibit displays artifacts from 19th and 20th century, including “Class Pictures” and other photographs of many of the schoolhouses in the County. (Photo by Porter Thayer)