Annual Meeting Recap, and a Call for Volunteers

In case you were not able to attend the annual meeting this past Saturday, here is a recap of my presentation about the current and future direction of the Society.

Faced with severe challenges, things looked pretty grim in the summer of 2016. The Museum building was closed for mold remediation after a flood; the membership had fallen to dangerously low levels, and the Society was faced with a serious financial shortfall.

But from darkness, light: Over the past year, the SHS has gained a new, pro-active board dedicated to bringing the Society into the 21st century. The work began by introducing a set of new, streamlined by-laws that better reflect the realities of today’s volunteer organizations; completing the flood and mold remediation of the entire interior and the collections; and re-inventing the storage and exhibit space to better utilize both the building and the artifacts.

But a collection is just a bunch of objects until it’s used to tell a story: our story.

With the introduction of affordable flat screens over the last decade, there has been a revolution in the way small museums are able to interpret their collections. The Society intends to embrace this new technology with gusto, with plans to secure grants in 2017 to purchase the screens and create new, digital interactive displays with rotating special exhibits. These exhibits will showcase objects in our collections, and will be designed to work equally well in the museum, in the classroom, and online.

For 2017 and 2018, the Society will focus on three aspects of Southborough history that have greatly influenced the way we live today.

The first was the coming of the railroad to Southborough. The Boston to Worcester line is the second oldest in the country, dating to 1835, and brought about dramatic change in the way people viewed themselves and the world. In a single year, Southborough left the 18th century and headed for the 20th.

Our second theme will focus on women and domestic life in the 19th century. Southborough was the second most productive agricultural land in the state by the 1870s, and most residents lived and worked on farmsteads tended by women. The days were long, and unbelievably hard — a fact little appreciated by the youth of today. We’re going to be taking a look back at what it took to tend a home, hearth and bring a meal to the table 150 years ago.

The museum and old burial ground sit adjacent to where once a Nipmuck village stood. The first peoples of this place, the Nipmucks, are almost entirely forgotten today, and deserve a more thorough look as the founders of the place we today call Southborough.

Finally, the Society Board is dedicated to bringing Heritage back to Heritage Day, and we’ll be organizing a set of activities in and outside the Museum to complement festivities on St. Marks Field.

Lastly, we are now once again in a position to accept volunteers. The first opportunity is May 13, empty the trailer day, when the remaining objects in our collection come out of storage. We need able backs and legs to help make this happen.

We have openings for 2-3 curatorial volunteers to prepare our photograph and paper collections for digitizing by the Boston Public Library in their Digital Commonwealth Project. The work is Mac-based using Filemaker, which is a pretty simple database program. The task is mainly assigning accession numbers to photos and transferring content information to the database. As the Historical Commission will be supervising this work, there is a possibility of a senior tax position as well.

We’re also looking for experienced editors and writers familiar with Word Press to edit and publish content on our website, including this blog.

And finally, in conjunction with myself and our new Treasurer, Rebecca Deans Rowe, we’re looking for people experienced in writing grant applications to help fund our activities.

It’s been a challenging but rewarding year. Let’s make the next even better!

With heartfelt thanks to everyone for their amazing support,

Michael Weishan,
President