Welcome Friends!

Welcome to the blog of the Natick Historical Society, it's nice to have you stop by!

Just a snippet of some of the undiscovered objects in our collections, as detailed below

Our curatorial staff, Jessica and Kate, are driven by curiosity about the stories and objects we discover in our daily work here at the NHS museum in South Natick. Here's just a few we've come across:

• An elaborate pair of colorful knit suspenders belonging to a sea captain who hailed from Natick in the mid 1800's. Who was this bold dresser? Who donated his suspenders to the local museum and why?
• Hand decorated gourd vessels from South Africa dating to the late 1800's. How did they find their way to our small New England town? What connections to the wider world might they represent?
• A vast collection of native and South American birds donated by one of our key founders, A.L. Babcock. How did he collect such rare specimens for the time? What kind of museum and mission might the founders envisioned in those early days?

As we work to develop exhibits and bring collections information up-to-date, our curiosity is peeked by the interwoven connections we uncover between the people, places, and objects of the town. Though our museum is small, we've discovered that it contains within it multilayered and often unexpected stories of Natick.

We've established this blog to better serve and engage our community, making these collections and stories more accessible to you. Kate and Jessica will be utilizing this space to launch a series of posts that will serve as an extension of the exhibits in our museum at the Bacon Free Library as well as in our mobile and temporary exhibits around town.

We hope you will join us in this endeavor by following along, reading, and sharing with us your comments, curiosity, and questions. If there is something more about our collections, exhibits, or Natick history that you would like to know more about, please don't hesitate to leave a comment here on the blog, our facebook page, or in an email. We are more than happy to respond and explore areas of further interest in a future post—stay tuned!