Documents, Artifacts, and Research Materials
Bedford Historical Society
Collections
Bedford Historical Society provides researchers with a well lit and environmentally comfortable space. A generalized listing of collections follows. Contact the Historical Society for more specific information.

Photograph Archive - approximately fifteen hundred photos of buildings, landmarks, properties, notable people, and community events from circa 1867 to the present.

Document Archive - original source materials spanning the eighteenth to the twenty-first centuries, about eight hundred items.











The Maria Rogers Letter Collection contains about forty-five exchanges between two young, unmarried women, Susan Knapp and Maria Rogers, from about 1816 to 1826. A few of the subjects within the letters included nineteenth century propriety, religous revivals, marital prospects, social gossip, bereavement practices, and entrepreneurship. The letters served as the theme and a research source for Bedford Historical Society's web exhibit. Artifacts - roughly five hundred objects, including toys, domestic tools, and glassware, ranging from the eighteenth to twentiesth centuries; artifacts located within the Bedford Museum on the second floor of the Court House. Contact the Bedford Historical Society for hours.

Textiles - comprises apparel, quilts, and domestic linens, approximately five hundred items dated to the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

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Collections Repository

Bedford Historical Society accepts donations of historical materials. Individuals interested in preserving personal collections for posterity and providing educators and researchers with valuable original source documents should contact the Historical Society. Some of the organization's most choice collections came in consequence to the actions of individuals with foresight. Former curator Emily Zucker recounted the following story in October 2008 regarding the arrival of the Maria Rogers letters: The owner of a used furniture store in Connecticut found the collection many years ago in an old desk. His daughter, Mrs. Freeze, came into possession of the writings and later gave them to a friend, Jane Westover. Ms. Westover brought the collection to the Bedford Historical Society in 1997 in a shoebox. The letters were thereafter carefully unfolded and flattened, but were not read and transcribed. Ten years later, volunteers, Gail Goodman and Buddy Richman, and I transcribed the entire collection, and suddenly a marvelous glimpse into the lives of two young women unfolded.
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