Projects & Activities

currently:

• Developing signage pointing out Windham’s most historic areas

• In the process of digitizing archived items for easier access to Society members and the public

• Ongoing inventory and update of histories of old houses and buildings

• Maintenance and update of cemetery records

• Newsletters to all members and other historical societies

• Regular public programs on topics of historical interest

• Maintenance of six historic structures and planning for future

• Research for public and municipalities

• Participation in community events

The Windham Historical Society Digitization Team

An ongoing project of the Windham Historical Society is the digitizing of our many collections and accessions to be able to better share them with others. We have a dedicated team of five individuals who painstakingly electronically record, catalog, and photograph all of the Society’s acquisitions and take notes and photos to be added to the website’s Archives page.

The team, consisting of Society members Penny Loura, Karen Lougee, Carol Manchester, Susan Simonson, and Linda Tetrault, has been at it for four years now, working through boxes and boxes of materials consisting of photos, deeds, newspaper clippings, pamphlets, and more. Some of the items go back as far as the 18th century. They have gone through about 4/5 of these boxes to date.

The process to accurately record this information is very detailed and time-consuming. The record is removed from the file box in which it is contained. It is then reviewed and recorded on an Excel spreadsheet where it is assigned an accession number, a box number, a description of the item, and the name of its donor. Our curator, Penny Loura, then takes a photo of the item and uploads the photo to the website’s Archives section.

Once finished with the file boxes, the team will turn their focus to the five museum buildings and their contents and then they have the many file cabinets, reference and library books, annual reports, city directories, scrapbooks, yearbooks, and many more items that the Society has acquired over the years to add to the site. As you can well imagine, this ongoing project will take quite some time to finish.

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The Windham Historical Society is currently undertaking a project to help bring public awareness to the most historic places in town. Recently, two signs were placed on River Road marking the beginning and end of Windham’s First Settlement, New Marblehead. 
Other areas to be recognized include Windham Hill, Windham Center, and South Windham.