Taunton's Old Colony History Museum marks 100 years in the old Bristol Academy on Church Green

TAUNTON The brick schoolhouse at 66 Church Green in Taunton is in its 100th year as the home of the Old Colony Historical Society. The society bought it in 1926, when Bristol Academy closed for good, and the Old Colony History Museum is marking the anniversary with a campaign it calls A Century on Church Green, which aims to raise $965,000 for the building, its grounds, its archives, school programs and new exhibits.

A school before it was a museum

Bristol Academy opened in July 1796 in a wooden schoolhouse, with Simeon Doggett as its first principal and about 100 young men and women as students, the museum's history of the building says. They studied reading, spelling, arithmetic, grammar, history, geography, logic and ethics, among other subjects. Boys took public speaking and girls learned needlework, and dancing was offered after hours at extra cost.

About half a century later the academy needed more room, and a group of civic leaders commissioned a new building. Richard Upjohn, whom the museum calls the preeminent architect of the era, designed the brick school that stands on Church Green now, and the museum says it is his only known brick schoolhouse. The museum dates the building to 1852.

Bristol Academy educated many Taunton leaders, three of the city's first 10 mayors among them. Competition from the public schools cut into its enrollment, and the academy closed in 1926. The historical society, founded in 1853, had met in private homes, temporary halls and the Cedar Street Chapel before it bought the building that year. The building is part of the Church Green National Historic District, and pieces of the old academy remain inside, including its lunch bell, which the museum invites visitors to ring.

The society rebranded its museum as the Old Colony History Museum in 2015. Its Hurley Library and Digital Archives keep books, documents, manuscripts and photographs, and the museum says researchers come from across the country to use them.

What the campaign would pay for

The $965,000 goal is split among five areas: the building, the grounds, the archives and library, education, and exhibits. For the building, the museum lists historic preservation, accessibility improvements, energy efficiency upgrades and storage that keeps its collections safe for the long term. The education money would go to school partnerships, curriculum development, internships, docent training and public programs, and the archives share to conservation, digitization and better storage.

The first project is a redesign of the museum grounds. The museum says the redesigned grounds will be more welcoming, accessible and environmentally sustainable, with gardens that reflect the region's history and room for outdoor learning and gatherings. A detail of the plans is on the museum's centennial page, along with a 45-minute illustrated video on a century inside the Bristol Academy building.

What's inside

The exhibits follow the Old Colony from Plymouth Colony, which was annexed to Massachusetts Bay in 1691, through Taunton's industrial years. The colonial gallery traces the earliest days of settlement and the conflict between the settlers and the region's Wampanoag tribes. The museum dates local industry to the discovery of iron ore in 1652 and lists what Taunton made and shipped around the world: silver, stoves, locomotives, textiles, nails, tacks, jewelry, pottery, stoneware and bricks. Other galleries cover the Irish, Italian, Portuguese, Azorean, Cape Verdean, Hispanic, Polish, French and other families who settled here, a first-floor display of 29 portraits and paintings, a rotating fashion collection, and a Society Room set up as everyday life in the 1750s, 1850s and 1950s. The military exhibit, Hometown Heroes, is being renovated.

Visiting this fall

The museum is open Tuesday through Saturday from 10 a.m. to 4 p.m. and is closed Sunday and Monday. Admission is $5 for adults, $3 for students and seniors 62 and older, and free for children 12 and under and for members. A 30-minute guided highlight tour starts at noon each day the museum is open and is free with admission, and self-guided audio tours cost $5. Many local libraries are part of the museum's pass program, which gives their patrons free admission. Members of the New England Museum Association and the North American Reciprocal Museum program get in free, and so do Massachusetts EBT, WIC and ConnectorCare cardholders through the Card to Culture program.

Kids Corner, a drop-in hour of hands-on local history for children, runs from 11 a.m. to noon on the first Saturday of each month; the next one is Saturday, Nov. 7. Curator of Collections Bronson Michaud hosts Beer with Bronson, a program built on objects from the collection, this time on militaria, at 5:15 p.m. Friday, Nov. 20. Members and corporate supporters gather for Deck the Halls, a free holiday evening with a first look at the museum's new winter exhibition, from 5 to 7 p.m. Wednesday, Dec. 2, and a live reading of A Christmas Carol starts at 5:30 p.m. Thursday, Dec. 17. The museum is closed Nov. 26 and 27 for Thanksgiving and Dec. 24 to 26 for Christmas.

The museum can be reached at 508-822-1622 or info@oldcolonyhistorymuseum.org.

Label: Reported by us, from the town's posted records.