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Portsmouth Historical Society
Portsmouth Historical Society (c) 2015; 870 East Main Road (at Union St), PO Box 834, Portsmouth, RI 02871

March 2016

 

 

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March Newsletter 2016

 

 1.Welcome to the March Newsletter. Thanks to our very active Membership Committee our membership now stands at 420 (up from about 100 in November) and we are actively seeking more. Please tell your friends and neighbors. The membership application is on our website.

  1. We have adopted a new logo for the Society, shown above. We are grateful for the work of Tom Roskelly, a local, well-known graphic artist, who has been working out the design for us.

  1. Among the upcoming events:

– We are working with the Portsmouth Library co-sponsoring a genealogy series at the Library given by Lynda Rego. The classes will meet on three successive Sunday afternoons (3, 10 and 24 April) from 1-3PM. It is a free program funded by the North Family Trust. Registration is required. Call the Library at 683-9457 for a reservation.

-We will be hosting an Open House for our new members in May. This will be an opportunity for you to see the museum prior to its being opened to the public. It will also be a chanced to meet the Society’s Board members and to volunteer to help us emphasize our wonderful town history. It t will take place on Sunday, 22 May from 10-2. Please save the date.

-Our Annual Meeting will be on Monday 20 June at the museum. Elections will be held for officers for the 2016-2017 year and we will have an interesting speaker on Victorian era furniture.

  1. Volunteers: We need volunteers to help us get the museum ready for its official opening on Memorial Day weekend. It will be open every Sunday afternoon from 2-4 until Columbus Day.

5.We are looking for volunteers to be docents at the museum when it is open. We would like to open it more often, depending on the number of docents that we can recruit. New docents would be paired with veterans, so you can learn on the job. Docent training will be held on Saturday, 21 May from 10-12.Those interested in being a docent, even if only one or two Sundays a month, please e-mail Anne Wagner, Docent Coordinator or call (before 8pm) @683-3272.

6.Also volunteers are needed for our various committees work or those who can help with minor repairs to our building . People with carpentry, plumbing or other handyman skills are sought. Please let us know on the website.

  1. Website: On very useful website (above) we have recently opened a “Store” and we have copies of the Portsmouth Compact for sale there. Soon we will add other items. It also includes a great deal of Portsmouth history. Spend some time wandering around it and take our short survey. You can also “friend” us on our Facebook page.

  1. Email Addresses: If you have received this via US Mail and you have an email address, we would like to have it to send these newsletters and updates of our events electronically. Last year, before we started emailing notices, we spent much of our budget on postage. You should soon receive a call from a Board member asking for your email address. We are trying to save money, so please send us your email address. We will only use the address to send you newsletters and other notices. We will not share it. Thank you.

  1. Lectures: We have had full-house turnouts for the Compact ceremony and the two lectures on the founding of Portsmouth. We are grateful for the wonderful support of the community and we hope we can continue to get the word out about the fascinating history of the town of Portsmouth—-378 years long.

  1. Donations: We continue to seek donations for our museum collection. We want books that relate to RI or Portsmouth history, but we are looking for diaries, store account books, photographs and other artifacts of local history. If you are cleaning out the attic and find something we can use, let us know and we will come get it. We reserve the right to decide whether it will be useful to us or not.

Thank you for your help, support and interest in the Portsmouth Historical Society. Help us to continue to grow and educate all of us about local history.

If you have any questions anytime you can contact us through the website.

 

Jim Garman, President

 

For more information about the Society, e-mail

info@portsmouthhistorical.org