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Welcome
to the Historical Society of Glastonbury
MUSEUM
ON THE GREEN
The building that serves as
our main museum was built between 1839 and 1840 as the Town House. It was built by Parley Bidwell, who
probably designed it, as well. Mr.
Bidwell had built the Methodist
Church on High
Street about 2 years earlier. We
now know that building as the South Glastonbury Library.
It has been said that the Museum’s
building was built of ballast bricks, possibly from North
Africa. Because there
was more than one brickyard in Glastonbury,
this may be not be the case.
This building is the first
secular Town Hall and served for 100 years. Before there was a separation of Church
and State, the first Meeting House stood on this spot and served as both
Church and Town House. The
adjacent cemetery is from that church.
The first school was also located on the Green. Livestock grazed on the Town Green and
the Militia practiced here. There
was a pig pound on the edge of the Green, keeping pigs out of the crops
and preventing the damage they did.
A painting of Joseph Wright
hangs near the entrance to the Museum.
He was a Yale graduate, a farmer, a shad fisherman, and a Deacon
of First Church where he started the first Sunday School. He owned a home on Wright’s Island (currently part of the Meadows), where he
lived in the summer and raised potatoes, corn, and straw for brooms for
his own family and for sale. His
second home still stands on the corner Main Street and Meadow Lane.
Joseph Wright kept complete
and thorough diaries, noting changes in the river, local events of the
1800’s including harvest balls, sleigh rides, and sailing and steam
ships. It is from Deacon
Wright’s diaries that so much has been learned of Glastenbury
during his lifetime. The original diaries, as well as transcripts, are
kept at the Museum.
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