Letter from the Chairman

            All too often, the Commission hears that a resident of Bridgewater has passed on and their family members have discarded items that could be of interest to those in the future.  The Commission sees this as a tremendous loss to the town in two ways.  First, is that the memories and recollections of that individual are lost forever and second is that little pieces of history are forever lost to the landfill or antique shops around the country.  The Commission has limited space at this time to store items, but we a working on that.  At one time the town had a museum in one wing of the Memorial Building for this purpose. It is one of our goals to once again have a place to store and display Bridgewater memorabilia.

            We are very limited in our funding so we are restricted in what we can purchase for preservation.  In the past, residents have come forward with donations to help us meet our goal.  We strongly encourage residents to record recollections, in writing or on tape, label photos and inform relatives of items that should be preserved.  No item or story should be considered trivial.

 Some of the areas that we would like to see developed are:

1. Pictorial recordings; neighborhood stores, 20th century structures

2. Personal interviews with those who worked in the local shoe industry and other Bridgewater businesses

3. Bridgewater Academy recognition

4. Treasures of Bridgewater-recording of personal histories from the "common'' citizen to the celebrity

5. History of the Bridgewater civic and cultural organization Lions, Masons, Rotary, Kiawanas,  scouting, Oddfellows, Rebeccas, Rainbow, DeMolay, Players, Knights of Columbus, etc.

6. Foster an appreciation of the history of our town in the schools by emphasizing its correlation with state, national and world history.  Our little town has been heard around the world, believe it or not!

A significant amount of material exists on the history of the town in the 19^th century but very little has been collected on the 20^th century.  It is our hope that this can be down with the resources that each of us has at the present time.  This can only be done with your support, today, before it is lost forever.

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