"Is this the Waterford Historical Society?"

“Hello. Is this the
Waterford Historical Society?”

This is a common way phone conversation to the museum start. Here's a "hypothetical" request.

WHMCC: “ You’ve reached the Waterford Historical Museum. How can I help?”

Caller: “I’m looking for where my great-grandmother lived. Can you tell me where exactly her house was? I'd like a photo of it. Oh! She worked at a small corner store, I think. That would be great to have a photo of too since she worked with her friend there and it meant a lot to her. I also need her obituary so I can put it in an album I’m making. Thanks.”


WHMCC: “I'm sorry. Unless someone donated these photographs or her obituary, the museum doesn’t have these records at the museum. I’ll take a look in our database to see if anything comes up with her name. If you have a street name or store name, I can see if anyone has brought to the museum anything related to your research.You should try the Saratoga County Clerk Office and speak with the County Historian who might be able to help you with resources like Town Directories or old newspaper articles.”


Caller: “But... Isn’t this the Historical Society? Like, that's what you do?”


WHMCC: “You’re speaking with the Waterford Historical Museum.”


Caller: “So? What’s the difference?”


What exactly is the difference??? As long as you can ask a question about the history of the area, they’re interchangeable so it doesn’t make a difference... right?

Early days of WHMCC with founding members
taking in donations to create the collection of the
Waterford Historical Museum in 1964.

Historical societies and museums have very, very similar goals when you look at the missions of each entity. Often, a historical society operates a museum and so those missions can be verbatim. And other times, you’ll see ________County Historical Society Museum. Which really doesn’t help with making it easier to tell if there is a difference.


After all, both seek to collect and preserve the history of whatever location they are serving. This means that they do take in collections as well and sometimes will offer exhibits and educational programs or events like a museum will also do.  

Typically, it’s a case of the historical society coming before the museum. Many early historical societies (or those of today still in formation stages) met in members’ homes or at some other public meeting area like a town hall or library to discuss their efforts and plans. Which also means members probably also stored their items in their homes until they had a definite location that they were loaned or were able to purchase. That is how the museum portion of these kinds of historical society museum can occur.


This is what happened with Waterford’s own historical society. It could have been formed around 1897 with the Waterford Study Club. It was this entity that created the first published compilation of the history of the area – to fill the void from the fires of the 1800s, particularly the 1841 fire that destroyed the records stored in the Town Hall on Broad Street.  This booklet, “The Old Town By The Ford” was written in 1912 by six forward-thinking women concerned with remembering the past of Waterford, NY.

The short answer to "Is this the historical society?": NO,
 You are NOT talking to the Waterford Historical Society

Does this mean that you should look to call the historical society because the museum wasn’t able to fulfill your expectations?

If you go searching for the “Waterford Historical Society”, you’ll probably find a number for a society. Several actually: Waterford, Michigan. Waterford, Maine. Waterford, Connecticut. And yes, we’ll probably pop up in a Bing or Google search of “Waterford Historical Society” somewhere on the list of results. The museum has had to be the bearer of bad news for researchers or interns to let them know they’re in the wrong state (or country sometimes). It happens and it's easy enough to click on the link to us assuming that everything is one and the same. The museum always does its best with the resources available, but historical societies tend to have the same amount and kinds of resources.

Genealogical researchers should definitely check out libraries, hall of records, or county clerk offices for  directories, maps, birth/death & wedding certificates and other documents that assist in this study.


Typically, if a quick search doesn’t come up with a solid result for what you’ve described, the conversation may go like this:


WHMCC: “It doesn’t look like our records have anything with her name attached to it. That happens sometimes when donations don’t have any info attached to them sadly so I can’t determine if your (great) grandmother is in any photos. If you’d like, you can schedule a visit in our O’Connor Research Library to take a look in our database in case anything looks familiar.”


Caller:“Oh, I can’t make it to the museum! I don’t live nearby. I know photos were donated by my cousin to the historical society, so they must be there. Can you ask the historical society to do a little digging or can you look at wherever that other place you mentioned might have them?”


Before we go on, there is something to clarify:

This definitely isn’t meant to sound like the museum doesn’t want to help or is just doing the bare minimum – we’re just as passionate at uncovering this history as you are! We know history has meaning, especially when you’re looking into your family history.

The museum will be happy to have you come by and you’ll receive help in looking through the database as you search for this history.

Why can't the museum just call/email the
 Waterford Historical Society for you?
There isn’t one for New York!

The Waterford Historical Society, like many other historical societies, was active in advocating on behalf of preserving historic buildings in Waterford. As this entity, historical societies can be the voice to these efforts that museums, by their organizational framework, cannot.


That’s why the Waterford Historical Museum cannot qualify a property as historical. 

Nor can WHMCC be the voice of authority that whatever work you plan on doing to your building isn’t going to be potentially harmful to the historic components. Or that it is compatible with historical standards so you don’t loose your tax exemption as part of a historic site or within a national historic district.

A museum research library is a little different from a regular
public library- items are stored in acid-free boxes so just
browsing is not an option. You can make an appointment with
the museum Director to search through WHMCC records!

The Waterford Historical Museum will open up our library for you to do some digging of your own, but the museum is not able to do this research for you or sign off that you’re all set to go ahead with whatever your plan for your property may be. We typically cannot accommodate research requests due to limited staff to search on your behalf.

Historical societies may be able to help you advocate on behalf of your property, but not always so if this is something that you’re interested in learning more about, you can always reach out to your state office of Parks, Recreation and Historic Preservation for more detailed guidelines.




The Waterford Historical Museum does not act as liaison for those interested in getting a property qualified as a historical site/landmark, but we do suggest you try contacting this state agency and their office on Peebles Island in Waterford.

The next part of our conversation may go like:


WHMCC:“Is it possible that your photos were held by the Waterford Historical Society’s president?”


Caller: “Probably. I’m not sure. I just know that she donated them. Why can’t you find them?”

The Waterford Historical Society successfully advocated to preserve the White Homestead, purchasing it for $1 from Grand Union Supermarket, which owned this and other lots on Saratoga Avenue in 1964 that it was demolishing to make way for another supermarket location. The Waterford Historical Society raised funds to move it to where it stands today at 2 Museum Lane, behind Saratoga Ave and nearby the old Champlain Canal Lock 4, close to the Cohoes-Waterford dam and bridge.

But during the movement and establishment of the museum, there was a difference in future plans and goals. Some members of the Waterford Historical Society did not want to have anything else to do with the museum and remained separate from the emerging museum Board of Directors that quickly took over the operations of the Waterford Historical Museum and Cultural Center in its early days.

Long story short: 
The Waterford Historical Society remained in operation for another couple of decades or so after the Waterford Historical Museum was founded. Sadly, their records of donations were not shared with the museum so there is absolutely no way for the museum to track these items. 

Even more frustrating is that there is a good possibility there was no system of records at all for the donations to the society. After the death of the Waterford Historical Society’s president, his son had no idea that what all those items in his house were donations. He naturally assumed as he was putting his father’s affairs in order that they all were personal property…and did what anyone else does with all the "junk" that piles up.

Albany Institute of History & Art has a painting by Waterford
 painter Ralph Savage that had been donated to the Waterford
Historical Society. It made its way to this facility due to a
lack of directions for donated items and  whoever donated it to AIHA
had no clue that it was intended to be a part of the
 Waterford Historical Museum & Cultural Center's collections.

Some items made their way to other museums like the Albany Institute of History and Art, and other items were passed along to other family members or outright sold. It’s a sad situation, but the museum really cannot assist in helping you locate these items as the museum founding members had no account of their own to even offer crumbs to begin putting the pieces back together.  It has happened a few times that people will visit looking to see an item donated to the Waterford Historical Society by a family member to be out on display at the museum or to have the museum locate it in their collection.


WHMCC will offer to have you visit with us to determine if anything looks similar for what we have in our records labeled as FIC (Found In Collection = donated to the museum without any donor information or background information on the item’s history).


Rest assured that the museum has a process for accepting donations that aims to prevent this situation from happening. To donate an item, a form must be filled out with a contact name and specify what you would like to have done with the item if the museum’s collection committee determines the museum is unable to accept the item into our collection of artifacts. Donors not giving their item as an unconditional donation are notified of the result of the committee’s consideration and then a deed of gift is sent out so that official ownership is transferred to the museum. Items are given 6 months after their consideration if not accepted for donors to come pick up their item.

So hopefully the end to this conversation can go something like this:


Caller: “Wait, I think my cousin actually donated these photos later. Maybe it was to the museum and not the historical society. Can you check under her name?”


WHMCC: “Sure. It looks like there was a donation at that time from your cousin. There’s only one photo but there are several people in it. Maybe you can pick out your (great) grandmother from this group. If you can identify anyone else, we’d be glad to add that to our records.”


Caller: “Okay. How do I get the photo?”


WHMCC: “It’s a cost of $3 to get a hard copy of the photo mailed to you or 10 cents to get a photocopy on standard printer paper that we can mail to you for the cost of a regular stamp. Or we can email you the photo for 50 cents. You can pay via cash, check or through our PayPal button on our website.”


Caller: “Thanks.”


WHMCC:“Glad to help!”