 |
| Genealogy Blogger Tom Tufts and Yours Truly |
Tom Tufts is the author of the Tufts Family Genealogy blog. We share the ancestor, Peter Tufts (1616- 1700) who settled in Malden, Massachusetts. He is my 9th great grandfather. Tom started by guest blogging on my blog, and then started the Tufts Family Genealogy blog in 2012. We have met up a few times. I knew that Tom was a long time volunteer at the Exeter, New Hampshire Fire Museum, and he told me that the museum was going to be open during the Exeter Revolutionary War Festival last weekend. It was time for my first visit to this extraordinary little museum.
This little museum used to be the old fire station. There are two hand pumpers from 1835 and 1846, and a steam pump from 1873 build in Manchester, NH. The fire engines date from the 1920s and 1940s. The bays of the old fire station are full of memorabilia like fire extinguishers, air tanks, axes, patches, tools and lots of photos of firemen from the years past. Many of the old photos have names on them, which is a great genealogy resource.
If you are a regular reader of Tom's blog, you may not know that he is a retired fireman with 20 years of service in Manchester and five years of service in Exeter. His grandfather was an Exeter fireman, and there are photos of him in the museum. Tom even showed me a group photo that includes his grandfather, and two other family members. I'll let Tom post that on a future blog post, because the story behind the people in the group photo is a bit of genealogical serendipity.
The museum is located on 30 Court Street in Exeter, New Hampshire. It is open the first and third Saturday of the month from noon to 4pm.
The Tufts Family Genealogy blog
http://tuftsgenealogy.blogspot.com/
Read Thomas Tufts guest blog posts at Nutfield Genealogy
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/search/label/Guest%20blogger%20Tom%20Tufts
----------------------------
The URL for this post is
http://nutfieldgenealogy.blogspot.com/2014/07/blogger-meetup-at-exeter-nhs.html
Copyright (c) 2014, Heather Wilkinson Rojo
Great visit and story, Thanks for getting the word out about our little museum. My wife Stephanie Toland and I worked very hard to restore the museum after it sat idle for many years. We think we have a rare collection of apparatus that all served the Exeter community from 1835 to the present which probably cannot be matched anywhere else in this area. My grandfather is pictured in a 1935 formal picture but as a selectman. The connection is that he is standing behind William and Edward Toland, Stephanie's Great-Grandfather and his brother. A couple years ago we borrowed the old log books from the Historical Society for visitors to look for their ancestors name. The fire associations here date back to the earliest settlement of the town.
ReplyDelete