We are incredibly excited to announce the discovery of FIVE musket balls fired at Concord's North Bridge on April 19, 1775
Welcome to Curator's Coner where we explore Minute Man National Historical Park museum collections and other cultural resources!
The Minute Man National Historical Park museum collections are extensive and varied and contribute to the park’s historical significance. The archeology, history, and archival collections complement each other and provide historical context and visual evidence of the stories contained within the site’s more than 250-year history. The following are some of the most significant assemblages in the collections:
Archeological collections, containing over 250,000 artifacts obtained during archeological investigations from sites throughout the park. These objects document elements of the historic landscape, domestic life, and indigenous settlement. Artifacts range in age from 8,000 BP to the twentieth century and have immense research potential.
Eighteenth century objects including the Buttrick powder horn, Paul Revere silver porringer, battle related musket balls (archeology), flintlock firearm, and gunflints.
Historic furnishings, decorative arts, and fine art collected by the Lothrop Family, such as: the Rose Hawthorne fire screen, the mahogany secretary supposedly belonging to Hawthorne Family, a fragment of cloth supposedly from Martha Washington’s wedding dress, extensive library of books by authors who lived in the home, and Harriet Lothrop’s wedding dress and shoes.
Archives and manuscript collections including the personal papers of Harriet M. Lothrop, the Hartwell family, Meriam family, and Allen French.
Natural resource objects include herbarium specimens and small mammal specimens from an Appalachian Trail study.
