page_title: Dedham Historical Society and Museum
section_title: Library and collections
hierarchical_section_title: Dedham Historical Society and Museum / Library and collections
caption_attribution_description: English: A depiction of Henry Orin Holdreth, from the Memoir of Henry Orin Hildreth by Erastus Worthington.
context_page_description: The Dedham Historical Society and Museum is a historical society dedicated to preserve and establish a greater sense of appreciation for the history of Dedham, Massachusetts. It consists of a museum and an archive. As of 2002, it had nearly 1,000 members.
context_section_description: The Society's collections include Dedham Pottery, Katharine Pratt silver, paintings, photographs, pre-Columbian stone tools, local and Civil War artifacts, and a historical and genealogical library. It also has antique furniture including the Metcalf Chair, the oldest piece of American furniture, and one of only two known “astronomical shelf clocks” by Simon Willard. It also owns the smallest bell known to have been made by Paul Revere. the bell, which dates from 1796 and cost $888, once hung in the Norfolk County Courthouse and announced the start of court sessions. It was given to the Society in 1894 by the County Commissioners.
  The Society's library includes over 10,000 volumes, including old street directories, church and civil documents, yearbooks, histories, and genealogical resources. From 1886 and until it was felled in a storm in 1972, the Society owned the Old Avery Oak.
  Portraits include that of John W. Thomas, Edmund Quincy, C.C. Churchill, Jerauld Newland Ezra Mann, and Henry O. Hildreth, a founder of the Society.  It also holds a plaster bust of Benjamin Bussey.  Other paintings include those by John Constable, Gilbert Stuart, Amasa Hewins, Henry Hitchings, and Alvan Fisher.
  Hill, who also served as a trustee of the Dedham Public Library for 19 years, spent much of his presidency gathering a library of several thousand volumes.  On the 21st of March, 1864 the library contained 68 bound volumes, a large collection of pamphlets, and a small number of newspapers and manuscripts.
  By 1890 there are about 2,000 volumes, comprising standard works on American history, histories of towns in New England, especially Massachusetts, and genealogies.  It also contained a large number of pamphlets, portraits, maps, articles of ancient furniture, and relics.  Most were acquired in the years 1887–1890.
caption: Henry Orin Holdreth
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