Exploring Duskmoor's Rich History Through Our Archives

If you’ve ever wandered down Main Street and noticed the brick building with the old clock tower that seems to tick just a half-second off from the rest of the world, you’ve seen the home of the Duskmoor Historical Society. For over a century, our society has been collecting, cataloging, and sometimes quarreling over the history of this town we all call home.

The society was formally established in 1878, just as Duskmoor was beginning to trade its rough mill-town edges for the more polished trappings of civic life. At the time, the founders saw their mission as simple: “to preserve the memory of our origin and to protect the truth from decay.” Lofty words for folks who also spent their first meetings bickering about whether sawmill invoices counted as “heritage.” (For the record, we kept them, and they’ve turned out to be some of our most requested archive items.)

Our collection today ranges from the expected photographs, town ledgers, and campaign posters to the delightfully odd. There’s a pair of hand-carved dice said to have been found in the pocket of a jacket left behind by a millworker who disappeared in 1892. A lantern from one of the earliest Unity Fairs, its glass smoked black from years of use. A stack of letters, written during the 1912 election, full of fiery rhetoric that makes today’s campaigns look tame by comparison.

The archives themselves are a treasure trove. Researchers and the plain curious alike are welcome to page through brittle copies of the Duskmoor Daily, marvel at turn-of-the-century advertisements (“Try our sarsaparilla tonic, guaranteed to soothe both lungs and nerves”), or trace their family’s story through church records and birth announcements.

But beyond the cabinets and the display cases, the society has always been something more - a keeper of Duskmoor’s collective memory. Our town’s history isn’t neat and tidy; it’s a patchwork, quilt, full of bright threads, dark seams, and a few mysterious stains we’ve never been able to explain. And that’s part of the fun.

So whether you’re new to Duskmoor or have generations buried in its soil, we invite you to stop by, leaf through our archives and maybe, just maybe, discover a story that makes you see our town in a whole new light.