Memorial Hall Museum, Massachusetts, United States
5.0 (14 reviews) Spent 1-2 hours Ranking #3 in Deerfield History Museums
Best small town museum for history!
This is a great museum. The displays are very informative and interesting. We spent three hours there but could have stayed longer. There is so much to see. Our guide was a wealth of information. As a descendant of people in the Deerfield Massacre I was grateful to see the artifacts from the raid on Deerfield in 1704.
Address
Memorial Street, Deerfield, Massachusetts, United States.
Mobile
Website
http://deerfield-ma.org
Current local date and time now
Monday, May 13, 2024, 21:10
User Ratings
5.0 based on (14 reviews)
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Reviews
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5bcnett 5:00 PM Jun 26, 2017
AN UNKNOWN GEM!
Everybody comes to Deerfield to see "THE STREET" (the mile long tree-lined street with several museum houses, two private schools, two farms, an inn, and many old houses most of which now belong to Deerfield Academy). However tucked away on a side street is a very interesting museum called the Memorial Hall Museum. The building which houses the museum was built in 1797 as the first building for Deerfield Academy. After the Academy no longer needed this building, It opened as a museum in 1880. With its nineteen rooms, it has something for everyone. Right now there is a special exhibit on Edward and Orra Hitchcock and Early Natural Sciences. We saw this first and I thought, " I just wasted my $6.00 admission fee" since Science does not interest me. But this was only one room. I then went on to be fascinated by incredible dollhouses, displays of clothes and shoes, children's dolls and toys, nurses caps and uniforms, quilts, furniture, art, military uniforms and equipment, old washing machines and irons, TONS of artifacts, four fully furnished rooms (dining room, bedroom, study, and kitchen), the famous old door from the Indian House that was "tomahawked" by Indians during the raid of 1704, lots of information about the 60 years (1675-1835) when the early Deerfield residents lived in constant fear of being attacked by the Indians and much more. We enjoyed our three hours and a half there and wished we had had more time to spend in this fascinating museum.
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5Yellodog117 5:00 PM Dec 2, 2018
An eclectic wonderful museum second to none
The museum has a super wide variety of artifacts from the history of Deerfield and the local area. Many of the items were collected in the 19th Century by a local historian and they create a great picture of what the town was like back in that time and before. There is also a super library, alongside the museum, which is used for research into local history and genealogy. Well worth the trip. Unfortunately it is only open from May through October so you have to plan it for next year at this point.
