Amherst Museum

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The Hoover House, one of Amherst Museum's historic buildings.

Amherst Museum is a historic house museum located in Amherst, NY. The Museum is dedicated to preserving the history the Town of Amherst, the Village of Williamsville and the Niagara Frontier. A 35-acre site, the Museum includes 12 historic buildings moved from their original site including homes, one-room schoolhouses, a barbershop, and a church; a main exhibit building; a collections storage facility; the Niederlander Research Library; and, the Country Store.

An educational institution, Amherst Museum is chartered by the State of New York.

1 Collections
2 Living History
3 Guilds
4 Events
5 External links

[edit] Collections

The Museum's collection contains over 50,000 objects. These include furniture, clothing, photographs, maps, ledgers, quilts and wedding gowns.

Collection materials are housed in two places within the Museum, the Archives Room and the Anscombe Collections Storage Building, built in 2000. These buildings are not open to the public. Collections materials are exhibited on a rotating basis.

[edit] Living History

Cooks hard at work in the kitchen at Elliott House.

The Museum's docents and volunteers provide a living history experience for visitors. Cooks work on the cast-iron 19th-century stove in Elliott House. The stove was specially cast for the Museum from an original mold produced by a local ironworks.

Volunteers receive training on historic cooking through the Museum. Youth interpreters cannot use the stove until they are over 18, but younger volunteers learn how to "help out in the kitchen", much as young people did in the 19th century.

Next door, members of the New York Regional Blacksmiths demonstrate on a working forge. The Blacksmiths hold a training school each year in late July and early August, as well as a "Hammer-In" event in August.

Other costumed interpreters, including weavers, quilters, cabinetmakers, craftsmen and women, and dancers appear at events and festivals. All Amherst Museum interpreters and docents are volunteers.

[edit] Guilds

There are five guilds within the Museum membership:

Quilters Guild
Lace Guild
Victorian Dance Society
Weavers Guild of Buffalo
Genealogy Society

The Museum also affiliates with many different community organizations, including the Amherst Diversity Coalition, the Women's Interclub Council, the Western New York Library Resources Council, the Amherst Symphony, and the Williamsville Rotary.

[edit] Events

The Museum features a variety of special events throughout the year, ranging from small guild-affiliated shows to large outdoor festivals. The Scottish Festival and Highland Games, first held in 1985, feature pipe bands, clans and vendors, and are the only officially sanctioned Highland games in the region.

Other events include a Civil War Re-enactment, Harvest Festival, a juried quilt show, a Halloween Trick-or-Treat, and a family Traditional Christmas Event.