Last updated – March 2010
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The Ameliasburgh Historical Museum has become well known as one of
the finest local museums of Ontario. Ameliasburgh Historical Museum has
grown from one building, in 1968, to a complex of many buildings and
attractions. The main building was built in 1868 as a Wesleyan Methodist
Church.
It became a United Church in 1925 and served the community until 1967 when it was closed. The
Ameliasburgh Township Council purchased the church from the United Church of Canada for the sum
of $1.00 and the community officially opened its museum on June 30, 1968. In the glass fronted
showcases displayed all manner of heirlooms, loaned and arranged by township families. Over the
years, several additional buildings have been added to the site such as: a log cabin donated in 1969,
display barns, a blacksmith shop with hand pumped bellows and a forge, a sap shanty, barns, bird
pens, animal compounds, a large stone building house, a bee-keeping display, a Beatty windmill,
dairy / milk house, cheese-making and butter-making memorabilia also, other attractions such as a
carpenter's shop, corncribs and a pea viner.
The Marilyn Adams Genealogical Research Centre (MAGRC) is the
home of various assets of the 7th Town Historical Society.
In 1990, 7th Town inherited two Trusts from the estate of Marilyn Adams
from which flowed the Marilyn Adams Genealogical Research Centre,
formally opened to the public in June of 1994, and as a research centre in August 1994. MAGRC
houses the Adams' Family Museum, Cunningham House, which is one of the Trusts. The other is
a fund from which the interest helps provide the over $90 per day required to operate the centre. The
centre now houses a valuable and rapidly growing collection of genealogical research material and
historic items of local, provincial, national and international interest. These donations have been
attracted from Canada, the USA and Europe. Many personal and community group collections have
been deposited, including:
• Hastings County Land Records for about 100 years prior to 1955
• Tudor & Cashel Township Records, dating back to 1852
• The Klein research on the Trips' of the Bay of Quinte
• Women's Institute Tweedsmuir histories, minute books, and other records
• Dempsey collection
• Douglas Crawford canning factory papers