News

It’s a busy season for everyone, but we hope you’ll find the time to join us for some treats and holiday cheer. And of course, don’t forget about our end-of-year donation match campaign.

Saturday, December 14, 2024

Come meet the directors and your fellow members and enjoy lots of Christmas treats, mulled cider, special children’s Christmas craft and Christmas music. We’ll be open from 9:30 a.m. to noon and look forward to seeing you all!

Please note that we will be closed Dec. 17, reopening on January 4.

Thanks to the generosity of one of our members, donations of up to a total of $2500 will be matched until December 31, 2024.

Help us promote and preserve Newcastle history by making it more easily accessible and available to our community and beyond, through our digitization project.

With the help of summer students and our volunteers, we’ve been busy cataloguing and documenting our collection, but we still have lots to do.

We’ve been using our new museum software (CatalogIt) for a while now, and it allows us to mount online slide shows, and makes managing, searching and sharing our collection much easier.

Your continued support has helped facilitate this move, and we are thrilled to be able to show you our first two online exhibits – one featuring our collection of holiday cards, and another of winter scenes in and around Newcastle.

We’re looking forward to the New Year with much hope and enthusiasm – and would be thrilled if you would join in the effort to help fund our activities, including a summer student for 2025. All donations made before the end of day December 31, up to a total of $2500 will be matched. Help us raise $5000 for 2025!

Donate today

You can donate in a number of ways – online or via e-transfer (please contact us if you wish to do that so we can give you the email address to use), or via cheque. Please do not mail cheques during the postal strike – we can pick them up from you or you can drop them off on Tuesday or Saturday mornings from 9:30 to noon at the Historical Room in the Newcastle Community Hall.

All donations are tax-deductible and you will be issued an official receipt.

Thank you!

Donate online

We hope you’ll enjoy the first two of our online exhibits showcasing aspects of our collection of artifacts and documents. We have been hard at work over the past few years digitizing our collection – first in museum software which we ran locally, and now in CatalogIt which allows us to easily mount online exhibits and show the community and beyond at least a small portion of our extensive collection.

First up is part of our collection of Holiday cards – Christmas and New Year’s cards dating back to the 1880s. It’s interesting to see that in the 1880s, Christmas cards often didn’t employ the iconography we’ve come to associate with Christmas – and instead were illustrated with paintings of flowers. At least one of our cards is an 1880s card from S. Hildesheimer & Co., in the UK. Siegmund Hildesheimer was very influential in the growing popularity of Christmas cards, which were first sent in the 1840s. The Victoria & Albert Museum in London has more information on the history of Christmas cards.

We’ve also assembled a small collection of winter scenes in and around Newcastle and we will add to those soon. (We have quite a few that have yet to be added to the catalogue).

View online exhibits

Newcastle over 100 years ago vs Newcastle now…

We thought it would be fun to show you how much Newcastle has changed in 100 years. At the time of the 1921 census, Newcastle’s population had actually declined from 787 in 1891 to 559 in 1921, 2 years after this photo was taken. In 1881, there were a total of 202 dwellings, 31 of which were unoccupied. (Unfortunately, later census data doesn’t include the number of dwellings in smaller towns and villages). The Massey Manufacturing move to Toronto in 1881 definitely contributed to the loss of population in Newcastle, but the entire Durham region lost almost 3,000 people between 1901 and 1921, and the township of Clarke lost 750 people during that time.

A talk by Judith Clapperton and James Breech

Wednesday, October 16 at 7 p.m.
Newcastle Community Hall

Had They But Known Her is a work of historical fiction by former resident of Newcastle, Judith Clapperton, about the life of Olive Wilmot.

Judith corrects the false information that Olive was reviled as a loose woman and depicted as the “prostitute” Mary Magdalene in the magnificent Tiffany stained glass window in the chancel of St. George’s Church, Newcastle.

Dr. James Breech is New Testament scholar and will discuss the Tiffany window.

Free Admission & refreshments following the talk.

We’ve posted a lot of our vintage movies (transferred to video) to YouTube for your enjoyment. From 1920s and 1930s movies of Newcastle residents to parades to the Orono Fair from the 1920s to the 1960s, there is something interesting for everyone. Who knows? Great Uncle George as a baby may just be in that movie from 1931… Check it out!

NVDHS YouTube Channel

Mark your calendars!

Saturday, April 13 at 11 a.m.
Historical Room, Newcastle Community Hall

• Find out what we’ve been doing for the past year
• Elect 2024-2025 Board of Directors
• Participate in our fun and informative Show and Tell
• Enjoy a light lunch afterwards

The meeting portion will be short and then it will be on to the fun of sharing our interesting items of historical interest. Found some mysterious items when cleaning out the basement at Great-uncle Dave’s? Or something amazing you found at a garage sale last summer? Bring it in and share at our very own Newcastle mini “Antiques Roadshow”

Free light lunch.

Hope you can join us! (Please let us know if you’ll be joining us for lunch too, so we can plan appropriate food quantities)

NVDHS General Meeting

Join us for a talk on antique bottle collecting!

Wednesday, April 17, 7 p.m.
Newcastle Community Hall, main hall
Cost: free, everyone welcome

Carl Parsons, founder of the Four Seasons Bottle Collectors Club, will introduce bottles and collecting. George Miller, a Newcastle resident, will discuss dairy bottles and Newcastle Dairy. Glen Moorhouse will talk about patent medicine bottles and Newcastle’s connection with Canada’s largest company, Northrop and Lyman. Bottles and related memorabilia will be on display.

Refreshments will be served after the talk.

Local artist, Jane Eccles, has painted many historical dresses in her career, including two dresses from notable Newcastle women, Olive Wilmot and Anna Vincent Massey, who were part of Newcastle’s “elite” at one time.

These two paintings have been donated to our Society by the artist and will be on display during History Month (February) along with their dresses which are part of our permanent collection.

In order for everyone to be able to see these dresses and their mirror images, we will be open on Family Day, Monday, February 19, from 9:30 a.m. to noon, so bring the family over to take a look. There will be special activities for kids. (up-coming history buffs!).

While you are here, take a look at what else we house in our Historical Room located at Newcastle’s “four corners” in the big red-brick Community Hall.

From behind-the-scenes preparation through to the jolly old elf himself, relive the 2023 parade in our slideshow and find yourself, your friends or your family enjoying the festivities on November 19, 2023!

Thanks to photographers Brian Jose, Willie Woo and Noemia Gomez.