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About

The Museum

Housed in the 1823 Abigail Hooper Trask house, the Museum invites you to experience Manchester’s fascinating past through restored period rooms, paintings and sculpture by master artists, an outdoor Salt Cod Fish Yard, a tour of Manchester in 1772, and relics of the Indigenous people. 

Contact

The Museum is located in downtown Manchester-by-the-Sea at 10 Union Street, near the railroad depot and across from the Library. It is open Tuesday through Thursday on a 10-3 weekday schedule. Call 978-526-7230.

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Staff

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Administrative & General Info: Nancy Klebart | info@manchesterhistoricalmuseum.org - 978-526-7230

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Archivist: Matthew Swindell | archives@manchesterhistoricalmuseum.org - 978-526-7230

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Events: Martha Chapman | marthac@manchesterhistoricalmuseum.org - 978-526-7230

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Museum Officers

  • President: Philio Wigglesworth Cushing

  • Vice-President: Rebecca Campbell

  • Co-Clerks: Susana Thompson, Mary Minott

  • Treasurer: Amy Snodgrass

 

 

Board Members

  • Leslie Beatty

  • Rus Brown

  • Marianne Coons

  • Tom Durkin

  • Matt Genta

  • Tom Lance

  • Constance Leahy

  • David Lumsden

  • John Round

  • Alison Anholt-White

Remarkable History of the Museum’s Abigail Hooper Trask House (1823)

This is the first house in Massachusetts to be built for a self-made unmarried woman! Abigail Hooper (1788-1885) was thirty-five and the town’s leading retailer when she had the house built in 1823. In the 1830s, after marriage to a shipmaster, she doubled the size of the house and added a columned side porch and a handsome frontispiece (since removed). She lived here for 62 years.

80.24.7 (1)a- Trask House - photo of the Trask House in 1880's front.jpg
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