Milton Historical Society plans big year in 2023

As a new year beckons, Milton Historical Society is ready to ring in 2023 with a whole batch of new things: a new director, new programs and a new main exhibit at the Lydia B. Cannon Museum.

DeeDee Wood is the new development director. Wood has done similar work in St. Michaels and Denton, Md. Among Wood’s duties will be leading the society’s Goshen cemetery walking tour. 

Walking tours had been shut down during the COVID pandemic, but society President Randy Brown said the tours will return in 2023. Besides Wood’s tour, the society will also offer Jack Hudson’s Milton Memories tour and bring back the architecture tour.

Brown said 2023’s major exhibit will be Women of Milton, which will trace the history of the town through the eyes of women, starting with the mothers of Milton’s founders through present day. He said this exhibit, which will open in March, will look at a wide variety of women to get a picture of how the town’s culture came to be. 

Bus tours will also return next year. Starting in spring, buses will take people from Milton to historical sites in Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.

After assuming the role of chairman in January 2021, Brown said he had to figure out how to resume operations after COVID kept the museum closed for a year. 

“One of the biggest challenges was figuring out, are we a museum or are we a historical society? If we are a historical society, are we able to make our outreach larger? So if we have another pandemic, which is big on our minds, we want to have a bigger outreach,” Brown said.

That outreach includes having more videos, interactive programming and a stronger social media presence. At the same time, Brown said, the society wants to continue to utilize the museum space with a gift shop and scheduled exhibits, which will be overseen by Wood.

“The biggest challenge for us is how to present the history of Milton,” Brown said. “Everybody is interested in something different, and it’s us rotating that as much as possible to capture as many eyes as possible.”