Founded in 1897, the Manchester Historical Society is the keeper of more than a century’s worth of the community’s historical treasures. Though it is a venerable 124 years old, MHS is using 21st-century methods to secure the collection and to communicate and engage with more and more people both locally and around the world.

As our shared history continues to unfold, our stories need to be preserved and passed on to the future.

Gifts of cash, check, and by credit card are gratefully accepted.

Gifts of securities are an easy and tax-efficient way to support. For information on making a gift of stock or securities, please call us at 802.549.4582.

IRA Rollover If you are 70 1/2 years old or older, you can give up to $100,000 per year to a charity through an IRA rollover. These gifts count toward your minimum annual distribution and are not counted as taxable income. Simply contact your IRA administrator to discuss making a qualified charitable distribution.

Annual Giving

Donations at all levels entitle you to receive our monthly E-newsletter, quarterly printed newsletter, as well as an invitation to any special events held during the year.

Governor Richard Skinner Council
$15,000+

Richard Skinner moved to Manchester in 1799 from Connecticut. He first lived on a farm in the southern end of Manchester Village. After being admitted to the Vermont Bar, he moved to a house on Main Street next to the Pierpont Tavern, eventually marrying the keeper’s daughter Fanny. Skinner became a prominent lawyer and town leader. In addition to serving six terms as Chief Justice of the Vermont Supreme Court, he was governor of Vermont from 1820-1823.

Franklin Orvis Circle
$10,000-$14,999

Franklin Orvis was born in Manchester in 1824, the eldest son of merchant Levi Orvis. After graduation from Burr Seminary, he went west to seek his fortune, returning in1849 after the death of his father. A natural entrepreneur, he transformed his father’s modest brick home and store on Main Street into the Equinox House in 1853, establishing Manchester as a summer resort.

Edward S. Isham Club
$5,000-$9,999

Edward S. Isham was the son of Supreme Court Judge Pierpont Isham and grandson of Ezra Isham, an early Manchester doctor. After graduating from Harvard Law School, he formed a law partnership with Robert Todd Lincoln in Chicago. He spent every summer in Manchester at the family home, known as Ormsby Hill. He was an early member of MHS.

Sarah Given Larson Circle
$2,500-$4,999

During her many years as a resident of Manchester, Sarah Given Larson was known for her quiet and effective generosity to a great many non-profits and schools. Mrs. Larson was a dedicated supporter of the Manchester Historical Society and many of her photographs taken in the 1950 and 1960s are now part of the MHS collection.

Loveland Munson Society
$1,000-2,499

Over the course of his distinguished career, Manchester native Loveland Munson (1843-1921) was lawyer, member of the Vermont House and Senate, and both an associate judge and the chief judge of the Vermont Supreme Court. He was also a gifted writer and sometime editor of the Manchester Journal. In 1875, he delivered a speech on the early history of Manchester at the Music Hall on Union Street which ended with. “…the life of the most favored individual is brief when compared with the probable duration of the community of which he is a part. We who now compose the corporate body will soon pass away, but the municipality may fulfill her thousand years. In that distant future, the space which separates us from the days of settlement will seem as nothing, and we who now commemorate the early history of the town will ourselves be reckoned among its early inhabitants.”

Louise Simonds Orvis Circle
$500-999

Louise Simonds (1874-1953) married George Orvis, a son of Franklin Orvis, following her graduation from Burr and Burton Seminary in 1890. After his death in 1917, she took charge of running the Equinox House and in 1925 hired Walter J. Travis to design the new golf course for the Equinox Links Club. She was the first woman to vote in Manchester and was for many years president of Manchester Village. 

Walter Hard Club
$250-499

Walter Hard (1882-1966), a fifth-generation member of a Batten Kill Valley family, left Williams College in 1903 before graduating to take over his father’s drugstore business. In 1928 he published Some Vermonters, “a collection of Yankee characters” in verse. His nine volumes of poetry were marked by unrhymed lines and broken rhythms, which he likened to the Vermont landscape. Critic Louis Untermeyer ranked Hard among the historic best of New England poets. In 1935, he and his author-wife Margaret sold the drugstore, and became proprietors of the Johnny Appleseed Bookstore, which they ran for thirty years in the historic Orvis store building beside the Equinox Hotel. He also served five terms in the Vermont legislature.

Sarah Cleghorn Associates
$100-249

“She was a poet, an educator – and a reformer.” With these simple words, written in the introduction to her memoirs Threescore, the poet Robert Frost summed up the life work of his friend Sarah Cleghorn, the only Manchester resident to appear in Bartlett’s Quotations. Sarah Cleghorn became quite well known for her passionate devotion to socialism, pacifism, experimental education and the abolition of capital punishment. She was that rarest of utopians – one who seriously lived by the principles she believed in and cherished her entire life.

 Falcomb “Fred” Nickelwhite Friends
Up to $99

Fred Nicklewhite was a master tailor who lived for many years in Manchester Village and is buried in Dellwood Cemetery. Among his clients were many notable visitors who vacationed at the Equinox Hotel and in the Village’s summer cottages. He is fondly remembered by all who knew him as a gentle and unassuming man who loved jazz and was proud of his enduring friendships with many jazz greats, including Duke Ellington and Cab Calloway.

Corporate Sponsorship
Giving Levels

We invite local companies to become annual corporate sponsors. For your annual gift you will receive the benefits outlined below. We are very grateful for your support.

1897 Society
$1,000 +

• Your company name and logo on the MHS website

• Your company name and logo on all program ads and press releases

• Your company name and logo in all E-newsletters

Proprietors Circle
$500+

• Your company name and logo on the MHS website

• Your company name and logo on all program ads and press releases

• Your company name in MHS quarterly newsletters

• Your personal name or company name and logo in all E-newsletters

Union Club
$250+

• Your company name and logo on the MHS website

  Your company name and logo in MHS quarterly newsletters

• Your company name and logo in all E-newsletters

Other Ways to Give

In addition to cash gifts, the Manchester Historical Society is able to receive gifts of stocks, mutual funds, or bonds. Your gift of appreciated stock or mutual funds can be tax deductible at full fair market value at the time of the gift, and there is no capital gains tax due. Please ask your broker to contact us or send the securities with a letter of transmittal to Manchester Historical Society, c/o Nicholas Strom-Olsen, VT Retirement Planners, 54 Highland Avenue Unit#1, Manchester Center, VT 05255.

Bequests are lasting gifts to the future of the Manchester Historical Society and provide an important legacy to the future. Simply by including the Manchester Historical Society in your will makes it possible for MHS to build for the future. If you do decide to include us in your legacy giving, your attorney can help you make this possible. We would like to recognize your plans by including you in our Legacy Society, which is acknowledged every fall in our Annual Report, so please let us know if you have made provision for a gift to MHS in your will.

If you have property or tangible goods you would like to donate, please contact us before making the gift to make sure MHS can accept it, and to discuss any necessary appraisal, environmental study, or other preliminaries.

We are always happy to talk to you about how you can support MHS now and in the future and urge you to discuss this with your financial advisor who can advise you on how to accomplish your philanthropic goals.

Thank you so much for your interest in the Manchester Historical Society and your generous support.

Donor Privacy Policy

Manchester Historical Society, a 501(c)3 organization, does not share or sell any of its donor information. Information is gathered through voluntary submission to our organization, and is used only for our fundraising activities. We abide by the policy of removing any donor who no longer wishes to receive material from our organization if they express this wish by telephone, email, or mail. All donor mailing and donation history information is securely stored and not made accessible online.