Our Mandate

The Beaverton Thorah Eldon Historical Society exists for the purpose of preserving the history of the community through research, collecting items of historical interest and for the preservation of municipal and family history.

History

In October of 1976 a group of interested citizens met to discuss the formation of a historical society. It was at that first meeting that the Beaverton Thorah Eldon Historical Society was born. Since that time the Society has grown, building up the Beaver River Museum on parkland – part of Centennial Park – with a long term lease from Brock Township. The museum complex is the result of thousands of hours of volunteer labour, many donations of artifacts and money, and grants from both the Federal and Provincial Government.

As a source for genealogy research, we answer many e-mail and letter inquiries as well as helping visitors research their family histories.  Our archives contain many resources pertaining to  both family and municipal history that have been researched, collected, organized, and indexed over the years. Appointments are booked ahead of time to ensure that a volunteer is available, or if searching original documents or photos, the archivist. Please view contact for more information.

We have:

• Photos
• Maps
• Documents
• Artifacts
• Cemetery records
• Microfilm of old newspapers
• Audiotapes
• Videotape and DVDs

We operate the Beaver River Museum, which consists of an 1850’s log house, a turn of the century brick house, and a mid 19th century stone jail, furnished with local artifacts. Our Meeting Place houses a large meeting and display room, archives, office, collection storage, and a video-editing studio. Annually, about 1000 people enjoy touring the buildings from late May to the end of September.

We keep our four buildings in excellent shape. They attract the attention of residents and visitors to our community.  Our commitment to developing and maintaining our museum, historical resources and outreach activities requires an extensive input of volunteer hours, donations, and fund raising to support it. The majority of our income is raised by activities such as the Antique Show, House Tour, Robbie Burns’ Event, Share the Wealth lottery and quilt raffle.

Maintenance of the museum and collection is an ongoing responsibility. In recent years we have been fortunate to receive grants from the South Lake Community Futures Development Corporation and from The Trillium Foundation which allowed us to make extensive upgrades to our buildings and equipment including new roofs, painting, foundation work, windows, sunscreen film on windows, microfilm reader/printer, a computer, and scanners.

Recent work has included scanning over 1000 images, some from our archives and some new photos such as artifacts of the Beaverton Legion and photos of the barns of Thorah township.  We are also in the process of updating burial records for the Stone Church Cemetery.  There are always new projects on our horizon.