December 2025
Dear Members and Friends,
As 2025 comes to a close, we again ask you to support the Annual Appeal for 2025–2026. This year has been a year of firsts and old favorites. We held our first Scavenger Hunt this year, featuring clues that led participants across Bristol’s cultural district. The gaming club that started meeting here in 2024 held its first gaming convention during the first weekend of November. We even held our first bingo fundraiser at the Polish Club!
We have continued to present programming, inside and outside of the building, including programs as varied as the 2025 West Cemetery Lantern Tour, the Federal Hill Walking Tour, programs on the Peck family letters, the Know-Nothings, and the Connecticut Tories during the Revolution, as well as a program co-sponsored with the Memorial Military Museum highlighting their Women in the Military project. We also continue to bring programming to the digital landscape as well. Our researchers have been hard at work bringing another year of daily emails and Facebook posts to readers.
As always, this building remains our largest artifact, and we are happy to report that with assistance from the Roberts Foundation and the D’Amato Construction company, repointing work has now been completed on the north side of the building. We remain indebted to New England Masonry for their expertise and attention to the brick façade on Bristol’s only nineteenth-century municipal building open to the public. We are also grateful to the Connecticut Historic Preservation Office for their guidance and to our friends and supporters who provide material support for this multi-year repointing project.
We hope you will consider an Annual Appeal donation this year and join us in our ongoing mission to preserve Bristol’s history and to reach out to the community with programs and activities highlighting it. And, if you are required to take a minimum distribution (an RMD) from a retirement account, like a 401k or an IRA, in many cases those funds can be donated to a nonprofit tax free, which is one more way to provide your support.
Annual Appeal donations fund a variety of different needs and programs, from utility bills to preservation supplies to speakers’ fees. They are one of the most direct ways to preserve Bristol’s history for future generations.
Noreen Zurell, BHS President
Donate by clicking the link above, or mail donations to:
The Bristol Historical Society, P.O. Box 1393, Bristol, CT. 06010
Please write Annual Appeal Donation in memo line.
December 2021
Dear Members and Friends,
This is the time of year when we reach out to you for support as we begin our 2021–2022 Annual Appeal.
This year is notable for many reasons. First, this is a special year because the Bristol Historical Society celebrated its 50th Anniversary this April! As we look back on the first half century, we want to celebrate how far the organization has come and express our gratitude for the people and institutions that have supported us in the past fifty years. Your support over the years has helped to maintain this remarkable building that we call home, Bristol’s first public high school. It has also enabled the Society to collect a broad array of artifacts related to Bristol’s history, present a range of programs and exhibits for all interests, and provide scholarships and other support to the larger Bristol community. We would not be here without you and are thankful for this amazing community.
In addition to these exhibits, programs, and community activities, we are excited to look forward to new projects: We will soon begin work on an exhibit highlighting Bristol’s schools in what once served as the principal’s office in our 1890 building. We are excited to highlight Bristol’s schools and educators in the exhibit and thrilled that this magnificent Queen Anne–style school building will finally have a display that corresponds to its own history. Also, as a nod to our interest in preserving school history, the Society undertook the fundraising to renovate the statue of Minerva that graced the high school on Memorial Boulevard. The return of the building’s original statue of the Goddess of Wisdom will serve as a bridge between the many graduates of that high school and the future students of the renovated Intradistrict Arts Magnet school.
As we reflect on our own history, we cannot overlook the reality that this year itself is notable. We hope the pandemic is drawing to a close, but we acknowledge that it will leave this community, like so many others, irrevocably changed. We sometimes conceive of history as something that has happened in the past, but so much of this year has forcefully reminded us that history is being made every day. As the Bristol Historical Society looks to the next half century, we renew our commitment to preserving our history for future generations of Bristol residents with your support.
We respectfully request that you join the many concerned citizens who have already made a tax deductible donation to our Annual Appeal. Help us continue to promote an interest in local history and encourage an appreciation for its importance by making a donation – today!
Happy Holidays from the Society and best wishes for a happy and healthy New Year!
Maya Bringe, BHS President
Donate by clicking the link above, or mail donations to:
The Bristol Historical Society, P.O. Box 1393, Bristol, CT. 06010
Please write Annual Appeal Donation in memo line.