MIDDLEBORO — The Middleborough Historical Association is celebrating two milestones in its own history, its 100th anniversary as well as the 60th anniversary of the Historical Museum. 

The museum is continually documenting the town’s people and their history and exhibits a collection as eclectic as the inhabitants of Middleborough, with everything from Native Americans to Tom Thumb on display. 

 The newest exhibit, compiled by Benjamin Carr, is a retrospective collection of 50 years at the high school. Carr, a member of the Middleborough Historical Association board of directors, collected relics from the high school which celebrated its 50th anniversary as it was torn down to make way for a new building, said Daniel Thompson, association president. 

 The collection includes desks, maps and books which represent an obsolete educational method, said Carr, who is also a teacher at Norton Middle School.

 “When Ben came through the building he captured the things that defined what this building really was,” Middleboro High School Principal Paul Branagan said. 

 “Every single student in some way, shape or form sat at the desks with the attached chairs,” said Branagan. The chairs all in rows defined what education was at that time, Branagan said.  “Now everything is flexible, movable…nothing is attached, it’s a different concept. When the desks left the school it signaled an end to a style of educational teaching and learning,” Branagan said.

Carr, who teaches world languages, formerly called foreign language, said he doesn’t use books anymore to teach. “They’re obsolete.”  Instead, students today use digital programs to learn a new language.  It’s not surprising that the foreign language textbooks are among Carr’s favorite items in the collection.  “They’re relics of the past,” he said.

The museum is one of a collection of buildings located on Jackson Street, maintained by the association. Noting an historical tie to the White House, Thompson said Jackson Street was named after Col. Peter Peirce’s favorite president. Peirce, who lived from 1788 to 1861,  was a  local businessman who built the historic Colonel P. H. Peirce Store at 99 North Main St.

The complex includes Mill Village, a collection of homes and outbuildings that tell the story of early life in Middleboro. Thompson said Col Peirce built the two-family homes in 1820 for his workers at the iron foundry, shovel factory and woolen mills. Families lived in the homes until the 1950s, when the buildings were acquired for $1 by the MHA and opened as an exhibit in 1961, said Thompson.

 The association also hosts one of the world’s largest memorabilia collection of Tom Thumb, his wife Lavinia Warren Bump and her sister Minnie. The women were born in town and worked as entertainers for the greatest showman on earth, P. T. Barnum.

The “little people” were known throughout the world. They sang, danced and performed in Japan, China, Australia, India, Yemen, Egypt, Italy, England and across the United States. “Tom Thumb was known to say he kissed more women than anybody in history,” Thompson said. 

The trio retired to Middleboro in a home on Plymouth Street and many of their possessions are in the exhibit. 

Other displays include a music room, an 1800s school room, a laundry room, a toy room and the Deborah Samson Room. The museum also displays Chippendale furniture from Judge Peter Oliver’s home, rescued before it was burned to the ground by an angry mob.

The museum located at 18 Jackson Street, is open Saturdays from 1 to 4  p.m. through Oct. 29, or by appointment.  Call (781) 361-1427 or e-mail middleboroughmuseum@gmail.com  for more information.