Announcing the winners of this year's LLHSM Achievement Awards!

The Vermont Historical Society is pleased to announce the recipients of this year’s League of Local Historical Societies & Museums (LLHSM) Achievement Awards. These awards are handed out annually by the society to recognize the exceptional work done by individuals and community heritage organizations across the state to collect, preserve, and share Vermont’s rich history, with particular emphasis upon innovation. The Award of Excellence and Merit are given out for projects completed in 2024, while Individual awards are for an individual’s years of service to the community.

VHS receives nominations for the awards, and recipients are determined by a panel of judges. This year’s awards were announced during this year’s LLHSM Conference, held in Middlebury on May 9th, 2025.

Here are the recipients of this year’s awards:

Award of Excellence

• Townshend Historical Society, for the West Townshend Stone Arch Bridge Project. The Historical Society worked closely with the Town of Townshend in assisting a restoration project for the West Townshend Stone Arch Bridge, constructed in 1910 by a local farmer. Over the period of five years, the historical society helped to raise the $850,000 needed to complete the project from a range of sources, a major accomplishment for a historical society with a usual operating budget of $5000. The work began in June 2024 and was completed in October. The historical society was awarded an honorarium of $250.

Award of Merit

• Chester Historical Society, for their Facebook project. In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Chester Historical Society turned to Facebook to showcase their collections to the public, setting up a group in June 2023, which has since grown to more than 2,000 members in May 2025. They have kept to an ambitious schedule of three posts per day with around 1,650 posted so far which generate conversations on and offline.
• Colchester Historical Society, for their 50th Anniversary Celebrations. Founded in 1975, the Colchester Historical Society celebrates its 50th anniversary in 2025, and have worked to release a quarterly newsletter, build bridges to the community through articles and online posts, set up a year-long programming schedule, and worked to engage local students about their community’s history.
• Fair Haven Historical Society, for the Fair Haven Historical Society Newsletter. The historical society has long published a newsletter to its members and to its community, and after establishing a committee to revitalize the publication, began issuing the new version in 2024, which includes articles from members, archival photographs, and archival articles that spotlight their collections and donors.
• Randolph Historical Society, for their Flickr Commons Photo Archive. The Randolph Historical Society joined Flickr Commons, a cultural heritage initiative from the photo-sharing platform in 2023, and its members have worked to digitize and upload photographs from their collections. These photographs have been seen more than 90,000 times, and this new access has allowed the community to identify unknown people or locations in some of them.

 Individual Achievement Award

• Lorraine Brown, Fair Haven Historical Society. Brown has been an active member of the Fair Haven Historical Society for more than two decades, and has spent that time writing and researching, chairing committees, and presenting programming to her community. 
• Patrick Farmer, Montgomery Historical Society. Farmer has been part of the Montgomery Historical Society for nearly 25 years, serving on its board of directors for 19 of them. He has been part of their “Men-With-Tools” group to ensure the proper upkeep and maintenance of the society’s headquarters, and wrote databases to track the society’s collections and streamlined their financial infrastructure. 
• Elizabeth “Betty” Walker, Orwell Historical Society. Walker has been a part of the Orwell Historical Society for many years, and has worked to preserve documents, has helped establish the foundation for its project about the history of the town’s school houses, and is unofficially known as the town’s archivist.
• Jane and Paul Willard, Waterbury Historical Society. The Willards have been part of the Waterbury Historical Society for more than 30 years, managing the society’s finances, membership list, and public relations efforts, as well as developing relationships with other community organizations, programming for local schools, oral history projects, and the publication of a book, A New Century in Waterbury, Vermont: Stories of Resilience, Growth, and Community.