Welcome to the new website of the Essex Historical Society & Shipbuilding Museum

We hope that you find the site informative and interesting. Through the wizardry of present day technology we are able to reach wide ranging audiences. As we speak to you through this present day medium, we are ever mindful that our lives and the abundant technology we enjoy today are rooted in the innovations of our fore bearers and the times in which they lived. Without their imagination and hard work, we would not be where we are today.

The Essex Historical Society & Shipbuilding Museum is a small regional, historical museum that tells the story of a New England village, its people, and its industries; principally shipbuilding. Today as you scan the scenic Essex River Basin from the grounds of the Museum there is the realization that much is just as it was hundreds of years ago. Artifacts and working reproductions are here for you to explore, to ponder, to touch. Programs and tours offered by the Museum are geared to bring history alive; to give you the feeling you are stepping back through time, ready to join in a shipbuilder’s life from centuries past, which for those who continue to ply that craft today is little changed from those who preceded them.

We hope you will have the opportunity to visit us and when you do it will not take you long to figure out that this Museum is unlike any other you have ever visited. It truly is a diamond in the rough. There is a tale at every nook and cranny. Let your curiosity run free and you will be richly rewarded.

We look forward to seeing you!

Cynthia Schlaikjer
President, Board of Directors
Essex Historical Society & Shipbuilding Museum