The Fairfield Museum and History Center collects items pertaining to documenting and contextualizing the history of Fairfield since its founding in 1639. The Library is home to some 12,000 volumes, or 8,000 individual titles, of monographs. Its strengths include the areas of decorative arts and artifact collecting, the history of manufacturing and trade, maritime studies, Fairfield genealogies, and local and regional history.
Special Collections houses a broad spectrum of one-of-a-kind materials that document the history of Fairfield in a variety of aspects. The rare book collection consists of 100 linear feet of the museum’s most unique volumes, including antiquarian and out-of-print items, first editions, and volumes whose fragile condition dictates special storage. The rare book collection also includes the museum’s collection of church books. Technically manuscripts, these ledgers date back to the 1700s.
Some of the oldest families in Fairfield are represented in the museum’s manuscript collections, which span a width of more than 600 linear feet. The manuscript collections consist of almost 120 distinct bodies of documents. Personal papers such as correspondence, diaries, notebooks, and drawings are found here as well as the corporate records of several Fairfield companies.
The museum’s map collection contains nearly 300 maps of Fairfield, Fairfield County, and Connecticut. Many of them, including the popular 1937 WPA map, were hand-drawn. A number of maps were compiled by private cartographers, oftentimes on fragile and highly acidic papers. Special Collections also houses the museum’s collection of historical Fairfield and Southport Newspapers, which spans the century between ca. 1860-1960 and beyond.
Approximately 800 posters and flyers from a wide range of social and political activities make up the museum’s broadside collection. Many of the bills and advertisements grouped in this collection were acquired even before they were posted, and are therefore in near-pristine condition. The World War II collection stands out for its forceful graphics and vivid colors.
The photograph collections include a collection of 19th –and 20th-century photo albums with tintypes, gelatin prints, albumen prints, and cyanotypes, among others. Researchers especially value several portrait collections as well as the documentary house photographs. The photograph collections also include daguerreotypes, glass slides, and stereograph cards.
