Museum As Artifact

The Lydia B. Cannon Museum was once the highly successful Milton Methodist Protestant (M. P.) Church, established in 1857. Elderly long-time residents of the town may remember the church by name, but most who were born after 1940 would know it as Grace Methodist Church; this was the name the congregation adopted after the unification of the Methodist Episcopal and Methodist Protestant Conferences around 1939. The church was last known as Grace Church, starting around 1956, when the United Methodist Conference decided to consolidate the two congregations in Milton into one, and the Grace Methodist congregation refused to abide by that decision. After protracted legal action, the congregation was officially dissolved in 1963. The building changed ownership and function several times before being bought by Lydia B. Cannon in 1971 and given to the Milton Historical Society. The first exhibition of the MHS in this building was in 1973.

In the major renovation of 2005 – 2006, the old Social Hall building was demolished and an annex integrated with the main hall was built in its place. The original stained glass windows from the renovation of 1906 were not only retained, they were masterfully restored by Jean Camarda, a local resident and specialist in that field.

Because the windows and much of the original structure were retained, the LBC Museum building is itself an artifact with an interesting history. This page introduces the first of what will eventually become several articles concerning the history of the building.

Symbols in the Windows describes the unusual emblems in the windows of the main hall, chancel, and annex.

People of the Windows tells the individual stories of the congregation members whose names appear at the bottom of almost all of the windows, either as donors or in memory thereof.