When nearly everyone invited to a March 2025 meeting of Oxford County historical societies showed up, Andover Historical Society Secretary Claire Sessions was surprised.

They talked about shared concerns: limited space, tight finances and aging members.

“No money, no membership, no space,” Sessions emphasized.

Of the roughly 40 people who attended the meeting in Bethel, only three did not have gray hair, Sessions said. Her Andover group moved their night meeting to 3 p.m. to be more considerate of the older members, society President Joan Forrester said.

Andover’s situation mirrors that of many small historical societies across the county, Sessions said.

“We are barely hanging on by the skin of our teeth and our fingernails,” she said. “But we are people who are committed to the preservation of Andover.”

Carolyn Hardy, a member of the Bethel Historical Society board and part of the Paris Cape Historical Society, was there and created a digitized list of the historical societies. She is working with Bethel Director Will Chapman to create a single database that hosts all the society’s catalogs to aid future researchers.

One topic likely to come up at the meeting this spring is how to reduce the high cost of insurance on their historic buildings.

WEST PARIS

For the West Paris Historical Society, space is not the problem.

Curator Elaine Emery said the group meets in a large building formerly owned by the International Society of Odd Fellows. Their society even managed to add a bathroom. But from December through April, meetings stop.

“The furnace makes too much noise,” Emery said.

When the society formed in the early 1970s, she said, about three-quarters of the town belonged. Supper nights filled the first floor wall to wall with people — scenes captured in old photographs Emery keeps.

“Through the years it has dwindled,” she said. Membership now hovers around 15.

“There are an awful lot of people moving into town who aren’t from the town, and this doesn’t interest them,” said Emery, who grew up in West Paris as part of the Penley family of the Penley Clothespin Factory. Her father was one of the owners.

She hopes newer residents will join, if only to understand the place they now call home.

“They don’t know about the factories that were here and the stores that were here,” she said. The society once ran scavenger hunts for schoolchildren, Emery said, but West Paris no longer has a school.

So far, utilities are covered by proceeds from an annual supper and hunters breakfast. With fewer members, that safety net is thinning.

Three younger members have joined recently: Emery’s daughter, Stephanie Emery, who serves as secretary, and Carina and Phillip Adams.

ANDOVER

Like many of the groups represented at the 2025 meeting, Andover faces expenses that exceed its budget.

One challenge: the society’s unheated building has no plumbing.

“We’re limited to meeting in good weather,” said Sessions, who held a brainstorming session with her society under the heading, “Money is no object.” Building a bathroom topped the list.

While some members are reluctant to “join the 21st century,” the group raised enough money to create a website. It hasn’t happened yet, because the web builder is behind.

“We haven’t had it since 1976, so what’s a couple more months?” she asked.

During the town’s Olde Home Days celebration in August, the society displayed material from Earth Station Telstar, which closed in 1972.

“Once in awhile someone will sign up during Olde Home Days, but never show up or come back,” Sessions said. Their group has 22 members.

The society has a Gmail account, a Facebook page and publishes a yearly newsletter. Everything will eventually be digitized.

“We are never going to be Bethel (which has more resources), but we will try to make it easier for people …,” Sessions said.

COLLABORATION

The broader collaboration among towns began in 2024, when Sessions discovered several maps stored in Andover’s collection.

The maps were created by local surveyor Charles “Bucky” Burnham and covered towns across Oxford County, including sewer systems, housing developments, old county roads and gridded topographical maps. Some dated to the 1940s, others to the 1970s.

Over the course of 2025, Sessions traveled all over Oxford County, returning maps to about 30 towns.

“Rangeley, Dallas Plantation, Livermore, Livermore Falls, Sweden, Harrison and Bridgton — everywhere that there was a map that didn’t belong to us,” she said.

One was a 60-page map of Mexico’s sewer system. “These were maps that they should have, not us,” Sessions said.

In Peru, town officials were “jumping for joy” when Sessions delivered a map of a cemetery for which they had no records.

Sessions said smaller historical societies are eager to connect with one another and compare notes.

“Woodstock, Greenwood, Bryant Pond — they’re all hanging on by a string, too,” she said.