Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and personal memoirs of Berkshire County, Massachusetts . Wm. P. D. M. Wilcox, Dr. W. H. Wentworth. Berkshire Athenaeum and Museum. The trustees of the Berkshire Athenaeum were organized as a cor-poration on May 13, 1872, under a charter granted in the precedingyear, that instrument reciting its purpose to be establishing and main-taining in the town of Pittsfield an institution to aid in promoting edu-cation, culture and refinement, and diffusing knowledge by means of alibrary, reading rooms, lectures, museums and cabin
Historic homes and institutions and genealogical and personal memoirs of Berkshire County, Massachusetts . Wm. P. D. M. Wilcox, Dr. W. H. Wentworth. Berkshire Athenaeum and Museum. The trustees of the Berkshire Athenaeum were organized as a cor-poration on May 13, 1872, under a charter granted in the precedingyear, that instrument reciting its purpose to be establishing and main-taining in the town of Pittsfield an institution to aid in promoting edu-cation, culture and refinement, and diffusing knowledge by means of alibrary, reading rooms, lectures, museums and cabinets of art, and ofhistorical and natural curiosities. Power was also granted to the townto appropriate money toward the support of the institution so long asit maintained a free library for the use of the inhabitants. It succeededihe Pittsfield Athenaeum, and took over its well selected collection ofbooks, which had been received in greater part from the Pittsfield Li-brary Association, a proprietary organization established in 1850. Ofthe original trustees of the Berkshire Athenaeum were Thomas Allen. Berkshire Athenseum. BERKSHIRE COl^NTY 07 and Henry L. Dawes, wlio were among ils most acti\e siij^porters andliberal benefactors. At the organization of the corporation a deed was made to it fora tract of land formerl\- occupied by the Agricultural National Bank,which was purchased with a fund to which Cahin jMartin had con-tributed $5,000, the remainder being gi\en b\- Thomas Allen andThomas F. Plunkett. The corporation also received, in 1869, in ac-cordance with an enactment l)y the legislature, the library, museum andapparatus of the Berkshire Medical College, and $4,400 from the trus-tees of that institution, which, after a long and useful career, thoughsadly hampered for want of means, had gone out of existence. Thelatter sum of money was paid out for land additional to that pre\iouslyconveyed. In 1874 the town of Pittsfield appropriated $24,000 for thepurchase of additiona
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