Furnishings
The Historical Society’s furniture collections range in date from the 17th to 20th centuries, many items produced locally, some left behind by the Whipple and Heard families or donated by other Ipswich families. The Whipple House rooms feature early furniture crafted in Ipswich and nearby towns arranged to show scenes from daily life in the 17th and 18th centuries.
Highlights include a Dennis chest, Gaines chairs, and period blanket chests. Key furniture items in the Heard House, displayed in a gallery setting, include an imported a Chinese carved display cabinet, Chinese porcelain garden seats, Japanese lacquer export cabinet, bamboo “Carrington Chair,” camphor wood ship captain’s desk, and Arthur Wesley Dow’s desk.

Fine Arts
The Society owns the largest single collection of works by Arthur Wesley Dow, including oils, watercolors, woodblock prints, cyanotype and black-and-white photographs, and plaster molds. The Society also displays a collection of works by the “Ipswich Painters,” a group of artists who gathered around Dow in Ipswich during the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Other highlights of the collection include two portraits attributed to Lamqua, a Chinese artist who was a student of George Chinnery, portraits of members of the Heard family including two by William Morris Hunt, and a marble bust of Augustine Heard. Early paintings and prints are on display at the Whipple House.

Decorative Arts
Special items in the Heard House include Chinese porcelain and other objects purchased by members of the Heard family who headed one of the largest China trading companies in world. Also on display are examples of Japanese porcelain and American silver from the 18th and 19th centuries.

Textiles
Special items in the collection include a sample of Trapunto quilting ca. 1650, a linsey-woolsy coverlet, samplers made by Ipswich girls, a gold-thread and embroidery piece, early embroidered “scenes,” and Chinese silk shawls.

Lace
The Society’s collection includes lace made by women in the late 18th century, including the kind of black Ipswich Lace purchased by George Washington for his wife, Martha. Between 1789-90, 600 Ipswich women were recorded as lace makers. Ipswich was the only town in America making bobbin lace commercially. The collection also includes pillows and bobbins used by Ipswich lace makers.

Domestic Objects
Shown at the Whipple House are early cooking utensils, spinning wheels, reels, wool winders, weasels; cheese making; mortars, pestles; candle molds, a collection of oil lamps and lanterns, pewter dishes and stoneware dishes.
Items at the Heard House date to a later period, including women’s toiletry objects, sewing baskets, men’s walking sticks, and children’s toys and games.

Military
The Society’s collection of guns dates to the French and Indian War and Revolutionary War. Also featured are a collection of items belonging to the Civil War hero Col. Nathaniel Shatswell, including camp equipment, his uniform, and saddle; personal items of the World War I Navy pilot John Patch who was tragically killed in action; and a collection of World War I posters.

Carriages
The Heard House carriage house contains a fine collection of late 19th century carriages, sleighs, A surrey, and a park drag.

Photographs
The Society’s large collection of photographs dates from the late 19th century to the present, and includes images of mills, bridges, street scenes, and daguerreotypes.

Historic Books
The Heard House houses the Ipswich Religious Library which was founded in 1791 and is the first circulating library in Ipswich. Other rare books include Anne Bradstreet’s Several Poems (1678) and two 17th-century Geneva Bibles.

Personal Papers
Housed in the public library archive, the Society has a large collection of journals, wills, deeds, and letters dating from 1636. Housed in the Society office are papers relating to the Heard family and many other prominent families in Ipswich, including letters, journals, and mementoes. The Society also owns a large collection of manuscript material pertaining to Arthur Wesley Dow.

Ipswich Female Seminary
The Ipswich Female Seminary Room of the Heard House features Seminary books, student sketch books, writing desks, diplomas, botanicals, globes, and science equipment. The Society has a complete collection of Seminary catalogs, from its founding in 1828 to its closing in 1878.