About us

Seventh Town Historical Society

Seventh Town Historical Society is located in the Ameliasburgh Ward of the City of Prince Edward County, Ontario, Canada. Ameliasburgh Township was originally known as 7th Town, and was settled by United Empire Loyalists in 1784.

In 1990, 7th Town inherited two trusts from the estate of Marilyn Adams, from which flowed the Marilyn Adams Genealogical Research Centre, formally opened to the public in June of 1994, and later as a research centre in August 1994. MAGRC houses the Adams’ Family Museum in Cunningham House, which is one of the trusts. The other is a fund from which the interest helps provide the daily funds required to operate the centre.

The Marilyn Adams Genealogical Research Centre (MAGRC)

The Marilyn Adams Genealogical Research Centre is the only free-standing dedicated genealogy research centre in Canada and houses a number of important collections of genealogical and historical interest.

  • Genealogical research material and historic items of local, provincial, national and international interest. These have been acquired through donations of personal and community group collections from Canada, the USA and Europe. The genealogy library also includes other records, letters, books, Ontario Vital Statistics BMD, map collection and more.
  • Hastings County Land Records for about 100 years prior to 1955
  • Tudor & Cashel Township Records, dating back to 1852
  • The Klein research on the Tripps’ of the Bay of Quinte
  • Women’s Institute Tweedsmuir histories, minute books, and other records
  • Douglas Crawford canning factory papers
  • The remaining regional assessment records for the Quinte area
  • Hessian Research of Johannes (John) Helmut Merz
  • Heal Research Papers and Records

Online resources include access to the Names Database, Land Records Database and Heal Database.

Cunningham house building

The facilities include the Marilyn Adams museum, library and reading area, research department, publications department, microfilm reading room, microfilming lab and the Hastings County Land Records repository of original documents. For researchers, the MAGRC is a convenient one-stop facility. The centre is equipped with archival shelving, customer-accessible computers with access to popular research websites, microfilm and fiche readers, photocopiers and microfilming equipment.

A dedicated team of volunteers from the 7th Town Historical Society and Friends of Marilyn Adams staff the centre. Without their help it could not operate.

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