Collections & Exhibits

Our Main Exhibits are:

Introduction to Mi’kmaw History
1754 Settlement of the area
Shipbuilding in Mahone Bay
Three Churches of Mahone Bay
Local Ceramics Collector Percy Inglis
Settler Families of Mahone Bay
Locale Female Artists
Early Kitchens
WWI

Our Small Exhibits include:

Rum-Running
Antique Toys
Folklore & Hidden Shoes in Walls
Begein Family and this c.1875 home

More Exhibit details:

The Settlement of 1754 exhibit tells the story of the people who came to Nova Scotia in 1750-1752 to receive land in Lunenburg and Mahone Bay. Learn more about the settlement history of our town here: https://mahonebaymuseum.com/research/townhistory/

The Settler Families of Mahone Bay Area exhibit showcases various artifacts, photos, and information about descendants of the settlers from Germany, France, and Switzerland who settled in Mahone Bay area. Please note that we hope to feature different families every year. On display for the 2021 season are the Keddy bible, Mader cowbells, Eisenhaur Wax Doll. If you’d like to check which families are currently featured, contact us!
Find more information about the Settler Families of Mahone Bay Area here: https://mahonebaymuseum.com/research/settler-families-of-mahone-bay/

The Shipbuilding exhibit shows various shipbuilding tools, a diorama of the McLean & Sons shipyard (one of the many shipyards that were in Mahone Bay), a list of over 500 ships built in Mahone Bay (available online here: https://mahonebaymuseum.com/research/ship-database/), information on various shipyards, photos of ships built in Mahone Bay, wooden half-models of ships on loan from the Maritime Museum of the Atlantic, and a map showing where some of the ships built in Mahone Bay ended up.

The Three Churches exhibit features photographs starting from c.1880 of the three churches over time before all three were in the current location, information about the history of each church, and church related artifacts such as local family bibles.

Our Collection

The Mahone Bay Museum preserves and interprets various artifacts relating to Mahone Bay and area’s history. We are currently working on providing access to pictures of artifacts in our collection. This sneak peek of the artifacts from our collection storage is under construction. Check back soon for more updates.

The Mahone Bay Museum has an archival collection with documents and photographs related to Mahone Bay. See more details here: https://mahonebaymuseum.com/archival-collection/
Public access to these archives is available upon request. Please contact us at 902-624-6263 or by email at info@mahonebaymuseum.com

The Mahone Bay Museum also houses a large portion of the Inglis/Quinlan collection, which is on loan to us from the Nova Scotia Museum. Percy Wellington Inglis was a ceramics collector who lived in Mahone Bay.
His collection was passed on to his niece, Clara Quinlan, before it was acquired by the Nova Scotia Museum in 1986.