About The Museum

The Wilson Museum was founded by Dr. John Howard Wilson. Dr. Wilson spent most of his youth in Philadelphia, Brooklyn, NY and Nantucket, he came first to Castine with his mother, Cassine Cartwright Wilson, in 1891. By 1906 Dr. Wilson had received from Columbia University, a Ph.D. in geology, was married and had a summer home on Nautilus Island, across the harbor from his mother’s house in Castine. In 1921 Mrs. Wilson gave the west end of her lot to build a museum for Dr. Wilson’s collections. Three other buildings were added to the property in the late 1960s: The John Perkins House, Blacksmith Shop and Hearse House.

Purpose:

Own and maintain the Wilson Museum Complex to show the antiquity of man and his cultural stages from the earliest geologic times that furnish any evidence of his existence, down to our present times.