Mary Hill of Cedarville is the new curator of the Les Cheneaux Historical Museum. Mary Hill of Cedarville was appointed by the Les Cheneaux Historical Association board of trustees to preserve what is most important to them: the history of the Les Cheneaux Islands. Ms. Hill, who has been interim curator for the Historical Association since late August, was unanimously appointed by the association board to be permanent curator of the Les Cheneaux Historical and Les Cheneaux Maritime museums Monday, September 28.

Her main goal as curator is to use her experience as a museum employee and volunteer to continue a project that will catalogue the museums' historical artifacts.

"My current goal for the museums is to complete the collections management program, which was started by [outgoing curator] Cathy Hollowell, who had a wonderful vision for our future. This program is going to be great. Its going to number every article and every artifact in our museums. Its all going into the computer and will be readily available to people so they can see what we have in our collection," she said.

With the help of museum volunteers, Ms. Hill hopes to gain a considerable amount of ground on the cataloguing project during the museums' off-season this winter. Volunteers are numbering, photographing, and documenting each artifact and then entering that data into a special computer program to create an easily accessible database of all museum materials.

Museum workers are also going through and organizing the museums' archival vault, which has accrued a vast amount of undocumented papers and letters, Ms. Hill said.

"We're cleaning out our safe where all of our archival materials are," she said. "Every box has papers in it. We actually go through and have to read these papers, which is good for me because there's a lot of papers in there I haven't seen."

Ms. Hill said it is important to preserve the area's history for future generations.

"This is basically our social and cultural part of Cedarville, our museums. They are a place where people can come together" to learn about the area's heritage, she said. "It's so needed in our community."

Museum board president Richard Smith echoed that sentiment. He believes the two museums are an invaluable part of the Les Cheneaux Islands.

"When you consider what there is in our community for a person who doesn't own property here to do here, this is it. We don't have a theme park," he said. "We have the islands, but we don't really have very much opportunity for [tourists] to get out and see those islands and those channels."

Ms. Hill began her work at the museums under the direction of long-time curator Annegret Goehring. She worked with Ms. Goehring for six years, before Mrs. Hollowell took over as curator in 2008, learning the workings of the two museums. During that time Ms. Hill said she learned a lot about the history of the area, preservation techniques, and organizing museum displays.

"She was a wonderful mentor and teacher. She knows her Les Cheneaux history," Ms. Hill said of Ms. Goehring. "Working with her, every day I came in I would learn something."

The Historical Museum is closed for the season, but will reopen during the two weekends after Thanksgiving for the Historical Association's annual Christmas Open House and Christmas Tree Auction fundraiser.