Lily Dale Museum

Lily Dale Museum

Located at the Lily Dale Assembly in New York, the Lily Dale Museum has developed into one of the finest Spiritualist museums in America, despite its small size.

Artifacts accumulated and were stored away until 1985, when Joyce LaJudice received permission to use the basement of the Marion Skidmore Library for a museum. However, because of the unsuitability of the basement in the winter months, the museum had to be relocated every year to the second floor of the Assembly offices. In 1995, the museum moved to its present home in the old schoolhouse. This was built in 1890 and used as a schoolhouse until 1938, when the government consolidated all one-room schools. The Community Club then utilized the building until 1995.

LaJudice organized the museum and ran it singlehandedly as Lily Dale’s Historian and Museum Curator, until she was joined in 2002 by Ron Nagy. Nagy became a second Historian and quickly became a major figure in the organization and running of the museum. He was instrumental in discovering a wide variety of forgotten artifacts in the Assembly offices, including many priceless spirit paintings by both the Bangs Sisters and the Campbell Brothers. Nagy is now considered the authority on such precipitated paintings.

An inventory of more than 3,000 items at the museum includes the Fox Family Bible, the peddler’s chest that had belonged to the murdered Charles Rosna, spirit slates and trumpets, women’s suffrage memorabilia, medium’s advertising signs, books by Andrew Jackson Davis, historical photographs, newspaper and magazine articles, and much more. It is a one-of-a-kind collection that is sought out by writers and researchers from around the world.