Before it was the Bartlett Museum…it was an historical exhibit for Amesbury’s 300th Anniversary Celebration of the town’s founding. The newly closed Bartlett School on 270 Main Street was procured for the project of displaying Amesbury’s past to the public. Over 700 items and collections were loaned to the exhibit. From July 1, 1968 the Committee began to transform the school house with help from numerous people and groups with the intent to open on August 10th and run through to Aug 25th.

Mrs. Hazele Kray headed the Historical Exhibits Committee for Amesbury’s 300th Anniversary Celebration in 1967. Mrs. Kray has deep roots in Amesbury as the granddaughter of Charles Pettingell who built machinery for carriages and founder of the Pettingell Machine Company. Eight of their machine tools manufactured here in Amesbury are on exhibit in the Ford Museum in Dearborn, Michigan. Mrs. Kray’s varied talents, and in particular her skill as an interior decorator, were applied to the presentation of Amesbury’s historical artifacts.

On Aug 28, 1968 Amesbury News printed this Letter to the Editor: “During the past two weeks we citizens of Amesbury have had much to be proud of. Every one of our 300th Anniversary projects was a great success. One of our most successful events was our Bartlett Museum, carved out of our old Bartlett School building. Hazele Kray and a small group of loyal workers (I was one) worked for three weeks to get the exhibits and antiques together so that the museum could open on schedule. Records show that over 600 people visited the museum each day during the two weeks that it was open. Now there is talk about a permanent museum for our historic town, Why not? With a museum we could continue to tell our story of our background of shipbuilding, the glorious days of the carriage builders, and of our great industrial past. The Interest is here now, it is not too late. Must our museum also fade into history?” - Harold Aldrich 418 Main Street

In 1969 the Town of Amesbury voted to convey the Bartlett School over to a corporation to be known as the Bartlett Museum for a nominal fee of $1. Charles Goodwin Jr. of Goodwin’s Hobby Shop, Main Street, Amesbury was elected as the first President of the Museum.