author
Lilian Baker Carlisle
1912–2006
A lively Vermont historian and museum worker, she helped turn everyday objects, local stories, and regional traditions into history that ordinary readers could enjoy. Her books and public work kept Burlington and Vermont’s past vivid, personal, and close at hand.
1 Audiobook
The carriages at Shelburne Museum
by Lilian Baker Carlisle
About the author
Born in Meridian, Mississippi, in 1912, Lilian Matarose Baker Carlisle later made Burlington, Vermont, her home after moving there with her family in 1946. She became deeply involved in the cultural life of the state and built a reputation as a writer, lecturer, collector, and public-minded local historian.
Carlisle is especially associated with Shelburne Museum, where she worked with founder Electra Havermeyer Webb and helped catalog and interpret major collections of American folk art and material culture. She also wrote on antiques, carriages, clocks, watches, jewelry, and Vermont history, with a gift for making specialized subjects feel welcoming and full of human stories.
Her work reached beyond museums and books. She served in Vermont public life, contributed to preservation efforts, and remained a beloved Burlington figure whose scrapbooks, papers, and publications captured decades of community memory. She died in 2006, leaving behind a rich record of the people, objects, and places that shaped Vermont’s past.