 Washburn had a long and abiding interest in local and state history . In 1826 he published a short history of Leicester in a Worcester magazine . This work formed the basis for his Historical Sketches of the Town of Leicester , Massachusetts , published in 1860 . He was elected a member of the American Antiquarian Society in 1827 , beginning a lifelong association with that organization . He served as the society 's secretary for foreign correspondence from 1866 @-@ 1867 , and then secretary of domestic correspondence from 1867 @-@ 1877 . A large portion of his personal and business papers also resides within its collections . He later became a contributing member to the New England Historical and Genealogical Society and was a member of the Massachusetts Historical Society and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences . In 1840 he published Sketches of the Judicial History of Massachusetts , which provides a basic history of the colonial Massachusetts Superior Court of Judicature ( antecedent to the current Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court ) and its justices . Biographer Robert Spector describes it as " the starting point and basis " for legal historical work relating to the court . Washburn considered himself to be more of an antiquarian than a historian : he believed it important to conserve artifacts and historical information , leaving the interpretation of those to others . He wrote of the importance , for example , of the need for the state to preserve its own historical documents ( something not given much attention in its early years ) . 
