From the dress Esther Dahlin wore on her wedding day to a goat on wheels used in a fraternal organization’s initiation rites, the Afton Historical Museum is the repository of all things.
More than 10,000 things, to be exact.
Museum officials know the total because they are in the midst of a reorganization that includes taking inventory and cataloging every item.
The items include 2,029 photographs, 913 books, 507 postcards, 32 hats, 23 dresses, nine pairs of shoes and one pack of unfiltered Camel cigarettes. The cigarettes belonged to war correspondent Ernie Pyle, whose wife, Geraldine “Jerry” Pyle, was from Afton.
“We started at the top and went all the way to the basement, separating the artifacts from the non-artifacts,” said museum president Stan Ross. “It was just all mixed together. We had no idea what we really had.”
Over the past four years, the museum has gotten $72,000 in state Legacy funding from the Minnesota Historical Society to inventory, catalog and preserve its artifacts.
“So if you walked in and said, ‘Do you have any information on David Berry from the 1800s?’ we can go to the computer and say, ‘Yes, we do, and it’s in display number whatever or box number whatever,’ and we can go right to it and show it to you,” Ross said.
The cataloging project unveiled a treasure trove of wedding dresses that had been hidden in the basement, including one from 1850, said Pam Reuvers, collections manager. Many of them are on display in a new exhibit called “Brides Through the Ages.” Reuvers is researching the family history behind each dress.
“Some of them were packed properly,” Reuvers said. “Some of them were in old Donaldson’s boxes and Dayton’s boxes.”
Most striking is how small the dresses are. “I don’t know how they got those dresses on. This one looks like a negative size,” Reuvers said, pointing to a long-sleeved gown with a jeweled buckle and mermaid tail. “They got married so young, I suppose they had no weight on them yet.”
The oldest artifact in the collection is a hand-carved Swedish pencil box from 1798; it belonged to the Berglund family, one of the city’s pioneer families.
Ross’ favorite is a wind-up horse-racing parlor game that was hand-crafted in France in the late 1800s. About 2 feet by 2 feet and 8 inches high, it’s designed to sit on a tabletop.
“There are eight small toy horses that run around on a circular race track,” Ross said. “You crank the crank, pull a lever that releases the horses … and finally one is the winner. It’s kind of crazy addictive. I can imagine a bunch of men sitting around a room, maybe the library or something, smoking their cigars and drinking their drinks and betting up a storm.”
LOOKING FOR STORIES
Now that they know what they have, museum officials will start limiting donations. Unmarked photographs or a box of antiques with an unknown provenance will no longer cut it.
“Every item needs to have a story,” Ross said. “We are looking for items that represent the history of Afton, and we want to have the story that goes with every item. It’s a little bit of a delicate process; people can be very offended if you don’t want their artifacts.”
Added Reuvers: “We try not to take duplicates because we are limited in storage space. Afton photographs we love, but if they are photographs of people, we require a label. We need to know who that person is, and the date it was taken. In the past, we’ve gotten hundreds of photographs that we have no idea who they are.”
Every once in a while, a box of odds and ends will be left on the museum’s front steps, Ross said.
“It’s a little gift from somebody who drove by,” he said. “We look at them and see if we can determine some importance from them and then check with other museums to see if they want them. (If not), they go to the great museum in the sky.”
The museum hopes to get another Legacy grant, for $10,000, to cover the cost of organizing and rehousing its “family files” — documents such as birth certificates, obituaries, land deeds and photographs that date back to the 1800s. Many of them are stuffed in a file cabinet in the basement.
And next spring, they’ll apply for a $100,000 Legacy grant to buy a “museum-grade” storage system — rows of shelving on racks that can be moved laterally — “so we won’t have boxes stacked to the ceiling down in the basement,” Ross said.
In the meantime, museum-goers can expect a number of new exhibits throughout the year.
Ross said the museum received feedback that instead of having a warehouse on display, it needs to rotate its collection to keep people interested.
“That’s an interesting statement because it takes a lot to get to that point,” he said. “You’ve got to find out what you have, and you’ve got to figure out where to put the things that you do have and come up with the money for the displays. We’re still working on that.”
Mary Divine can be reached at 651-228-5443.
Follow her at twitter.com/MaryEDivine.
IF YOU GO
The Afton Historical Museum is at 3165 S. St. Croix Trail. It is open from 1 to 6 p.m. Wednesdays and Thursdays; admission is free. The exhibit “Brides Through the Ages” will run until Aug. 28. For more information, call 651-436-3500 or go to aftonhistoricalmuseum.com.
