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Carnegie Museum unveils new exhibit on Jefferson County 4-H
Southeast Iowa Union offers audio versions of articles using Instaread. Some words may be mispronounced.
FAIRFIELD – Carnegie Historical Museum in Fairfield has a new exhibit that details the history of 4-H in Jefferson County.
The exhibit on the museum’s top floor includes a treasure trove of information, photographs and artifacts dating back to 1922, the year Jefferson County 4-H was formed. Two girls who are members of Jefferson County 4-H Teen Council volunteered to assemble the exhibit, Taylor Miller and club president Piper Miller, no relation.
Taylor is the daughter of Eric and Kala Miller, while Piper is the daughter of Eric and Melissa Miller. The two are also interning with Jefferson County ISU Extension this summer, though this project was something they did in their free time.
Barbara Kistler, treasurer of Jefferson County ISU Extension Council, said a chance encounter at the museum prompted her to think of creating a 4-H exhibit. She was there one day to drop off a photo, and saw that Loretta Diers had just moments ago donated her 4-H dress and some of her ribbons to the museum.
“A lightbulb went off,” Kistler said.
Kistler mentioned to Carnegie Museum Director Jake Schmidt that those artifacts would be nice to display to showcase the upcoming Greater Jefferson County Fair, which is June 23-30. Schmidt added that it would be even better to leave them up through the Iowa State Fair Aug. 7-17, and that’s what they decided.
4-H County Director Courtney Burkhalter suggested inviting the county’s 4-H clubs to submit items for the display, and Kistler said she “jumped right on that.” Taylor Miller and Piper Miller got involved, and they belong to two different 4-H clubs, with Taylor on Leading Hands and Piper on Ceniteers. Piper said she was able to find a history of 4-H someone else had typed, and she highlighted some of the key events in the organization’s history by creating a timeline for the display, with help from fellow Ceniteer Natalie Steele.
The museum already had some 4-H artifacts such as old newspaper articles, and Burkhalter agreed to let the girls borrow some 4-H materials housed at the fairgrounds to use in the display.
One of the neat facts highlighted in the display was how large 4-H was right off the bat. In its very first year in Jefferson County in 1922, the club boasted 335 members. Boys and girls belonged to separate clubs. The boys’ clubs showed animals while the girls’ clubs did home economics activities. Kistler mentioned that the Activities Building at the fairgrounds, built in the 1950s, was commonly referred to as the “Girls’ Building.”
The display tells the story of how 4-H kids were recruited to harvest crops in 1943 while the men were fighting in World War II.
Piper said a thought that occurred to her while preparing this exhibit was that it would be nice to bring 4-H participation numbers back to what they were years ago.
“Today we have 159 members and 60 Clover Kids, and that’s quite a bit less than what we started with in 1922,” Piper said. “If we could get our numbers up, that would be nice.”
Call Andy Hallman at 641-575-0135 or email him at andy.hallman@southeastiowaunion.com
