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Washington Evening Journal
111 North Marion Avenue
Washington, IA 52353
319-653-2191
Pioneer Museum packs historical punch
MARENGO — The Iowa County Historical Society Pioneer Museum almost hides at the corner of East South Street and Wallace Avenue in eastern Marengo.
People don’t know it's there, said Historical Society President Patty Hinrichs.
On a recent Friday, local residents and out-of-towners admitted to Hinrichs that they didn’t know about the museum, though it has two log cabins, a depot, a barn and an old Sinclair gas station on the grounds
The two-story museum is full of displays that include part of an actual early 1900s farm house which was taken apart at its original location and reassembled inside the museum.
“Originally this was the 4-H building,” said Hinrichs of the structure on a quiet street near the Iowa County Fairgrounds.
When the historical society bought it for a museum in 1965, the organization thought it would have enough room for everything the historical society wanted to display, said Hinrichs.
Then people started bringing things.
The historical society added a front section, two stories high, for workshops and storage. But museum curators needed more space for displays, so both floors were filled with exhibits.
The first room visitors see is filled with period dresses, hats, stoles and military attire.
Uniforms include those from Burns Byram and James Slockett, and Darrel Freshour. Slockett, a former Iowa County sheriff, earned a Silver Star.
Freshour served in the Army in Vietnam from 1964-1966.
Byram “died in a tragic plane crash too, like Eugene Ely,” said Hinrichs.
Ely, a mechanic from Williamsburg, was an aviation innovator. The Pioneer Museum is hosting a temporary exhibit about Ely and aviation from the collection of historian David V. Wendell.
Wendell will present a program at the museum at 2 p.m. Sunday, Aug. 18 to celebrate National Aviation Day.
The middle section of the museum is lined with books used for genealogy research. The Genealogy Society helps people research family histories using information there.
Pauline Lillie visited all the Iowa County cemeteries and recorded the names and locations of every person whose name she could read. The book she created is available for family research.
Museum volunteers gather information and work to digitize it for online research. Marengo native Dave Wannamaker, who now lives in Des Moines, drives down and scans articles and pictures for the museum, said Hinrichs.
“He’s a great volunteer for us.”
In the backroom, the museum has recreated a school room, a general store with “quite a bit of what they would have sold at that time” and a doctor’s office.
Much of the school display consists of items from Gritter Creek County School west of North English. The school is open to visitors all the time, said Hinrichs, but not much remains in it because of the possibility of theft and vandalism.
“It is in the middle of nowhere,” said Hinrichs. Directions are available at iowacountyhistoricalsociety.com.
Every year in the fall, the Lutheran Interparish School in Williamsburg drops students off some distance from the school and has them walk to school as children in pioneer days would have, said Hinrichs.
The children take their lunches in pails, sit in the old desks and experience what school was like in the 1870s.
“The kids really get into dressing up,” said Hinrichs. “They really live history that way.”
More than 60 people showed up at Gritter Creek school for its 150th anniversary celebration this summer.
The 1900s Everitt Hursh farmhouse inside the museum was donated by Hattie Hursch in 1987. She was 100 years old when she attended the ribbon cutting.
The house, moved to the museum from south of Marengo, isn’t complete, but it is original. Visitors walk under the original porch roof to enter the living area.
Much of the wallpaper and furniture is original to the Hursch house.
“We wanted kids to see what a farmhouse was like back in that day,” said Hinrichs.
Many larger items at the museum were sitting outside, so the historical society built a barn a few years ago to house them, with the help of an Iowa County Community grant.
One of the last Model T cars sold in Iowa County sits in the museum barn.
The car was sold out of Victor to a man who bought two of them, said Hinrichs. He thought he’d drive one until it wore out, and then he’d drive the other.
But the man lost his vision before he could put many miles on the second car. “This one hadn’t been driven much at all,” said Hinrichs.
The man said he’d give the car to the museum if it had a place to store it indoors. So when the historical society built the barn, the museum got the car.
The two log cabins on the museum grounds are the first cabins built in Iowa County.
Henry Meyer built the smaller one — the one Hinrichs calls the bachelor cabin — in 1861 when he first arrived in Iowa County. But when Meyer married, his bride didn’t want to living in the one-room cabin with a dirt floor.
Meyer built a second, two-story cabin for his new wife. “Their wedding certificate is framed and in that house.”
The first cabin was given to the Pioneer Museum after the Lutheran Church bought the property near Homestead and built a church. The cabin was moved to the park until the Historical Society bought the land near the fairgrounds. Then the cabin was moved on a semi-trailer to the new location.
The Misel/McBride playhouse, which sits between the cabin and the depot, was originally built as a model, said Hinrichs. Companies used models so people could see how their houses would look.
Two houses in Marengo, based on the model, are still standing, Hinrichs said.
When the house was no longer needed as a model, it became a playhouse for children of the family that owned it until they donated it to the museum.
“You can even hook up electricity,” Hinrichs said.
The former Victor train depot keeps the old Marengo firetruck and other large items safe from the weather. “[It] has quite a colorful history to it,” said Hinrichs.
When passenger train service ended, depots were torn down or used for other purposes, said Hinrichs.
Someone purchased the Victor depot, moved it on a semi-trailer truck to the Victor exit off I-80 and turned it into a bar and grill. “They even had strippers there,” said Hinrichs.
The venture didn’t work out for the owners, and the depot sat empty for a while.
In 1987, Dale Noyes, president of the historical society at the time, offered to buy the depot for $1, tear it down and rebuild it at the museum.
The Historical Society furnished the building to look as it did when it was a depot.
The Iowa County Pioneer Museum is located at 675 E. South St. in Marengo. It’s open noon to 4 p.m. Thursday and Friday and by appointment. Call 319-642-7018 for more information.
