Daily Newsletters
Account
Washington Evening Journal
111 North Marion Avenue
Washington, IA 52353
319-653-2191
Iowa Wesleyan archives moved to Henry County museum
Henry County Heritage Trust works to preserve local history
MT. PLEASANT — The majority of Iowa Wesleyan University archives from the Chadwick Library are currently undergoing inventory and categorization at the Henry County Heritage Museum.
With the help of community members and Mt. Pleasant Correctional Facility inmates, the archives were moved from Chadwick Library just a few weeks ago.
“We had several lady volunteers that came to box all the things up to be moved over here,” Henry County Heritage Trust Treasurer Pat White said. “We had our board members helped take down shelving units to bring over here. Then we contacted the Mt. Pleasant Correctional Facility, and they set aside three days to actually load all the things onto trucks, bring them over here, unload things and put the shelving together.”
Under the expertise of the former Harlan Lincoln House Director Spencer Barton and White, an inventory of many of the archives now exists.
At the moment, the two will continue their work to inventory the rare book collection, prints, and framed items before they move into categorizing this large collection of local history.
When they begin the categorization process, they anticipate weeding through pertinent items that contribute to their intent to keep Iowa Wesleyan and local history items in Henry County.
“The main intent is to keep it all local as it should be,” White explained. “I think that’s what the community wanted, as well, and the powers-that-be at Wesleyan. I think that was their hope and intent.”
“The intent of this room is certainly going to be Wesleyan related items, but we’re going to expand from that to include a lot of Iowa history that we haven’t focused on in our research library that we have upstairs,” White said.
According to White, the Iowa Wesleyan Archive Room “ … isn’t going to be what you think of as a display room in a museum.”
“We just don't have the room for that,” she said. “It's more of an archive room where we're holding the records of the University.”
The hope is to eventually have displays on top of the many filing cabinets in the archive room along with plenty of wall-hanging displays.
As they sort through the many items in the collection, White anticipates they will eventually need to weed out some items that don’t quite fit into their mission, so, the public should keep their eyes open for a potential book sale or other ways they will narrow down the archives.
Barton shared about a few historical gems found in the collection.
“This is a Methodist missionary New Testament in phonetic English instead of regular English,” Barton explained as he delicately opened the book from 1885. “ … this was used for missionaries in Central Africa.”
“You’d have natives in Africa that would learn the Gospel in English,” he said. “These would be in British occupied lands, so, it also allowed them to learn a little bit of English as well in the process, so, then they could actually communicate with government officials, as well.”
Another noteworthy part of the collection includes a whole set of War of Rebellion from the rare books collection from the University.
“These books were all correspondents to the Civil War that the War Department made at the turn of the 20th century,” Barton explained. “We have a nearly complete set.”
“It’s pretty amazing,” White commented. “When we were boxing the books up, we weren’t paying too much attention, but we thought we had two or three copies of the same thing, but actually it’s just different editions of it.”
The collection also includes Iowa Wesleyan year books, local newspapers, photographs, letterman jackets, sermons, and many other nuggets of history.
Comments: AnnaMarie.Ward@southeastiowaunion.com
