An afternoon at the Port Wing Heritage Hall

Today I did my first shift for this summer, staffing our museum from 1-4pm when it's open to the public.  This museum came to be back in 2001 following the big Port Wing Centennial celebration.  They had collected so many items for the Centennial displays and then decided they should build a museum to permanently house those treasures.  So, lots of volunteer hours and $40,000 in donations later, they had a museum...and lending library!

Behind the museum you can also visit the old Port Wing jail and also what they call the "Booth Building" which housed a commercial fishing operation at one time.  Both of those buildings were moved to this location.  Also inside the Booth Building is a miniature replica of the town as it looked in the early 1900's.  Pretty fun!

We are very fortunate to have a talented and hard-working curator, Soney Rockenbach, who has spent the last 13 years organizing and recording all of the donated items, and setting up thoughtfully arranged displays by topic and category.

It's nice when people can feel confident in those running the museum to trust them with their family treasures.  There are LOTS of items from the Larson family farm taking up space here!

The sign on this chair says, "Parlor chair from the home of Fred & Regina Larson."  And,
"Fred Larson was the first homesteader to move his family to Port Wing."  

This is the carding bench and carding brushes from our farm.

Lots of old toys, some from our old house.

Nice displays with informative captions and signs.

Lots of family histories in these notebooks!  Each family has contributed their stories and memories of family members to the contents of these notebooks.  What a treasure for a little town!

And below is the Lending Library corner.  This is run on the honor system and has been cared for all these years by my friend, Sandy.  Today, since I was going to be there for a few hours, she mentioned that I could help her weed out the old stuff so it can go to the flea market fundraiser for the museum next weekend.  So I was back "reading shelves"--putting the shelves in alphabetical order, and weeding per her criteria--anything older than 10 years old or any duplicates.  When everything is donated, and there isn't an abundance of shelf space, it could get to be kind of a conglomeration over time.  So clearing up the old stuff in time for the flea market leaves room for new donations in the future.  And I felt like I was "back on the job" again!  Thanks, Sandy!