Recently, one of East Linn Museum’s invaluable volunteers, Nadine Jackson, came across two associated artifacts as she straightened up the museum’s attic and moved on downstairs to put order into the files in the research room.
In the attic, she came across a portable metal filing cabinet sealed with masking tape. Its label identified it as having been put together by third-graders at Oak Heights for the American bicentennial year 1976. It is a time capsule.
Down in the research room’s newspaper files, Nadine discovered a brief story plus a photo of the third-graders published in The New Era newspaper. The project had been quite an undertaking, with students being asked by their teacher, Mrs. Ruth Wodtli, to talk with parents and grandparents about the past two hundred years of their family histories which became part of the time capsule.
Added, too, were an assortment of relics including a bag of marbles, a school lunch menu, buttons and school supplies.
The time capsule then traveled on July 3, 1976, to the newly established East Linn Museum for safe keeping not to be opened until 2076.
And, if Nadine had not made her discovery, it likely would still be forgotten in the museum’s attic. Some of us volunteers considered opening the capsule to see what was inside, but others said, “No!”
It will not be opened until 2076, providing the museum survives until then, or perhaps by someone else in the future.
When considering their time capsule, we can begin to think of the museum itself as being a large time capsule. Or maybe a better image would be to see the museum’s collections as fall-out from any number of time capsules.
The East Linn Museum is eclectic, meaning a lot of diverse elements are involved. This brings criticism from some who find the mixture of artifacts too diverse and distracting. Their solution would be to store many things and have selected items in integrated displays at different times.
But for the most part, the rooms and showcases in view throughout are the storage units, there being but a limited space in the upstairs attic. For others, to have the wealth of objects displayed that the museum does have makes the place a much more interesting and rewarding experience whether to visit or to serve in as a volunteer.
The museum does have some limitations. Most of what is seen came from this area in one way or another, much of it donated by the families of earlier citizens of the East Linn vicinity whose portraits look down from the walls in the main room. Familiar names shared among them are Wiley, Moss, Hamilton, Barr, Horner and Mealey.
The industrious organizers of the museum who helped establish it back in the 1970s worked wonders, aided by collections from Lois Rice and Don Menear. But not always recalled were the words of a little rhyme many of us learned in school: “I have six honest serving men.They taught me all I know. Their names are where and what and when and why and who and how.”
Considering the trials of assembling the artifacts primarily with the aid of volunteers, this is not surprising. Even today where far fewer treasures are taken in by the museum, histories are generally scant or totally lacking.
Which brings up Nadine’s ability to serendipitiously connect the Oak Heights third graders’ time capsule with the matching article in The New Era already on file.
Mostly, histories of the artifacts in the museum, it is likely true, come from making fortunate connections.
Take the museum’s violins, for example, the Guanerius and Stradivarius. Both types of violins are considered superior and of high value these days, their original makers being Italian experts.
Initially, the discovery of a Stradivarius in the museum collection looked almost plausible because the instrument had a history.
It had been brought to America before the 1776 revolution from Europe and had journeyed west by wagon train. The connective hitch, however, was this: A volunteer recalled hearing about a stolen Stradivarius in a nearby town when a fire broke out in the creamery and burned through part of the downtown until halted at a brick building in about 1919.
The missing violin belonged to the city’s barber who complained, too, of having lost a pair of long johns drying on a clothesline. Two Stradivarius violins in this limited area didn’t gibe, so the volunteer pondered.
At the same time she searched through one of those really great time capsules, a 1902 copy of a Sears Roebuck catalog. She looked for information on a 16-inch-long harmonica in the museum’s collection.
And here it was, Sears’ offerings of Stradivarius and Guanerius violins.
Some violin may have played a part in the afore-mentioned family history, but it was not the 1902 Sears Roebuck Stradivarius, although Sears said its violins were made in Europe. Does a skewed family history detract from the museum’s Strad? No. It’s one of those myth-making ventures which enrich an object’s past, but which misses the truth.
History just plain is one of those places where people fall into adding embellishments for effect, especially when truth often stretches credulity.
Old catalogs and reprints of them can shed a lot of light on objects at the museum. For example, two articles we associate with the earliest pioneer days here, the 1850s to 1860s perhaps, show up listed in Sears catalogs from the late 1890s.
One is a tin candle mold still being used apparently in the 1890s when kerosene lamps in the East Linn area and even electricity in other locations were common.
The candle mold sits in the museum’s kitchen display.
The other, and there are more than one, is a scythe with a cradle attachment lined up beside the blade to catch falling stalks of grain, with which a man could mow one or two acres a day of wheat, oats or rye grain.We always think of such scythes and cradles as crossing the Plains in the back of a covered wagon, but as of the 1890s freight trains were more involved. McCormick reapers had replaced most scythes for grain harvests.
We might say in many respects the museum is full of mysterious time capsules ready for release and recognition. For some, recognition may never come. An example is a small packet of tintypes, photographs reproduced on metal. A little battered, men and women appear solemn, and in the case of one young lady, even sullen.
However, this may have come from the need for sitters to stay still several moments in order to be photographed or from a self-conscious apprehension that the photo would not depict them as they saw themselves.
The tintypes have a question attached, “What can we do with these?” Well, they represent a time period, likely the 1870s, judging from the dresses and hair styles worn by the ladies. Also, they are tintypes and Eastman Kodak paper used in photography didn’t come along until after the mid-1880s.
Otherwise, for the moment, they remain a mystery awaiting a who and definite when answer.
We volunteers are all amateurs, not professional museum folk, and the museum hasn’t funds to hire a curator anyway, especially not a trained one. This leads to some discussion among the volunteers as to what should be kept and how displayed.
We don’t really have a standard time line saying everything should pre-date the 1950s, for instance. In fact, local and pertinent is often the criteria relied on. A volunteer objecting to things which seem too modern in recent memory looked at the 100-year definition of what comprises an antique. She received an observant response: “You just don’t recognize how old you are.These things are going to be old enough.”
True, in a couple or three decades. Which brings us to the East Linn Museum’s general plea for volunteers. As of the end of May, six of us will be over 80. Whereas Elsie Robnett and Lucille Rapp, volunteers before us, waited until they were 90 to retire from the East Linn Museum volunteer ranks, there is no guarantee all of us will be able to do the same.
Not to say that volunteers over 80 are unwelcome, but there will be a need for successors. Each volunteer brings special skills. One might read more history while another understands computers and a third knows how to change the fluorescent light bulbs.
All contributions are important to the whole. And at the East Linn Museum we can learn much we didn’t expect to know regarding technology as well as people, all historical.
Does the East Linn Museum offer a strong view of the local past? Likely, not quite. As with any time capsule, what has been saved, one way or another, and put on view is a matter of selection on the one hand and blind luck on the other. In general, it is just a hint of what has been lost and destroyed.
But that is history? Think of all of the lives which have gained brief mention, or of trying to find out about our own ancestors. As with the museum’s little packet of tintypes, unless someone has left notes or has written information on the back of old photos the who, what and when are gone.
Thinking of ancestors takes us back to the Time Capsule waiting for 2076, left at the museum by Mrs. Ruth Wodtli’s Oak Height’s third-graders. Because they looked at 200 years of their ancestors’ pasts, we would really like to see what they discovered, but we can’t ruin the time capsule’s intent.
In the meantime, the museum will receive a further time capsule of sorts, scrapbooks of records compiled by Myrtle Gates. Many may remember her as a longtime music teacher at Sweet Home High School from 1951 to 1976. Also, she involved herself in civic affairs and belonged to a calligraphy group.
She was considered a true Southern lady who set up an initial singing Christmas Tree program here in 1953. After her retirement, she returned to Virginia, where she died in August 2017, a month short of 107 years old.
Seeing her records should surely be like opening a time capsule and reawakening old memories for those who knew her or studied music under her. She also was appreciative of the museum.
In the meantime, the COVID-10 uncertainties still dog the East Linn Museum. We should be opening in March on the first Thursday, from 11 a.m. to 4 p.m. on March 4.
May we all stay in good health, meanwhile.